Let’s talk about Worms.

No, no that kind…

For the uninitiated, Worms is a popular game franchise developed by Team17. It is a type of artillery game where players control a team of cartoonish worms and use creative weaponry to defat the opposing team. Here’s a brief video to give you an idea of the gameplay:

The Worms games are available on a number of platforms and have recently found their way to iOS and Android. They appear to be pretty well received on these devices, but I think there is a key component missing that could push them from popular to blockbuster hit:

Dear Team17,

I’ve been playing your awesome series of games, Worms, ever since Worms Armageddon came out on PC 12 years ago. Since then, I’ve enjoyed my fair share of hilarious battles on the PC, on the Xbox 360, and even on my iPhone. Worms is regarded as an all-time classic by myself and many others.

I was extremely happy to see that Worms found its way to mobile platforms like Android and iOS because it meant I could partake in the enthralling battles in miniature and have them in my pocket whenever I needed a good game to play. However, there’s something missing. I do believe that one simple change to the way that the Worms games work on Android and iOS would bolster sales and turn Worms into a huge success on these platforms (not to mention: they’d be a blast for your customers). That thing is play-by-mail.

Now I’m not actually talking about playing through mail, but rather using the term to describe the style of play that we see with games such as Words With Friends. WWF is great because you don’t have to sit down for an hour long game. Instead, players make moves whenever it is convenient for them. The moves are stored on the server, then sent to the opponent whenever they open the game on their end. Instead of needing to dedicate a large chunk of time to the multiplayer game, players can make moves in tiny increments which is way more convenient, and means that you can participate in a game while you are waiting in line at the grocery store, rather than having to sit down on the couch at home and devote your full attention to a real-time game.

Worms is already designed from the ground-up to be a turn based game. Moving to a play-by-mail model seems only natural and would absolutely improve the experience for your customers on mobile platforms. You’d also be filling a gap that has been left by WWF; I can’t tell you how much I’d rather call an airstrike on the worms of my opponent than to score points with letters in a lackluster word game. I think a large group of people would agree.

I know I called play-by-mail “one small change inch and I know that’s not exactly true from the developer perspective. To the player, the game would operate very similarly, but it would likely take a lot of work on the backend. Still, I know it’s not impossible, and I think it would be absolutely worth it. I would love to be able to play long-term multiplayer games of Worms against my friends, and I know many of them would love to as well. If you convert the Worms games into a play-by-mail model, I think you’ll find huge success on the App Store and the Android Market (especially if you make these two platforms able to play against one-another).

Sincerely,
Ben

So Google tell us that the Chromebooks will be fast. It all hinges on the apps (again!)

I took the newly released Angry Birds for Chrome and tested it on a desktop, a tablet and a netbook. I also took a beta version of Chrome and tested it on that. Then I took a native version downloaded via AppUp (Yes, Angry Birds is already available for your Windows desktop!)

The results – I’m not impressed with the Chrome version at all. Windowed and running slowly on Chrome. The Native version runs flawlessly.

This, of course, isn’t a Chromebook test but remember, Chromebooks will run in Intel Atom N570 (at least the first devices) so the CPU and GPU power is limited. The Chrome OS is likely to be faster and WebGL will get better and as we go forward, the platforms will obviously get better but based on what I’ve seen this evening, I’m a little wary of performance. It’s not going to stop me from buying an Acer Chromebook for testing but this test gave me a good reality kick.

Update: Feeback from others in my circle that have tested isn’t that positive either.

Note: We’re not sponsored by AppUp or Intel. The ads you see are agency sales.

If you’ve been following Carrypad for some time, you are likely to have seen some hints of gaming in my work. Specifically, such hints usually take the form of any one of the games from the Halo series. I’ve been playing these games (made by Bungie) for nearly 10 years.

