xbox 360 – Krunk4Ever!

September 10, 2012September 10, 2012

Xbox 360 Needs a Better Keyboard UI

Update: This post was drafted back in October 2009. I had submitted it as feedback to Microsoft/Xbox 360, but never really heard back. Steam just announced their Big Picture which featured a keyboard system (Daisywheel) very similar to mine (I know there are quite a few differences), so I decided to publish this post.

During the past Xbox 360 beta, I had made the following suggestion to the Xbox 360 team.

I’ve always found the keyboard UI to be clunky and difficult to use with the controller. I understand the chatpad or a keyboard would make it more easy, but I’m pretty sure most people using the Xbox 360 still use the controller to type in text. When I found out I could redeem codes via their website, it was a blessing. Typing those 25 character codes always took an inane amount of time. Now that they plan on releasing Twitter and Facebook and other apps that can require a lot typing, it’s ridiculous to use the existing keyboard UI with the controllers to type.

That’s what got me thinking of a better keyboard UI with the current controllers.

Currently we use the L-joystick for moving the cursor up/down/left/right and hitting A to select a character. To enter 1 character, I may have have to move the cursor up to 15 steps.

One thing I’ve been thinking of is that we have 2 joysticks, each with 4 axis with 8 degrees of control, which we do not take advantage of. 8 x 8 is a total of 64 possible characters. If you consider the center position (joystick in relaxed position) to be another state, that’s 9 x 9 = 81 possible characters.

Here’s a rough sketch of what the UI would look like:

To type the number ‘1’, all I would have to do is point the L-joystick left, point the R-joystick up, and then push on R-joystick. Each letter would only take 3 actions (move L-joystick, move R-joystick, push on R-joystick).

That leaves the buttons (A, B, X, Y), bumpers and triggers to do other stuff like delete or move the cursor. You can even dedicate a button to switch back to the current keyboard mode. The D-pad would be perfect for this job.

As you may have noticed in my sketch, there’s a lot of empty spaces. I originally thought of putting every single character (symbols, numbers, both upper and lower case characters) on that, which is still a viable idea. Another option would be to drop that down to 5 circles (center, up, down, left, right), each circle having 8 possible characters like it is now, giving me 40 characters, which is about the same amount of characters on-screen today. You would then use the D-pad to toggle between upper and lower case, as well as symbols.

Of course there’s still more stuff to flush out, but I thought the idea was sound.

Also, given that the PlayStation 3 has a similar controller, I could see this being used on their console UI also.

March 27, 2010March 27, 2010

Friday Gathering!

It’s been long time since I invited Perry-tachi (see definition #2: tachi) over for dinner and games. I’ve seen Perry a few times since New Years, but everyone’s been really busy lately. There was that potluck over at Valerie’s sometime earlier this year, which was really fun. I still remember Ike (pronounced EK) shouting “grape tree house” over and over again during Pictionary. Oh yeah, congratulations on Sathana for getting his Ph.D. candidacy! This gathering had been long overdue and I was happy to see everyone again and that everyone was doing fine.

I sent out an email on Monday asking if people were interested in coming over on Friday/Saturday night for dinner and movie/games. I was a bit sad when only 3 people had responded and only Perry and Carolynn accepted. I sent out another email on Wednesday night and got 1 more accept from Sathana. It turns out that somehow my email ended being caught by UW’s spam filter. Here’s the email in full:

Hey guys!

It’s been awhile since we last got together at my place. I was wondering if people were interested in grabbing dinner followed by either a movie or Rock Band.

I recently acquired The Good, The Bad, The Weird, a Korean movie that looks hilarious:
http://www.hd-trailers.net/movie/the-good-the-bad-the-weird/
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/thegoodthebadtheweird/
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809884000/info
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/good_the_bad_and_the_weird/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0901487/
Of course there’s English subtitles.

I’m open to other movie suggestions as well.

Or we can always do what always do and play Rock Band. Since we’ve last played, I’ve gotten plenty of new songs. Let’s say Friday tentatively, but if people prefer Saturday instead, we can do that too.

//Toland (^_^x)

Maybe I had too many links in my email or maybe krunk4ever.com is considered a spam domain? Saran and Tom found out earlier today and wanted to come. Valerie also found out last minute and came over too. Perry even spoke with Joe and coordinated some Halo 3 over Xbox Live (he currently works in New Mexico). It was a full house once again.

We decided if 4 or less people, we’d have dinner a Sushiland. 5+ and we would go to Yea’s Wok. Only 4 were available for dinner (or found out early enough to join) so we ended up eating at Sushiland in Bellevue. I was surprised that at 7pm on a Friday there was hardly any line. It did get a bit busier later on, but previously on Fridays we had to wait upwards to an hour.

