JohnnyTwoShoes News

UK Disconnected

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:17:37 -0800

At a time when internet innovation is sky rocketing, the UK government is trying to introduce something called the Digital Economy Bill. Sounds pretty harmless? It's actually a terrible nightmare in disguise and it will hamper innovation pretty sharpish.

One of those bills that tries to slip through government at the behest of media conglomerates, what does it mean for you? If anyone is even accused of file-sharing in your house, your internet can be terminated without notice and you'll be slapped with a £50,000 fine. They don't even need evidence.

ISP's would effectively be forced to spy on our internet traffic, ISP's that fail to co-operate will be smacked with a £250,000 fine. Ouch.

The tragedy is, this is just the beginning.

"Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he's planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson's successor in the next government would also have this power" — Cory, Boing Boing

And in somehow if that's not enough, under the same act the government will also introduce age ratings on all boxed video games aimed at children aged 12 or over.

There's no way that this is a forward thinking goverment, you might as well disconnect the UK from the internet altogether — as soon as what we say is spied upon, controlled and people are jailed without evidence I'll no longer feel like a citizen of the modern world.

You can help stop this bill going through by telling your MP just what you think of the Digital Economy Bill, a great website called WriteToThem is set-up to make the process as easy as possible, just enter your postcode, select your local MP, type out a succinct message and hit send.

Thanks for your help, if we stop this we've averted a digital disaster.

Grab and Share with TinyGrab

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:25:43 -0800

We all love to show each other things we find on the internet or on our computer but because most websites stop what's known as image leeching, often, broken images come back and it's all a bit of a nightmare.

Enter TinyGrab, a small piece of software for Windows and Mac that let's you screengrab any part of what you can see (like Jing), only it uploads to the internet and gives you a url you can just paste into a browser/forum/blog without having to press more than one key.

What's more, it's FREE to use it for 10 images a day — if you want lifetime premium use, with FTP functionality and file management it's only £10 to buy.

Visit TinyGrab

Flash Player 10.1 Pre-Release

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:33:04 -0800

All our games on this website run under the guise of Flash Player, so it's always good to have the latest and greatest to squeeze the best out of your hardware, but remember, this is pre-release software and it is likely not free of bugs (although, you can argue that flash player is never free of bugs).

If you want to submit yourself to the testing process at the possible benefit of a performance boost, go ahead and download the latest Flash Player, version 10.1 from Adobe Labs. We have.

Get Flash Player 10.1 from Adobe Labs

UPDATE: Just tested this new plugin under OSX and I'm seeing a massive performance increase, Anandtech has posted results from Windows at it looks to be over 100% performance boost in some cases.

New HSC2 Description

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:22:49 -0800

It took me a little while, but today I updated the appstore description for the iPhone version of High Speed Chase 2 with EMOJI characters. You'll only be able to see the benefit if you're running iPhone OS so I did some screenshots for those without.

As you can see, it not only looks a lot cleaner, the text is more to the point.

The Tale of Mr. Carter

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:54:42 -0800

The Tale of Mr. Carter is a short animation by SamuriFerret, a clearly talented young UK based animator

Thanks to AnarchyDom for pointing it out in the forum.

You can watch "The Tale of Mr. Carter" on Newgrounds

High Speed Chase 2.2 Now Available!

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:02:53 -0800

Apple finally got round to agreeing that High Speed Chase 2.2 was ready for publishing, so here it is! The 2.2 update, available right now.

Expect more FREE updates to come for all existing owners of the game or buy the game now to ensure future FREE updates.

Buy High Speed Chase 2.2 now from the App Store or just hit the shiny App Store logo to find the update.

If you want to see a video of the High Speed Chase 2.2 features, it's available to watch on Youtube right now.

What Would Mario Look Like Naked?

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:06:03 -0800

Apparently Mario without clothing would look like this. Hang on, this doesn't seem right...

PETMAN Robot

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:51:43 -0700

PETMAN is an evolution of the BIGDOG technology by Boston Dynamics. The thing that still gets me is in a few years we'll see auto-bots that will do things like drive us places, serve us coffee and milk our livestock.

