The Rabid 48 (Rant)

Consider this a follow-up rant to yesterday's Post-Brexit Aftermath rant.

So here we are once more with another rant just a day after the previous one was voted damn. Anyone who's been following blog since October 2014 will notice that the rant's name is pretty damn familiar to a certain other rant on a similar subject...

The word "rabid" can be used with more emphasis here though as these protests are far worse than what we had in Scotland about a year and a half ago.

Speaking of here we are again, who remembers all of those pointless rallies we had back in late-2014 following the independence referendum in Scotland. Well it's happened again in London this time (#LondonStays) and it's all going down in Trafalgar Square where a bunch people think a rally will change the outcome of the referendum.

Two words. Hell no.

A lot of the stuff I'll covering here is pretty much just reiterated from that rant (as well as the Pro-Brexit Aftermath rant I put out yesterday) but it basically just boils down to this - these rants will NOT change anything. You had the chance to make your move and you simply didn't. I stated in yesterday's rant that the youth of the country (my generation sadly) had the chance to vote and the vast majority (64%) chose not to. I'm not saying my generation is lazy, but it shows that they seem to care far less about the country's politics than older generations and this is what led the Leave campaign to victory.

As for these rallies, well I already covered that these rallies are completely pointless and rarely solve anything. Did the nationalist rally in Glasgow grant Scotland its independence? No. Did the nationalist rally in Dundee grant Scotland its independence? No. Did the protests in London against David Cameron's austerity bring a halt to the government's plans? No, although I agreed with their point. Will the protests currently happening in London right now overrule the Brexit vote? Given the track record of past rallies I seriously doubt it.

That's a hat-trick right there (not counting the current rallies) and I'm sure if I do some digging I can pull up many more examples where rallies failed and while I can almost admire the passion that goes into this, a lot nastiness comes out of it too. Let me go ahead and quote some tweets.

Wait a minute, I thought it was #VoteLeave supporters who were all virulent racists? pic.twitter.com/vzwhQCposr

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) June 28, 2016

The accumulated intellect of #LondonStays came up with these toddler-level placards. Guys, #LondonsGone pic.twitter.com/cGOk1p5S8t

— Martin Daubney (@MartinDaubney) June 28, 2016

So yeah so much energy going into something so passionate yes, but the outcome has turned Trafalgar Square from a tourist attraction to a toxic cesspit of racism (not from Leave campaigners either, see the first of the above tweets.)

Your energy is far more better off being used into just accepting the result, you wanted democracy? You got it. You had a referendum, democracy was served and now you don't like it you want to overturn it. This kind of childishness is bringing awful flashbacks from #HopeOverFear in 2014. At the end of The Rabid 45 I suggested to focus all of that wasted energy on tackling ISIS, now maybe that was a little extreme, but my underlying point still stands. This is just a big waste of time although if I am proven wrong it will be interesting but I doubt it. The past three rallies have failed and this will too. Get over it, move on.

I guess I should also say something about the whole "Little Englander" bullshit as well that the Remain campaign (aka remainiacs) keep peddling. I voted out, as did many others, so we could secure trade deals with other nations where the EU has failed. This isn't pulling up the drawbridge like many are putting it, but rather opening ourselves up for more trade to appeal to the wider world. That statement alone is enough to counter the whole "Little Englander" bullshit but in case it isn't, I guess you should say talking shit about the Welsh too considering Wales also had a majority for Leave. But hey, feel free to keep the Little Englander jibes up, it just makes you seem incredibly ignorant and conveys a sense of arrogance too.

I'd like to close this rant by making a short statement about the whole Londependence movement that happened briefly on 24th June - it won't happen. While Scottish independence is very much a possibility, London is far too integrated with the UK to ever break away from the nation especially considering that the royal family is pretty much completely situated there and I'm sure the Queen (who technically has ultimate power over the UK) will veto London breaking off from the UK.

One final something to consider - Anjem Choudary (a prominent Islamic extemist living in the UK) was supportive of EU membership as it makes deportation harder. Maybe that might make you think about some of the downsides of remaining. (Source article)

And I'm fucking done on this - and I don't just mean this rant but the entire fucking topic as a whole, holy shit this has been one hell of a fortnight and I'm still waiting for the tide to pass over.

