You may also have noticed that the main blog page has changed over the last few days. The previous "magazine" style was an experiment, as as any scientist will tell you, not all experiments turn out the way they were planned. The magazine layout is suited more to a multi-user blog, and to create the amount of content required was taking time and energy that was better spent elsewhere.

The site as a whole is constantly evolving, and there are plenty of exciting things in store for the coming months!

You stand at the entrance to what appears to be a traveling carnival. A sign above the gate reads "The Carnival of Video Game Bloggers", which strikes you as somewhat odd. You hear a strange tune in the distance, and your senses are almost overwhelmed by the barrage of lights and lasers. You can go north.

> Go North

You are greeted by a shady looking gentleman wearing a long black robe and a top hat. On closer inspection you see his nametag, but before you can say anything he introduces himself.

"I am James Newton, the Grand Master of this Carnival. We gather the finest game bloggers from around the World and force them to write articles until their fingers fall off! Mwuahahaha!"

After a few minutes of evil laughs, he clears his throat.

"Sorry about that old bean, just a silly little joke I like to play. Please look around and talk to these fine folks, as they have many pearls of wisdom to share with you. Before you go, please read 'My Personal Journey of Dreams'."

He hands you the book, but before you can thank him he lets out a blood-curdling cry of "WA-HA" and disappears in a cloud of red and purple smoke. How very strange. You can go west, east and south.

> Go South

You cannot escape the carnival!

> Go West

Life is peaceful there.

As you look around, you see a booth containing a gallery of paintings that seem to move. The sign "Fantendo" hangs at the top, and as you stare at the paintings you are approached by Jordan Bieber.

"Wii Want Wiimakes" he says, waving what appears to be a white remote around. You step back in case it is some form of magic wand.

"The Wii is a powerful system" he continues "and many great GameCube games would work even better with the advanced controls that the Wii provides". He motions towards some of the paintings, which have titles such as "F Zero GX", "Beyond Good & Evil" and "Pikmin". As he waves his wand, the pictures appear to react! You should escape before this sorcery affects you too! You can go east or south.

> Go East

Stephen W is manning a stall named "Project Paradox", which features a game involving throwing hoops over bottles. The hoops appear to get smaller as they approach the bottles, which is somewhat disconcerting.

"Roll up, roll up!" he calls "Win a great prize for that special person! After all, Nothing Says 'I Love You' Like an Epic Mount!"

As you peruse the stand, you realise that the mounts are indeed epic. You can go east or south.

> Go South

You are at a food stand named "SharpBrains", manned by Alvaro Fernandez. There is an array of snacks, ranging from hotdogs to cotton candy and some strange dishes you have never seen before. One of the hotdogs looks like a finger.

"Get your brain food!" cries Alvaro "There's lots to choose from!"

"This one is named 'Training the brain with a computer workout program: MindFit'. Eating this will give you the knowledge of computer games that can train your brain" he moves to the next dish - "Brain Exercise FAQs will give you more knowledge about brain exercises from video games, and will help you strengthen your brain."

He points at the third dish "And finally, this dish will impart the knowledge of a Brain Essay Contest for High School Students. You should tell everyone about this!"

The food looks delicious, but your appetite seems to have departed since you entered this carnival. You can go north or east.

> Go East

Jimmy Atkinson, caretaker of the Online Education Database, is standing guard in front of a huge black obelisk. The obelisk reaches so high that it appears to touch the moon itself. Strange marks cover the surface, and it seems to gently glow in the darkness.

He whispers to you "This is 'The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Degrees and Careers'. It contains an endless amount of knowledge on obtaining a video game degree or career".

You stand in awe for several minutes, before gathering your thoughts and moving on. You can go west or south.

> Go South

You walk into a bar. OUCH! You shake your head, before walking into what appears to be a small tavern. "Taverns aren't normally found at carnivals" you think to yourself. As if by magic, the sign above the tavern change to "This is no ordinary carnival".

Many people are inside, chatting and laughing about all kinds of subjects.

Gene of "1 Life Left" is talking about How to Be Sponsored and detailing how to get your competitive gaming team to attract major technology sponsors and get paid to game.

The mysterious wizard jai from the realm of GAMEBLOGGER sits at a table, summoning small dragons and other mystical creatures. The dragon blows smoke and flame, and scorches the words "GAMEBLOGGER: March 2007" onto the table.

