Egg Freckles

Trine 2 takes place in the same fantasy world as the original, and once again our three heroes, Zoya the thief, Pontius the knight, and Amadeus the wizard are bound together by the Trine and forced into saving the kingdom from darkness.

Trine 2 shares the same game mechanics as the original.nOnly one hero can be on the screen at a time, and the player must decide which hero’s unique set of abilities is up to the current task.nObstacles include the same spikes, pits of lava, fireballs, swinging pendulums, and booby traps as the original, but this time our heroes are forced to solve more difficult puzzles involving steam, pipes, and running water.

The hordes of skeletons from the first game have been replaced with roaming bands of goblins that attack our heroes with sword, spear, and arrow at designated times.nI can’t say the variety or difficulty of the enemies has improved, but the adversary in Trine has always been the environments and never the combatants.

The characters are controlled using customized directional keys on the keyboard.nAiming is accomplished with the mouse.nThe left and right mouse buttons perform different attacks, spells, and actions depending on the character in play.nThe scroll wheel is used for switching between weapons.nSometimes it is important to perform a spell or attack with one character, and then quickly switch to another hero to use a different capability.nThis can more easily be accomplished by reprogramming the buttons surrounding the movement keys to switch in different characters.

Trine 2 shares the same emphasis for collecting experience points as the original.nThe bad news is that the ability enhancing treasure from the first game has been replaced with useless collectable artifacts in Trine 2.nThe good news is that casting spells or special attacks no longer has an energy requirement, and skill points can be reassigned among characters during the game.

Zoya retains all of her skills from the original game. She can shoot flaming arrows, and use her grappling hook to climb and swing from nearby wooden platforms.nIn Trine 2 she gains the ability to shoot frozen and explosive arrows, and creep past enemies with unnatural stealth.nZoya is still the most versatile character.nHer distance attacks prove remarkably effective at close range after she gains the explosive arrow skill, and her grappling hook to can get her to many place other characters cannot.nI wouldn’t waste experience on her stealth skill.nThe object of the game is to kill opponents for their experience, not avoid them.

Pontius the knight gains some explosive capabilities of his own in Trine 2. He still boasts the same sword, shield, and hammer combo that made him a powerful warrior in the original, but this time his abilities have been strengthened with fire, frost, and throwing attacks.nPontius’ frost shield temporally slows down enemies after he blocks their attacks.nHis fire sword makes short work of goblins that get in his way. With the proper experience he now has the ability to throw his mighty hammer, or charge its attack for even more damage.nPontius’ hammer throw is indispensable for boss battles later in the game, but I have never found a need for his charged hammer attack.nEnemies just seem to die so quickly from the flames of his sword.nPontius also has a running charge attack, but the experience to unlock it could be better served on the wizard’s puzzle solving capabilities.

Amadeus the wizard is the groups problem solver.nHe has no offensive capabilities of his own, but his ability to conjure multiple objects and move things with his mind make him invaluable at solving the puzzles in Trine 2.nI strongly advise that you place a lot of experience on Amadeus’ ability to conjure multiple objects, and unlock his plank ability as soon as possible.nThe game is made easier by acquiring skills, and nothing helps reaching out of the way vials of experience like a stack of boxes conjured in the right place.nAmadeus loses the power to conjure the floating pyramid from the original game, but his ability to pick up enemies with his mind and place them in harms way makes up for the difference.

Just like its predecessor Trine 2 benefits from the Nvidia PhysX engine.nThat means all of the boxes Amadeus generates, or all the goblins Pontius kills fall and interact with the world in a realistic way.nYou will start to count on this behavior when you swing Zoya from her grappling hook, or change the direction of deadly acid flowing overhead.nThe weight of objects Amadeus picks up with his mind can be used to activate pressure switches, spring levers, or crush enemies.nHalf of the joy of playing Trine is seeing what Rube Goldberg inspired contractions you can manipulate, exploit, or create in this realistic world.nBy using the realistic physics there is more than one way to solve an puzzle, making Trine 2 never the same game twice.

