Out of curiosity, I went to check; the founder of Microsoft has left the company rudderless and is doing full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation doesn’t offer anything new from other non-profit organizations with the exception of $30 billion in funding.
The world needs the leader of the biggest enterprise back in his office. Return to Microsoft and unite the industry…
We are proud to announce the integration of Noble Avatar into eCribbage (this actually happened a while ago). eCribbage is the largest, most comprehensive collection of free online cribbage games on the web. See below for a depiction of the winners podium after a game has ended.
If you like cribbage, definitely give the game a try. For the guys out there: the game also seems to be quite popular amongst the ladies!
Website: http://ecribbage.com
Winner's Podium for eCribbage
Age of Conquest is doing pretty well in the Android Market. The Lite version has been downloaded over 200′000 times. That is actual very close to Noble Fart downloads with a little over 350′000. Conversion rate from Lite downloads to sales is a little under 10%.
Age of Conquest Ratings in Android Market
I spent some time playing Crusader Kings Deus Vult by Paradox Entertainment for the sake of fun as well as spying on the competition. I was close to putting the game away after spending half an hour trying to “play” it. There is no tutorial or anything to help explain things. The tooltips were helpful, but didn’t explain how all the variables influenced all the other things in the game. I finally looked at some YouTube video footage that detailed some of the basic game play.
The Good:
- Captivating! A must for strategy game enthusiasts.
- The game allows managing everything from members of your court, diplomacy, military, economy, provinces to the empire as a whole.
- Sophisticated diplomacy management make it both challenging and interesting to play.
- Endless hours of entertainment, once you get the hang of it. It’s a bargain for $25.
The Bad:
- The graphics look good enough, but the user interface is simply a pain to navigate. Clicking on provinces, military units and factions is difficult.
- There should only be one zoom level for the map. You are either too close or too far away from the map. The overview map should have the various provinces colored.
- Micromanagent: there should be an option set some of the features to auto. There is no fun in managing every single member of your court. Also, there isn’t much fun in managing your ruler’s character traits. There are too many lengthy messages boxes that force you to make a choice: “choose this button if you want to do A. Please note there is a 25% chance that your ruler receives the trait Illness and a 10% chance your Piety changes by -1.0 or a 50% that your mother leaves you and your father looses -20 prestige or…” (and that’s just the first button)
- Accidentally clicking a message box. Every so often just the instant before you select a province, a message pops up and you select one of the buttons by accident. Especially annoying if you just declared war against a big empire.
- Unclear relations between the various variables. It is difficult to manage your empire if you don’t know what all the various options do. Although the rollover texts provide some guidance many things are left unexplained.
- Bugs and crashes…
The game is definitely worth playing. A streamlined version of it could make it an exceptional game. You can download the Crusader Kings through GamesGate. Get the Deus Vult edition for $25.
So, I finally received my Nexus One in the mail. Google is giving away a free phone to every finalist (N. American Conquest) in the Android Developer Challenge. In other news, Google is also giving away a free phone for developers that have an application with rating 3.5 or higher in the Android Market. So, I am expecting to receive another phone in the mail anytime soon. It’s either going to be the Nexus One or the Droid by Motorola.
Anyhow, the Nexus One works great! The speed is amazing. It replaces the free HTC Tattoo that I received a while ago to port Age of Conquest to the smaller screen size. The Tattoo was quite a disappointment. It “runs” very slow. The touch screen isn’t working very well; to get things moving, you had to press down really hard.
If I indeed get another free Nexus One, what should I do with the 2nd phone?
Avatars generated by Noble Avatar have been integrated into a Poker Simulator by John Aronson.The program is intended to simulate the casino table game Texas Holdem Bonus. “Texas Holdem Bonus” is different from the multiplayer poker game “Texas Holdem”. The simulator can be used to practice game-play and explore new strategies.
The Texas Holdem Bonus Simulator is written in Java and can be run via Java Webstart. Use the game play URL below if you would like to give the game a try!
Game Play URL: http://www.aronsonhome.info/trip/poker/simulator.jnlp
The latest AO update features a couple of new tournaments:
- Free membership upgrade tournaments (April 15, July 15, October 15)
- The 3rd Aevum Obscurum Championship Tournament (September 4)
- The 2nd International AO Stein Tournament (May 1)
Join now to compete!
AO Stein Tournament banner. Feel free to distribute:
“Christ Centered Game Reviews” has reviewed Aevum Obscurum!
Appropriateness Score:
Violence 10/10
Language 10/10
Sexual Content/Nudity 10/10
Occult/Supernatural 9.5/10
Cultural/Moral/Ethical 9.5/10
Appropriateness Total: 49/50
For the detailed review visit:
http://www.ccgr.org/modules.php?name=MReviews&op=show&rid=810
ManifestoGames has added Aevum Obscurum to their list of games. Royal AO is the Central Committee’s Choice of the week!
“If you’re like me, this is actually a very congenial way to play; each day, you play another turn and get a little gaming fix, without having to spend hours at a time.”
Visit ManifestoGames: http://www.manifestogames.com/AevumObscurum
Bytten has reviewed Aevum Obscurum. For a detailed description go to:
http://www.bytten.com/gamereview.php?id=231
Aevum Obscurum (AO Royal) has been reviewed by Out of Eight PC Game Reviews: “A more beefy version of Risk that is almost too big for its own good”. For the full review visit:
http://jaguarusf.blogspot.com/2007/04/aevum-obscurum-das-tausendburgenspiel.html
In other news: Announcing the first international AO Stein tournament. Start date and map to be determined at a later date.The prize is depicted to the left and will be awarded to the winner of the tournament! Stay tuned for further information …
Cheers m8 
It’s official now – Aevum Obscurum the game will also be known under AORoyal: “Royal Aevum Obscurum”. The change was triggered due to difficulties remembering or even spelling Aevum Obscurum correctly! AORoyal is simple enough to remember and spell and still contains the original meaning: (Royal) Dark Ages.
At the same time. “Aevum Obscurum Entertainment” will be known under “Noble Master” games.
A demo video in flash format has been created:
Aevum Obscurum – Demo Video
Aevum Obscurum has been awarded with 5 starts by onekit.com software magazine!
The game has been listed at:
http://www.onekit.com/store/product/aevum_obscurum.html
Below the access statistics for the last 12 months:
- 36′124 Unique Visitors
- 10′140 Returning Visitors
The new release 2.5.10 is up but buggy. In order to keep players entertained, here some access statistics for the game server and web site:
Last month 12 Giga Byte of data has been transfered each from and to the game server. This includes logins, game, tournament, join, order submit etc. requests. I.e. it does not include download of the client or website access. Simple data transfer from and to the clients connected with the server.
Website access, download of executables and Java Web Start comes to 16 Giga Byte.
To total it up: 2×12 GB + 16 GB => 40 GB monthly transfer for December!
There is quite some development under way … However, nothing to show off besides some boring code samples.
http://www.mysql.com
Increased MySQL scalability to allow for “unlimited” multiplayer “real-time” gaming to be … More exiting news later!
Read about the story behind Aevum Obscurum:
The Story Behind Aevum Obscurum
Money has been wasted on http://www.milliondollarscreenshot.com/. The Million Dollar Screenshot site has a click-through-rate of couple of cents per click. Compared to $1 per click for standard deals on professional gaming sites. Cheap! Let’s lure some people on the site!
On another note, clicks on Google Ads have generated $63.84 since the last 12 months. That’s about $5 per month. Last month (October) was $7.06.
Reporting the first paying customer after 2.5 weeks! Thanks for the support.
