My most popular filename patterns in MusicBrainz Picard

adminmedia0 Comment
1 min. reading

I am using free and powerful MusicBrainz Picard program to clean-up my entire MP3 files collection.

Aside of actual job (pooling MusicBrainz database and fixing, sorting, correcting and cleaning-up tags in your music files), it can also rename actual files on your disk in the same time.

The thing is that it uses a very complex filename pattern by default, while I am using something as simple as:

%artist% - %title%
$num(%tracknumber%,2). %title%

First for standard files and second for parts of albums. Thus, I have written them down here to keep in mind.

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Find all e-mails sent or received in Gmail after office hours

adminGoogle, Microsoft1 Comment
9 min. reading

Someone gave me a task to find all e-mail messages sent or received in Gmail:

  • in given period of day — after 16:00 given day and before 08:00 the next day and
  • in given period of week — between 00:00 and 23:59 during weekends,

so, generally speaking, outside office hours.

Gmail has a quite powerful filtering mechanism, but it:

For some internal reasons I couldn’t follow the “automatic way” suggestion (i.e. to upload messages from Gmail to Google Sheets and try to filter them there) and thus I decided into semi-automatic way.

Meaning that I wrote an Excel sheet which generated Gmail’s filtering queries for me for all required dates and I only have to manually copy-paste them into Gmail’s search box.

You can get similar results Epoch Converter’s batch tool, but I wanted to play a little bit with Excel instead.

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Let’s talk about game economy!

admingames0 Comment
11 min. reading

I am old and thus I still remember these pretty days of Diablo I, back in 1996 — where each and every pieces of Tristram was filled with a pile of 5 000 gold pieces (the biggest amount you could store in single map’s cell) — because Diablo I’s economy had so poor design that most of the players were earning millions by the end of the game, without a real ability of spending this.

Game economy is an extremely important part of each game design and you are deeply wrong, if you think that it plays key role only in economy-based games. I have intentionally mentioned Diablo 1 to show you an example of a dark fantasy game. Some economy-related mistakes for match-three like game are also mentioned here.

In this article I would like to focus on some economy-related issues and mistakes that you must consider when designing money and resources layer in your game, no mater what kind of game you’re currently developing.

Crafting is an important part of game economy, but I have written a separate article on this subject.

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Google Play Games: The good and the bad approach

admingames0 Comment
4 min. reading

Google Play Games on Android and Apple Game Center on iOS is a really good tool for developers and gamedev companies that provides them with a powerful tools to build, analyze and retain your audience and optimize your game.

As for the game players — it allows them to share and compare their results and build their common game profile or even portfolio, by getting experience, achievements and ladder positions across many different games in the same time.

And, as with everything, this can be a base for your success or a begin to your complete failure.

Here is a quick review and compare on how game creators of two different games for Android approached this topic. And, in the same time, a very quick info on two quite different games.

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Simple ways and mistakes to ruin a gameplay in your game

admingames0 Comment
16 min. reading

I’ve been playing Puzzle Forge 2 game way to much. I spent so many hours playing this game that I managed to get some nice achievements in it and in Google Play Games in general.

In addition, I found a quite nice number of gameplay-related bugs in this game. Large enough to use it as a model scenario in discussion on ruining your game and a gameplay in it, by makings simple, yet stupid mistakes and wrong design assumptions.

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A Farewell to Arms in Puzzle Forge 2

admingames0 Comment
5 min. reading

I have finally said “good bye” to the Puzzle Forge 2 game. My decision was made because:

While doing above, I managed to capture some interesting (?) screenshots that I’d like to share here.

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Migrate all your messages to Gmail or other mail account using imapsync

adminGoogle2 Comments
18 min. reading

This article covers:

  • all the information, that I managed to find out or figure out,
  • all the bottlenecks I had to resolve and all the walls, I hit,
  • some additional info or alternative methods,

about migrating all messages from some mail account to Gmail, using imapsync and IMAP protocol.

The imapsync is an extremely flexible and powerful tool, that also has an on-line counterpart (so you don’t get your hands too dirty), and its documentation simply surpasses imagination, so it is certainly able to transfer all the messages between virtually any IMAP servers, not just between Gmail.

But this article focuses on external IMAP server –> Gmail scenario. For other scenarios, you should find some tips here, but you may need to consult imapsync documentation and the Internet or to use another solution.

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All legendary weapons in Puzzle Forge 2

admingames0 Comment
8 min. reading

This is basically a shortcut and my personal memo of a corresponding forum thread — a complete (?) list of all forty legendary weapons that you can create in Puzzle Forge 2. With a little bit cleanup.

The game itself hasn’t been updated since July 2016 (and most forum threads ceased even earlier, somewhere in 2014 or 2015), but even today it has a large number of players and certainly — a massive gameplay!

BTW: Using ugly, dully, unreadable and lame phpBB (a forum engine last time updated in 2007!) for supporting game players that are actually bringing you money is so… so… lame!

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