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Mini Ninjas review

So I just finished playing Mini Ninjas, the new-ish action game from IO Interactive.
And boy, oh boy, good times.

The gameplay is great, the controls are tight and the overall game is cute. I mean, ridiculously cute. So cute I had to wrestle the controller away from the girlfriend.
The sound design is brilliantly executed, though the exclamations made by the bad and definitely evil samurai can get a bit tedious.

Seen in a larger perspective there’s a certain nostalgic feel to the game. Even though it’s a fairly new game and it runs on all the big platforms, there’s still an early 90’s almost arcade-like feel to it. That, and a certain Zelda-ness. Which is absolutely brilliant.

Boss fights are everything they’re supposed to be, with challenges, and unique patterns and solutions.

Hiro You play the game as one of several child ninjas, hence the name I presume. Initially you start out with only two to choose from, but as the game progresses and you save your friends, more and more ninjas are added to your merry band of dangerous assassins. Where dangerous means cute.

There’s little doubt in my mind that I am probably not the target demographic for this game, as there is little more than cartoon violence and puffs of smoke. Everything is dialed down to saving the animals from the Evil Samurai Warlord, and by extension thereby saving the world.

I can highly recommend this game if you’re in the market for some fun and light entertainment. Also, this could very well be either a good action/adventure game for your kids, or possibly the game that could lure your better half to trying out console gaming.

2009/12/29 · Review · 0 comments

Preparing a server to run Roots

I know I’ve been yammering on alot lately about Roots. And it will stop soon, I promise. I just need to make sure that all the documentation is in place before I release my baby into the world.

Prepping a server to run Roots is fairly simple. There are few requirements, and one slight modification needed to permissions to make everything swing.

First off run the following command to ensure that you have all required packages: “apt-get install subversion apache2 php5 libapache2-mod-php5″.

Basically any webserver with any implementation of PHP5 will do, in theory. I haven’t tested anything else than Apache, so YMMV.

Next navigate to your /var directory, and assume root privileges by running “sudo su”. Next give the www-data group ownership of the subversion directory by executing “chgrp www-data subversion”. Next modify the folder permissions so the group has write permissions by running “chmod ug+rw subversion”.

And that’s it. You are done prepping your server for Roots.

2009/12/14 · Projects · 0 comments

Setting up Subversion on an Ubuntu server

I am writing this here, as much for my own sake, as for everyone elses. In the process of writing Roots, I’ve had to configure Subversion quite a few times, and have always forgotten each step along the way, much to my own dismay.

So, here we go. The assumption here is that this is done on an Ubuntu server, but just about any linux distro will do, AFAIK.

First get root privileges by running “sudo su”. Confirm with your root password.
Install Subversion by running “apt-get install subversion”. Confirm by pressing “y”, followed by “enter”.
Now create the folder that’ll hold your Subversion repositories. As far as I can gather standard dictates that this should be in “/var/subversion”. So run “mkdir /var/subversion” to create that folder.
To ensure that Subversion runs at boot time, ie. starts automagically when the server starts we need to add an execution script to “/etc/init.d”. So change directory by running “cd /etc/init.d”.
Then create the script file by running “touch svnserve”. This will create the file.
Set execution privileges on the svnserve file by running “chmod +x svnserve”.
Now edit the file by running “vi svnserve”.
Inside the editor insert this as the first (and only) line in the file; “svnserve –d –r /var/subversion”.
Press esc, followed by “:wq” and “enter” to save your changes to svnserve.
Now that the execution script is done, we need to add it to the list of scripts that’s run on boot. We do that by running “update-rc.d svnserve defaults”.
That command should output the following response to your terminal:
Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/svnserve …
/etc/rc0.d/K20svnserve -> ../init.d/svnserve
/etc/rc1.d/K20svnserve -> ../init.d/svnserve
/etc/rc6.d/K20svnserve -> ../init.d/svnserve
/etc/rc2.d/S20svnserve -> ../init.d/svnserve
/etc/rc3.d/S20svnserve -> ../init.d/svnserve
/etc/rc4.d/S20svnserve -> ../init.d/svnserve
/etc/rc5.d/S20svnserve -> ../init.d/svnserve

And we’re done! Wasn’t that easy? By using this tutorial your Subversion server will load any number of repositories that are located within the /var/subversion directory. And you can connect to them using this address: svn://your_server_ip/repository_name.

If you have any questions please feel free to post a comment.

2009/12/14 · Tutorial · 0 comments

Roots SVN Manager nearly done

I am so close to finishing the Roots SVN Manager that I can taste it. Not that you can taste code. But if you could, it’d taste good.

To be completely honest, the code is done. It works. I just need to sit down and do a write-up on installing it to your system. Not that installation is particularly complicated.

Anyway, before everything is final I’ll just let you feast your eyes on some screenshots. I redid the UI from the previous version because I felt it was a little bit too 37s–ish.