Knights of Pen & Paper +1 Edition combines two fantastic things: a brilliantly funny de-construction of a pen and paper role-playing game like Dungeons & Dragons and a mobile game that uses those very same mechanics to create a habit-forming experience.
Best of all? It’s going free on Wednesday at 8 am Pacific, so you should go get yourself a copy of it. Like, right now.
We’ve been using the Do Not Disturb function on our iPhones since iOS 6, really, as the feature really helps us have some down time. You can schedule or enable the feature for easy access, keeping those pesky calls, messages, and notifications off your iPhone screen when you just don’t have the brain space to deal.
But what about those calls and messages you really do need to get? What do you do there? Luckily, there are a couple of options to let certain calls come through.
If you’ve played any of the new Telltale Games series The Wolf Among Us, you’ll know who that hairy dude with the bandages is. It’s Bigby Wolf (née Big Bad), the star of the fantastic adventure game series based on the Eisner award-winning comic book series, Fables, by Bill Willingham.
The doctor here is telling Bigby Wolf, the sheriff of Fable town, to take it easy, get some rest. Eat more chicken.
See the full video below.
Story-driven puzzle-adventure games are finding a new resurgence lately, with titles like Telltale’s The Walking Dead and Fables finding critical success in the typically first-person shooter dominated games market.
Jane Jensen is the veteran game designer from the days of Sierra Online with massively popular games like King’s Quest and Gabriel Knight to her credit.
Developed by her new venture Pinkerton Road, funded via Kickstarter and published by Phoenix Online Studios, Moebius: Empire Rising is the first installment in a planned series revolving around Malachi Rector, a modern-day take on Sherlock Holmes with an attitude.
His bodyguard, David Walker, is a bad-joke loving ex-special forces badass with a heart of gold. It’s these two that form the central relationship in the game story, a nice break from the typical romantic love-interest interactions we see all too often.
When you’re using OS X, you can search the web for any term you can right click on. You simply do so and then choose “Search Google for [highlighted word].”
In iOS, there doesn’t appear to be any way to do the same thing.
There is, however, a work around.
According to Apple, its App Nap advanced technology feature in Mavericks helps you save power when you’re working with more than one app at a time. The system knows when a certain app is in the background, completely hidden by other apps’ windows. When that app isn’t doing anything, then, OS X will slow the app down, keeping it from using up CPU cycles, and thus battery power.
It’s a great feature, and one of the reasons why your Macbook may seem to have more battery life than it used to, thanks to Mavericks.
When switching to a napping app, it can seem to take a couple of seconds for OS X to get that app back up to speed. If you want to reduce the start up time of a napped app, you can disable App Nap for it.
Elder Scrolls Online is a new massively multiplayer role playing game by Zenimax Studios and Bethesda Game Studios that attempts to compete with the behemoth of the premium subscription MMO, World Of Warcraft, on its own turf in the fantasy genre. While the base gameplay is fairly similar — go on quests, fight bad guys, level up, game with thousands of other players — this new MMO has a lot that’s unique to offer gamers.
What Elder Scrolls Online brings to this competitive gaming genrea is a long history of games set in fantasy world Tamriel, beginning in 1994 with The Elder Scrolls: Arena and continuing through three the present day with four sequels: Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. There’s a ton of lore and backstory here, as much as any high-fantasy Tolkien-esque novel you might read, and this deep infusion of fictional reality — as well as the action gameplay style of the original single-player games mentioned above — is a solid asset in Bethesda’s favor.
Reviewing any MMO is a massive undertaking itself, and so we decided to dig in deeper than we usually do to give you a better sense of the world of the game, filtered through the eyes of a new Elder Scrolls Online player.
Here’s what we came up with.
I’m not usually a big fan of the whole “do it over and over until you get it right” genre of games typified by the Trials series of games, but this one has me hooked. Developed by RedLynx and now published by Ubisoft, the latest version of the game is also the first on mobile: Trials Frontier. You can grab it for free now for your iPad or iPhone.
Like all of the other installments in the series, Frontier is all about piloting a motorcycle with a rag-doll rider through increasingly intense tracks with jumps, loops and environmental hazards.
Here’s a quick gameplay video to show you how it works.
Sure, a simple passcode with four numbers will keep most casual folks out of your iPhone, but if you want it to be really secure, you should think about using an alphanumeric password, like you would on a website or your Mac.
The idea here is simple, the more characters you have (and the less obvious your password is), the better your security. Balancing a large enough number of characters with ease of recall can still be tricky, but I’d bet you’ve got it fairly worked out on the websites you visit — why not use that same acumen on your iOS devices?
