Chrome Experiments

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my 3 years on the internet, it’s that things grow fast. Take YouTube for example. It has a massive community, but I bet you wouldn’t guess it was founded in 2004. Just 5 years and look how big it is. And then look at Twitter. It’s user base expanded by 500% last year. That’s like doubling it, doubling it again, and adding what they already had to that. And the next great thing has just come along. And it’s name: Chrome Experiments

It’s developed with the new Web Browser, Google Chrome, in mind, taking advantage of it’s huge Javascript abilities. But it seems to work fine in most browsers. It’s basically a vast collection of Mini JavaScript apps, that run in your browser. Let’s take a closer look at a few of my favourites……

Starfield

Starfield is one of those things that’s always fun. The direction that the stars move is determined by where you mouse is on the screen, meaning they can go anywhere. You can also blur them, so that they have a comet like tail, by holding down your left mouse button.

Monster

This is one of the more unique apps. It starts off as a very simple cube, but changes rapidly as you use the given controls. You can stretch the X, Y, and Z values, make it curve more, create protrusions inside it, and change the background colour. This could be one of the greatest JavaScript creations ever. If there was a little bit more customization involved.

Ball Pool

This was the first Chrome Experiment I ever tried, and probably the reason I checked out more. You create balls by clicking and dragging the cursor, and then you move them, shake them and get rid of them. By double clicking the background, you can also change the colour of the balls and background.

Browser Talk

All you need to make this app work is a Microphone connected to your computer. You then choose you microphone, choose a character, and you’re off! As you talk, the mouth on the person will open and close accordingly, making it seem as if they are talking. I absolutely love this Experiment, and can’t wait for some more character’s to come

Ball Droppings

Ball Droppings is really quite unique. A hole drops balls continuously (at a rate you can change), and you can then direct the balls by drawing lines. As a ball hits a line, it makes a noise. The further down the screen a ball gets, the lower the noise. You can also change how gravity affects them, and, if you like, make them travel up instead of down! If you really wanted too, I suppose you could even make a song using lines and editing the gravity with this…….

That conclude’s my review of Chrome Experiments, which you can find at http://chromeexperiments.com

Jamie

Also, check out Woof’s Post below

Powder Game

I know, I know, I haven’t posted in about a month. I think I have Writer’s Block or something.

Anyway, here’s a game review on a cool simulation game called Powder Game.

You can place a wide range of materials in the little black box and experiment to see what happens. Since the site was originally written in some other language (I think it’s Japanese) and it might be hard to understand the internal guide, I’ve written my own guide so you know which material does what.

Click to enlarge.

Materials:

Powder: The default material. Burns at a moderate speed with not much energy.

Water: Can put out fire and grow trees. If touching Ice it can turn to ice itself. Can even get rid of magma if there’s enough of it. Obviously enough, it doesn’t burn.

Fire: Sets things alight. It disappears quickly. Generates a pretty large amount of energy when there’s a lot of it.

Seed: When placed on top of Powder it grows into a tree. Burns at a moderate speed with not much energy.

Tree: Can only be gotten from Seed + Powder (or via cloning). Burns at a slow speed with lots of energy.

Gunpowder: When on fire it explodes with moderate energy and at a fast speed.

Fan: Keeps generating energy. It can slowly erode if it is constantly hit with magma.

Ice: Ice can turn water into more ice. If hit by a strong wind it can turn into Snow. Ice cannot burn, but can be melted with magma.

Snow: This material isn’t very long-lasting. Ice turns to snow when it’s hit by a strong wind, but the snow normally turns to water a few seconds afterwards.

Super Ball: These bouncy little things can get quite annoying, but are pretty cool all the same. They can’t burn, but can be melted with magma (if you manage to stop them bouncing).

Clone: This is used to constantly generate the material it was first hit with.  It can be useful for stuff like tree-growing, but it can easily reach the ‘Powder Limit’* if left unsupervised.

Fireworks: By selecting another material with the left mouse button, you can put almost everything inside a firework. The default material inside is Powder. You must ignite these for them to release the material.