Afterwards we came back to my place and setup another Xbox 360 console using my 24″ Dell LCD. I really need to get that projector for my basement. That’ll be sweet. The few of us who had arrived early played some Beatles Rock Band while we waited for the others to arrive. I noticed that they now show you your friends’ score and I was surprised we actually beat Tekman’s and Angel’s score in Yellow Submarine.

Most of the people arrived and we started some Halo 3 4 vs 4 multiplayer action. It was hilarious hearing Joe and Perry speak over the microphone as it’d be delayed a few seconds on a screen and as someone mentioned Perry sounded like a high-pitched chipmunk. And for some reason, the chat wasn’t blocked per team, so we were able to hear everything they were planning. The teams actually turned out to be quite even after a few matches, but I think Joe was just goofing around after the 3rd round. Having Perry and Joe on the same team originally was slaughter for the 4 of us. Our team was much more even, where everyone would have about the same number of kills. On the other team, Joe and Perry would have 20 kills each, while the others would have about 5 kills each.

Joe called it a night and some people switched over to playing a soccer game. In the meantime, I deep fried some shrimp tempura. Did you know that Costco sells these awesome Panko Breaded Shrimp (Kirkland Signature brand). At first I thought it was shrimp with Panko mix where I would dip the shrimp and deep fry them, but it turns out they come pre-breaded. Yet another win for lazy Toland! The instructions provided actually tell you to use the oven, but after experimenting a few times, I find that 2 minutes at 350F is perfect for 3-8 shrimps. 2.5 minutes is still good, but at 3 minutes you have black charcoal shrimps. People seemed to enjoy them. 🙂

Afterwards, we switched over to Rock Band and tried out some of the new songs I recently got. Rock Band was a blast as usual. Singing Lady Gaga was really fun. We also got to try out OneRepublic, White Stripes, 3 Doors Down and a bunch of other music I’ve acquired since our last gathering. I even tried expert on drums and guitar for several easy songs. Expert on drums can get crazy difficult.

The last of us splitted around 2:30am and ended the night with Silversun Pickups – Panic Switch. Did I mention it’s been a long time since I had so much fun. Few probably know the reason why I setup this gathering. And today was going so well too! Sigh…

Perry’s birthday is next week, so we’ll probably do something again to celebrate.

December 10, 2008December 9, 2008

Lips Update

So I finally remember to ask the Xbox discussion about the issues I was hitting with Lips.

It turns out that all my issues stem from the fact I have a USB microphone connected to my Xbox 360. Somehow microphone registration gets all screwy because of that. In my case, I have my Rock Band microphone plugged into the Xbox 360 at all times. The fix is to unplug the USB microphone when you’re playing Lips. Apparently this will fix both the 2nd microphone lighting issues as well as the static noise, video and audio out of sync issues, as well as the freezing issues.

Other good news is that Harmonix (creator of Rock Band) is going to patch up Rock Band so it can use the wireless microphones! From MTV Games:

We broke the news that the highly regarded microphone bundled with Microsoft’s “Lips” karaoke game would not work with “Guitar Hero” or “Rock Band” at launch.

Harmonix and MTV Games have now addressed gamers’ concern over the lack of compatibility, and there’s good news to be shared.

“Microsoft and MTV Games are working together to ensure that consumers will be able to use the wireless mics from ‘Lips’ with ‘Rock Band 2’ after launch,” said the companies in an e-mailed statement. “More details on timing to come. Harmonix and MTV Games strive for all third-party controllers to work with the ‘Rock Band’ games, fitting with Harmonix’ open-platform philosophy for controllers.”

Sounds like we’ll have a patch in the coming weeks! Will you use the “Lips” mic?

That’s great news! Being able to play Rock Band with a wireless microphone would be neat! Then I can scrap my Rock Band microphone and not hit into these issues anymore!

December 1, 2008December 4, 2008

Mirror’s Edge

I don’t actually own the game yet, but I’ve played the demo and I found it to be a lot of fun. You may then be wondering why I have a whole blog post dedicated to Mirror’s Edge. The main reason is because it ties in with a couple things I wanted to blog about but doesn’t deserve their own post at the moment.

I got the demo a few weeks back and it was extremely fun. As one of CAD’s sillies state: “I have never felt this much like an acrobatic asian chick in my entire life.”