Robot uprising?

Check out the PETMAN video on YouTube

Mini-Documentary

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:03:26 -0700

On Thursday the 28th of October, Johnny Two Shoes is being filmed for a short documentary for BBC 2 in the UK about game development, how we started and how we got into it at a young age.

I will try and post the video to the site once it has aired, I'm not sure of the air date right now.

Is there anything you think we should talk about or any questions you'd like us to answer in the film?

JTS Exclusive Games

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:46:21 -0700

Johnny Two Shoes is first and foremost a games developer, we actually built every game you can play on this website (and the website itself) and what's more, you won't find the majority of these games such as The Heist 2 and Attak almost anywhere else on the internet.

There are usually two types of casual gaming websites, portals and developer showcases. At Johnny Two Shoes we're more like a showcase, but, because we have a huge community that thrives on earning medals, socialising and interacting with the way we make games, we could be considered as a hybrid of those types of sites, taking the best of portals (medals, community) and showcase (personable, engaging).

Johnny Two Shoes is run entirely by two brothers Max (meridimus) and Josh (joshsslade) from London, UK. We hook-up our favourite freelance sound engineer, David Carney (thedavidcarney) for the awesome audio experience in our games.

I hoped you learned a little bit more about what Johnny Two Shoes is and if you'd like to take part in our bustling community you should head over to the forums and introduce yourself.

We're Feed Burnin'

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:55:13 -0700

Well, we realised our feeds were GROSSLY under powered, by that I mean I was stripping everything out just to get them working straight. Today, I did something pretty cool - I converted all our feeds to feedburner and made them so much sweeter. You can now view images, embedded video and full formatting inside RSS feeds.

It's already available through the Feedburner service, all old feeds will be automatically updated to use the new feeds so you don't need to update anything (or any cool widgets you made) to get it working with the new awesome-sauce.

Sorry I left the whole system in a bit of disrepair earlier, I've been so distracted with lots of other things going on at once but it should all be fixed now. If you spot anything funky, post it in the comments!

To summarise, you can grab the RSS feeds with all the new features right now:

Johnny Two Shoes Blog RSS

Johnny Two Shoes Forum RSS

Poni Hoax

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:03:42 -0700

I went to see Poni Hoax a while ago at Cargo in London, but I was prompted to write about them today because their album "Images of Sigrid" just turned up.

Poni Hoax are a mix of experienced musicians, their sound is really well developed and hugely varies between each track on the "Images of Sigrid" album. In my opinion, they are one of the greatest bands I have found for a long time, so for me, they deserve a space on the Johnny Two Shoes blog. I want to share with you what I have found!

Poni Hoax are a French band, so they may not be known at all in America or even very much in the UK. I want you to tell your friends about Poni Hoax, buy their album "Images of Sigrid" and if you get a chance to see them, jump at it. They're really are the most enthralling live performance I have ever seen, bursting with emotion and a kind of clarity that only well versed musicians can maintain.

Listen to Poni Hoax on MySpace

Photography by David Rivoal

Hello, Joe Danger!

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:45:47 -0700

Our friends at Hello games recently announced their XBLA, PSN and PC title "Joe Danger" for what looks to be an incredible game packed with style and oozing with fun.

I don't want to attempt to steal the lime-light on what Hello Games will say about it themselves, but consider this "Hello Games wants to make games that will put a stoopid grin on your face." and follow the link to read more.

Read more about Joe Danger!

R* Detail "Gay Tony" Multiplayer

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:43:16 -0700

Today R* detail the very best of what's to come in "The Ballad of Gay Tony", details of the often overlooked (by people who dislike the series) and overplayed (by people who love the series) multiplayer game modes.

The original Grand Theft Auto games are partly what inspired us to make our own games and even inspired a lot of them (see High Speed Chase, High Speed Chase 2, The Heist, The Heist 2), so you can see why this is big news for us.