One way Frozenbyte, the developer of Trine, has tried to improve its replay value is with a series of achievements and a online cooperative multiplayer mode.nThe achievements challenge the player to discover all of the collectable artifacts in the game, or perform stunts like surf on a platform floating on steam for four seconds.nChallenges like completing an entire level with one character become difficult when you only have a constrained set of capabilities to rely on.

Due to a lack of available online players I never got to fully test Trine 2’s cooperative multiplayer capabilities.nI suspect this feature is best served for local network play, or multiple controllers attached to the same computer.nIn cooperative play up to three players share the roles of the three available heroes.nPuzzles must be solved with all players working together, no hero can be left behind.nI fear cooperative multiplayer mode might have made the single player game too easy.nNo one likes sitting around dead while their friends complete the game, and have all the fun without them.nTo combat this lack of participation Trine 2 offers a healthy amount checkpoints to revive fallen players.nIf you want a challenge in Trine 2 you will have to pick the hard difficulty where checkpoints don’t revive your health.

The world of Trine 2 is a beautiful one.nGraphical detail and realistic lighting have been improved to the point I can no longer max out the video settings on my 2011 MacBook Air like I could with the original.nIt is difficult to find a 2D side-scrolling platform adventure, let alone a 3D shooter, with this amount of detail.nIt is a hard benchmark to beat, but I think Trine 2’s animated background paintings are even more beautiful than its predecessor.nYou can witness this beauty straight from the playable title screen where an enchanted castle vista is depicted in the same hour of daylight as your computer’s clock.

Trine took the standard side-scrolling platform adventure and turned it on its head with a choice of three heroes, upgradable abilities, and a realistic world where everything falls into place.nTrine 2 follows on the same path as the first storybook adventure with gradual improvements that streamline gameplay and open the Trine world to players of all capabilities. If you liked the original, Trine 2 is a sure buy for $14.99 from the Mac App Store.

Limbo is a puzzle-platform game that was released for the Xbox 360 in July 2010. It has only recently made its way to the Mac. I have been excited to play Limbo since I first saw the concept art over two years ago. Once you see a screenshot of Limbo you will know why it is unlike any platform puzzle game you ever have played before. Limbo was created by Danish game developer Playdead. The name of their company is fitting for their creation. Limbo is presented primarily in monochromatic black-and-white tones, using lighting, film grain effects and minimal ambient sounds to create an eerie atmosphere often associated with the horror genre. Journalists praised the dark presentation, describing the work as comparable to film noir and German Expressionism. Based on its aesthetics, reviewers classified Limbo as an example of “video game as art“.

If you like challenging platform-puzzle games with a dark and lonesome atmosphere similar to Myst, Limbo might be for you. Just don’t be surprised that when you die, (and you will die often) your character will meet his end in the most violent and cruel ways imaginable. Limbo follows the story of a nameless boy who awakens in the middle of a dark forest. While seeking his missing sister he encounters various puzzles and traps as he makes his way in between the menacing trees and into an industrial ruin. As is typical of most two-dimensional platform games, the boy can run left or right, jump, climb onto short ledges or up and down ladders and ropes, and push or pull objects. He must manipulate his environment to stay alive, often pushing boxes, floating logs, flipping switches, and enacting perfect timing to avoid chasms, spikes, saw blades, and the weight of oncoming objects. The game’s second half features mechanical puzzles and traps using machinery, electromagnets, and gravity. Many of these traps are not apparent until triggered, often with deadly consequences. The boy is able to continue at the start of the current obstacle with an unlimited number of retries. As the player will likely encounter numerous deaths before they solve each puzzle and complete the game, the developers therefore call Limbo a ‘trial and death’ game. Limbo is much more of a puzzle game than an action platformer. The few human characters the boy encounters either attack him, run away, or are dead. Other enemies include a giant spider, and white worms that latch onto the boy’s head and control his direction until removed. When playing Limbo you get the feeling you are very much alone, and since you have no means of attack the best defense when you come across an enemy is to run away and rethink your strategy. It might surprise you that Limbo with all of its eerie atmosphere has very few sound effects and no musical score. Much of your time playing the game is spent in near silence. You might be tempted to turn on some music or listen to a podcast while playing, but you will miss out the on the emotional suspense and subtle clues the developers have infused into the gameplay. > The game’s story and its ending have been open to much interpretation; the ending was purposely left vague and unanswered by Playdead. It was compared to other open-ended books, films and video games, where the viewer is left to interpret what they have read or seen. Some reviews suggested that the game is a representation of the religious nature of Limbo or purgatory, as the boy character completes the journey only to end at the same place he started, repeating the same journey when the player starts a new game. Another interpretation suggested the game is the boy’s journey through Hell to reach Heaven, or to find closure for his sister’s death.