29th June 2016 Update: Shit just got even more real. There are now people actually calling for the assassination (yes you read that right) of Nigel Farage. I mean I know you guys on the Remain side of the fence may not like the guy but come on. This is especially shameful considering another MP was murdered a week before the referendum (R.I.P Jo Cox) and I'm saddened and angered that people stooping to such a low level.

29th June 2016 Update 2: A sister rally very similar to the one I just went hell-for-leather on also happened in Manchester however it was so petty it was barely even worth mentioning and it didn't last very long.

2nd July 2016 Update: Another fucking rally's going on this time under the hashtag #MarchForEurope. We had a fucking fair and democratic vote on 23rd June and your side lost. All of these rallies will NOT change a thing, the only event that had any impact in this was the referendum itself. 52% of those who voted voted to leave and if you are rallying down in London and you didn't vote then you have absolutely no right to complain as you did not do your part to stop Brexit from happening so sit the fuck down.

2nd July 2016 Update 2: Damn I don't think I've ever had to put out as many updates to rants as I have here, but sadly it seems this rally was far more contagious than its predecessor with it happening in nearby York as well as Manchester. It seems we've entered the Anger stage of grief here. Here's a fucking thought, stop this pathetic rallying (which as I've stated an incessant amount of times before, doesn't solve anything) and work on building a better UK outside of the EU.

Post-Brexit Aftermath (Rant)

DISCLAIMER: This will be the last political rant on this blog. Sorry but I guess this isn't true.

This rant will definitely strike a few nerves and believe me I did do my best to restrain myself from typing this one out, but I simply had to give in because the amount of cuntery and foolishness surrounding the whole Brexit event is nigh-on overwhelming.

As many of you are aware, whether you're from the UK or not, we had a vote on whether to leave the European Union with the outcome (surprisingly) being 52% (51.9%) to leave. I am personally very happy about that as the EU, while once being a friendly trading bloc, has become a greedy, megalomaniacal wannabe superstate with a constant lust for more power over its member states. This simply had to end so I personally voted to leave. If you voted to remain, that's your choice and I won't judge you for that. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Unfortunately a lot of the people over in the Remain camp do not think that way.

I'm not going to bring up the recent petition on the UK Parliament's official site as that has been confirmed to have been compromised with some sources even claiming it was a 4chan prank. What I will say about this though is that this petition was hastily set up by a Leave supporter who proposed new rules for the referendum as he thought Remain was going to come out on top, This unfortunately backfired and the petition has now been abused by not only excessive numbers of Remain supporters failing to accept the referendum's outcome (some of these supporters are even willing to manipulate the petition illegally to get their way) but as well aforementioned bots allegedly set up by 4chan. Parliament removed a good chunk of signatures that were believed to be fraudulent but I'm pretty sure many still remain.

The cringeworthy petition can be found here.

With that out of the way I'll now shift over one of the main focuses of this rant.

A number of Remain voters have been looking to overturn the result of the referendum (hence the large number of signatures on the above petition.) This movement also appears to be gaining some ground in parliament as the Liberal Democrats have pledged to ignore the referendum and keep the UK within the EU despite a small majority voting to leave and with shit hitting the fan big style over in Labour a Lib Dem victory is sadly on the cards in the next general election. Sorry Corbyn, but if Labour can't get itself together then I may very well vote Tory just to keep the ironically anti-democratic Liberal "Democrats" out, that being said if TUSC contest my constituency again I'll probably hand my vote over to those guys. (TUSC is basically a left-wing UKIP, they strongly oppose EU membership while still upholding many of Labour's core beliefs.)

The largest issue within the whole shitstorm for me was the immense social divide it's created and how peoples' opinions of other people have changed. I am no exception to this - before the referendum I greatly adored the actor Sir Patrick Stewart, I was borderline fanatical over him, however now I have no strong feelings either way. On the reverse however I like John Cleese for his comedy work but when he announced his support for Brexit my opinion of him shot right up (Fawlty Towers and Monty Python anyone?)

