John Squibb

Skyrim shall consume thy life.

2011-11-14 16:22:51

Like many addicted gamers, my weekend was consumed by the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The latest installment from Bethesda is spot on. The PC version meets every expectation, and delivers the total RPG experience I've come to expect from the Elder Scrolls series. Since I had Veteran's day off, I was able to crank for about 5 hours Thursday, as soon as the game became available on Steam (I actually RMA'd my preorder from Amazon, which arrived noon the next day, because I couldn't wait to get started). I was up and at it again by 8 a.m. Friday, and didn't quit until almost 2 a.m. Saturday morning. I uploaded a few of my favorite screenshots to Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.240543886009347.63389.100001612128672&type=1&l=d2d19f470e). Fearing I might develop some DVT, my girlfriend Laura and I took a half-day trip to Mt. Charleston, where I also got some great screenshots (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.239591202771282.63201.100001612128672&type=1&l=00ad23773a). After that, the rest of the weekend was Skyrim, Skyrim, and More Skyrim with a side of Skyrim. According to Steam, and I imagine I'm the lower number in their stats, I logged 35 hours over the weekend.

I picked up the PC version, because, well, I prefer PC, and I've got the machine for it (https://plus.google.com/110493034210671290586/posts/7JYYuFbR4Kz). You can expect great visuals on just about any setting. I've been using the default High settings, tweaked a bit to lean more toward the Ultra settings. Even with Dual GTX560ti cards running in SLI, I experienced some lag in full Ultra mode. Bethesda has really tuned the game to take full advantage of all available graphics rendering. If you have a less-than graphics card, fear not, the game is gorgeous on just about any setting, and the modified High settings I chose produced excellent screenshots (see above). There are a few glitches that result in mid-game crashes, but nothing out of the ordinary for a new PC game. I expect some patches are in the works. I quick save a lot, and the game autosaves constantly for me, so I merely have to crank it back up, which is very quick, though a minor annoyance.

Now for some thoughts on the gameplay itself.

The world is huuuuuuuuuuuuuge. I've barely traversed 25% of the map, and have probably only really explored 50% of that deeply. Steam tells me that I have unlocked 12/50 achievements (24%), so I imagine I've got at least another 100 hours of gameplay before I even have to start looking for things to do.

The NPC interactions are very diverse. The amount of dialog and interaction blows my mind. Just about everybody has quests and favors for you to complete, so there's no trouble finding work.

Crafting has been taken to a whole new level with alchemy, enchanting, blacksmithing, and more. You can pass time and earn gold by chopping wood, harvesting vegetables and hunting wild game. Cooking allows you to combine various foodstuffs into soups, stews, and other concoctions that provide various stamina and health benefits.

Spells seem more diverse, though I don't mess around with magic much. I go straight in for the hack and slash experience. Dragon words/shouts are an interesting feature that I probably haven't been taking much advantage of, but I get the feeling that those will become more important as I venture through the main quests and acts.

There is so much to do in the game, it's hard to express, especially this early in, just how vast it truly is. To give some perspective, Prima's Official Game Guide is over 650 pages in size. This game will undoubtedly consume hundreds of hours of my life over the next several months. If you're a fan of the Elder Scrolls series, then I imagine that you have already purchased this title and are too busy playing to be bothered reading about it. If you haven't experienced the previous titles, and you are a fan of fantasy RPG, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a must-have. You can download it on Steam and play it right away!

ZendCon11 Review

2011-10-22 17:02:30

Last week, a couple of coworkers and I attended the 4-day, 7th Annual Zend PHP Conference (#ZendCon11) in Santa Clara California.
It was an excellent opportunity to catch up on all the latest PHP happenings, gain new knowledge, and score some tips and tricks from industry professionals.