Your interpretation of Limbo only comes from playing it. Limbo might appear predictable to the casual observer, but each challenge is different than the last. You can rarely depend on skills learned earlier in the game to complete your latest objective. It is because of Limbo’s dark dreamlike tableaus and intriguing challenges that I recommend this game both as a fun puzzle and a work of art. At $9.99 from the Mac App Store, Limbo is sure to keep you busy for at least three to six hours, while its silent film effects and unnerving mood will have you coming back for reruns.

Trine. is a side-scrolling platform adventure.nThe game follows the adventures of three heroes bound together by a mythical crystal force known as the Trine.nOnly one hero can be on screen at a time, and the player must switch between the three heroes often in order to complete the games various puzzles, obstacles, and enemies.

Gameplay is similar to Castlevania with elements taken from the Legend of Zelda and Diablo.nThe game is set in a fantasy world with a very Tolkien feel.

The characters are controlled using directional keys on the keyboard.nAiming is accomplished with the mouse.nThe left and right mouse buttons perform different attacks, spells, and actions depending on the character in play.nThe scroll wheel is used for switching between weapons.

The objective of Trine is to progress through the game’s levels while collecting experience points, discovering treasure, and defeating enemies along the way.nExperience points provide our heroes with new capabilities.nTreasure enhances a heroes existing capabilities.nHeavily armed, platform hopping skeletons block the our hero’s way with sword, arrow, and fiery breath.nDuring the course of the game it quickly becomes apparent that the environments, and not the enemies, are the true adversary in Trine.nThe levels in Trine are filled with spikes, pits of lava, fireballs, giant pendulums, and various other booby traps and puzzles that require the unique skills of one or more of our heroes to overcome.

Our first hero is Zoya the thief.nHer bow and arrow is the only ranged weapon in the game, and her grappling hook is indispensable at reaching out of the way areas.nZoya is my favorite character for her mix of combat and maneuverability.nShe is very versatile.nThrough the use of power ups her bow becomes a formidable weapon, even at close range, and her jumping ability and agility cannot be beat.

Our second hero is Pontius the knight.nHe is the teams primary warrior and uses a sword, shield, and sledgehammer for melee attacks.nI found myself using Pontius more during the beginning of the game.nHis powerful melee attacks are useful at dispatching hordes of skeletons, but his lack of maneuverability makes him a poor choice for Trine’s later obstacles.

Our third hero is Amadeus the wizard.nHis ability to use sorcery allows him to move objects remotely, as well as conjure new objects into existence by drawing their shapes on screen.nInitially Amadeus is only able to conjure a single cube-shaped object, but later in the game he can create multiple cubes, planks, and a floating pyramid the thief can latch onto using her grappling hook.nAmadeus has no traditional attacks, but he can hurl objects at oncoming enemies.nHe is a poor choice for close quarters combat, but his telekinesis and ability to change the game’s environment makes him invaluable for overcoming Trine’s most difficult obstacles.

Trine would be an average side-scrolling platform adventure games if it wasn’t for the lush 3D environments and realistic physics our heroes must explore in order to complete their quest. nThe worlds in Trine are beautiful.nAfter seeing them you will agree with me that 3D landscapes with realistic lighting aren’t just for first person shooters anymore.nPart of the excitement of completing a level in Trine is getting to experience the next area.nEach level is different from the last, filled with new obstacles and picturesque background scenery that never seems to repeat.nIf there is one constant in Trine it is the Nvidia’s PhysX physics engine which provides objects and characters with realistic physical interaction.