I also have to say something about Richard Dawkins throughout all of this too. He's another one who I liked and I always assumed he took a neutral stance in it all,  I'd also like to point that he more or less said that the general public are too stupid to vote on something like the EU, before the referendum I dismissed that completely but following the referendum he's fucking right. People voted because they assumed that their vote wouldn't have an impact and if you thought then go eat shit, and if you thought that and now you're part of the cringeworthy #REGREXIT movement then go eat more shit.

And throughout all this I'd to give a major fuck you to all those who are whining about having their future stolen from them by the older generations. If you (mainly my generation sadly) wanted to stay in you should've got out there and voted. Statistics show that only 36% of 18-24 year olds turned up to the vote and as for those who whine about how the old people will die soon and won't have to live as long with the consequences that may be true, but that is an absolutely vile and sickening way to think. These people fought through World War 2 and the elderly who didn't probably parents who did so or lived through that horror, and people are saying they shouldn't vote? Fuck you!

These are the people whose votes you want to deny. Show some fucking respect. (Image from Fact File.)

And now I'd like to address those who claim that the Leave campaign is based around bigotry and hatred. Oh boy what a fucking cliche!

Now I do agree that the official Vote Leave campaign placed an exceptionally heavy emphasis on immigration but I detest the notion that most leave voters were swung by immigration, although it was a major point for many people. Many people were swung by pledges (wrongly) announced by many high-profile campaigners. I never expected a lot of that to be true, nor did they have any influence on my vote - I had my own reasons for voting out.

So let's be clear.

I am a 20 year old college student (at the time of writing.)

I voted to LEAVE the European Union.

I am pretty much dead central on the political spectrum.

I did NOT vote to leave on the grounds of immigration.

I did NOT vote to leave on the grounds of any campaign pledges.

I voted to leave because the EU became power-hungry and hated what it had become.

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I'd like to conclude this lengthy rant with this pic which has been circulating it round Twitter after the result.

Sadly a lot of people on both sides of the fence do not wish to follow this example. (Image originally posted by Caroline Farrow)

28th June 2016 Update: A follow up rant for this has been put out - read it here.

Blog Reform

This is a blog post I meant to put several weeks ago but I found the time to do so back then, however I've now got some spare time so I figured now would be a good time to put it out before I forget.

It's no secret that this blog was originally designed first and foremost a game development blog to keep track of all things relating to my game development and what I'm doing and any games I'm putting out or any game dev events I'd be getting involved with, itch.io week for example.

However the blog has recently began losing sight of its original purpose and what it was meant for, since I started the blog I have discussed political issues (a topic I wanted to avoid when possible,) phone tech (a personal hobby) and various other issues which I have touched on in the past. The blog has been home to a number of rants while others are simply me getting involved with unrelated business which I probably should be keeping out of.

And I've decided to take stand against... myself... I guess?

I've decided to reform this blog and delegate all unrelated topics to a personal sister blog which I'll be making some time in the future. The blog will remain as it always has done up the end of this year, I'm keeping it like this as I've promised follow-ups to a number of these unrelated posts such as the Feature Removal Competition Bonanza rant (where I completely ripped smartphone company LeEco apart for making stupid decisions) where I promised a follow-up in September/October.

As of 1st January 2017, these blog reforms will come into play and all future non-gamedev related posts will be relegated to the new blog. Any current unrelated posts will remain on here and probably won't be removed unless I see fit, however any future rants and other unrelated posts will be on the new blog as of the beginning of 2017 and this blog will remain strictly unrelated.

As for my Twitter and personal social media accounts, they are orientated to me rather than my career so while there will obviously gamedev stuff on there, there will also be other things on there that I feel the need to talk about or vent. That will remain unchanged. This reform affects only this blog.

What Am I Doing For Itch.io Week?

For those who aren't aware, itch.io is having a special week this week and we're all doing stuff for it! If you want more info see here.

So what part am I playing in this? Mostly sales but other things as well.

Project Plasma

• Can be bought a whopping 70% off for this week.
• Will try to ship out v1.1 this week (no promises) Due to time constraints regarding college assignments this won't be happening. Sorry!
• Project Plasma download key giveaway! (Please only take one key or your second key will be revoked.)
• 2 keys on Thursday
• 5 keys on Friday

Project Plasma Mobile

• Nothing...

Iron

• Will make a start on recreating this.

