Portal 2

On a note related to this post, I have updated the backlog post a LOT lately, with new purchases (why oh why do I keep making this harder on myself) as well as a few completions - including the topic of today's post.

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I'm just going to go ahead and say it - buy Portal 2. Now. If you haven't bought it yet, you're a damn fool.

Also, you're committing sacrilege if you have not played the first Portal. I'm serious here. I learned today that one of the guys at work had never played it, so I took matters into my own hands and bought him a copy on Steam. I like to think of it as making the world a better place, if only marginally.

I want one. Now.

For those who don't know the premise of Portal, you are given a gun that shoots portals. Certain types of flat surfaces allow you to fire said portals into them. You can fire a blue portal and an orange portal - when both are laid down, physically entering one will result in you coming out of the other one. The kind of teleportation portals we all wish existed in real life.

Your task is to use the aforementioned portal gun, as well as your brain, to solve a bunch of physics puzzles, that all involve getting you to the other side of a room safely. While this sounds utterly boring when I describe it, that's because, well, I don't describe things well?

It's a first person exploratory puzzle game, if that makes any more sense. In the first title, you are a test subject for a company called "Aperture Science", and your not-so-friendly robot test supervisor GLaDOS offers you... well, less guidance more snarky comments as you progress through the lab. Eventually you escape the confines of the test rooms to try and break out of the lab.

In the sequel, the storyline begins somewhat similarly, in that you are kind of thrust back into the lab test rooms, although they are now badly damaged and gradually get repaired as you continue through the game.

The puzzles originally consisted of mainly buttons, boxes, platforms, the cutest gun turret robots you'll ever meet, and the like. In the sequel, some more elements are added, such as light bridges which can be extended to different parts of the room via portals, goo that makes you run really fast when you walk over it, and a sort of swirling blue antigravity field thing that carries you in whatever direction it is moving.

In addition to all of this, a coop mode has been added, and it is brilliant. There is a certain satisfaction to be had in completing a puzzle, and that is only doubled when you manage to complete a puzzle with the aid of another player. All of the coop puzzles are designed in a way that both players need to get involved, so if you have a player who simply refuses to work with you then I can see how it could very quickly descend into chaos, with the players trying to portal each other into the water (which kills you). Luckily, the game also warns you when you try to look for a coop partner randomly online (it flat out tells you its more fun with a friend rather than some random).

All in all, if you haven't bought it yet, or planned to buy it yet, I doubt I've done much to convince you. However, buy it buy it buy it! It's an entertaining, intelligent game with quite a funny plotline. And the ending to single player is simultaneously hilarious and awesome.

Archery

Sorry about the lack of post last Friday. I was busy / lazy.

Well, not quite lazy, I had to run into work even though it was a public holiday because a project at work broke. Even worse, when I got in there and ran it, it worked fine, the issue being only a temporary server downtime. So much for a day off...

Anyhoo, last week, Sarah and I joined my brother and a few other people heading to Olympic Park for some archery. It turns out that about a month ago, he and a mutual friend bought bows. They've been running off to archery ranges most weekends to have a few shots. Mark had mentioned to me at one stage that once he finishes uni, he'd be interested in taking up archery, and I was definitely up for joining him in that. My guess is that my bro heard me offhandedly mention that, and invited us to join him for a go (unfortunately, Mark was busy since uni is eating his soul).

We headed to Olympic Park, and paid our moneys. Matt and Josh had their own equipment and "know what they are doing", so they buggered off to another section of the range to play with their compound bows, whilst the rest of us were in the learner group with plain old longbows.

I quite enjoyed it, though I learned quite quickly that I'm a terrible shot. I spent a large amount of time in between volleys searching for the arrows that missed the target - and at one stage even managed to permanently lose one somewhere. They sometimes have a tendency to burrow under the ground (apparently the compound bows are worse for this), making it difficult to find them, if not impossible.

After a while Sarah and I managed to start hitting the target with greater reliability. It was at this point that I began to notice that the arrows we were using were bent. It makes sense, since that was the equipment that anyone can use when they head to the archery center, but it also allows me to blame my lack of accuracy on said bent arrows.

Eventually we were told to stop - altogether way too quickly, and we fired our last shots. We then watched Matt and Josh for a few shots (it turns out they're also quite terrible at archery, and although they were shooting at a much longer distance, they were also using bows equipped for said range), and I got to try one shot with the compound bow.