Everything in Trine interacts with everything else in a realistic way.nStacks of blocks will topple over with an indiscriminate push.nThe remains of vanquished enemies fall to the ground with the characteristics of a rag doll.nPendulums swing with added force when pushed.nLevers lift with the expected result of additional weight.nTrine’s realistic physics make each level seem new every time you play it.nOn one go around a solitary block might be waiting patiently for our heroes to use its height to reach and otherwise unobtainable platform.nOn the next play through that block might have moved in the course of battle and be precariously positioned over a pit of lava out of reach of all but the wizard’s telekinetic grasp.nIt is easy to see how the realistic shifting, sliding, pivoting, swinging, and stacking of objects makes the wizard’s skills of manipulation invaluable.nAnd his ability to create new objects means that the same obstacle can be overcome in several different ways.nTrine is never the same game twice.

Trine takes the standard side-scrolling platform adventure and turns it on its head with a choice of three heroes, upgradable abilities, and a realistic world where everything falls into place.nTrine plays like a rich storybook with talented voice acting and a unraveling tale being told to the player in between each level.nIf there is a downfall to Trine it is that the enemies are not as diverse as the world they inhabit, and the wizard’s ability to conjure stacks of cubes, planks, and pyramids makes some obstacles too easy to overcome.nI highly recommend Trine, which can be purchased from the Mac App Store for $0.99 for a limited time.

By July 2002 Mac OS X was just over one year old, Safari was still several months away, and very few web browsers took advantage of the innovative new features and bold aqua interface of 10.1 Puma, the latest version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. Opera looked like it belonged on Windows. iCab looked like it belonged on Mac OS 9. OmniWeb was the first Mac OS X browser developed in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_(API text: Cocoa), but all three lacked a modern rendering engine capable of displaying the world’s latest websites. Mozilla and Netscape weren’t much better. Both were bloated, unstable, ugly, and slow. Internet Explorer had been shipping as the default browser on Macs since 1997, and was the only browser included with Mac OS X. It’s en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_(layout_engine text: Tasman) rendering engine was state-of-the-art when version 5 shipped in early 2000, but since then Microsoft had lost interest, updates were few and far between, and page rendering had slowed to a crawl. Looking back it is hard to think Apple could sell Mac OS X as “the world’s most advanced operating system” without a world class browser, but that is exactly what they were doing during the Summer of 2002.

In late 2001, Mike Pinkerton and Vidur Apparao started a project within Netscape to prove that en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(layout_engine text: Gecko) could be embedded in a Cocoa application. In early 2002 Dave Hyatt, one of the co-creators of Firefox (then called Phoenix), joined the team and built Chimera, a small, lightweight browser wrapper, around their work.

At the time Gecko was a very robust rendering engine, and when it was stripped out of the bloated Mozilla/Netscape suite it ran quite fast. By combining Gecko with the stylish performance of a native Cocoa interface Chimera became a world class browser in the making.

Quick to load, intuitive to use, I learned about Chimera in July 2002 during the release of version 0.4. This was an important update for the Chimera project because it marked the first time Chimera could open a URL from an outside application, and the first time Chimera could load content into new tab without the need of additional windows. The ability to quickly open websites from NetNewsWire in a row of organized tabs instead of a mess of stacked windows motivated me to replace Internet Explorer with Chimera as my default browser that summer.

Hyatt was hired by Apple Computer in mid-2002 to start work on what would become Safari. Meanwhile, the Chimera developers got a small team together within Netscape, with dedicated development and QA, to put together a Netscape-branded technology preview for the January 2003 Macworld Conference. However, two days before the show, AOL management decided to abandon the entire project. Despite this setback, a skeleton crew of QA and developers released Camino 0.7 on March 3, 2003.

The name was changed from Chimera to Camino for legal reasons. Because of its roots in Greek mythology, Chimera has been a popular choice of name for hypermedia systems. One of the first graphical web browsers was called Chimera, and researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have also developed a complete hypermedia system of the same name. Camino is Spanish for “path” or “road” (as in El Camino Real, aka the Royal Road), and the name was chosen to continue the “Navigator” motif.