Thallium

• This bonus game will be available for free for this week.

Project Plasma 2

• Will post teasers and concept sketches (maybe.)

---

Well... that's all I can do I guess. There might be a few things that I'll get involved in on top of all that, but right now that's all there is to it.

So get yoursen out there!

Project Plasma - https://archangelatom.itch.io/project-plasma
Project Plasma Mobile - https://archangelatom.itch.io/project-plasma-mobile
Thallium - https://archangelatom.itch.io/thallium

Feature Removal Competition Bonanza! (Rant)

Happy May everyone! Let's just get on with this. Kicking things off this month we have another rant targeted straight at the smartphone industry.

If you're the kind of person who gets pissy if their phone brand gets slated, then don't worry because this rant doesn't target any of the big brands (Samsung, Apple, Huawei, HTC.etc.) If you are however a LeEco (formerly LeTV) fanboy, then I suggest you close your tab or turn back now.

I am a huge smartphone, tablet, and gadget enthusiast, ask anyone I know about this and they'll confirm that. Sometimes when I'm bored out of my arse I may end up looking up what the tech industry's getting up to, particularly in the Chinese market as a lot of the latest innovations in smartphones lately appear to originate from there. Case and point...

6GB RAM in a smartphone? Vivo Xplay 5 Ultimate. Straight outta China

First 2K resolution display (2560x1440) in a phone? Vivo gets it again with the Xplay 3S (a lot of people attribute this to the LG G3 which was the first phone by a major brand to include a 2K display but not the first overall.)

First deca-core (yes 10 CPU cores) smartphone? Introducing the Zopo Speed 8!

So whether you think Chinese tech is wondrous or just a pile of cheap crap, it's tough to deny that they're innovative and are driving many of the features that are seen in many modern smartphones today. However lately, there's been another minor craze that's been rearing its ugly head with LeEco (and possibly UMI as well turns out UMI thankfully has more sense) hyping another feature, or more accurately, hyping a lack-of-feature in a certain phone. LeEco have decided to cut out the 3.5mm headphone jack, a feature which is seemingly commonplace among smartphones nowadays.

Now I've always had a very low opinion of LeEco, I've always seen them as a very backwards company who somehow managed to successfully piss everyone off by hyping their first batch of phones like hell only for them to skimp on various features. For starters they skipped the SD card slot and while this alone is enough to turn me away it's something that a few manufacturers are sadly doing, their phones run Android but have no Google Play which is partly down to the fact that China has very limited access to Google's services but despite that, most other manufacturers still include Google's services on their devices when selling their phones outside of China.

The whole removing the 3.5mm bullshite started after a rumour cropped up about Apple's next major iPhone release, the iPhone 7 of course, which is rumoured to be skipping the headphone jack. LeEco decided to take this rumour and go full retard with it and remove the jack from their latest lineup of phones (which still by the way, skip all of the aforementioned features as well.)

Now here's the part where I ask what the whole point of this is, there are very few USB type-C earphones out there (I forgot to mention that LeEco are hoping to phase out the 3.5mm jack in favour USB type-C earphones) and this is a move which will only hurt LeEco financially (probably for the best in this case as LeEco have consistently failed to learn from their mistakes) and a company like LeEco who is still a small name in the phone world needs as much financial backing as they can get. Not to mention that maybe some people want to use their headphones while their phone is plugged into say, a power bank of some sort? Bluetooth headphones exist sure, but not everyone wants to use bluetooth. The only reasonable way around this is if LeEco are so stubborn over this is to either include an adapter or include a second USB-C port.

One thing I want to put out there as well is the fact that another reason why LeEco did this is because they wanted to beat Apple to this. Imagine if Apple decided not to ditch the audio jack in the next iteration of the iPhone. I really hope they don't as not only would this NOT piss a load of people off (I have never owned an iDevice as writing this so it wouldn't affect me, at least not at first) but it would also catch LeEco with their pants down, making them look like a proper set of twits.