The compound bow is a pain to fire. The string was ridiculously difficult to draw back til a certain point, then it drew the rest of the way quite quickly. I don't know if this is expected behaviour, or if its my brother's bow being useless, or what. I took my shot, and managed to hit the target - which is more than Matt and josh could say for most of their shots!

In the end, I am considering purchasing a bow, although I do not know if it would be a compound one - those things are a bit pricey, after all!

Japan - Kingdom of Characters

As mentioned briefly at the head of the last post (for the 2.5 of you who actually read this), before heading off to Distant Worlds, Sarah and I also gave the Japan Foundation's "Kingdom of Characters" expo a look. While it was an extremely small expo, it was quite interesting.

A lot of the information was about how Japanese characters have evolved, from Doraemon and Hello Kitty to the newer Pokemon and such. While the information was interesting, it was kind of difficult to focus on when there were plenty of large statues of iconic characters, as well as a bunch of people walking around looking at these, and taking photos. I found it particularly difficult to read the section on the 80s or 90s (or whenever Evangelion was originally released) due to the people trying to take photos of the big, green... thing behind me (I had to move to get out of their photos, but then I couldn't read the poster thing).

Much of it ended up just being Spritza and I taking photos of the statues and things, so here are a few of them. Enjoy!

Ultraman got nothin' on me

Big, kind of scary green thing

It's not until you see this statue of Rei in person that you realise 

how much of a stick figure everyone in that show is

It's only a Gundam. I can take it

Giant Hello Kitty!

Somehow, the photo of the Hello Kitty bedroom from the corner of the expo seems to have not appeared in my possession. Pity...

Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy

As I mentioned previously, on Saturday Sarah and I headed to the city for multiple events. one would be the Japanese Foundation's small expo called "Kingdom of Characters", which had information about characters that Japan had created, along with historical context (a lot of them were done in reaction to events occurring at the time). More on that another time, perhaps.

 It is an Opera House. In Sydney. I am taller than it

Later that evening, we headed to the Sydney Opera House for the main event - Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy. This is a show where a bunch of songs from various Final Fantasy games is played by a symphony orchestra.

The orchestra was conducted by Arnie Roth, who was in Sydney a few years ago for Play: A Videogame Symphony, which I also attended, so I knew that this show was going to be well done. Play was insanely awesome (though a little jarring when it began with the original Super Mario theme, which I'm used to hearing in chiptune form).

Distant Worlds followed form, and was, as far as I'm concerned, better than Play was. Admittedly, a large part of this can be attributed to the music itself, as well as the role that the Final Fantasy games have played in my existence. Final Fantasy VII was the very first RPG that I ever finished (I had played copious amounts of Baldur's Gate before this, but never finished it, and hadn't understood anything about it at that point). Final Fantasy VIII remains my favourite Final Fantasy title to date, and one of my favourite games overall still. I am currently playing through Dissidia Duodecim, Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy XIII, having recently completed I, II and Tactics. Beginning to get the idea here?

Nobuo Uematsu - the composer behind the vast majority of the Final Fantasy music was in attendance at the show. Naturally, I assumed this meant he was going to be there, and possibly doing a signing event afterwards (which was correct), but would be in his own private box for the show itself.

I have never been more wrong in my life. I have also never been so happy that I have been wrong.

After the first song (Prelude, which appears in almost all of the FF series), Nobuo was introduced. He took a bow, accepted the applause, and then sat down. In the crowd. About 8 rows behind me. The people he sat next to were just fans, who had paid to come to the show like everyone else. He just had a regular seat like everyone else!
Naturally, the people who he sat near freaked out. Hell, I would have freaked out too!

The show continued brilliantly - they played all their Final Fantasy VIII songs quite early on though, and later on, it got a little weaker near the end though, by playing songs from Final Fantasy XIV Online (which I don't think many people would have recognised - I played the beta of said game, and didn't purchase it afterwards because I didn't enjoy it), and then the 15 minute opera scene from Final Fantasy VI. While it was performed well, I didn't know the scene, having not played through much of FFVI, and as such it made it difficult. This was remedied with the encore though, being a song everyone knew. This particular encore surprised noone. It was still brilliant though.

