Matthew Lang

A massive milestone for the team shooter. 30 characters to choose from and still going strong.

Blizzard’s team shooter Overwatch is hitting a major milestone today with the official unveiling of Baptiste, the game’s 30th hero. Baptiste is a support character described as a “combat medic” who uses an array of gadgets to aid his team in battle. That includes a device called an immortality field that prevents nearby allies from dying, healing grenades, and Baptiste’s ultimate ability, described as “a matrix that doubles the damage and healing effects of friendly projectiles that pass through it.” The reveal follows a few days of teasing, including a short trailer yesterday.

— Overwatch’s 30th hero Baptiste is here to shake things up

Fortnite might be stealing the spotlight across the globe, but for me, Overwatch is a better and more enjoyable game to play. At first, I was sceptical about the game. As I watched my son playing it, I couldn’t make out what was going on. I succumbed though, and now I’m a long-term fan of the game.

Games are facing an exciting time. With continual updates, games can now have a longer shelf life. Sounds excellent and while Blizzard is executing this plan nicely, there are others that I think aren’t doing so well.

Fornite might be a worldwide sensation, but I think it’s already under-attack from copycat clones. How long can they fend them off?

EA started launched Star Wars Battlefront 2 late in 2017 and quickly found out that their loot box monetisation was very unpopular with gamers as well as the progression system. I don’t think the game has recovered since then. Sure it’s an okay game, and yes I did buy it, but I definitely think it has had its day. It seems that every other week there’s some kind of points promotion to get people to play. And don’t get me started on the unlimited heroes in a game.

Blizzard though has slowly improved the Overwatch game since it’s release and remains as enjoyable as it was on the day that I first played it.

Will we get to 40 characters in the game? That might be a push, but I’ll keep on playing and being a fan in the meantime.

Even though we have bigger screens with more pixels available to use to view, Nick Janetakis makes a strong point for sticking to 80 characters per line when coding. And he even supported his argument up with a few screenshots as well.

1080p is still one of the most popular resolutions for monitors and it just so happens that with most code editors you can comfortably fit 2 code windows at 80 characters side by side, and even have room for a sidebar if you like that sort of thing.

— 80 Characters per Line Is a Standard Worth Sticking to Even Today

Well worth a read if coding is your thing.

I mostly stick to 80 characters per line when programming. I say mostly as it’s more a guideline than a rule for me. I find it easy to adhere to this guideline when working with Ruby and other programming languages, but where it falls apart for me is when I am writing HTML. In some cases, I just can’t get a line under the 80 characters.

There are things I can do get around this. I can extract segments of HTML into partials (I am using Rails anyway), but is this valid reason for doing so?

I’m not sure, but in most cases, separating out this HTML would definitely help project organisation, allowing me to work in a more component-based way with my HTML. I might just have to give this a try tonight.

When it comes to building ideas for applications, I will always choose the web first. It’s what I can I do best and it is where I can ship those ideas more efficiently. I can go from that first line of code to a shippable idea in hours. After that, I can just iterate on that idea when I want to.

There’s another benefit to building for the web though. You have access to a bigger market.

At a startup, engineering resources are scarce. It’s expensive to spread your engineering expertise across different platforms, so it’s better to focus on one in the beginning. Building for the web means that users on mobile, desktop, Chromebooks (which have become the most popular EDU hardware in the US), and any other internet-connected device can use your service, whereas a native app is specific to iOS or Android.

— Considering App vs. Website? It’s 2019: Build a Website.

I’ve toyed with learning Apple’s programming language, Swift. My goal is to learn how to build iOS apps. It’s not that I have some Candy Crush busting idea that will net me millions, it’s just something I would like to learn.

Even if I had the knowledge to build a native app in the same time that it would take build a web app, I think I would still go with making a web app. Native apps serve their purpose, but I think we’re seeing more viable alternatives through web apps.

I’m not one for paying particular attention to the Academy Awards, but even I had to do a double-take when it was announced that Black Panther earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Not that I think it doesn’t deserve it, it indeed does, and it is a fantastic film. It’s just that these types of movies never seem to make the final list of nominees.

No longer can superhero movies be classed merely as summer blockbusters and be relegated to specific award categories as they have been in the past.

That was the assumption, anyway. Between 2009 and this year, superhero movies still didn’t receive much attention from the academy in its biggest categories. That’s the entire lifespan of Marvel’s current Cinematic Universe — a total of 22 movies passed over. Genre films have largely been relegated to the science categories, including Visual Effects.

— Black Panther is the first superhero movie to earn an Oscars Best Picture nomination by The Verge

It’s taken a long time for these movies to be recognised and hopefully, we will continue to see a broader range of films being nominated for Best Picture in the future.