That being said, this would be around 150% as juicy as it normally would considering that not-too-long ago they lashed out at Apple for being an outdated company because they released a small flagship smartphone (LG did the same, but the difference here is that LG actually make decent phones.) I dislike Apple and I hate defending them but I have to stick up for them here, a small flagship is a brilliant idea considering that everyone is jumping on the 5.0''+ craze, leaving those who want a smaller phone either in the dust or treated as second-class citizens by forcing them to buy phones with budget specs. LeEco also brought up the fact that Apple aren't innovating, I'm not going to go into this, but if LeEco are implying that they're the top innovators then they're completely fucking delusional. Name one thing that LeEco has done that practically any other manufacturer hasn't and no, removing basic features and pissing off entire internet communities by doing so doesn't count.

Now I can see this audio jack being phased out eventually, and if more manufacturers jump onto this ludicrous bandwagon then the big brands will follow, there's very little we, the consumers, can do about that. With manufacturers already phasing it out, it'll happen eventually, maybe not for a year, maybe not for another two. We don't know. Right now it's only one relatively small manufacturer who's doing this, if Apple does decided to jump onto the bandwagon and phase out the jack in favour of lightning-port earphones (as the rumour goes) then that will be the beginning of the end for the audio jack and we don't like it, well there's not much we can do. We vote with our wallets, if you think a company's done well, buy it. Otherwise, if they've fucked up, avoid it.

8th May 2016 Update: I have decided to release a follow-up post to this rant when the iPhone 7 is released to see if LeEco really have gone and dun goofed with their frankly idiotic removal of the headphone jack (like I said, LeEco did this to beat Apple to the pie despite it possibly not even happening.) If Apple does include the 3.5mm in their iPhone, expect LeEco to be thoroughly humiliated in this follow-up and judging by the latest iPhone 7 leaks, it's really not looking good for LeEco. I'll go grab the popcorn because this could be juicy!

12th June 2016 Update: Very disappointed and saddened today to see how Motorola has now jumped onto the feature removal bandwagon with the Moto Z. Their only saving grace here is that they've left it in their mid-range Moto G models (which is more than what LeEco have done.) Still I'd like to know why they think this removal is so necessary because all I'm seeing is "let's remove this audio jack cos Apple might be doing and it's the trendy thing to do!" To make things worse, it looks like the iPhone 7's jack removal is a given. Although there is still one last glimmer of hope...

Iron's Fundamental Flaws

Lately, I've been looking at Iron and its horrendous development. It was supposed to be done in December but that sadly didn't happen. I have come to the conclusion that the game is flawed from the ground.

Combat in a platformer game is hard to do without having to adhere to strict limits, having you only being able to shoot in two directions is very restrictive and makes for some very poor combat. That being said there have been ways around this. I recently played a demo platform game called Butcher which by the way, is a brilliant game and is probably one of the few so-called "retro-style" games out there that actually pulls off the whole retro theme very well (major praise going out to THD for that.) Anyway, Butcher uses an eight-directional playing sprite while pulling off omni-directional shooting.

Another indie game, Cave Story also pulled off an enhanced platform combat system by opting for four-directional shooting (three-directional when on-ground.) I don't think I need to explain in much detail what Cave Story is - it was pretty much the Undertale of 2004 and is generally seen as the forefather of modern indie gaming.

Unfortunately, Iron can't employ such a system. This simply because I outsourced the sprites to a friend of mine, unfortunately I didn't take combat into account and I was left with bi-directional combat which is pretty shite in a platformer game. I could request for new sprites but this would take a lot of time and I want to get the game out as soon as possible, mid-July would be nice.

That's why I've made the decision to completely overhaul the game, genre and all into something new - an RPG game. This may even result in me using a whole other engine. Sadly no one pre-ordered Iron, however if people had pre-ordered it I would offer them an immediate refund given the circumstances. The Thallium pre-order bonus will remain for the time being.

I have decided to hide Iron's download page for the time being, so you won't be able to access it, unfortunately this will mean that Thallium can't be accessed either although I'll leave that page up. Project Plasma and Project Plasma Mobile will obviously remain up also.

I'll release updates as I go along but I hope that with these major changes, Iron's development will be far less messy than it is right now.