The encore, in action

After the show, we linked up with a couple of friends who were up from Melbourne for the show, and lined up for the post-show signing event. There were only 100 tickets sold for this (apparently), and we were lucky enough to get some. We even managed to get fairly close to the front of the line, only waiting about 15 minutes or so to meet Nobuo, Arnie and Kanon (Kanon being a performer they brought in from Japan to sing two of the songs - Suteki da Ne and Memora de la Stono ~ Distant Worlds).
Nobuo had a good laugh at the item I brought for him to sign - a cartridge of the original Final Fantasy game for NES. Or Famicom, since it was actually an original Japanese edition.

Front: Arnie Roth, Nobuo Uematsu

Back: Me, Spritza

So, I met Nobuo, he's awesome. Arnie is also really nice. Unfortunately, I had to move on so others in the line could get their time, so I only got to say thanks to Kanon as she handed me a poster with the trio or autographs on it - although I'm sure she's really cool too. In fact, I plan on buying her new CD when it gets released. Admittedly, a big part of the reason for that is that she has sung 4 Final Fantasy songs on it :P

Best Thing Ever

There's not much to say today. Kind of in a slump of things that have happened.
However, this weekend will change that.

Tonight and tomorrow the Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy concerts are on (Sarah and I are attending tomorrow night's show - as well as attending the meet and greet afterwards where we will meet Nobuo Uematsu, a fact which both excites me and intimidates me a little).

Sunday, we're going to do some archery. Fun times ahead.

From now, I am aiming to keep to an update schedule of Monday/Wednesday/Friday - hopefully giving me time to think of things to talk about, or at least some random things to ramble about like yesterday.

But for today, simply enjoy this photo of the early birthday present Mark bought for me. This is quite possibly the best thing ever - and useful too!

Yes, it "says" things to you in zombie when you press the button

Random Thoughts

No single, coherent topic today, though I have some more random mini-topics, so words shall be typed, and you shall read them.

This morning, I got a chance to give Crysis 2 a quick bash. In 3D (goggles and all). Yes, my last post was about how I hate 3D. I still hate 3D. However, this didn't hurt my eyes as much as usual, and it even had a slight 3D looking effect on the gun. It may be possible to make this thing work after all, though that wasn't the point I was arguing (it probably is possible to do 3D well. Just not yet).
I will probably pick up Crysis 2 at some point to play on my gloriously 3D-incapable monitor, because the graphics are so pretty...

My face to face Pathfinder group hasn't had a session in months. This is due to one of our players constantly being annihilated by work (at Maccas >.<) and uni (last semester of a teaching degree). Once that's done, we will likely resume a more consistent play schedule, though by that point we'll all have forgotten what had happened in the game as well! Thank God for the Madboards Pathfinder to tide me over!

Speaking of which, said Madboards Pathfinder is becoming increasingly difficult to moderate due to Krug. SMK, I know you're gonna read this, and I'm glad you're staying in character, however the last action you took may well lead to your death. Well, that or break the plot irreconcilably. Either works.
Plot wise (and there are minor spoilers here), there is a plot-scheduled pub brawl that is supposed to begin (and will very soon), however it is supposed to be weapons free. The material I am using states that the moment someone draws a weapon, the Sheriff will be on them like Donkey Kong, which makes sense. If people are fist fighting and someone draws their blade, then that guy is the biggest threat. Krug has drawn his greatsword, so he will have a level 4, fully healthy fighter bearing down on him. Not pretty at all...

Cityrail failed more so than usual yesterday. Somehow their signal box at Sydenham station managed to die (I was told some vandals got to it), and caused pretty much every train to be stopped indefinitely. I was at Revesby station at 7.30am, to go to work. I arrived at work at approximately 10.30am. Something's wrong here...
They'll likely try to apologise to everyone by having a day where train travel is free. This seems to be their standard apology method. However, there is a big issue with this - it doesn't actually make up for the failure to the people who were put out by it.
For example, someone takes the trains to work regularly. They likely buy a weekly (or even fortnightly) ticket, since its cheaper than to buy a return ticket every day. So ShittyRail schedules a day where travel is free. The people who have already paid for this weekly ticket don't get any benefit - they already paid for that free day.
And the people who used the trains as a one off the day they failed? What are the chances that they need to use the train on the day they pick to make free?

Fail.

Dino D-Day is horrendous. Don't waste your money. This guy explains it all in a 20 minute video - and explains it better than I ever could.

Why the 3D fad must be killed. Now.