On the same lines, Penny Arcade also made a comic strip about Mirror’s Edge, but I didn’t really have much problems with the headaches, given that I’m pretty sure I’m quite susceptible to 3D motion sickness. For example, I was playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on Saturday and after just 2 missions (~30 mins or so), I felt a slight headache and had to stop playing. It could be that the demo was short and it didn’t have to time to get to me yet, but even with COD4, I was pretty sure I’d get a headache within minutes of playing the game, which I didn’t really get with Mirror’s Edge.

I was planning on getting it for the Xbox 360, but it looks like it’s going to come out on the PC in January, so I might pick it up then. PC games are usually cheaper to get and I’m not sure I’m willing to drop $50 on it quite yet, given that I heard it’s a rather short game.

Speaking of which, have you seen the trailer? Check out these trailers just to see how fun they look!

You can find more trailers here: Gametrailers.com – Mirror’s Edge: Reviews, Trailers, and Interviews

The music you’re hearing in all of the trailers are remixes of a song called Still Alive by Lisa Miskovsky. No, this has nothing to do with the Portal song by Jonathan Coulton.

You can also watch/download the HD version on Gametrailers.com. Someone also posted the mp3 for you listen: Still Alive.mp3 (Still Alive by Lisa Miskovsky – 4MB). I personally think the song’s amazing, especially with the piano keys, which for some reason makes me think it has some Asian background. I wonder if that has to do with the fact the main character you play as is Asian.

November 30, 2008November 30, 2008

Thanksgiving Weekend

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I assume some of you are still recovering from being overstuffed.

Thanks to Carolynn for planning out this year’s Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lot of fun helping prepare the food. Of course it was also fun eating it. There was a pretty good show up this year: Carolynn, Joe, Perry, Sathana, Felix, Tom, Jim, Saran, and Pita (sorry if I misspelled your name). Valerie also showed up later to join in the festivities. We had turkey, stuffing, green beans with onions and bacon bits, mashed potato, yam and marshmallows, pumpkin pie. The stuff was delicious. Now I’m hungry just thinking of it.

After eating, we played some Xbox 360: PES 2009, Rock Band 2, Lips, Gears of Wars 2, and even some 8 person Halo 3.

I took some photos which you can view in the photo album:

Thanksgiving 2008

I even recorded a few Rock Band Sessions (posted with permission):

Unfortunately I ran out of disk space during Perry’s and Pita’s performance.

I picked up Lips earlier in the week at the company store, here’s my semi-review. Since I’ve been an semi-avid Rock Band player, I’ll probably be making many comparisons to it.

The game comes with a good selection of songs. All 40 songs are unlocked at the beginning, so you don’t have to go through some tour mode to unlock them. Given that, we’ve found that even though there were 40 songs, not every song was something people wanted to sing. Unlike Rock Band where singing is optional (where you can choose to play guitar or drums), Lips requires someone to actually sing, and people always have a fear of singing songs they’re not too familiar with, especially when you only know the chorus.

You can’t actually fail in this game, but since you’re the center of attention, people become self conscious. It helps if 2 people are actually singing or if the whole crowd joins in like at a real karaoke.

Additional songs can be purchased at 160 points (about $2) each, but the selection is pretty weak right now, but more are supposed to be coming.

It comes with 2 wireless microphones, which is really neat. However, it’s sad that the microphones do NOT work with Rock Band, which apparently requires a patch from Harmonix. It’d be sweet if I were able to use the wireless mics with Rock Band sometime in the near future. The wireless microphone includes motion sensors similar to the Wiimote and you can use it to swing and make noises and so on. It also required to enable star power or overdrive or whatever Lips calls it.

The singing part uses the the center area for lyrics in big text and jumpy balls like at karaoke, and on the top and bottom are the pitch lines for 1st and 2nd player, which includes another set of lyrics, similar to Rock Band. However, different than Rock Band is that the lyrics move along with the pitch lines vertically, making it hard to read ahead. I can look at the lyrics in the center screen, but then my eyes have to jump back and forth between the lyrics in the center and the pitch lines above. Another pet peeve I have is pitch marker. In Rock Band, there’s this triangle that tells you exactly where your current pitch is. In Lips, they have a ball which is very hard to see, making it difficult to judge if I should increase or decrease my pitch in an instant.

There’s also a mode where you can connect a music player (i.e. iPod or Zune) where you can play your music and sing along to it. I haven’t tried this mode yet, but apparently it also does the pitch lines, but without the lyrics, it becomes hard since most people don’t really know the words outside of the chorus for most songs.

