Book the Second - Beginning Ajax with PHP - From Novice to Professional

Well, after months upon months of stress inducing, sleep depriving work, Beginning Ajax with PHP - From Novice to Professional has finally launched. When I look at the book, I still cannot fathom just how much energy it required to finally complete it. Without the help of some solid Apress team members (Jason Gilmore, Quentin Zervaas and Richard Dal Porto; thanks guys!), this book would not exist.

Even though I have only written two books, I feel like a veteran even though some of the guys I have worked with have far more experience than myself. Holding a fresh book in your hands invokes a wide range of emotions. I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, combined with a sense of relief that it is finished and also a bit of nervousness in hoping that people enjoy the book and find it useful.

Speaking of finding the book useful, I have already had several questions about who would get the most out of it. The book assumes you already have a decent working knowledge of PHP and a beginner background with JavaScript. From there it is meant to guide you through learning JavaScript based Ajax and the many different applications it would have with PHP as a server side helper. There are some interesting examples and it goes into some more advanced techniques, those who are looking to get into Ajax based online applications will hopefully find it quite useful.

If you are interested in learning more about the book, my publisher (Apress) has a solid bit of information on it (including a sample chapter and table of contents). And, of course, if you are interested in picking it up, it should be available at your local Chapters or Amazon.

Anyway, if anyone picks it up, drop me a line to let me know what you think. Hope you enjoy it :).

Comments (0) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 10.25.2006

Monthly Wrap-up

Wow, has it already been a month? With the little one on the way (less than 2 months to go, my wife is officially 32 weeks along today) I have been working very hard to get everything ready for his arrival. I swear, Babies R Us' owners will be putting their kids through college with all of the money we have spent there lately. It will be well worth it however, I get more excited to be a father every day. Between all of the shopping (and subsequent working to pay for said shopping) however, I have still managed some game time. Here is a quick run down of what I am playing.

Dragon Quest Heroes - Rocket Slime

I cannot say it enough, I love this game. There is a reason this game made EGM's game of the month. While it is definitely geared towards youngsters as mentioned by EGM, something they neglected to mention is that it is also geared towards Dragon Quest fans. The entire game is like one big "Thank you" to fans. Monsters, items, sounds, music, text; it all relates back to the Dragon Quest series. Fans of Dragon Quest 8 will love all of the little "heads up" moments of recognition (Cor blimey!).

On top of all of the fan love is a fantastically fun game that will addict you from the get-go. Tank battles rule and even the action RPG elements are fun and filled with unique elements. It seems to be a bit on the short side but what is there is pure gold. Give this one a shot, I love it.

Deep Labyrinth

I started off rather enjoying this game. The music is wonderful and I always enjoy a good dungeon hack. Unfortunately, it sort of gets worse as you go on. The control scheme which works well in earlier, open environments tanks as soon as you get to enclosed environments. Pretty much the only deaths I have had have been from cheaply getting "hooked" (as in, gameplay glitch) on enemies or walls. In order to get out of the "hook" you have to frantically move the control pad, all while getting hit; lame.

The story is pretty terrible although I am only playing the first quest and I hear it gets better in the second quest. I don't know if I will ever manage to get through the first quest however. I am in the final world but finding it really hard to continue as the difficulty has increased as the control has become even worse (coincidence?). It is really too bad that this game didn't work out too well as the music is wonderful and it had some pretty good potential...

Star Fox Assault

I picked this one up on a whim based on glowing reviews from fellow bloggers. I am sad to say I am not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. Controlling everything by the stylus makes it very frustrating and, quite frankly, begins to hurt my fingers after even short play sessions. The new strategy elements kill it for me (even though they are well done) because every stage seems to come down to trying it once and failing and then barely sneaking through the next time.

I miss the first Star Fox which had a shooter driven system rather than this "mini-fight" based strategy game. There is a constant timer in fights that you have to share amongst all of your pilots which makes things extremely frustrating. To me imposing a timer is not a good way to enforce difficulty. I am not sure what everyone likes so much about this game but for me it is merely average.