There has been a small discussion of 3D technology on my Facebook page. I call it a small discussion, though that's embellishing it somewhat. It really boils down to me complaining about the 3DS hurting my eyes when I tested it the other day, and a few people commenting on said statement. I figure that my stance on 3D in general (as opposed to the 3DS on its own merits, or lack thereof) should be supported, and so today's topic came to be.
Well, the title of this post very succinctly sums up my feelings on the whole thing, but I suppose I should elaborate. I will be talking about 3D in the context of both games and film/TV, to be something resembling fair.

This is the Virtual Boy. It sucks. It's also 3D. Coincidence?

Let's start with the obvious. 3D has been done before now, obviously. Take a look at the Virtual Boy, for example. Actually, don't. Really, really, don't. It's screen had an amazing two colours - Red and Black. And it was in 3D. You could play for about 10 minutes before it broke your eyes.
But even before that, 3D has been achieved. For example, watching sports in 3D has been done for years. Centuries even. The Ancient Greeks even had 3D sports. This was usually achieved by leaving the home, and actually attending the event. There you go - an amazing full 3D event.
Snarkiness aside, there is something to be said for the concept of 3D movies and gaming. I reckon it would be great to be able to experience a game in full 3D surrounding you. However, the problems with 3D as it is now are:

A) It doesn't work
I haven't seen many movies in 3D, to be completely honest. Hell, I haven't seen Avatar in 3D or even in glorious 2D. The movies I *have* seen in 3D are Alice in Wonderland (the Johnny Depp one), and Tron Legacy. If there was ever going to be a movie where 3D would be amazing, Tron was it. However, the only real 3D effects I saw in that movie was a slight amount of depth perception on the house, near the start of the film. In Alice in Wonderland, there was a butterfly in one scene, and I'm not even sure it was part of the movie - it may have been the title screen or something. Admittedly my memory is hazy. The fact that I cannot recall anything about the 3D of these 3D movies is a bad sign, is it not?

 

ThinkGeek yet again tempts me, with the solution to 3D... these glasses make the 3D into 2D - and the film actually watchable

B) The glasses suck
When I went to these 3D films, I had to wear 3D goggles, as they make you do all the time, obviously. The reason behind this is that (typically) there are two images being displayed, overlapped on each other. One is for your left eye, the other is for your right eye, but the images are slightly different. The lens on the glasses filter the images so your eye only sees the appropriate image, giving you this 3D effect. The one that doesn't work.

Am I the only one who has a problem with seemingly crossing your eyes for potentially hours on end? Am I the only one who thinks that this is a horrendous idea?

Anyway, this is why some people tend to get headaches and eye strains from this - your eyes feel like they are going funny because they ARE going funny. Intentionally. I don't know if there has been much research into this, but it sounds to me like a logical way to injure yourself.
On a related note, as a permanent glasses-wearer, wearing glasses over my glasses is impractical, and stupid.

C) It's a gimmick. An expensive gimmick
Nowadays, almost every big Hollywood film seems to be in 3D. A lot of them aren't designed initially for 3D, and just tack it on. This may be why my experiences mentioned under (A) were pathetic. It seems everyone is tacking pointless 3D onto their film in a bid to sell more movie tickets. At a higher price at that. Can't the filmmakers rely on good writing, and good acting to make money.

Well, it IS Hollywood we're talking about. I suppose they can't.

It's gimmickyness feels like the Nintendo Wii's motion controls to me - shoehorned into everything that is released to appeal to the idiots who go "ooh shiny" and then wonder why their heads hurt after watching the thing.

On a related note, I tried the Nintendo 3DS. It gave me a small headache, and made my eyes hurt a lot. Part of this is likely fatigue, I have been getting minor headaches a lot lately because I haven't been sleeping well. However, this was triggered almost instantly as I looked at the screen trying to play Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition.
To me, the 3Dness of the game looked like two distinctly different images slightly on top of each other, which was very disconcerting, and definitely the course of my headache. Somehow, I still managed to beat the CPU, but by that point, my mind had been made up - I am NOT buying this machine. I don't care that it would be my first opportunity to play more than 30 minutes of Ocarina of Time - if I can't get use of the main feature of a device, then I will not purchase that device.

And I will avoid 3D TVs, movies and gaming machines as well. I like to be able to see what I've paid to see, thankyou very much.

Beep beep bloop

One thing that strikes me as odd is how people can have such wildly differing tastes in music. It is a strange phenomeon, don't you think?