Issues with Lips
I’ve hit into a lot of issues with Lips and I haven’t been able to find anyway to troubleshoot the issue. If anyone’s experience the following issues, I would like to know if you have a way to get around it. I’m pretty sure it’s an issue with the game itself, since I haven’t hit into any of these issues with the other games I play, but it could be that my Xbox 360 is finally dying.

When playing 2 players, one of the mic’s lights do not blink according to the music. I’ve tried changing the batteries, resyncing the mics, but the lights will not come on. If I hold the power button, the lights will blink, but supposedly they’re suppose to blink according to the music’s rhythm during game play.
Once in awhile, the music becomes out of sync with the game. Other times, there’s a lot of static in the music. And both of these are precursors to the game freezing, which I would then have to reboot. I verified it’s not actually the song or using custom videos as replaying the same song in the same mode has no problems after a reboot.
There’s probably a way to get around this, but I haven’t figured a way yet. Once in awhile, I add a song in Sing mode and decide not to sing it, and I can’t seem to get rid of it. Every time I finish singing a song, instead of returning to the main list, it shows this song. Does anyone know how to remove that song so after singing, it returns me to the main list?

On Saturday, I caught dinner with Andrew and watched Milk. The movie was decent. Interesting information about gay history which I never knew about, but it was quite clear who their targeted audience were. I do have to say Josh Brolin once again outdid himself and gave an amazing performance. I didn’t realize it was him until halfway through the movie. After seeing him in No Country for Old Men and W. and now Milk, not only can he act like the person he’s portraying well, but he can LOOK like the person he’s portraying well. Andrew also mentioned, it would’ve been interesting to hear Dan White’s side of the story on this whole affair. Apparently Dan White was the first one to use the Twinkie Defense.

September 21, 2008October 3, 2008

Rock Band 2 + Xbox 360 Live Points Deals

Wow! It’s been quite awhile since my last post. Things have been quite busy at work and with the darn construction going around here, I’ve been waking up at 9am. I haven’t gotten a chance to blog about Joe’s Birthday BBQ or my recent camping trip. Hopefully my workload won’t be as bad in the coming weeks.

Anyway, the following deals are time sensitive, so I thought I’d blog about them now before they evaporate. Amazon.com has a few Xbox 360/Rock Band deals going on this weekend:

Xbox 360 Live 4000 Points for $40 or Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points for $16. These are normally $50 and $20 respectively. You’re basically getting a 20% discount making it 100pts/$1 instead of 80pts/$1. Pretty good deal considering Live Points don’t usually go on sale and if you order $25+, you get free shipping and since these are considered “gift cards”, they’re not taxable (even in WA).

If you’re seeing a different seller on the main page, please look on the right side, and you should see Amazon.com as seller and the lower price. Given that this deal started earlier this weekend, it’s currently back-ordered, but you’re still allowed to purchase it at the discounted price.

If you’re wondering if it’s better to get the 1600 points or the 4000 points, the better deal is the 1600 points because at 4000 points, you save about 5 cents, but the savings are pretty negligible. I would recommend buying 2x1600pts to qualify for free shipping.

Buy Rock Band 2 for the Xbox 360 and get a 1600 Live Points Card

Here’s your chance to add the new Rock Band game to your collection and set yourself up with 1600 Live points. That means the 84 tracks from the game plus about 10 downloads with your points. This deal will keep you rocking for a while! Offer limited to products shipped and sold by Amazon.com. Promotion ends on October 4, 2008 at 11:59PST. Offer good while supplies last. Limit one per household. See Details.

*Details

Order the standalone version of Rock Band 2 for the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card by October 4, 2008 in our Video Games Store and receive the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card free. To redeem this offer place both participating products in your cart and proceed through the check out process. At the end of your order the cost of the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card will be deducted from your total order. This offer applies only to the purchase of the standalone version of Rock Band 2 for the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card offered by Amazon.com and does not apply to products sold on our site by third-party merchants or through third-party areas such as Amazon.com Marketplace or Auctions. Limit one per household.

How to Qualify for the Rock Band 2 Points Card Promotion:

-This offer applies to qualifying purchases made before 11:59 p.m. PT on October 4, 2008 while supplies last on the “the standalone version of Rock Band 2 for the Xbox 360” and “the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card.”
-Offer does not apply to out-of-stock items.
-The cost of the Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points card will be deducted from your total order at the end of the check out process.
-Offer can only be applied to orders placed after 12:00 AM PT on September 21, 2008, and before 11:59pm PT on October 4, 2008.

Since I was planning to pick up Rock Band 2 already (just didn’t want to pay retail), getting a free $20 worth of Xbox 360 Live Points made a pretty sweet deal. Too bad I had to pay WA sales tax, but even considering that and the fact that the 1600 is really worth $16 this weekend, I’m still saving over $10.