Safari was first released as a public beta on January 7th, 2003, it became Apple’s default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 Panther on October 24th, 2003. During the Beta period and into 2004 I stuck with Camino because its Gecko rendering engine displayed pages more accurately than the up-and-coming WebKit rendering engine used in Safari. As WebKit’s popularity grew and developers became accustom to its features, Camino lost much of the dominance it once had over Safari. Safari 2.0 was released on April 29th, 2005 as the only web browser included with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. This version was touted by Apple as possessing a 1.8x speed boost over Safari 1.2.4, and a noticeable speed increase over pre 1.0 versions of Camino. Safari would go on to become Acid2 compliant with the release of version 2.0.2 on October 31st, 2005. It would take the release of Camino 2.0 on November 18th, 2009, to reach that same milestone.

After the release of 0.7 progress on Camino slowed as development was taken over by the open source community. The Camino website was moved from the Mozilla Foundation mozilla.org to the Camino Project caminobrowser.org. In September 2005, Mike Pinkerton accepted a position at Google where he worked closely with Google’s Firefox team and continued to work on Camino during his “twenty percent” time. Mike would go on to develop the Mac port of Google’s Chrome browser, a direct competitor to Camino.

Camino 1.0, released on February 14th, 2006, was the first browser of the Mozilla family to appear as a universal binary. It included many important new features and advancements like a new tab bar, download manager with pause and resume, built-in ad blocker, history search, and the ability to autofill forms from the address book. Thanks to improvements in the Gecko rendering engine Camino 1.0 also adopted SVG, the tag, and JavaScript 1.6, as well as improved CSS 2 and CSS 3 support.

My daily use of Camino stopped with the introduction of Mac OS X 10.4, because of Safari 2.0’s superior Javascript performance and RSS handling. Camino continued to be an important browser for users of older versions of Mac OS X. While Safari 2.0 dropped support for Macintosh operating systems older than 10.4 Tiger, Camino 1.0 continued to support 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4.

Camino improved integration with Mac OS X while Firefox and other browsers were demonstrating their platform independence. Instead of using an independent spell checker, RSS reader, and password manager, Camino used the dictionary services, Mail RSS reader, and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keychain_(Mac_OS text: Keychain) in Mac OS X. Camino’s Keychain compatibility made it an excellent second browser because it shared the same saved credentials with Safari. Camino 1.5 introduced session restore on June 5th, 2007, more than four years before Safari would gain the same functionality in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Because Camino is developed exclusively for Mac OS X it was able to adopt some Mac OS X specific features before any other browser including Safari.

Camino 2.0, released on November 18th, 2009, introduced many new interface features to the browser including movable tabs and tab preview. It was the first Camino release to be Acid2-compliant. Two of my favorite features from Camino 2.0 are the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growl_(software text: Growl) support, and enhanced annoyance blocking features. With Growl you are notified when downloads begin and finish, helping you keep track of the content you want. The enhanced annoyance blocking features allow you to enable Flash animations on a per-site basis, helping you avoid the content you don’t. Camino 2.0 introduced a updated AppleScript dictionary that included vocabulary for downloading the raw HTML source, or text from any webpage or selection. This feature is still missing from the latest version of Safari, and makes Camino a valuable part of many of my AppleScript toolbox. The greatest new feature in Camino 2.0 may be the inclusion of version 1.9.0 of Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine. It is this rendering engine that allows Camino to pass the Acid2 rendering test, and brings Camino up to date with Firefox 3.0 released over a year earlier.

One year behind Firefox, and more than four years behind Safari, Camino was showing its age even before it reached 1.0. Camino is no longer the world class browser it promised to be in the Summer of 2002. The latest version of Camino, 2.1, was released on November 29th, 2011 and brings Camino up to date with Firefox 3.6 released eleven months earlier. The Gecko rendering engine reached 2.0 on March 22nd, 2011 with the release Firefox 4, but Camino may never grow old enough to adopt it. Starting with Firefox 4 Mozilla announced the end of Gecko embedding, which Camino uses to include the Gecko rendering engine inside of a native Cocoa interface.