Thallium - https://archangelatom.itch.io/thallium (game currently inaccessible)
Project Plasma - https://archangelatom.itch.io/project-plasma
Project Plasma Mobile - https://archangelatom.itch.io/project-plasma-mobile

Going on a Short Hiatus

Back in January I put up a short blog post about how I was suffering from a burnout and how I felt disillusioned by the prospects of game development. My situation has not changed (it's got slightly worse if anything) I've decided to take a short break from game development for the time being. However the fact I'm suffering from a burnout isn't the only reason I'm going on hiatus. I'm at that point in my college year where there's an awful lot of work being given out to me and for obvious reasons it's important that I get this done. If I don't do the work I fail the course which means no qualification for me.

So I'll be using this hiatus to do any outstanding coursework and assignments that need to be done. On top of this, I'll also be spending this time on fulfilling other personal interests of mine. I will also be learning a few code languages as well (Python specifically, but others as well.)

In bullet points:

• I'll be keeping this blog active and will still post throughout my hiatus. (Just probably not about game development although sales may still be announced here.)
• I'll be keeping my Twitter account active and will still tweet things.
• Any sales I have planned in the interim will proceed as normal. (These will still be announced on this blog and on Twitter.)
• I'm not cancelling any currently ongoing game dev projects I have. (Iron for example)
• I will still look at and occasionally post on the itch.io community forum.
• No one has driven me to this - this is my own personal decision.
• Game development will hopefully resume by the end of May.

And on that note...

Leap Day Sale 2016!

One last post for the month I guess.

For one day only - Chaos Symbol is hosting a leap day sale with Project Plasma and my upcoming game, Iron, having their prices cut down by 29% for today only!

Project Plasma Mobile Has Been Discontinued

CHAOS 2, or Project Plasma Mobile, was a prototype Android-exclusive mobile game that was released on 12th April 2015. It was a pile of shit and it is now being discontinued as I feel my time is best devoted to bigger, better projects such as Iron.

The PC version of Project Plasma (CHAOS 1) is still in development, it's just Project Plasma Mobile that's been axed due to the fact that it's a prototype game that is quite honestly a trainwreck. Putting out any updates, whether they are to salvage the game from eternal shittiness or otherwise would be a waste of time not to mention the fact that it was clearly a prototype and not a full game per-se.

This is only to say that there will be no updates for it anymore, the game will still be available as a download if you're into trainwreck Android games.

Or if you want a vertical scrolling shooter game that's a bit more wholesome then the PC version is also available to buy with a free demo available.

Project Plasma: http://archangelatom.itch.io/project-plasma
Project Plasma Mobile: http://archangelatom.itch.io/project-plasma-mobile

Smartphone May Not Ship as Described (Rant)

So this is a rant that I had in the works for well over a year now, however I decided to completely rewrite what was going to be added so it would fit in-line with recent events and I also wish to throw some shade at a certain smartphone company as well. Originally Samsung was going to be the victim when I wrote this out just over a year ago but that wouldn't be fair, because there's an indie smartphone company that's just recently emerged who's just gone and fucked everyone over.

First off, let me get my point across - Stop making new mobile operating systems.

Stop making new mobile operating systems and improve upon existing ones.
Stop making new mobile operating systems and improve upon existing ones.
Stop making new mobile operating systems and improve upon existing ones.
Stop making new mobile operating systems and improve upon existing ones.

We clear? Good.

Why am I saying this? Because a new mobile operating means higher compatibility issues which in turn means higher costs for development unless you have the module already. It also means more time wasted on compatibility. This something I'll return to later in this post as I want to shift the focus to a whole new level of cuntery.

A robotics company called Turing Robotics Industries (TRI) is wanting to enter the smartphone market with what is simply called the Turing Phone which is being funded through crowdfunding. Now this phone is controverisal as it is due to its lack of USB port, headphone jack, and requiring users to use WiFi to transfer files between the device and the phone for security reasons which is heavily ironic as wireless transfer is less secure than using a solid wire. With all of this you can tell that these guys are going to go very far in the smartphone industry and will probably even topple the likes of Apple and Samsung... /sarcasm

Anyway, they've obviously decided to add to their controversy by swapping out one of the phone's most important features... the fucking operating system.

