While your waiting for ‘Sonny 2‘, I suggest playing Johns newest game, Ahicevement Unlocked!

The amazing and talented Tasselfoot pwned the game in the least amount of time available (301-seconds). Below is his YouTube video. Can anyone else get a perfect score?

The ride has come and gone. I want to say ‘Thanks’ to everyone who donated to the ride and it was great being a part of Team Armor!

You can check out photos of the ride from here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danmcneely/sets/72157609655826858/

Yes, it does make a difference and it does matter.

About a year ago I wrote an article about the perfect parking spot.  It illustrated a parking spot of the kings, one that exemplified all that I strive for in perfect parking.  Good spot, good location, nice sunlight times; it was a match made in heaven.  However, after the honeymoon things started to go downhill.

• I wrote this article before Winter happened.  Later that month my parking spot cushion (the area I stepped out into, a little dirt patch) became a muddy graveyard of sticks and dirt.  I forgot to take a picture, but it looked something like this:

  

• Sometime in later Winter someone started to TAKE MY SPOT.  They didn’t know it was my spot, but like my own creature-of-habit tendencies they pulled into that spot every day, and I had to adjust.  The problem is that a second set of offices share the same parking lot area and these spots are closer to them then they are to our building, so they take it.
• In Spring these birds started to appear and hang out in the tree that acts as the primary source of shade in the afternoon (to cool the car).  Bird droppings soon became more annoying than a seatbelt that couldn’t be cooled fast enough, so I gave up on the spots under the tree.
• In late Spring I moved to another spot under another tree that was less populated.  Around the end of Spring the tree started dropping little sticky cherry-like fruits that left marks that were super hard to scrub off.  I had to move again.

  

• In Summer crows started to hang out in the parking lot, so trees or locations around larger trees were becoming dangerous locations, and these birds dealt critical damage to car cleanliness.
• By this time the ratio of distance traveled vs. accommodating elements was becoming a serious issue.  I was now walking across the parking lot or having to park in some random spot which I didn’t like.  It became a serious manner.

However, this story ends happily, as I finally found a good parking spot.

I managed to find a parking spot that was marked “Reserved.”  I noticed no one every parked in it, and even though it was “Reserved” for someone, that someone never used it.  And everyone else seemed to avoid it too since they didn’t want to take that person’s reserved spot.  So I decided that it was “Reserved” for me.  I now park in it daily.

I am fairly certain that next year I’ll be telling you how this parking spot fails, but in the meantime it’s the best I can do.  I know it’s such a small difference in my life, but every day I get off work and I know my car is going to be the first thing I deal with.  So I like to know that when work is finished I get to step into a cooled-down, same spot, no mess, close proximity parking spot.

Or maybe I should just walk.

I feel like John Locke from Lost in a way.  I have to keep clicking the button on the computer every four hours to postpone, and if I don’t postpone it my computer will die.  It’s true.  Let me tell you the story.

I got back from vacation on Monday, and found my computer not working.  It’s a Vista machine, and it’s under two years old.  It wouldn’t boot past the loading screen.

So I restart the computer, thinking it was just a glitch, but it fails.

I try to run in last-best configuration, it fails.

I try to run in Network-Only Safe-Mode, it fails.

I try to run in Safe-Mode, it fails.

So that is the entire list.  I unplug everything, try to recover from DVD, it all fails or glitches.  I run several checkdisks and that sort of thing, and the computer doesn’t respond.

Finally, after trying to recover from DVD for the ninth time, it works.  Randomly.  My computer glitches out, displaying random coloured RGB pixels across the entire screen making my monitor look like it had dead pixels, then it restart and started working.

I traced the problem back to an automatic update of the OS by Vista.  The way this works (which is set to be “on” by default) is that the computer gives you a few minutes to hit the “postpone” button on the automatic update or it will restart the computer and start the upgrade.  Your only options are to postpone it for a few minutes or a few hours, and there is no option above 4 hours.  So the minute I wasn’t at the computer, my computer decided to automatic upgrade without me, and managed to crash.

So after the crash I turned off Automatic Updates in the Control Panel.  However, Vista doesn’t approve. It still feels the need to bug me about updating or “I’ll do it automatically for you!” still!  I cannot seem to get rid of the option for Windows to auto-update, which means I most likely will wake up in the morning with another failed update/crash.  I’m sitting here trying to Postpone the update over and over again.

What happens when I go home and leave the update to itself again?  What happens if I turn the computer off?  Will it Automatic Update on load like it did last time?  There’s no good answer, every answer is a threat to all my lovely documents and I have no control over it.  The only way to guarantee my computer would survive the night would be to press the “Postpone” button on the computer every time it pops up, all through the night.

