Patintero Playtime for iOS – The spirit of the Filipino traditional game lives on!

Every Filipino child knows Patintero by heart, as it is a fun street game that requires teamwork and agility. Zeenoh, in its third game, relives the Patintero spirit among the youth in its new iOS app entitled “Patintero”. True to its roots, Zeenoh designed this app to tap the hearts of Filipino children who has forgotten the joy of playing street games. Before the advent of technology, children used to play outside with friends with games such as Patintero. Zeenoh aims to reach out to the youth and help them rekindle their love for street games by introducing it as an iOS app.

In the game, Grandfather Amihan teaches users how to play Patintero digitally. The tutorial establishes the setting of the game, involving two teams and a grid. The two teams are the players and the taggers. The goal of the game is simple: for the player team to pass through the other end of the grid. The taggers are assigned each line in the grid in which they must guard, in an attempt to block the players from crossing. In order to win a Patintero game, a player must be equipped with speed, agility and a presence of mind. Without these three, it would be difficult to get the team across the other end of the grid and win the game. Zeenoh’s Patintero allows players to acquire power ups as they go, which are: speed, time, 10pts coin and 20pts coin. A whole Patintero game only lasts for 2 minutes, wherein the winner is determined by the highest score.

The game features three flavors, which are the Patintero Playtime, Patintero Ultimate and Patintero Extreme. The Patintero Playtime is the first version to be released on November 2011, which is a free version that allows a one-to-one (human vs. human) game. This version is available on HD format and for the iPad. The Patintero Ultimate is a paid version that offers more features. These features include more teams that can play, which varies from animals, plants and aliens, to name a few. This version would be released soon after the release of Patintero Playtime. On the other hand, the Patintero Extreme offers even better features than the Ultimate, as this version of the app would be integrated with more teams and more worlds to explore. In addition, this flavor would enable networking features which can be accessed through WiFi or Bluetooth game challenge. The Patintero Extreme would also be a paid version of the game.

Through Zeenoh’s Patintero, children who were not able to play the game would learn how, and those who do would be able to experience the joy of playing Patintero in a digital platform. Zeenoh aims to benchmark iOS apps by developing games that are original and unique, grounded by the company’s culture and heritage.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE GAME:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/patintero-playtime/id476312935?mt=8

Zeenoh Launches Crazy Kite

Crazy Kite

Can’t seem to find a fun and productive game for your child to play? Do war games put you off due to its extreme violence and bloodshed? Are you worn out by the intricacies of games that involve complex commands, incomprehensible quests and innumerable characters? No need to bother looking, Crazy Kite is here!

Zeenoh, a Philippine-based creator of mobile game applications launched its newest kid-friendly game: Crazy Kite! You don’t have to worry about your child getting exposed to carnage missions as Crazy Kite is clearly designed for kids and the kids at heart. The game is basically about the kite-flying adventures and misadventures of Carl. Carl is a chubby, little kid who is constantly being bullied by nasty kids from his neighborhood because of his weight. Carl is alone most of the time, as he has hardly any friends at all. One day, when Carl was walking across the neighborhood, one of the bullies throws a piece of plastic at him. Carl being gifted with a creative and adventurous mind, decides to create a kite out of the plastic instead of fighting back. From then on, the amazing journey of Carl begins. Along the way, Carl is bound to encounter quite a heap of distractions, starting from the multi-colored birds down to the malevolent, evil witch.

The objective of the game is quite easy: avoid distractions and earn more stars. How? You simply need to fly your kite in the air while collecting star bubbles. Under the lite version of the game, you can play arcade and choose between two available kites: Pedro, a classic blue kite and 3 Stars, an airplane-shaped kite that embodies the Philippine flag (colored blue on the left, red on the right, white on the upper portion, with three stars and a sun printed on its body). The player is equipped with three kite lives. As the game begins, stars that are enclosed in a bubble will come your way, and it is your mission to burst them using your kite. You do this by simply swinging your kite to the direction of the bubble by tilting your Iphone/Ipod touch sideways and back. The number of bubbles that you have popped in the course of the game will be equivalent to your total score. Along the way, you will encounter several distractions. These are obstacles that must be avoided as crashing into them decreases your number of lives.

The game also boasts of its open feint and Game Center features that allows your child to evaluate his/her gaming performance, while interacting and challenging other players from around the world via the Internet. If you opt to play in full version, you get to unlock more kites and enjoy the full story mode including the Birds Nest episode, Bullies Mischief episode and more. Get to know the characters and Carl himself, with Crazy Kite’s full, complete version!

For only $0.99, allow your child to relish the wonderful world of kite-flying without the hassle of making or buying an actual kite, going outdoors and anticipating the wind. Stimulate his/her concentration and motivation skills by letting him/her play Crazy Kite. With Crazy Kite’s colorful, state-of-the-art graphics and simple gaming instructions, your child is sure to enjoy this wonderful gaming experience. So what are you waiting for? Purchase and download now!

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Here are some of the game’s screenshots:

Permissions Problem on Mac OS X

We have dealt with permissions problems with Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) thrice. The third one really was a

Mac OS X

head-scratcher and yes, I’m a Mac newbie. The first two instances, we just had to change the permission to “Read Only” from the file’s info. The third one – it made me think.

The Macs in our lab are set to authenticate to a Windows Active Directory server. User accounts are from this server and a local Administrator account is set on the Macs and is used whenever we do some configurations and installations. We were able to install apps like Office 2008, iWork ’09, Audacity, Sam Animation, VLC, etc. Some apps used their own installation setups but most were just dragged and dropped to the Applications folder. And whoever logs on to a Mac was able to launch any applications installed.

I was then asked to install iMovie HD, the app bundled in iLife ’08. I was able to install it using the local admin account but when I logged on using a domain account, I found out that I had no access to the app which didn’t allow me to launch. I checked it’s info and “everyone” had no access. I logged back in using admin and changed the permission for “everyone” to Read Only.

Local admin and domain account with restricted permission on iMovie HD.

I used the same domain account to check the iMovie HD app and now it has a different icon. I tried to launch it but a window popped up and informed that I can’t launch the app because it may be damaged or incomplete. Weird.

Damaged or Incomplete?!

Next, I checked the permissions using command line. Here’s what I got.

Using CLI

The iMovie HD app is owned by “admin” and used by the group “staff“. And checking the left side portion of the Terminal, it implies that the owner has read, write, and execute function, while the others/everyone has read and execute permission. However, no permission was given to the group, or in this case, the staff. Using CLI, I gave permission to the staff group to read and execute the app using chmod. And since a “.app” file is also a directory, we have to do it with the recursive switch.

hostname:~ admin$ chmod -R 755 /Applications/iMovie\ HD.app/

Set Permissions using chmod

After that, I was able to run iMovie HD using different accounts.:) What GUI can’t do, CLI can.

Others may have encountered this and may have a different solution. Please share how you fixed the problem by commenting.