Here’s how to turn off the simple passcode in iOS, and set up a more secure one.
Editor’s Note: Due to the sheer size of Elder Scrolls Online, we’re publishing our hands-on impressions in three chunks. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. What follows is Part 3.
I had just finished a long assignment from the elven ambassador in the province of Elsweyr. I was tired from running to and fro, tangling with spies and fighting the Sea Elves at every turn.
Suddenly, Commander Karinth stopped me in my path and pressed me into duty fighting these ocean foes. I had to run into the fabled Wind Tunnels, looking to destroy the foul Storm Totems. Enemies at every turn of the weaving passages forced me to dodge back and forth to avoid vicious attacks while retaliating with my own spells and sword blows.
After what seemed a lifetime of combat and destruction, I returned a hero. Then I took some time out for me, finding a crafting table to put together some ingredients I’d gathered to make something useful. A restorative meal got me feeling better than usual.
As in many MMO games, Elder Scrolls Online offers many activities to engage in, including questing, crafting, cooking, combat (both player versus player and player versus environment) and traveling through dungeons with a few close friends. Even marriage — if you bought the digital Collector’s Edition.
There’s a reason people get addicted to games like Elder Scrolls Online: There’s so much to do that it’s incredibly easy to get sucked into these deep virtual worlds.
If you’ve ever come across a great snippet of text you want to Tweet right from your Mac, you know the drill: you have to copy it, open Twitter, create a new message, and then paste in the text there. Then hit the Send button.
Sure, it’s not that difficult, but what if there was an even easier way?
Well, there is, and here it is.
Photo Credit: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Look, we all know that Apple makes some of the greatest products around. We use iPhones, iPads and Macs because they work well, and they’re fairly intuitive.
That said, even the most dedicated fanboy has to admit that there are still a few places that just don’t quite work as advertised.
Here are a few of those, along with their fixes, for iOS devices, including the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
Some folks like the auto-expand of omw to “On My Way!” Honestly? I’m rarely that enthusiastic when sending a text about my plans to head over to a buddy’s house. Just sayin’. If this bugs you, here’s how to fix it, as well as add others to your texting repertoire.
Hop on over the Settings app. Tap on the General tab, then scroll down to Keyboard and tap through to Shortcuts. The omw! shortcut is built in right there. Tap it, and change it to whatever you want it to say. Be sure to hit the Save button in the upper right, or you’re back to square one.
Want to add your own shortcuts? That’s pretty easy, too. Simple tap the Add New Shortcut…field at the bottom of the Keyboard settings pane, and add one in. Try to keep your shortcut (bottom field) 2-4 letters, or it’s really more of a longcut, right? The top field contains the actual phrase you want the shortcut expanded to. Try not to get them confused, like I did the first one I added. You’ll get an error saying your Shortcut cannot contain spaces. That will be the tip you’ve gotten it backward.
We’re all data hoarders now, what with our iPads and iPhones having the ever-present connection to the cellular and Wi-Fi networks all around us. Unfortunately, unlimited cell data plans are as rare a programmer who doesn’t own a single hoodie, so it’s paramount to keep track of which apps are sucking up the cell bandwidth.
Luckily, iOS 7 lets you control which apps will use cellular, and which apps will only connect to and use the network juice via a stable WiFi connection.
Tap into your Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and then tap on the Cellular icon. Once there, you’ll see the option to toggle Cellular Data OFF completely, disable LTE, or enable Data Roaming, as your heart (and wallet) allows.
Swipe down to the bottom, however, and you’ll see a long list of all the apps on your iOS device that use cellular data. For each app that you want to restrict to using only Wi-Fi networking, tap the toggle next to each app name to OFF.
Now, when you’re strictly on LTE, 4G or 3G, your iOS device won’t let those specific apps connect to the cell network and take up all your precious, metered data. They’ll be able to connect once you’re in range and hooked up to a WiFi signal, so have no fear.
It’s pretty easy to reply to a phone caller with a text message in iOS 7. When the call comes in, tap on the little phone icon in the lower right and slide up. You’ll get the option to either reply with a message or have your iPhone remind you to call the person back later.
If you choose to reply with a text message, you get a couple of built in replies–Call you later, I’m on my way, What’s up–or you can type a custom message. Ever wanted to change those pre-written messages to be just a little bit funnier? You know you have.
Here’s how: Launch your Settings app, and find and tap on the Phone settings button. Then tap on Reply with Message. You’ll then be able to type in three custom missives. And you’ll still be able to type your own custom message, when the phone rings, too. Interestingly, the typical auto capitalization doesn’t seem to apply here, so maybe the developers wanted you to work at using proper English.
