Modern Warfare 3 - Noob Solo Review

One of the things that put me off getting MW3 was the so called short campaign.  I have had it for a couple of weeks now and I have to say that for the beginner (this is my first MW game) the reputed 5 hour campaign is way off.  I have clocked in 8+ hours and I'm not even half way yet.  If you are UberLeet and only ever play with the pistol (as any other weapon would make it too easy) then you probably could zip through it in less time.  I want to enjoy the ride and take in the atmosphere.

For the solo player there is also the Spec-Ops games.  These are a bit like GOWs Horde mode where you have to see how many waves of baddies you can withstand.  There are also some general challenge games where you have to complete timed courses, etc.  I haven't played these much yet but they look like they add a few hours to the game.

Say 15/20 hours for your first run through and half that for a second/harder level and you are probably getting your monies worth from it.  Add Spec-Ops and you are probably talking £1 per hour of entertainment.

So as a non multiplayer player, I would give the game 8/10.  The plot is just a bit too far fetched to be believable and your companions don't really have a personality between them, but the game play is great.

Update:
I will keep it at 8/10 but I have since realised that completing the single player campaign once counts as 50% of the campaign % score.  I am guessing you have to do it twice (or even three times to get all the achievements) to get 100%.

iOS App Submission Tips

So, I have four app in the app store based on two code bases.  Here are some tips that you may find useful and that I wish I had known.

1. Wait until your app is REALLY finished before submitting it.  It only really gets one shot at the front page of the "new apps" part of the appstore.  The people who see it there are going to be your initial user base.  If its only half finished then people will download it, try it and uninstall it.  No questions asked.
2. Make sure it is in the right category.  I released a music news app and foolishly marked it as "news" first and "music" second.  Who looks in the news category?If i had marked it the other way round, i would have got a lot more hits.  
3. It usually takes a week to get a new app approved.  The app store gets the most action at the weekend, so submit your app on a Thursday or Friday.  Then nine times out of ten it will be live on the Saturday and you will get maximum exposure.
4. You have two apps, same code base but slightly different content.  Say, one is a "lite" app.  If you submit two apps, one an update to an existing one and the other a new app based on the same code, the update will be done before the new app.  I think it is about 4 days for an update and a week for a new one.  This makes me think updates are not as rigorously checked or that there is less paperwork for the reviewer to fill in.  I am just saying ...
5. "Lite" apps.  They are there to give someone a taster of the real app and nothing else.  If I am not doing many updates then I have no problem with renaming the lite app and resubmitting it as a new app.  That way it gets maximum visibility.  Some existing users will not get the update, but who cares as they probably are not going to buy the app.

iPhone Fragmentation

iPhone users laugh at Android because of its market fragmentation, but it is pretty fragmented itself.  if you are an iPhone dev then you have to worry about which iOS model  you will be running your app on.

iPhone 1 to 3G
Small screen.
Dead slow.
Rubbish camera.
Not compatible with a lot of the latest iOS features.

iPhone 3G/4
Bigger screen.
Fast.
Decent camera.
All latest iOS features.

iPad 1
Biggest screen.
Fast.
No camera.

All latest iOS features.

So to write a universal app you need to include 3!! versions of any artwork you require and at least three (maybe 5) different sized icons for the home pages.  You can't guarantee what features the device will have or what speed it will eventually run at.  Add to that iPone5/iPad2 and you have even muddier water.

The Lava Lamp Shaped Universe

Two of the great scientific questions of the age are what was before the "big bang" and what goes on inside a black hole.  It has always struck me as blindingly obvious that the "big bang" and block holes are both opposite ends of the same tunnel.  Whatever gets sucked into a black hole will eventually get spewed out into a new universe somewhere in a parallel dimension.  I believe Lee Smolin has done some research on this.

How does this work?  Well, imagine of you would a huge lava lamp.  As time goes by it changes shape, bits bubble off and bits join up again but there is always the same amount of "stuff".  The way i see it there is an unbreakable skin round the universe that can increase or decrease in size. when a bubble occurs it doesn't break off from the main body but instead goes off into another dimension in the same space. Then matter gets sucked out of the old universe and into the new one, a bit like sand running from one compartment in an egg timer to another.

So how does this relate to our universe?  Well imagine there was another universe U1.  U1 at some point in its life gets a black hole in it.  This is some sort of hole between dimensions.  matter starts leaking out from U1 and that forms our universe U2.  As it is in a different dimension it is an entity unto itself.  The bang in the "big bang" is the force of the matter flowing into our universe.  As more and more flow in, our universe expands and U1 shrinks.  This carries on until U2 starts to develop black holes.  Now we are leaking matter into any number of other universes Un.  Eventually once there are enough black holes, the amount of matter leaving U2 will be greater than the amount coming in.  This is why the universe seems to be contracting.  It is literally getting smaller.

This makes much more sense than all the matter sucked into a black hole being reduced to an infinitely small point or all the matter in the universe coming from one either.  it doe however make more questions that need answering.  If you have more than one black hole then what happens when they meet?  If the rest of the universe has been consumed then does one consume the other or can one suck the matter back out the other?  If the second black hole is consumed, would this have any effect on its child universes?  Who knows?  Is any of this measurable?  Probably not.