While evaluating the HTC Thunderbolt [tracking page], Verizon’s first 4G LTE phone, I’ve been intrigued by it’s mobile hotspot capability with regards to using it for real-time multiplayer gaming. This post is to talk about whether or not the Thunderbolt capable of providing a 4G connection that can result in smooth competitive multiplayer gaming.

I’ll be using the latest Halo game, Halo Reach, as my example for this post as I have lengthy experience with how the game ‘feels’ while playing multiplayer on various connections.

There’s nothing more frustrating than dying because your connection is worse than another player’s, or because your connection dropped some vital packets on the way to the host.

As a gamer, having a high-quality internet connection is absolutely vital for competitive multiplayer gaming. What do I mean by ‘high-quality’? In the world of real-time competitive multiplayer gaming, super high-speed connections will not give you the edge. Low latency, low packet loss, and low jitter are often much more important than having huge bandwidth. Even the host of the game (the machine that is sending all of the information around to each individual client) needs a relatively small portion of bandwidth to host a well performing multiplayer match, as long as they keep the aforementioned parts in check.

Let’s briefly define what we’re talking about:

• Bandwidth Available download/upload speed
• Latency (also known as Ping) How long it takes for information to be transmitted to and from another machine
• Packet Loss How much of the information that gets sent actually reaches the destination
• Jitter Average change in latency over a period of time

Verizon’s 4G LTE service easily has the first bullet covered. The Thunderbolt rips data right out of the air at an impressive rate. I’m currently seeing 18mbps download and 21mbps upload which is absolutely overkill for most gaming scenarios (or any other scenarios for that matter).

Fortunately, Verizon’s 4G is also upping the ‘quality’ end of the connection (latency, packet-loss, and jitter). They are approaching quality levels that would, not so long ago, be considered unthinkable for a mobile data connection.

I connected to the Xbox 360 through a WiFi adapter and was able to connect to Xbox Live and play several games of Halo Reach.

For the most part, the Thunderbolt’s 4G connection was sufficient for competitive gameplay. It felt like being connected to a dedicated home connection, which is very impressive considering that you are getting quality that rivals a direct connection, and speed that outpaces it.

As you can see, the numbers are quite competitive, that is… most of the time. I have to mention that while the Thunderbolt’s 4G connection can get the job done for gaming, it does occasionally crap out in short bursts and greatly impact gameplay. From years of play, I can tell you that it feels like a packet-loss situation when this happens. It’s unclear to me whether this is a result of the 4G connection itself being unable to communication for brief periods of time, or perhaps it’s the fault of the Mobile Hotspot app that may be locking up from time to time.

The Thunderbolt’s connection might have double the latency as my home connection, but if you look at the handy chart below (well, actually the second one down), you’ll find that it’s still within an acceptable range for close-quarters competitive, and even tournament quality gameplay. Long range tournament quality gameplay has an even larger tolerance for latency, so we’re definitely in the clear there.

Jitter on the Thunderbolt’s 4G is also impressively low. The 10ms figure up there means that the latency won’t fluctuate by more than 10ms on average, which is very useful for having consistent and quality gameplay without the connection impacting your ability to play.

There’s also one piece to the puzzle that I haven’t yet talked about, and that’s NAT (Network Access Translation). The NAT has 3 possible states, Open, Moderate, and Strict. For many games, Halo Reach in particular, you’ll need an Open NAT to have the best online experience. This chart shows how peers on a network can/cannot communicate to one another based on their NAT setting:

Unfortunately, the connection from the Thunderbolt has a NAT status that is set to moderate. While not an absolute roadblock to gaming online, when it comes to Halo Reach, this limits the pool of players that you have to match with, resulting in longer times waiting to enter games. Players with incompatible NATs also cannot communicate via in-game voice-chat. There are some advanced settings within the Thunderbolt’s Mobile Hotspot app, but none that I could find that would change the NAT configuration.