This guy is amazing

For example, when I take a look around my office, I see a few people who's music tastes I have literally no idea of. Then I see the guy who has an eclectic mix of psychedelic trance, general electronica, old school one hit wonders, basically every song ever. He has a song which is 7 minutes of printer sound effects, which does a great job of hurting my head.

I see the guy who listens to mostly rock. Many forms of it, I suppose, though there was nothing that was really screamy when he's the one in control of the music. Mainly because 99% of screamy songs are inappropriate for the office, so he plays things like Greenday, Audioslave, occasionally Tool (which have a lot of inappropriate stuff, so I suppose he's either gone for the least offensive stuff, or just doesn't care at some points).

I see the girl who plays Indie rock, mostly bands of which I have never heard of. Occasionally a band I have heard of (Kaiser Chiefs - and even then I only know the song because I have a trance remix of it somewhere).

And then there's me. I listen to a combination of rock, dance, and some random stuff (soundtrack and so on). Mostly, when in the office and in control of the music, I play trance. Partially because its different from the rest of the office's music, partially because its great music to code to (particularly since I have a lot of more progressive trance, so it builds up and breaks down a lot - great for a long day spent coding), but mostly because I like it, and don't listen to it enough.

I have never really understood gangsta rap, or pop. Nor will I ever, I can rarely bear either of these genres. That made working at MacDonald's very difficult when I was there for eight and a half years, the majority of the other crew were 14-16 year old kids with no taste in ANYTHING, or intellectual capability. And hated trance because it wasn't their music.

No, I'm not bitter. Not at all.

Lately, though, I've been listening to more and more chiptunes. Chiptune is a style of music reminiscent of old video games. Ever play Super Mario on the SNES? Not the newer ones, the actual SNES one? Yeah, that's a chiptune.

Her Laser Light Eyes by Nullsleep - awesome

I think I'm addicted.

What strange styles/bands of music are you into? I mean strange by, not mainstream. Dragonforce perhaps?

Also, any mention of Rebecca Black will be punished by death. Using kittens with lasers. They will eat you with their... laser eyes. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Learning While Coding

The last week or so at work has had me learning how to do some things for when I program which I never expected. They are all things that are important things to be able to do, and a few aren't as difficult as one would expect, though the major one (which I will get to) has been giving me utter headaches, because it leads to a rather large change in programming style and way of thinking.

Warning, heavy geekery ahead. Though really, on this blog, would you expect anything else?

To begin with, Localisation of applications. This is quite a big thing on, well, any piece of software. How do you write a program to work in any language? To make it display properly in Japanese, Chinese, Russian? Apart from the obvious issue of needing someone to translate for you (if you do not know the language), you also need a way to make it easy to inject these language options into your software. For example, if you hardcode all of your strings, then for every language version you need to find where all of these are coded, then change them for each language, then recompile many different language versions. This is completely unmanageable!

Luckily, for me at least as an iPhone programmer, Apple have made it easy. It seems so alien to me, having something from Apple which simply works for a change (my work laptop is living proof to me that the Mac elitist pricks who tell me that Macs are superior to PCs simply are spending too much time staring lovingly at the form of the computer, rather than the fact that the screen is showing that all your apps have frozen)!
To localise an iPhone app, all you need to do is create a strings file (called Localizable.strings - remembering that its z is important because they're American and can't spell. Also, a lost of configuration stuff is skipped by using this particular filename, since its the default), and define a bunch of variables in there. Once you have done that, wherever you code a string in the app itself, replace with the following piece of code:

NSLocalizedString(@"TITLE", nil)

where "TITLE" is the name of the variable, and the second parameter is simply space for a comment to assist a translator with (context matters a LOT in language).
Of course, there is a little bit more to it - you still need to actually localise your strings file. In xCode 4, all you do is go to the localise panel on the right, and add a localisation to your strings file. It asks you what language it is for (since the iPhone will use default language settings based on what the user picks). Then, simply change the variables you set in the above one to the language specific strings. Sorted!