Xenosaga 3

Ok, I sort of like Xenosaga 1 even though I thought it was a bit too slow. I pretty much HATED Xenosaga 2 strictly because its battle system was almost impossible. Even though the plot was great, the battle system was so hard that I barely, and I mean barely, finished the game and it was only through sheer force of will.

Thankfully, Xenosaga 3 is the game I have been waiting for ever since the Xenosaga series was announced. I love every single piece of this game. The story, the graphics, the music, the environments, the easter eggs; this is the worthy follow-up to Xenogears I have been waiting on. And, speaking of Xenogears, the fan service done towards Xenogears is astounding. You will have to play it to know what I mean but this game is LOADED with direct throw-backs to Xenogears. It is the game that finally made me believe that they may have actually redone Xenogears by Xenosaga 5 (had it not been cancelled early). One look at Jin Uzuki's costume should stir up fond memories for series fans.

All in all, I cannot recommend this game enough for Xenosaga/gears fans. It actually makes me sad that the series has been cancelled; just when they got it right, *Sigh*.

Disgaea 2

I have just started playing this one and, so far, am a little disapointed. I don't think there is a bigger fan of Nippon Ichi's SRPGs than me and so Disgaea 2, the follow up to my favorite of Nippon Ichi's works, has to be stellar for me. I think I will get more into it as I go, but it almost feels like a step back from Makai Kingdom. Everything is grid-based again. There are no vehicles/buildings. Even the graphics don't seem as polished. It is almost as though they took the original Disgaea engine and plopped a new story onto it.

I suppose that is not a bad thing, I guess I just expected more. That being said, it is still an excellent game, I just thought it would be a bit, I don't know, more. I am starting to feel the old Disgaea addiction setting in however (finally at the point where I can reincarnate characters) so I will see how I feel after a couple more hours of gameplay.

Comments (7) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 10.4.2006

Summon Night Swordcraft Story

Well, it has been a rough couple of annoying days in my pursuit of stalking the wild and incredibly rare species of game known as the "Atlus Game". See, here in Calgary, anything published by Atlus seems to be automatically so obscure that almost no stores carry it. Why this is, and why we get innumerable copies of games such as Grand Theft Auto is beyond me, but it always presents an interesting challenge to obtain anything published by Atlus.

So it is then that I have spent the last 4 or 5 days desperately trying to obtain a copy of Summon Night - Swordcraft Story. My hunt included many fine days of EBGames employees telling me the game did not exist or it will not be available until October, or it might possibly come out in a couple of days (after some work in convincing them that it did, indeed exist). After searching long and hard, my work finally came to fruition yesterday when I stopped by my local EBGames and was told that they did indeed get in just 1 copy. I am the fellow lucky enough to have snatched it up.

After all of that hard work, was it worth it? Oh man, you better believe it. I am having a hard time believing that a game this addicting is for the mere Gameboy Advance. The graphics, animation, story and gameplay so far are all top-notch. The music is a little "meh", but I can certainly live with that in lieu of what the game has to offer.

You begin the game by choosing whether you want to be a boy or girl character. I am not nearly far enough into the game to find out how this figures into things, but it's an interesting choice none the less. Foregoing the urge to choose the female character just for kicks, I chose the boy character and I am underway.

The first 15 minutes of the game have you going through a bit of backstory but after about 30 minutes you are tossed into the dungeon with nothing but your hammer to defend yourself with. Needless to say, you will quickly acquire a weapon that will serve you better and it's off to the races from there.

The battles themselves are super fun. While I can certainly see the similarity to Tales of Phantasia, I find the battles to be way more fun. Where in Tales you pretty much run up and button mash until the critter is dead, in Swordcraft Story, you can maneuver around much easier and the gameplay really gives you full control. The combo system even seems slightly like Phantasy Star Online in which you can string together hits to strike (so far) 3 times at once (with the sword).

The game is just getting started and already I cannot put it down. You can apparently wield up to 5 weapons that you forge yourself and the dungeon in the game just gets deeper and deeper. So far this game seems like a total sleeper hit and I feel very lucky to have managed to pick up a copy. Don't let this game pass you by, pick it up if you can find it!

Comments (15) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 8.4.2006

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