My computer controls my life :(.  Let’s hope for the best tomorrow.

The MS-Ride is less than 5-weeks away and our Team Jerseys are ready to go. Here’s how they are going to look, so if you see us on the day of the ride, make sure to say ‘Hi’.

It’s not to late to donate and support a great cause. You can visit our Team Page, or click on a team member and support them.

Armor Games Team
Daniel McNeely
John Cooney
Jeff Hiltbrand
Brian Hunter
Miles Kushin
Alfred Santana (Coming Soon!)

Just wanted to let everyone know that ‘Castle Crashers‘ came out today on Xbox live!

Castle Crashers was developed by The Behemoth, and both Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin played a HUGE role in the game.

Tom Fulp (Creator of Newgrounds) has made Flash gaming what it is today, and helped pave the way for sites like ArmorGames. If you have an Xbox go buy the Game. That’s an order!!

-Daniel

I believe it was Will Wright, creator of the SimCity, Sims, and Spore franchise that was set on the fact that glitches in gaming were “features, not bugs.”  It’s a funny way of thinking about it, but it’s really hard to explain this to the everyday viewer.  Quite honestly, I can barely understand it either.

A recent video from EA games does a very good job explaining this phenomenon.

Wow, this was just about the most well-played response to a fan video ever.

Anyway, when I program my games the random user #44,349 always tends to find a random glitch or error in a game.  They send me an email telling me how much they [loved, hated] the game and how the [glitch, bug, error] made their gameplay that much more [terrible, awesome, exciting, blah].  These bug reports are really helpful, and we’ll fix them.

So whenever you do see a bug on an Armor Games game, try hitting up the author.  We are usually down to earth with the community so if you send us an email we’ll usually fix the bug (sometimes even credit you!).  I know that the first 72 hours I usually get a bug report that is so perplexing I could never understand how someone would arrive at it.

And yes, it’s a feature, not a bug.   So [deal with it, enjoy it, tell us about it].

Google recently launched a new tool for monitoring where people are searching from.  When it came to “Armor Games” as a search query, well, we were a bit surprised.  My guess would have been the United States or Canada on top for search volume (although they were rather high) or the United Kingdom purely on how much we know Europe loves casual gaming.  Instead, it  was that country that everyone holds close to their heart, yes… it’s Finland!  Finland holds that highest ratio of searches for Armor Games, followed closely but Croatia and Slovenia:

Now this is not to say that we get the most traffic from Finland.  And this graph is not saying that the order of the countries on this list is the traffic rank for each.  It’s just an indication of what percentage of searches are going towards our site via Google.   So, Finland, what makes our site so appealing to find?  Why does your population of 5.3 million search for us so frequently?  Is it because we share the same colours in our logo and your flag?  Is it our shared respect of folk music?  Who knows.

Additionally, the United States has a breakdown of region as well.  Utah and Oregon seem to be the victors here, followed closely by Arkansas and Idaho.  Most interesting thing about this map is that large chunk of white space right in the middle of the United States.  What’s going on Wyoming?

And another interesting graph is the search for “Last Stand 2″, which resulted in a very territorial breakdown of where people are searching for it:

Apparently Michigan and the Northeast love their zombie killing, or at least are looking for zombies to kill.  Anyway, these maps are a lot of fun to check out.  It gives you an interesting perspective on how location makes a big difference in what people search for and how frequently.

I have a buddy of mine who just released a new album on iTunes. I normally don’t post music reviews but I’m positive this album is going to be a HUGE hit so I thought I’d give everyone a heads up.

Check out the album. (Click here)

If you only listen to one song, make sure to hear ‘Invisible Children’.

Portal: The Flash Version at Zeebys Awards 2008!

Hey everyone! Ido Tal here, me and my partner Hen Mazolski, the creators of Portal: The Flash Version, have some exciting news! Portal: The Flash Version was nominated for the Best Web Game of 2007 award at Zeebys’ second annual casual game awards.

Every time our game gets mentioned like that, it reminds me of the development of the game. Me and Hen worked on polishing the game a lot. I remember not sleeping two days, skipping school, in order to make it with the last deadline we set to ourselves, and we made it 5 hours before! Good times.

I would be extremely grateful if you guys vote for us in the Web Game category at Zeebys’ in the following link: Vote Here

*Make sure to click through the various voting pages to reach the ‘Best Web Game’ voting page.

Thanks!
Ido