Trigonometry Wars versus Polygun Wars

First off, I want to congratulate both 71M and ahrimanes for creating excellent clones of Geometry Wars. One strange thing is that both seem to be a combination of the original GW and GW: Retro Evolved. Since this is a head to head comparison there must be a winner and by the time I conclude this post it will be obvious who that is.

Trigonometry Wars:
by 71M







Trigonometry Wars (TW) final version was released on Aug. 19, 2006 so it is a little dated but stands the test of time. TW is only available for the 1.5 kernel.

Controls:
They respond the way you would expect. The SELECT button allows you to switch between 3 different control schemes: Original, Analog fire, and Analog thrust.

• Original mode:
  
• Analog stick: Steering
• Left shoulder: Thrust
• Right shoulder: Fire
• Triangle: Destroys all enemies on screen
• Analog Fire mode:
• Analog stick: Fire
  
• Cross: Thrust down
• Square: Thrust left
• Triangle: Thrust up
• Circle: Thrust right
• Left and Right shoulder: Destroys all enemies on screen
• Analog Thrust mode:
• Analog stick: Thrust/Steering
• Cross: Fire down
• Square: Fire left
• Triangle: Fire up
• Circle: Fire right
• Combining two Fire buttons will shoot diagonal; IE: Triangle and Circle fires diagonally up and right.
  
• Left and Right shoulder: Destroys all enemies on screen

Graphics:
The graphics in TW are pretty good. The colors seem a little bland but sufficient. The net background is done very well. It will distort with movement, bullets, explosions, etc. very accurately.

Sound Effects and Music:
Nothing impressive but fit the game quite well.

Game play:
I have played this game several hours and it is fun but a little hard. I believe there are four main enemies:

• Violet Pinwheels: Dumb and lazy. This enemy just wanders around the screen with no purpose waiting to be shot.
  
• Blue Squares: Dumb and slow. This enemy follows your ship but gets in no hurry.
  
• Pink Squares: Dumb and fast. This enemy also follows your ship but is much faster and will tend to take the shortest route possible to get to you. There are two sizes small and large. This makes it interesting because the small Pinks are harder to hit.
  
• Green Squares: Smart and fast. This enemy is the same as Pinks except they will dodge your bullets.

There may also be an enemy similar to gravity wells in the original GW. I caught glimpses of a grew circular thing but could never live long enough to investigate.

You have a set number of lives and bombs but as you progress through the game more lives and bombs are earned.

Artificial Intelligence:
AI was quite good, I was pleasantly surprised. The Green Squares are the most impressive, dodging your shots with great agility.

You need to try this game. It is quality homebrew but the graphics are nowhere near the quality Geometry Wars.

Polygun Wars:
by ahrimanes





Polygun Wars v.02 (PW) was released for 1.xx and 3.xx on Nov. 17, 2007. This recent release is the reason I decided to check out and compare these two clones. I thought there must be some improvements that ahrimanes had made to release another Geometry Wars clone. I was wrong but this is only v.02 so hopefully ahrimanes will continue to work on this game because it is a great start.

I have a few problems with this game:

• First, there is no splash page to start the game. When you start the game it throws you into the game without warning.
• Second, there is no way to pause the game. Pressing start exits the game without warning or notice. If you have to scratch your nose you are dead because this game is much faster paced than Trig Wars (more on that later).
• Third, stats are in what I believe is Spanish. An English version would be good.
  

Controls:
There is only one control scheme in PW. In Trig Wars it is called Analog Thrust (see above). I don't mind only having this control setup because it is the one I prefer, other people may disagree. The analog controls are flawless. They perform accurately and as expected. The left shoulder controls the bomb which destroys all enemies but it doesn't work. The net background distorts and there is a lot of sparks but when the light show is over the enemies are still there. Right shoulder does nothing.

Graphics:
Between TW and PW, I prefer the graphics in PW. The color of the sprites are more vibrant. The net background bends and flexes like TW but when your ship explodes the net blends to red where your ship used to be. This is a nice touch not found in TW. The enemy explosions are more colorful and similar to Geometry Wars.

Sound Effects and Music:
As with TW the music is appropriate to the game. My preference leans towards PW for its sound effects.

Game play:
Polygun Wars is a much faster paced game than Trig Wars. Your ship and the enemies move faster which makes for a game with a little more tension.

PW only has two enemies that I have found:

• Violet Pinwheels: Same as TW. Dumb and lazy.
  
• Blue Diamonds: Similar to the Blue Squares in TW. Dumb but faster. The diamonds come after you but are much faster than the Blue Squares.
  

That's it. Only two enemies. I hope the lack of enemies is due to this being v.02. I believe that the increased speed of PW will become a problem in future versions assuming new enemies will be faster and smarter.

Artificial Intelligence:
The AI is adequate. With only two enemies and the pinwheels having no intelligence there isn't much AI to worry about yet.

This is worth trying, it is fun but needs some work. An option to pause the game is essential; a splash screen, more enemies, and English stats would be nice. To his credit ahrimanes states on QJ forums that he plans to work on some of these problems.

Final Word:
If you were only going to have one Geometry Wars clone on your memory stick then it would have to be Trigonometry Wars. Polygun is doing well but has a long way to go. I will update with new info when later versions of Polygun are released.

Playstation Network Store for the PC goes live!

What we have been waiting for since the PS3 came out is finally here. Download games to your PC and then put them on your PSP without having a PS3. Hopefully the Playstation Network Store lives up to our expectations. I am in the process of setting up my account so I'll update later.

Well it's about 10 mins later. This is the buggiest site I've ever seen. I tried to set up an account and got an "unexpected error" and could go no further. I thought that maybe the servers were getting hammered with the new launch so I would browse the site for a minute. Every page I went to I couldn't "back" out of (with the back button), so you have to click on the header logo to go to the homepage and start over.