Oil: Oil is good for generating energy.  It burns at a slow speed with a lot of energy.

C-4: This is an explosive plastic. When ignited, it burns very fast with moderate energy. Well, it doesn’t exactly burn. Once ignited it kinda disappears slowly – it doesn’t bring the flame with it.

Stone: A rather boring material. If you grab it it turns to powder. It can’t burn, but if it’s heated up with magma, it turns into magma. Lazers have no effect on it.

Magma: One of the more interesting materials. It can destroy almost anything. The only other way (apart from deleting it) to get rid of magma is to either put loads of water on it or to somehow destroy it with a virus.

Virus: The virus material turns all other materials into more virus material. But other materials ‘fight back’. Whichever material is the first one to get infected it normally the one that takes over at the end of the ‘battle’. But a strong breeze can often restart the infection. Virus material is very unstable, and not to mention irritating. The bomb material can not be infected by virus material.

Nitro: My personal favourite. Nitro causes a massive explosion and burns in the blink of an eye. Grabbing it can set it alight if you’re not really careful. Sometimes super balls can ignite it too.

Ant: Ants make strange patterns in solid materials (such as tree, C-4 or metal). Once they burrow in, it’s quite tricky to get rid of them. Ants burn at moderate speed with not a lot of energy.

Torch: This material sets everything it touches on fire. It’s only weakness is water. Lazer has no effect on it.

Gas: This floating material is highly flammable. It burns very fast with a lot of energy.

Soapy: This is soapy water. It turns into bubbles if a strong enough breeze hits it. This can’t be used to grow trees, but it can be used to get rid of magma, destroy torch or put out fires (though it doesn’t seem to be very good at putting out flame since the energy it creates can sometimes turn the soapy water to bubbles.

Thunder: (This is wrongly named – it should be lightning.) Thunder moves randomly. Wind doesn’t effect it. Normally it just ignites material or blows it away like gunpowder. Metal can contain it. Stone turns to powder when hit by it.

Metal: It’s not as sturdy as you’d think. Water can erode at it and turn it to powder. When heated up like magma it turns into magma. It can contain thunder. It reflects lazers.

Bomb: This material is pretty useless. It destroys almost everything in it’s path.

Lazer: The newest material to be added, lazer is like a stronger, longer-lasting fire. It can destroy almost everything (excluding stone, metal and torch). It will continue moving until it reaches a block or an indestructible material.

Other objects and tools:

Box: What would a simulation game be without boxes? These are flammable. Fighters like to kick them around. The size of your pen determines the size of the box.

Bubble: If you’re too lazy to create bubbles with soapy water, or you want to be able to control the size of the bubble, this is the tool for you. Bubbles turn into the first material they touch (unless it’s a block, in which case they pop).

Fighter: The enemies of the game. If they kick your Player he dies. They can also die if they step on something like magma, fire, torch or lazer. They like kicking boxes around.

Player: This is your avatar. You control it with the left, right, up and down keys. You can also pick what colour his head is by selecting a different material with the left mouse button. If you press the down button he will puke whichever material you picked. His head colour can be changed if he runs into a different material. You can only have one player at a time. Fighters seem to have it in for him, and will kick at him (which kills him).

Wheel: This object turns around when material hits into it.

Block: One of the most important objects in the game. It is 100% impenetrable.  There is a thin lining of block around the black box (unless you delete it).

Erase: This tool only removes block and wheel objects.

Reset: Resets the black box.

Clear: This tool removes material.

Wind: Generates wind. Energy is wind created by materials.

Air: Generates air. Depending on white mouse button you have this tool equipped on, the type of air differs. Blue air is like a black hole: it sucks things in; green air is compressed tightly, so when it’s released it’s like a bomb.

* = There is a limited amount of material, block, fighters and boxes in the game. It’s very annoying, but you get used to it.

Hopefully you found that helpful. There are other features, such as pen size and special effects, but hopefully you’ll figure them out by yourself. If you can’t, feel free to leave a comment.