Whatever the case, this is a great way to personalize the way you interact with people when you tell them that you can’t answer the phone right now.
I like some notifications. I try to keep it down to a dull roar, of course, but I want a head’s up when I get a phone call, text message, or email from specific clients or friends. But when I see a flurry of these notifications in my lockscreen, I mentally dismiss them, only to have them appear again the next time I check my iPhone for the time.
I messed around with it and came up with this solution, thanks to iOS 7.
While your iPhone is locked but on (just hit the Home button), check out the little horizontal line at the top of your screen. That’s the Notification Center and it can be accessed without unlocking your iPhone.
Slide down from the line with your thumb or finger, and that will activate Notification Center. I tapped to the “Missed” notifications tab at the top to make sure the iPhone thought I saw everything, and then dismissed Notification Center with a swipe up.
Once you’ve done that, and you get to the lock screen again, you shouldn’t see any notifications hanging around in your lock screen. That is, of course, until you get new ones.
Some users have reported problems with sending text messages to their friends and family after the upgrade to iOS 7. Typically, when iMessage is unavailable, your iPhone should send messages as SMS ones instead, denoted by the green chat bubble as opposed to the regular blue.
If, however, your iPhone won’t send texts automatically, here’s a possible fix.
Tap into the Settings app, and scroll down to tap on Messages. Once there, you’ll see a toggle switch for Send as SMS. Set this to ON with a quick tap and your iPhone will start sending messages as SMS ones without you needing to intervene.
Even with this toggled OFF, you can still send messages when they stall out with iMessage. Simply tap and hold on the message mid-send, and choose Send as Text Message from the popup menu that appears.
Now you can send iMessages to those with an iOS or Mac device, but still communicate with anyone using an Android or feature phone (ugh).
Editor’s Note: Due to the sheer size of Elder Scrolls Online, we’re publishing our hands-on impressions of the game in three chunks. Part one is here. What follows is part two.
Queen Ayrenn is a modern monarch. She’s definitely trying to do the right thing, but I can hear the weariness in her tone when she tells me about the endless rituals she must complete in order to be accepted by her subjects.
I’m not sure what happened to her during her 17-year absence, nor why she returned to the kingdom at age 28 to inherit the throne of Alinor. Honestly, I don’t much care. What I do care about is that she is tired. She knows these rituals and adventures are necessary, but she finds them tedious, if dangerous.
She’s always glad to see me. I always want to help her. I’ve bonded with Queen Ayrenn, and she’s not even real.
That’s one of the real triumphs of impressive new MMO Elder Scrolls Online: It’s a virtual world, but the individuals you meet there somehow can, at times, seem more realistic than the people you might spend your day next to on the subway.
Spotlight is crazy useful to find stuff on your Mac. Just hit Command-Space on your keyboard and type in the name of files, words from in text files, the kind of document you want, or even the date when you think it might have been created or modified, and you’ll find it in an instant.
I rarely organize stuff into fine-grained folders anymore due to the power of this one simple to use feature in OS X.
Sometimes, though, I want to know where a found document is — here’s a cool trick to do just that, sent to us from Cult of Mac reader Ivan Manzanilla.
Disruptor Beam, the company behind Game of Thrones Ascent, hopes to thrill the thousands of Star Trek fans worldwide with its upcoming social strategy roleplaying game, Star Trek Timelines.
You’ll need to build your own starship and crew to boldly go where no one has gone before, exploring the Star Trek multiverse alongside characters from all eras of Trekdom.
There’s a new teaser trailer with the voices of Commander Data, Leuitenant Uhura, and Captain Jean Luc Picard to get you excited.
Editor’s Note: Due to the sheer size of Elder Scrolls Online, we’re publishing our hands-on impressions in three chunks. Here’s part one.
I dash up a sandy dune, rushing past palm trees, looking for the spot on my map where an eyeball icon beckons my attention. The sky is blue — it’s mid-day here in the Hammerfell region — with a few clouds to tease the eye. It’s hot enough to fry an egg on my heavy armor, but hey, I’m not really running anywhere.
As I crest the little hill, a brilliant lens-flare from the sun draws my attention skyward, distracting me from the broken bridge. I tumble heavily to the sea below, splashing into the water.
I’m in good company: there’s a small school of orcs and elves who have made the same rookie mistake. We make the slow swim of shame to the sandy beach, then rush off to explore this idyllic, if tricky, land.