The thing that is a bit upsetting to me is that using a mobile data connection for competitive gaming should have been possible for a long time. On certain carriers, and in certain places, 3G connections have the bandwidth to support competitive multiplayer gaming, but they’ve never had the quality necessary. There’s really no reason that 3G connections can’t have high-quality characteristics, but it seems that the current fad in mobile data is to shove bandwidth that we don’t really need down our throats, when perhaps their time would be better used improving the quality of their existing data infrastructure. Have a look at this chart from Halo Reach’s Lead Networking Engineer, David Aldridge:

If you compare this to my chart of tests above, it’s clear to see that bandwidth is not the problem, it’s the quality that is important here. A 3G connection from Verizon could easily serve as the host to a 16 player match of Halo Reach in terms of bandwidth, but cannot keep up with the ping or jitter necessary to support competitive gameplay conditions.

Either way, Verizon’s 4G connection does have what it takes for real-time competitive gaming, though you may occasionally experience bursts of poor quality which will result in awful gameplay. There’s also the fact that the moderate NAT setting will impact your online experience. As a serious gamer, I wouldn’t rely on the Thunderbolt’s connection for gaming use, but it certainly makes an excellent backup connection if your console can connect with WiFi to the Thunderbolt’s 4G hotspot, and would presumably let games online in places that you normally wouldn’t be able to (in the car?).

There’s one thing that was clear from last nights live testing of the Aspire One 522 I’m the worst person in the world to demonstrate 3D games. Interestingly though, that’s because I never have devices that can play games. In the last 5 years we’ve seen just a handful of mobile devices that can play games and the fact that I was thrown into Half-Life 2 and Unreal Tournament demos shows that the Acer Aspire One 522 is quite unique and an indicator of where netbooks are going next. We tried hard to find showstoppers and major issues, design problems, heat and noise or anything that would confirm that this is a cheap device but no, after 3 hours, it was clear that the Aspire One 522 is a real bargain and a true upgrade option for those with first or even second generation netbooks.

Highlights and Lowlights

• 1080p playback via local or YouTube works flawlessly on-screen (1280×720) or via HDMI
• In normal use, this is a 6 hour working device with a 3-hour gaming capability, 5 hours or more video playback and up to 10 hours with radios-off in low-power use as a text-entry device.
• No heat or noise to speak of although the fan is constantly spinning and can sometimes be heard or felt through the chassis.
• The Hard Disk seems to be a bottleneck in some situations
• Mono speaker just about does its job
• The glossy screen appears to be a little washed out compared to high-end displays
• Wifi reception is better than average
• No USB 3.0 or charging USB port
• Plastics very thin
• Access to memory and HDD is easy. Upgrade to 4GB is possible (Only 2GB available in Windows 7 Starter)
• Gaming needs more testing but viewers on the live session seemed very excited!
• Battery life / weight ratio is very good

A word of warning though, in terms of CPU processing power, there’s not a lot of difference here between the Intel Pinetrail platform in single or dual-core variants. in a pure-CPU video rendering test we saw the Aspire One coming in at 15% faster than a Intel N450 CPU which puts it between the N450 and N550 in terms of processing power. Compared to first-gen netbooks, that’s a great improvement but its far from mainstream.

It’s the ‘balance’ of CPU, HD Video and 3D that works so well with the Acer Aspire One 522 (and, we suspect, other Fusion C-50 APU -based devices) and if Intel don’t one-up the C-50 with Cedar Trail in a significant way, they will lose a good percentage of netbook sales. At €299, there’s very little room for beating AMD on price.

So here are the three videos we made during the 2.5hrs online last night. As usual they are captures of the low-quality stream but I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of them. Thanks again to everyone that joined and helped-out in the live session. Spread the word this is how reviews should be done!

Part 1 – Overview and first impressions.

Part 2 – Heat, battery life, video performance, browsing tests

Part 3 – Video testing, webcam, high and lowlights, Crystalmark test

I am certainly not qualified to talk in-depth at the Xperia Play gaming experience but I was certainly quite excited to see the hardware controls and game quality. In the video you hear me talking to a Sony Ericsson representative about the product. We discuss battery life, pricing, availability, get a gaming demo and take a look round the device.