TRI decided to swap out the OS - Android to Sailfish. Now I've always been known as having an affinity towards Android, however I'm not an overfanatical fanboy and I do approach competing systems such as iOS with an open mind, but this particular change angers me somewhat simply because they're using an indie OS. I'm all for indie stuff, I'm an indie games developer for fuck's sake, but mobile operating systems is where a clear line is drawn. As I said earlier on more operating systems increases development costs due to having to buy software (such as GameMaker export modules) to export to these new systems. Not only that but it increases development time having to the games (or apps) compatible with the new system and even wastes bandwidth (for those on limited connections) as it means more files potentially need to be put up to cater for the diverse number of systems out there.

These new systems should be discouraged and I personally refuse to cater for these new indie mobile operating systems such as SailfishOS. I dislike Apple for their business practices and forcing developers to buy Macs to develop games for iOS, but if I got into a situation where I'd have to choose developing for SailfishOS or developing for iOS, then iOS would win. Yes SailfishOS is compatible with Android apps, but to what extent? Just because SailfishOS allows Android apps to work outside of their native environment in no way guarantees that they'll work well. Plus they'll need an app store to allow for Android app downloads and with no Google Play you're limited to either sideloading apps or a very limited app store.

The dumbfuckery doesn't even stop there...

This is how I'd react at this point if someone else had written this blog post and I was merely reading it.

So not only have TRI proven to be absolute complete and utter wazzocks in changing the product's spec and giving consumers something they didn't pay for, but they've also gone and mislead their consumers with this statement. Deception or dumbfuckery? You decide.

Here's a part of their latest statement regarding the phone's change to Failfish... whoops sorry, SailfishOS.

Sailfish OS runs exceptionally fast on the Turing. You will not have to worry about performance issues with Turing’s Snapdragon 801 because Sailfish OS has been optimized to run fast on your Turing Phone. The Turing Phone will still be able to run Android Apps on the Sailfish OS without issue. An Android application store will be available for you to download your favorite apps.
The Sailfish OS is an evolved continuation of the Linux MeeGo OS previously developed by an alliance of Nokia and Intel. MeeGo mobile software platform was created through the merging of Moblin and the Maemo OS originally developed by Nokia.
This essentially means you have one of the world’s fastest mobile device running the fastest mobile OS with the capability of running your favorite apps in a secure environment.

The above statement was taken from this Android Authority article. You can read and cringe at the full statement there. Notice that the guys over at Android Authority aren't too happy with the change either and have also pointed out that TRI's statement is full of bullshit.

Phandroid, another Android news site, also proceeded to rip TRI to shreds for this bullshit decision.

Well fucking said Phandroid. This screenshot of their article pretty much summarises what I'm trying to get across here.

First off "SailfishOS runs exceptionally fast on the Turing." Well this I can't comment on as I haven't seen it but the part that gets me when they go ahead and say the device has a Snapdragon 801, a smartphone that don't get me wrong - is still very much a capable chip and was originally designed for flagship devices and has seen airtime on such devices such as the Sony Xperia Z3 and Samsung Galaxy S5, but then they go ahead and say that the SD801 makes the phone the world's fastest.

Right... so they're using a two year old chip that's been superceded by not one, not two, not even three, or four, or even five, but six superior chipsets (SD650, SD652, SD805, SD808, SD810, SD820.) All of those chips have performance that smashes the two year old SD801's performance and that's not even taking into account competition from rival chipset manufacturers such as MediaTek, Samsung (Exynos,) and Intel (yes they make mobile chips too.) The fact that they're claiming that a Snapdragon 801 powered phone is the fastest around when it's two years old and is a 32-bit in the era of 64-bit devices is just idiocy and if you have the balls or lack-of-brain-cells to make such a statement then you shouldn't be in the smartphone industry, or any tech industry for that matter.

The fact that TRI have played around with consumers' money and made spec changes and have had bare fallacies published is the embodiment as to why I treat crowdfunding with extreme caution. Once you've put your money on the table, there's no way you're getting that back unless the project falls short of its goal. People paid good money to make sure that this phone saw the light of day, and now TRI have made it so that the consumers will get something pretty different to what they paid for. I'm fairly sure this is the kind of shit that can be grounds for a dispute and refund through PayPal's dispute system.

When TRI did this they basically said to their backers "haha we've got your money and we're gonna change the spec sheet and give you something different and there's absolutely fuck all you can do about it!"

Shame on you TRI. That's all I have to say.