This all takes place on the continent of Tamriel, which will be familiar to gamers who’ve played the previous titles in the series: Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind. It’s like Middle Earth for game nerds. While each of the previous games took place in just one area of Tamriel, the Elder Scrolls online promises the whole land mass.
It’s paradise –I wonder if I can bring my kids with me when I move here.
When you start your Mac up, you may notice the process taking longer and longer over time. One of the reasons may be the sheer number of little menu bar and helper apps that you’ve allowed to creep into your system.
One way to decrease this start up time is to take these items out of the Login Items list, which is in your System Preferences app.
I’m kind of a stickler for a clean hard drive, especially since I started using Macbook Airs a few years back, what with their tiny little SSD units. I’ve moved most of my music to the Cloud and my iPhoto library to an external hard drive, but there’s still a ton of cruft that ends up on my system.
So, once a month or so, I sort my Movies, Applications, and Downloads folders by size, and delete the biggest things I don’t need anymore. Or I move them to an external hard drive for access later.
What I’ve never done before is use Spotlight to find these files easily across all my folders.
Sure, it’s nice to know you have a bunch of unread email messages. And it’s understandable that iOS apps notify you about every little activity. But after a while, all the little numbers in the red circles on my iPhone’s home screen start to feel like a chore.
I hate having to open up apps just to clear out the taunting little numbers. I could ignore them, but they’re designed to bother me (or, more politely, to get my attention). I mean, I have healthy emotional boundaries, but this is getting ridiculous.
So I turned them off — and you can, too.
Princess Ida needs to find herself, and she’s doing so with a quest across an unpredictable and shifting landscape that takes inspiration from perspective-bending Escher art and hit indie game Fez.
You’ll need to tap on the screen to get Ida moving to her end goal, swiping and rotating dozens of different mechanical gadgets to make sure she can continue on her way. The puzzles aren’t super difficult, but they do require a bit of thought, and plenty of them are downright ingenious. You’ll feel pretty darn intelligent when you finally get that “aha!” moment.
Check out our play-through video below to get a sense of how lush and calming Monument Valley really is.
You know what I miss? Those pre-defined search items that used to hang out over in the Finder sidebar window. You know, the ones that said, “Files Created Today” or “Yesterday” or what have you. They were super handy.
Turns out, you can get the same sort of search power right in Spotlight. All you need to know is a little syntax, and you’ll be looking for stuff created or modified on specific dates or within certain date ranges. There’s even a way to request stuff done before or after dates. Yay!
When you walk into an Apple Store — the minimalist design, the Macbook screens tilted just so, the approachable, encyclopedic sales staff — you might be forgiven for being a little bit speechless.
It’s not unlike walking into a Porsche or Mercedes dealership — you don’t expect to find bargain bins full of junk. The presentation is, in fact, as important as the product, and once inside, you’re going to hand over your money to get both.
Even though Apple stores have become tourist attractions in their own right where folks come from countries like Sweden and Brazil to purchase these great products at prices lower than at home, savvy customers might someday shun those stunning glass facades and signature spiral staircases for cheaper prices found elsewhere.
A new report by DealNews shows that Apple products are getting deeper discounts sooner in a product lifecycle than ever before, begging the question: is the Apple Store the best place to buy your gear?
Sure, we all love a good game of Civilization V, but we also all know that the epic turn-based strategy can really suck up our time.
That’s one of the reasons we’re so excited about Hero Generations, a Rogue-like strategy game with a unique, personal question at its core: what will you do with the limited time you have left?
You’ll have plenty of choices, but your character will age one year for each turn in the game. If you want to truly influence the kingdom, you’ll need to find a mate, settle down, and have a child.
Your offspring, then, becomes the next controllable character in the game, with all the experience and items that you amassed before you died.
If that doesn’t intrigue you, I’m not sure what will.
When you want to look up a street address in Safari, you may still be using an old workflow: copy the address from the web page, paste it into the search bar, and then use Google Maps.
With OS X Mavericks, you might even have gone a step further and pasted the address into Apple’s Maps app, and then sending the directions to your iPhone.
There’s another way, though, which offers more immediate gratification: opening the address in Safari.
This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.
Your game may be great, but languish in a cobwebbed corner of the iTunes store. That was almost the fate of Little Inferno, an original downloadable game launched in 2012 by indie outfit Tomorrow Corporation. They made some mistakes — big and small — that all devs hope to avoid.
One of the many cool things at the Game Developers Conference each year is the post-mortem talk, a look at what a game did well, or not so well, by the developers who made the game. This year, we were lucky to hear a talk about Little Inferno and the mistakes the team made along the way.