platforming

Tumblr goes dark with massive outage

Tumblr has been hit with another sweeping outage. The blogging platform has been completely inaccessible to all users, as of the last couple of hours.

Tumblr confirmed its outage via a tweet from its official Twitter account earlier this afternoon that said, "We're experiencing slow loading or intermittent errors on certain pages and are working quickly to restore performance."

Since then, the company tweeted that it took down the entire site "in order to resolve a network issue."

The blogging platform has had a rough go the past couple of months. In October, it was … Read more

Mechanized horned equine assault for Android

Although there are only two buttons available for use (jumping and dashing), players will find themselves overwhelmed by the increasing difficulty of the game as the score gets higher. As the scrolling becomes progressively faster, chain jumping and dashing is required to cross particularly difficult obstacles. Gameplay involves leaping over gorges, collecting fairies, and dashing through giant crystallized stars for further points. The points gained for collecting fairies or dashing through stars increases with every consecutive action. You are awarded with a happily squeaking dolphin rising above from seemingly nowhere every 5,000 points. You get three lives, called wishes. … Read more

The legend is back! Rayman's new adventure on the Android scene

The legendary hero is back! And he's tackling the mobile platforming scene with Rayman Jungle Run. Selling for a little less than tree fiddy, will Jungle Run do justice to the Rayman series? All you have to do is read the next paragraphs to find out.

Installation is relatively fast for such a gorgeous game. It's essentially a Running game retaining the look of Rayman Origin.You'll lead our hero through a gauntlet to try and collect Lums (firefly-like creatures). The goal is to collect the maximum amount on each level by employing Rayman's various skills … Read more

Modern platform games for iOS

Despite the realistic 3D graphics of today's first-person shooters, RPGs, and other games, platform games continue to thrive on iOS. There's something about jumping through levels, solving puzzles, and collecting coins that keeps gamers entertained. Also, the capability to play through a single level while on the go makes platformers perfect for short bursts of play on your iOS device.

While a console controller is probably the ideal way to play these sometimes precise running and jumping games, iOS game developers have come up with unique ways to make them work.

This week's collection of iOS apps is all about modern platform games. The first is the most traditional platformer, but adds an interesting twist for passing levels. The second has an uncommon control system, but a unique art style and fun, varied gameplay make it a great option. The third is the most polished of the collection, with challenging puzzles and a somewhat grotesque storyline.

Note: There are no Android versions for any of these games.… Read more

Hey, Web developers! Here's a one-stop shop for your app needs

Enough with having separate Web programming tutorials from Google, Apple, Opera, Mozilla, and Microsoft.

These five major browser makers, along with Facebook, Adobe Systems, Nokia, and Hewlett Packard, have become stewards of a new effort to centralize developer resources at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This Web Platform Docs project will include not just help on to use a bewildering array of new Web technologies, but also will detail which ones are accepted standards, how well the various tools work across multiple browsers, and how stable the standards are.

"A key part of this project is that it … Read more

Zynga shows its cards, adds four more games to its platform

Zynga unveiled four new games at a press event tonight designed to show developers why they should be turning to its newly launched gaming platform.

While Zynga has been hammered by its poor earnings, slumping stock prices, reported player burnout, and executives jumping ship, the company has been focusing all its attention on its new developer partners.

The developers weren't shy about their gratitude at the press event.

Matthew Cullen, president of RocketPlay -- the company that designed Sports Casino, a social sports-betting game that is based on real-time sports events -- said the company would have had to … Read more

Reuters hacked (again) with fake story of Saudi minister's death

Someone must have it out for Reuters. For the second time in two weeks, the blogging platform for the news source's Web site has been hacked into and false stories have been illicitly published.

Today's sham article reported that Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had died, according to Reuters. The first bogus story, posted earlier this month, was about the rebel Free Syrian Army suffering setbacks in their battle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Reuters did not report the false story and the post was immediately deleted," Reuters News' director of … Read more

In tit for tat, AMD grabs Apple chip designer

Fast on the heels of Apple nabbing a designer from chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, AMD turned around today and hired an Apple chip architect.

Jim Keller, 53, will join AMD as a corporate vice president and chief architect of AMD's microprocessor cores, reporting to Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster, another former Apple employee.

"Keller will lead AMD's microprocessor core design efforts...with a focus on developing both high-performance and low-power processor cores that will be the foundation of AMD's future products," AMD said in a statement.

Keller had been a director in the platform architecture … Read more

Game Center arrives on the Mac via Mountain Lion, but where are the games?

commentary Apple's Game Center should, theoretically, be a service and a hub that ties together gamers across Apple's devices. It should be a social connector, a method of discovering new games based on what others are playing...and a mobile service on the order of Xbox Live.

Right now, it's very little of any of that, largely because the average iOS device owner probably has no idea Game Center is on their device...or what it even is. Regardless, the new version of Mac OS X, Mountain Lion, includes Game Center as one of a handful of more cross-compatible iOS/OS X services. At the moment, its offerings -- connect to leaderboards, see achievements, play cross-platform, and connect to friends -- are limited because, well, there just aren't that many Game Center games for Mac yet.… Read more