This is what's new:

Loads more deathmatch locations, including indoor locations
Deathmatch kill streaks
New weapon types, including sticky bombs!
Free mode now has parachutes to play with (jumping out of your friends helicopter isn't so suicidal anymore)
New helicopter (The Buzzard) and new N.O.O.S.E. truck feature in free mode

Find out everything R* has detailed in "The Ballad of Gay Tony" DLC, due out October 29th on XBOX 360.

CryEngine 3 Released

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:56:48 -0700

The makers of Crysis (PC) have released a new game engine. This is the most advanced engine around today, check out this release trailer to see what games will look like in the years to come.

Heres an example of something different done with the old version of the engine, Its a remake of the classic Monkey Island.

The Forum Is Now Open!

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:12:29 -0700

So this last chapter of "The Nightmare That Stalked The Forums" is closed. Let's hope that this doesn't repeat itself again and we can keep improving the forum in the time to come.

Remember, if something doesn't work, I'm going to need a full video from Jing that shows me how it isn't working, post the link here or email us with full details on how to reproduce the problem.

I'm not saying everything is perfect yet!

Left 4 Dead Characters As Bears

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:17:03 -0700

Awesome illustrator and friend of Johnny Two Shoes, minkee has drawn all four characters from the original Left 4 Dead as bears!

Zombie bear mod anyone? Incredible idea. We've already seen the Teletubbies in Left 4 Dead as zombies which is possibly the creepiest thing ever. The idea of mauling (see what I did there) zombie bears has got to be 10 times better than Lala, Po and the gang.

via flickr

Uncharted 2 Review

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:54:19 -0700

One of the most anticipated games of the year has been released on PS3. If you have one or are thinking about getting one, check out the review.

Has to be one of the best games Ive played in a while, its a incredibly polished and fun. Played the Multiplayer Beta and cant wait to play through the full game when it arrives.

The Forum Is Closed (Not Anymore)

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 09:51:55 -0700

So yesterday, someone managed to hack into a mod account and screw around in the forum.

This has lead me to believe a few things about the site, we have some moderators who are not being careful with their login details and we have some malicious players on Johnny Two Shoes who intend to damage our website.

Well, they're not too serious because we can combat that stuff. Now topics will never be deleted, they can only be locked or hidden. New "report" button means any player can flag issues anywhere on the site (be it a username/avatar/post/topic/comment).

In summary:

Topics can be locked or hidden by mods, never deleted (can be undone by other mods)
The entire mod process will be publicly logged so any-time mods change something it is logged to show who, when and where in the forum it affects on a new page for every registered player to view
Mods will be able to roll back changes (like re-show hidden topics/posts)
Topic titles can only be edited by JTS staff
Bans can be rolled back at any time by JTS staff
New report button will let registered players flag all kinds of events on the website (this will come later)

Update, it's back. Tomorrow the old forum data will be back!

GTAIV There's Always A Girl

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:43:05 -0700

"There's Always A Girl" is the latest video from Rockstar promoting the new DLC for XBOX and stand-alone games "The Ballad of Gay Tony" and "The Lost and the Damned".

Enjoy the new trailer!

Is Flash Good For iPhone?

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:57:34 -0700

Jon Jordan, writing for Edge asked us what we thought about Flash for iPhone. You can read the article Is Flash Good For iPhone? on the Edge website and find the full transcript from Johnny Two Shoes below.

How useful will it be for you as a game developer to now be able to make native Flash apps for iPhone?

It sounds great, being able to develop in action-script and have it run on the iPhone like a native app. The only problem is it's very slow on the device, performance is pretty terrible. We've already developed High Speed Chase natively on the iPhone platform, so there's no incentive for us to start using action-script to make lower performance games now we can code natively.

Do you have any plans to do so?

We plan to experiment with the new tools, but the amount of development time we'd save probably isn't worth the performance hit on the device. It's not at a stage for us where it's a viable alternative to native iPhone development.

Would you prefer Apple to open up iPhone so it would be able to do in-browser Flash games as is now happening with every other smartphone and Flash 10.1?