Also, you can upload things to the site. I haven’t figured out how to do this myself yet, so if you do please tell me. Some of these uploads are quite good. Others… aren’t so good.

I was going to do an ‘Interesting Things to Try’ section, but could only think of one:

• Try making a pit of lava, and then dumping fireworks filled with water on top of it. You can almost feel the magma’s despair as it realises ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

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Hopefully that wasn’t too painful to read. Have fun on Powder Game!

-legoless

Halloween Updates

Halloween is right around the corner. Both Poptropica and AQ Worlds already have some cool Halloween stuff to do.

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On Poptropica, they set up a little stall on Main Street. You can get Halloween costumes there.

There’s a witch costume, a mummy costume, a vampire costume and a pumpkin hat.

You can also sign up to receive an e-mail when Nabooti Island is released by clicking this button:

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On AQ Worlds, they made a whole new area called Mystcroft. It’s a small village that only appears on ‘Mogloween’.

There’s a vampire queen who sells you rare items. To buy most of them though, you need to help the three witches – Bubble, Toil and Trouble – by completing their quests. There are also lots of new monsters, such as ghosts, man-eating pumpkins, and even a new boss monster – Blister. He has a chainsaw that – if you are lucky – he might drop after you defeat him. That’s not the only free item though; there is also pumpkin armour, a sword made out of vines and a pretty cool cape! (There are probably more, but I haven’t found them yet.) Here are a few pictures:

Mystcroft be here till November the 10th, so enjoy it while it lasts.

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Also, Automattic (the company that owns WordPress) has bought the site ‘PollDaddy’. It’s an awesome site that makes polls. Loads of people use it, including PC World, RTÉ and Fox. Anyway, the guys over at Automattic made a new poll feature for WordPress. So I decided to make my own poll, just to see how it works.

That’s all for now!
-legoless

AQ Worlds

Sorry I haven’t posted lately.

Before I begin, let me thank Spurs for telling me about this game.
The game is called AdventureQuest Worlds. It’s a new MMO that’s just after coming out of Beta. There are a few glitches, but nothing too big.

You’re able to fight monsters to gain Experience points, Reputation points and, of course, gold. You can spend the gold on new weapons, weapon upgrades (when your level increases) armour, helmets, and other things.

There are also quests you can do. Find a NPC and click the ‘!’ above their head to see if they have one for you. Completing quests gets you XP/REP points, lots of gold, and for some of the bigger quests, different rewards such as armour or pets.

You can buy membership on it too, which lets you buy special armour, cool pets and other awesome stuff. Members also get to chat. Non-members will be able to chat eventually, but right now the servers are too weak to handle it, and they don’t have enough mods to control everyone yet. You also get Member Coins when you buy membership, which you can spend on ultra-rare items. I’d save my coins up though – I’ve heard a rumor that you will be able to buy space upgrades later.

I don’t have anything bad to say about the game, other than the space. You’re only allowed up to 20 items in your inventory, which is really irritating for someone like me who wants to collect everything.

Try it out for yourself! It’s really fun. My favourite item is the Giant Lollipop.

That’s all for now!
-legoless

PS: I wrote a Mission 9 guide on my Club Penguin Mission Guide page, in case any of you are interested.

Moshi Monsters

Ok, this isn’t really a game review, but  I’d like to tell you guys about a cool game called Moshi Monsters.

Please click here to sign up. For every person who signs up using that link I get 30 coins.

In Moshi Monsters, you get to adopt a monster & care for it. You can buy stuff too, such as furniture for your house, disgusting food to keep your monster’s health up, or clothes for your monster. There aren’t many games to play right now, but you start off with quite a bit of money.

You can also attract Moshlings (pets for your monster) by planting flowers in your garden. If you want some flower combinations just ask.

You can make friends with other monsters to make your Friends Tree get bigger, and leave messages on their notice boards so you can keep in touch.

There are a lot of other fun things to do that I ahven’t listed. Why not find out for yourself and sign up?

Don’t forget to read the Poptropica post and Dragon Cave Update below this too!

That’s all for now!
-Lego