The Xperia play runs Android 2.3 on a Snapdragon 1Ghz CPU (MSM8255with Adreno 205 GPU) with a 4 inch ‘Reality’ display at a true 16:9, 854 x 480 resolution. Note that Android 2.3 brought in some touch responsiveness extensions and enhancements.

What’s important to me is that another major company is now switching to the ARM/Android chassis for another product category which means Android is now in phones, tablets, media players, cameras, gaming devices, TVs and smartbooks. What’s category do you think Google are looking at for it’s next ‘device-specific ‘ branch of Android? Set-top-boxes is something I’ve been keeping an eye on.

Mobile World Congress is well underway with announcements and product launches coming from a bevy of manufacturers, HTC included.

At their press conference this morning they announced no less than 6 new Android devices, one of which is the Flyer, a 7 inch 1.5GHz packing tablet weighing in at  415 grams.

The Flyer has up to 32GB of internal storage expandable via microSD card, 1GB RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, 3G, GPS and both front and rear facing cameras at 5 and 1.3 megapixel respectively.

HTC plan to differentiate from other tablet manufacturers by including a capacitive stylus for handwriting, note taking and general annotation. Notes can be captured in ink or voice and have built in Evernote synchronisation. Also included with the Flyer are access to several new key services from recent partnerships or acquisitions that the company has made. Their recent investment with OnLive, a gaming service that renders 3D games and streams games to your device see’s integration with the Flyer whilst HTC’s acquisition of Saffron Digital will provide access to downloadable movie titles via the new HTC Watch application.

At first it looked pretty chunky to me in the press photos but JKKmobile has managed to get his hands on and compare it to the Galaxy Tab and the difference was fairly minimal.

Whilst its certainly got a lot of character I have to wonder about the new tablet version of HTC Sense running on a Android 2.4 core, sure there will be a lot of additional functionality added in typical HTC fashion but with Honeycomb around the corner, its a risk.

Whilst we wait for Chippy to do his thing and get some hands on time check out JKK’s video;

Just arrived in the Samsung Apps market today is Need For Speed Shift Full version – Free. This is the second racing game to appear in the last week. Previously we had Asphalt 5 HD, again, full and free. If you’ve got a Galaxy Tab these apps might not be appearing in your Samsung Apps catalogue due to country restrictions. My Tab was bought and is operating in Germany although it is set to English language. Need For Speed Shift does not appear in the standard  Android Market here so I’m not sure if there’s an alternative route for it. Let me know if it’s available where you are (and if it’s also free indicating that the Samsung App catalogue is largely a marketing channel!) Oh, and before you ask, no, I’m not putting up the .apk , Sorry!

I am putting up a video though. You can see Need For Speed Shift demonstrated in the video below. Watch in HQ/480p  for best version.

It works well! Smooth, responsive, enjoyable! If you’ve got a Tab, look for it in the Samsung Apps application.

Just arrived in the Samsung Apps market today is Need For Speed Shift – Full version – Free. This is the second racing game to appear in the last week. Previously we had Asphalt 5 HD, again, full and free. If you’ve got a Galaxy Tab these apps might not be appearing in your Samsung Apps catalogue due to country restrictions. My Tab was bought and is operating in Germany although it is set to English language. Need For Speed Shift does not appear in the standard  Android Market here so I’m not sure if there’s an alternative route for it. Let me know if it’s available where you are (and if it’s also free – indicating that the Samsung App catalogue is largely a marketing channel!) Oh, and before you ask, no, I’m not putting up the .apk , Sorry!

I am putting up a video though. You can see Need For Speed Shift demonstrated in the video below. Watch in HQ/480p  for best version.

It works well! Smooth, responsive, enjoyable! If you’ve got a Tab, look for it in the Samsung Apps application.