We landed in San Jose, California around noon on Sunday, checked in at the hotel, registered at the conference, and then spent the rest of the evening looking for ways to waste time around Silicon Valley. Rather than gush over local tech companies, we did what any self-respecting PHP developers would do: eat and tour bars. If you're looking for a great buffalo burger in the Mountainview area, check out the Tied House (http://www.tiedhouse.com/). We also spent some time at Molly Magees Irish Pub ( http://www.mollysmtview.com/), which looked the look, and had the brew, so we forgave them for their late 90's US music video reel playing on all the screens, as well as the lack of additional pool tables.

We registered for the pre-conference tutorials, so we were up and at it early Monday morning. I attended the Design Patterns and the PHP Extensions tutorials, both of which were in-depth, hands-on, and definitely worth the additional time spent.

The conference itself ran from Tuesday to Thursday, and was jam-packed with sessions, keynotes, and swag-slinging booths. When a particular session block didn't appeal to me, I headed over to the unconferences, which were impromptu mini-sessions of varying topics, held by professional and amateur speakers alike. The blocking of the sessions and keynotes was very good, and I rarely found myself with any downtime at all. In fact, my brain was fairly fried by 7 p.m. each day.

The cloud was a major focus throughout the event, and rightfully so, as it has revolutionized the industry over the course of just a few years. IBM, Rackspace, and Amazon were all present, participated in individual keynotes, and shared the stage during an open-ended QA/Panel Discussion midweek. Many of the sessions were oriented around cloud services.

NoSQL was another big topic. I attended a couple of sessions on MongoDb and Redis, and found coverage on relational databases to be fairly lacking. The NoSQL trend(?) is still running very strong, and memory databases are all the rage. The MongoDb session was held in the Grand Ballroom, and a great number of the conference attendees were present.

Object-Oriented design was spread throughout, and I attended many sessions where Dependency Injection, Design patterns, and the SOLID principle were key discussion points, or assumed practices.

Git and Github have definitely taken over the reigns. I did not attend a single session where code was distributed in any other fashion than via Github. In fact, the only mention of subversion was during the "Git for Subversion Users" session that I attended the first day. As a newcomer to the Git party, I found it a natural and logical switch.

There were some sessions regarding API development, and one of my favorites was David Zuelke's "Designing HTTP Interfaces and RESTful Web Services," which was an excellent overview of the good/bad/ugly in building RESTful web services.

Other aspects that I did not expect to be so positive, were the food and beverage provisions. There was always fresh Starbucks coffee, cookies, soda, and water near the sessions. Every morning there was a continental breakfast, followed by lunch that afternoon, and dinner once the sessions ended. I did not expect the food situation to be that good.

Thanks to the sponsors, Zend, the speakers, and everyone else who made ZendCon11 a positive experience, I look forward to even more great stuff next year!

ZendCon 2011

2011-10-17 00:21:09

A couple of coworkers and I have arrived in Santa Clara for ZendCon 2011 (http://zendcon.com/). We're going to hit the pre-conference tutorials Monday, then it's breakout sessions and keynotes Tuesday-Thursday. Located in the epicenter of Silicon Valley, it's going to be a great opportunity to learn the latest in PHP development tricks, from some of the greatest minds in the industry. Plus, we've got some great swag to look forward to! I'll be spending my time in the "PHP Extensions, Why and What?" and "Design Patterns in Action" tutorials, and will probably have some comments on each. I'm glad to see a wide variety of sessions throughout the rest of the week, covering many topics I'm interested in, such as application profiling, version control, cloud services, extending PHP, databases, and much more! If you're attending, look for me there, we'll grab some coffee and exchange ideas.

Multiple Inheritance in PHP via Traits

2011-09-08 03:33:47

PHP 5.4 is going to introduce some new tricks, particularly multiple inheritance, using an ingenious traits system. Installing an alpha version of PHP is the only way to get a peek (at the time of this writing), and there are a few examples provided on the documentation page: http://us3.php.net/traits.

It’s always exciting to see PHP dip a few more of its toes into the OOP waters, so let’s see what we can do with this new feature!

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