Through the Ages is the eagerly awaited digital adaptation of Vlaada Chváti’s card behemoth which in turn is basically Sid Meier’s Civilization but with cards. Through the Ages is available for both iOS and Android. I’ve mostly played on iPad Pro where the app is just about perfect from a technical perspective: beautiful, responsive, easy […]
Oracle has finally released Java SE 9, now available on the Oracle Technology Network. As usual the official end-user portal java.com will switch versions later, so for now it still distributes Java SE 8u144. I have yet to install the JDK, as the corresponding NetBeans update was delayed by its transition from Oracle to Apache. […]
Flugwerft Schleißheim is a Deutsches Museum outpost with a large collection of historical and modern aircraft. The location started out as an actual airfield of the Royal Bavarian Flying Corps in 1912–1919, and the airfield is still in use for the museum’s restoration work. In fact, one well-restored exhibit just landed while I was there! […]
There have been several remarkable articles on Java performance issues in the last couple of months. Those links tend to get lost on Twitter, so I wanted to compile them here with brief overviews. All articles are based on the OpenJDK which also underlies Oracle’s distributions. Java and SIMD Piotr Nowojski tests automatic loop vectorization, […]
Riem is a small farming village to the east of Munich which was eventually engulfed by the expanding city and became a district. Rather than immediately urbanizing the area, a large open space to the south of Riem was dedicated to Munich-Riem airport in the late 1930s. The airport continued operation until 1992 when the […]
Asmodee Digital is the video game publishing arm of French board & card game specialist Asmodee. After numerous acquisitions, Asmodee controls an impressive stable of popular games. Asmodee Digital has been steadily converting them to digital form, as well as publishing some notable third-party games. Many of my favorite iOS board game ports, as well […]
Colt Express is Asmodee’s digital adaptation of the eponymous Ludonaute game whose website also offers the PDF rulebook for download in various languages. To get the technicalities out of the way, Colt Express is available for iOS, Android & Steam. I’ve played the iOS version (on iPad) which is up to Asmodee’s usual high standards. […]
Tired of the feature bloat in PC strategy games like Sid Meier’s Civilization VI? Midjiwan’s mobile 4x title The Battle of Polytopia is the perfect antidote. Called “Super Tribes” on release in early 2016 and reviewed under that name at Pocket Tactics, Polytopia continues to be supported by its developer and has recently received a […]
Myriarch Combat Simulator is now available in an enhanced Java version, with a JavaFX user interface. I removed the download of the original .NET version as it was fairly rudimentary; I had already planned moving to Java at the time and so didn’t bother properly finishing that version. Overview Myriarch attempts a precise real-time simulation […]
The Java assert statement can be used for conditionally checking program invariants. Assertions are enabled or disabled with the desired level of granularity by Java Virtual Machine flags, as described in the linked guide. So far, so similar to assertion facilities in other languages. However, whereas .NET Debug/Trace.Assert shows and logs a message by default, […]