While embedding has long been relatively low priority, being officially unsupported is a significant change. As important parts of embedding stop working, core Gecko contributors will longer be fixing them. Such breakages are unfortunately common—in fact, making sure that embedding breakages were resolved was a significant amount of the work that went into the release of Camino 2.0, as well as the upcoming Camino 2.1. Without support for embedding, releases of Camino using newer versions of Gecko—like the one used in Firefox 4—won’t be possible.

The development effort that was used to maintain Gecko embedding is being refocused to rapidly bring Firefox up to par with WebKit browsers like Safari and Chrome. The volunteers who develop Camino are too few to maintain Gecko embedding on their own, or put forth the major effort required to port Camino to WebKit. If nothing is done Camino will continue to receive security and stability updates as long as Gecko 1.9.2 is supported, but it will never see full support for Acid3, HTML5, or CSS3.

Camino will continue to be a viable browser only as long as the web works with Gecko 1.9.2, but as I write this many webpages are passing it by. Even though I still have Camino installed on my computer it fails to qualify as a modern browser less than two months since its last update. I am saddened that Camino must die in the effort to save Firefox, a browser that has gotten just a bloated as the Netscape Suite it once replaced. By losing Camino we will not only see the end of a browser that once made the Mac great, but the end of a development community focused solely on the advancement of a great Macintosh software.

Even at training (Early 2009) our instructor warned us about ‘Old School vs. New School’ Geniuses. His emphasis was that the needs of the business change.

Today’s Mac Genius are no longer required to have the same deep understanding of the Mac OS, its UNIX roots, or classic past. They can no longer troubleshoot the same impossible set of hardware symptoms with ease while working with multiple customers bar side. Their lack of knowledge into the depths of Apple history and lore is embarrassing for anyone who grew up with Clarus the Dogcow, HyperCard, and the 1.44MB SuperDrive. The Mac Genius who knew all these things have either moved on, or burned out. Replaced by a new generation of Mac Genius every who are eager to take their place every 18 months.

Tasks like replacing a display, swapping a phone, or updating software don’t require the same skills that isolating a failed video card or manually recreating a user in OS X do. As iPhones and iPads continue to fly out the door, the role of a Genius shifts.

The Mac Genius that work the bar today are different from the Mac Genius of the past. They see more iOS than Mac OS X. Their customers are delivered one by one using a reservation system while an assistant holding an iPad keeps order. Their troubleshooting techniques are predetermined, and the proper diagnosis codes must be achieved before parts can be ordered. Today’s Mac Genius work at a faster pace with more monotony, and less time for conversation.

“These customers don’t want to ‘hang out with a genius’ — they want their phone to work. NOW.

Today’s Mac Genius are replacements, excited to fill the role I once coveted until I we all burn out in the end. There is no path of advancement for a Mac Genius. For a long time I was angry Apple couldn’t find a place for more of the great Mac Genius from the past. But after reading the “The New Genius Bar” on Stephen Hackett’s 512 Pixels I began to understand that today’s Mac Genius are just as good at their jobs as my generation was at ours.

The Genius Bar has changed, and by letting the older Genius go, Apple was doing us all a favor. No matter how much we love the company, no one wants to be a Mac Genius forever.

Most Geniuses are emotionally invested in their jobs. Their ability to assess and react to any situation with skill, tact, and empathy keeps customers ranking Apple support so high, year after year.

There are better jobs out their with double the pay, better hours, and working behind the bar at an Apple Store is a great way to start a career.

I always saw the Genius role as a stepping stone into other IT jobs.

When you see a Genius complain about the nature or the business, the retail schedule, the ever increasing assembly line of work it is time for them to go.

Every 3 or 4 months you have to look hard at yourself and the current incarnation of the job and ask, Am I the best fit for this job? Am I willing to deal with the problem of the week and offer feasible solutions? Is my mental health in a state where I can enjoy this? Would I want to work with me with my current attitude? If the answer is no, I hope a manager helps you through that tough time and out the door if need be.

The magic of the position has worn off. I will always miss the good times I had working for Apple, but too much has changed both behind the bar and within myself for me to ever go back.