Finally, this probably isn’t time sensitive, but Xyon informed me there was a new free Rock Band song: Stephen Colbert DLC hits Rock Band. The song is called Charlene, a pretty short and hilarious song by Stephen and the Colberts. Those flawless expert achievements are finally within reach!

July 20, 2008July 20, 2008

Fake DVDs

I ordered some Xbox 360 green replacement cases off eBay, because some of mine were damaged and I’d like to keep the same green look in my library collection. I received my package today and I was surprised to find out that in every single case, there was a DVD movie. The first thing that popped into my head was seller mistake? Then I thought maybe that’s why green dvd cases are more expensive than regular dvd case, they’re code for bootlegs!

At first I didn’t realize these were fake as they looked quite real. The DVD cover art was nice and the back of the DVD was silver. However upon further inspection, you can tell that the cover art is actually a DVD sticker label.

Not only were these not bootlegs, these were not even real DVDs. I tried placing a couple into my DVD-ROM drive and none of them were readable. Looking closer at the back of the DVD, they did look funky:

Anyway, I’m not sure why these were included with my shipment. Maybe they were there in case you weren’t sure how to use a DVD case. I just know I now have a stack of coasters.

July 9, 2008

New Free Halo 3 Map: Cold Storage

Got this via the Xbox.com Marketplace RSS feed: Celebrate Bungie Day!

Grab this new multiplayer map free.

Cold Storage Map

Once, the Cold Storage facility was a vibrant, active research center on Installation 05. An accidental contamination resulted in an unforeseen outbreak, which compromised the Forerunner center. Now, emptied and silent, watched only by a local caretaker, the abandoned structure serves as a reminder of how something as powerful as science is ultimately beholden to nature. This new map is available free starting on 7/7.

Downloaded it a few days ago. Haven’t got a chance to try it out yet.

July 3, 2008July 6, 2008

More Free Tracks for Guitar Hero III and Rock Band

Time to jam.

Just got alerted that there was a new free track for Guitar Hero III: Guitar Hero III July Song Track Releases:

Top Gun Anthem Single Track (available July 3)
Price: Free
Songs: “Top Gun Anthem” written by Harold Faltermeyer as featured in the famous movie starring Tom Cruise.

I guess it’s a freebie to celebrate the 4th of July. You can listen to the music on YouTube: TOP GUN ANTHEM

Since I was on Xbox Live downloading this free track, I decided to see what other DLC (Downloadable Content) was available for games that I own. Apparently they released new costumes for Ninja Gaiden 2 for 200pts each. I really have no need to pay $2.50 to get a new costume for Ryu Hayabusa.

Anyway, it turns out that Rock Band is also release a new free track. According to *** DLC Week of July 1st – Crüefest Pack plus free song!:

Hey everybody, next week for DLC we have the Crüefest Pack for $.99 per track (80 Microsoft Points) and a track from the movie “The Rocker” by Vesuvius absolutely free! Also check back on Monday and I may have some other news-type-stuff for you.

[…]

“Promised Land” – Vesuvius
(All tracks utilize the original master recordings)

[…]

“Promised Land” – Free!

You can go listen to Promised Land and watch someone play on YouTube: Promised Land- Vesuvius Rock Band Guitar Expert. Sounds like another song celebrating July 4th, Independence Day.

June 29, 2008July 6, 2008

Another Free Guitar Hero III Track: I AM MURLOC

So I finally logged into Xbox Live today to accept Xyon’s friend invitation (apparently he’s now addicted to Rock Band and went out to purchase an Xbox 360 and the Rock Band Special Edition).

Anyway, while I was browsing through the Inside Xbox videos and noticed that there was a new free track for Guitar Hero III: I Am Murloc

From OXM’s World of Warcraft meets Guitar Hero:

Thursday 26-Jun-2008 9:52 AM “I Am Murloc” available to download for GH3, which is great if you actually know what it is.

Fans of Guitar Hero III and free stuff can download “I Am Murloc” today, a World of Warcraft song by Blizzard’s in-house band, Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain.

This promotional exercise is supposed to build hype for a big announcement ahead of the Activision and Blizzard merger finally taking place. It could be an announcement that World of Warcraft is heading to consoles (which makes sense given the console DLC and merging) but it’s more likely to be something in the vein of Diablo 3 being announced.

As for the song itself, here it is. Erm… what?

Looking up on YouTube, I found the song and music video: I AM MURLOC – L70ETC.

Enjoy!