The games JohnnyTwoShoes make for the web browser rely on keyboard/mouse input, the idea of flash running inside mobile safari would make our games un-playable. Portable browsing is about being lean and the flash player is an unnecessary layer of fat the iPhone can do without. Native apps can be manually optimised for performance as well as originally designed around the iPhone input methods (touch, tilt etc) which make them a much better choice for pocket gamers.

What limitations will this system have compared to building native iPhone apps from scratch?

Regardless of API's, it's got to be performance. In reality the PS3 has trouble running flash intensive applications such as games, it can just about handle video. On top of that, Mac has performance problems inside Safari. These kinds of problems seem more pressing to us over whether Flash can run on every mobile device out there.

What effect do you think this will have in terms of the number of Flash games that will be released onto the App Store?

Opening the appstore up to flash developers is likely to open the floodgates on mad content. This could be good for a small percentage of games, but mostly I feel like it will further cheapen the quality of the appstore.

full article on Edge

Ballad of Gay Tony: Screenshots

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:04:14 -0700

Today Rockstar release their updated "The Ballad of Gay Tony" website which contains tons and tons of new stuff about the game. It shows what vehicles are coming, what the new weapons do but it's the screenshots for the game that seem to be the most revealing (and drool worthy).

To check out this new content, head over to the official Rockstar website.

Collab on a Photo Blog

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:24:07 -0700

Collaborative photo-blogging, the name itself sounds pretty lame. All it is — you and a friend take a picture each day and post them side by side just like the above image I borrowed from MintyForest. Minty Forest a photo-blog between two peeps who just liked each other enough to keep it up for a full year!

via photojojo

Banana Dash World 4 is Released!

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:40:30 -0700

Banana Dash World 4 has finally been released, we spent our evenings and last weekend polishing and shining this into a little gem for you all to play.

We're very proud of Banana Dash World 4. Please note, the music was designed by TheDavidCarney, our super talented freelance master of all musical wrangling and friend of Johnny Two Shoes.

Play Banana Dash World 4 Now!

Honda EV-N Car Houses Unicycle

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:14:52 -0700

This car may not be to everyone's taste, but to me it's brilliant — I love the look of it. The roof is a solar panel and the rest of the car is white/cream to reflect sunlight to use less energy in things like air-con.

But the coolest draw for this little tyke? The uni-cycle we posted before sits right in the door frame. That's just awesome.

via engadget

We're on Last.fm

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:59:51 -0700

You already know that Johnny Two Shoes isn't a big corporate machine. We're a small games company and as such you can pretty much check out what we listen to on a daily basis by taking a sneaking peek at the Johnny Two Shoes last.fm page.

It ranges from stuff like The Knife, Dystopia all the way through to Bob Marley, The Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra. We don't just listen to one type of music, we soak up any musical genius we can, it helps keep us sane.

Have a look, friend us and relish the awesome musical world.

GTAIV Meet Yusuf Amir

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:48:15 -0700

"We're getting Arab money" — this is the new trailer from the GTA IV expansion "The Ballad of Gay Tony". The story-line is looking incredibly awesome.

Honda Sanitize The Circus

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:12:54 -0700

Honda have whipped up this incredible but somehow creepy unicycle that's kind of in a similar market to the segway. But somehow I can imagine this catching on and in my mind I'm seeing London commuters silently flying past on these one-wheeled machines.

via Engadget

Watch out behind you

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:33:39 -0700

This guy is on a peaceful stroll through the forest listening to music and trying out his new noise cancelling headphones, happy in a world of his own.

I always knew those things were a bad idea, remember to look behind you. Something might be there... dont ask what happens once it reaches that building.

Microsoft has the answer to the tablet?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:43:20 -0700

I saw this video a moment ago and I thought "Whhaaaattt?". This is incredible, it looks and feels like an Apple product but it's not, it's a concept product from none other than Microsoft.

The whole cutting out, tearing, writing and dragging stuff seems pretty intuitive and gives you an awesome look and feel to the way the person is working on-screen.

Anyway, check out the vid.

via TheNextWeb