Now it is about 4 hours later. I have successfully created my account. It didn't take that long, I had other stuff to do, but the site is still buggy and the content is a little underwhelming. I hope this is like all of Sony's other ventures. Start out slow and shaky, without many games at launch, but after a while it becomes quite good: PS2, PSP, PS3 (hopefully)... Check it out and see what you think.

Best commercial for a game ever: EXIT

This is the commercial for a new PSP game, EXIT, but there is no gameplay shown. There is nothing from the game shown at all but it is an awesome commercial none the less.




Exit Site

No God of War demo

Well, I guess I wasn't one of the chosen to receive the GoW demo. This sucks since I signed up just a few hours after the site went up and I've been an Underground member forever. Guess I'll have to wait for the download version. ...grumble....sucks....ass...

originally posted on 10/06/07

UPDATE:

Maybe I was a little naive when I signed up for the God of War demo. They claimed that if I signed up then I would receive a UMD demo of God of War: Chains of Olympus. If you were fooled too, or if you actually received the demo disk, then head over to PSP Fanboy and vote in their poll. Right now 97% of PSP owners who signed up did not get the disk in the mail.

I've been pretty disappointed with Sony's stance on homebrew but I still buy games and other Sony products because for the most part they make good products. For the last couple of years they have been letting their quality and customer service slide. This is probably the last straw. I can no longer support their tyrannical iron fist when it comes to the PSP or their drm/root kits.

Shame on you Sony and shame on us for believing in you.

updated on 10/16/07

UPDATE 2:

Maybe I was a little hasty with my disappointment of Sony. DCEMU Forums has a member who posted that the demos are now showing up. I investigated some other sites and can confirm that others claim to have received their demo yesterday and today. Why would Sony claim that everyone should have received their demos by now? I guess they just jumped the gun. Sony, you need to get your sh...t together.

updated on 10/18/07

UPDATE 3:

I give up it has been a month since my original post and still no demo. Sony you suck, eat ...it. I will be removing my membership in Playstation Underground.

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

Sorry but I had to do it. V for Vendetta is one of my favorite movies. To commemorate the occasion here are some wallpapers I created after the movie came out. Hope you like them.

Targus Wireless IR Keyboard PA87OU

I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the box containing my Targus Wireless IR Keyboard PA87ou. This thing is small. As you can see it is about the same size as the PSP and only a little thicker. This is a full Qwerty keyboard minus the F1-12 keys. There are some special PDA function keys on the right hand side that won't be used with the PSP. It is amazing how Targus packed a keyboard together in such a small package and still made it very comfortable to use. The keyboard itself is smaller than my laptop keyboard but the keys are larger. That doesn't sound possible does it? Targus was able to make the letter keys larger by making the less important keys like brackets, curly brackets, caps lock, tabs, etc. smaller. Obviously this makes it very easy to type on (if you are used to typing on a laptop keyboard). I am very pleased with this purchase (only $24 plus shipping).

I have a few complaints: The cradle that holds the PSP/PDA seems a little flimsy. The "loops" that the PSP sits on are plastic and could be stronger. Also, the infrared arm that swivels up and down could get snapped off if you aren't careful. There isn't much that could be changed about the arm since this keyboard is supposed to be generic enough to be used on almost any PDA with an ir port. My last complaint is the one that really bothers me. I wish there were arrow keys. There is a silver oval on the bottom right corner of the keyboard which is the arrow keys' replacement. This oval is functional but a poor substitute for the real thing. Often I found myself moving the cursor up when I meant to go right. The oval takes up less room than four more keys, I get it, but at least make it square so that it is easier to use. Don't get me wrong this is not a deal breaker, I love this keyboard. I use the arrow keys quite a bit and I just wish they were better implemented. I would recommend it to any PSP homebrew user that wants an easier way to input text. Now I need to find a homebrew browser or app that supports the ir keyboard, for the web, because Sony's text input is a joke.

UPDATE:

I had heard about πkey (pikey) before but didn't know exactly what is was. Well it is the holy grail of ir keyboard support. Fanjita has developed a standalone and plugin which will allow you to use an ir keyboard in the xmb, games, browser, etc. Here is Fanjita's site (Noobz) and info on pikey. I will do a review of pikey once I have enough experience with it.

PSPWrite v1.0.2 (and 1.0.3)

PSPWrite is a text editor created by zx-81. This app is very well done like all of zx-81's stuff. You can create, save, and load text files with PSPWrite. Customize your documents by changing the text color, background color/image, and use tab spacing. Write also has ir keyboard support (waiting on my keyboard to get here). You do not have to have your own ir keyboard because PSPWrite has its own virtual keyboard. I will update this post when I can evaluate the ir keyboard support. If it works well then this will be a candidate for Best Homebrew.

UPDATE:

Flawless. This app works as you want it to. All of the above features work without problem and the ir keyboard support couldn't be better. I will have a separate review of the targus ir keyboard but PSPWrite and keyboard are a match made in homebrew heaven. There are some keys on the keyboard that are PDA related, so you wouldn't expect them to work, but all other keys work like a regular keyboard. I wasn't going to give this app a rave review because I thought the font was too small and was difficult to see. Well, zx-81 just released an update (PSPWrite v1.0.3) which makes my complaint less relevant. V1.0.3 now has another font size. Choose between the original or bold. The actual "size" doesn't change but it does make the text bold which helps greatly with readability. Zx-81 has also given you the ability to choose what processor speed you want: 133, 222, 266, 300, and 333. You can also adjust whether the cursor is tied to your text or can move anywhere on the screen. This is definitely going on the list of Best Homebrew.