It gets slightly more complex when you are localising images and interface layouts (due to button sizes and things), but this is the general workflow of it. Not bad at all!
(Also, Ray Wenderlich's site is where I found the tutorial that taught me this. Awesome site full of tutorials. Don't freak out when you see the "I'm quitting iOS" post - its an April Fool's troll)

 

Unrelated: Rocks fall, everyone dies

Another important thing I've been learning as part of work the last few days has been how to use a Unit Testing framework for the iPhone. Unit testing is an important part of programming. At least, that's what I've heard - I've yet to see results from it, because all I've been doing is learning how to do it, how to combine it with Mock Objects, and trying to get my head around this enough to write some useful tests.

The theory behind it is that if I write a test that ensures I get correct output from a function I write, then later on if I change the function (refactoring, optimisation, etc), then I can rerun the tests. If the tests fail, then obviously I've changed something to the point where it breaks - aka failed refactoring, where the actual processing has changed. Sounds useful huh?

Well, even more than that, once I've caught up on the tests I should have been writing, I can use this for TDD - Test Driven Development. This is where we write the tests BEFORE the code is actually written. The purpose of this is to force me to think about what is actually needed (in terms of variables and functions), and then ensure that each function works before I move onto something else (since its always nice to see green lights as irrevocable proof that your code works).

As you can probably tell, this is a far cry from my usual method of "think about the system, design some objects, start writing, run the app to see if it works". Hopefully, this'll work much better.

Its just doing my head in at the moment.

I won't go into details on how to get it working on the iPhone, since there are many ways to do it (and this post will go insanely long, and overly technical for those not so code minded), though I will mention that I'm using GHUnit-iPhone for a test suite, and OCMock for the Mock Objects, if you are interested in taking a look.

I will probably integrate some of this onto my home machine so I can work from home if required - and possibly more importantly, for my own work (which has yet to begin / be designed).

Japanese food, Arcade, and Walking

Walking. Lots and lots and lots of walking. But let me back up a bit.

Last week, it was brought to my attention that a certain person I know, normally residing in Bathurst, was in Sydney for the weekend, due to the uni he works for deciding arbitrarily that he doesn't know enough about iPhone programming, and so sent him to Sydney for a programming workshop, that lasted from Friday through to Sunday.

That's my theory anyway, why else would they send him to what seemed like a beginner's course on iOS programming?

Anyhoo, Sarah and I met up with Tiger for dinner and wandering around the city post-work Friday evening. We started by dropping by his hotel room so he could check in, and people could drop off things if required.

HOLY CRAP the room was HUGE. For one person, it was slightly overkill - a double bed (it accomodates two people max apparently), a huge loungeroom with a large TV (and lots of mirror's for seemingly no reason), a decently sized kitchen and bathroom. It even had a hat rack! Awesomesauce!

After that, we headed to the small Japanese 250 yen store, and the grocery store below it. I forget the name of the place. Anyway, Tiger spent copious amounts of money on random objects and foodstuffs (that he can't easily get hold of in Bathurst), while I was happy with a single bottle of Ramune, and a packet of random Ramune flavoured candies.

From there, we headed to Kinokuniya, where we looked at manga and just books in general until we were kicked out (it was around 6.30 by the time we got there, after all, and they close at 7pm). From there, on to Pepper Lunch! Foooooood!

Afterwards, we headed to Capitol Square to try some of the prize-winner games there. Noone managed to actually win anything off the claw machines, though I managed to lose about $3 without even having an attempt at it. The machines just kept eating my money, without letting me even try the claw thing.

Most likely the machine was scared I was going to win.

It turns out that the place also has pachinko machines there! Totally worth the $2 I spent to only half-understand what I was doing. I have the general idea of how Pachinko works, but I still kinda don't quite get it. I should read up on it at some point, I suppose.

After that, GALAXY WORLD! We walked up the street to the "proper" arcade, and played games. DDR, Guitar Freaks, a couple more prize winners, and DJ Max Technika 2. Oh God Yes Technika!

For those who don't know, Technika is a game where you pick a song, and you play it on a touch screen. It is kind of similar to Elite Beat Agents on the DS (or Osu! Tatakae! Ouendon), in that you tap circles on a touch screen in time with the song. However, in Technika, you have the top half of the screen moving left to right, and the bottom half going right to left, so you end up with a generally kind of circular motion of notes.

It also has some pretty good music, that will stick in your head forever if you give it half a chance.

Afterwards, we headed back to Tiger's hotel room, sat down for a bit (since we had walked all over the city between each destination by this point). Eventually, it was time to leave, and catch a cab home.

Fun night. Tiger, you better get yer ass up here to Sydney more often!