The scholar Ybother from TodaysTen.com is stood on the table at the center of the room, and is singing 10 Fun Things to do in Second Life. People around the table are clapping and cheering at these tales.

You see Viv, the leader of "Cool Moms Rule" in the corner. She appears to be cradling a Faery, and the book "Game Recommendation: Faeries" rests on the table by her side.

The bartender dries a glass, as Mon Macutay from GM Tristan Online: Gaming and MMORPGs talks about Sex in Video Games, and why developers, users and cultures use sexual innuendoes in game design and culture". The bartender nods in agreement, before beckoning you to drink. You decline. You can go west.

> Go West

Jigsaw hc guards the entrance to "Rants & Reviews", which appears to be an impossible maze that defies the laws of space and time. You step inside…

The first wall reads "Game Magazines Dying?". You step forwards, but your body feels as if it is moving back. You turn around to see another wall marked "3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures Review".

Your pulse quickens, and you look up to see what appear to be stairs. As you look, you feel a strange sensation as gravity appears to shift. You close your eyes, and when you open them again you are walking on the ceiling! The floor has many strange markings on it, but as your vision clears several phrases appear. They read "Tony Hawk Project 8 Review". "Tetris Evolution Review" and "Desktop Tower Defense Review".

Panic and confusion set in, and you open your mouth to call for help. No sound escapes, but instead a butterfly emerges. The words "March Xbox Live Arcade Recap and Review" are emblazoned across its wings. It was a very big butterfly.

You feel your vision failing, as all images blend in to each other in a whirlpool of bright colours. You black out.

> Open eyes

You stand at the entrance to what appears to be a travelling carnival, but only blackness remains where there was once light and sound. There is now only a sign that reads "Submit an article for the next carnival using the carnival submission form, and view past and previous editions at the blog carnival index page".

It is over. You have escaped the carnival!

The End

---

That's it for this issue. I hope you all enjoyed the adventure, and you can subscribe to the RSS feed for many more thrilling tales!

Technorati tags: carnival of video game bloggers, blog carnival.

If you're compressing images, choose the right format for the right job. PNG is a lossless format that is much better at compressing pixel art images than photographs. JPG can leave a lot of “artifacts” on these kinds of images, and is better suited for compressing photos or painted artwork. Choosing the right format not only shrinks the size of your application, but helps to maintain the quality of the final product.

You can generally shrink you .exe and .dll files by around 50% by using UPX, with no discernible change in performance.

Note: Always compress executables after icons and resources have been added, as adding resources to a compressed executable can result in programs working strangely (or not at all).

Get UPX

If you're using PNG images, pngcrush is an essential application to have installed. It has many different levels of compression available and can generate considerable space savings. Perhaps the most useful feature is the “brute force” option, which will try over 100 different combinations to create the smallest possible image file.

Get pngcrush

Using OGG or OXM for music can generate large savings when compared to raw formats such as WAV and XM. OGG is well suited to sound samples and music, and can make a huge difference if the correct quality settings are chosen. It's usually best to try a few settings and listen to the results to see which quality to use, as some qualities work better for different kinds of sounds.

OXM is a compressed version of the XM music format, a MIDI like format that uses its own samples. The OXM format compresses the samples using the OGG codec, and can easily shrink a track by 70% or more with virtually no audible differences.

OggEnc is a command line tool for encoding OGG files, whereas OggDrop is a GUI application that supports drag and drop. OggMod is a tool for compressing XM files into OXM.

If your game uses any kind of custom data definitions, such as text or xml level definitions, you can generate extra savings by compressing them. There are many different compression algorithms, and some are more suited than others. Run Length Encoding (RLE) works well for data that has large areas of sequential data values, but isn't as effective for other formats such as XML. There are plenty of freely available compression libraries, and including zlib and unrar, and most languages have a wealth of examples to look at.

Manually compressing all of your media can be a slow and tedious process, and can generally be left until the game's release. At the simplest level, you can place all of the commands into a Windows batch file and run it once you've compiled your software. Other options include using build software, which is covered in more detail in the recent build tools article.

Next issue is very special, as the Carnival of Video Game Bloggers is dropping by! If you want to submit an article to be featured, please use the carnival's submission page, and make sure you drop in to see what's on show. There have already been some great articles submitted, but more are always welcome so get cracking!