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Pumice seems most plausible.

We obtained worldwide elevation data from NOAA, for our BattleCell land conquest game. (a super-evolved version of Risk) Game coordinates for Sandy Island are: -1911,15956

Sure enough, the NOAA data shows an elevation of 1 meter, for the entire Sandy Point island.

Possibly, the island was a dynamically generated object, based on the original NOAA elevation data. What else, besides pumice could generate such readings?

http://battlecell.com

http://battlecell.com

We developed a web based game BattleCell that uses Ajax/CSS instead of Flash for all the heavy lifting. We discover at least one new bug in the IE rendering engine every month.

Since this article is about IE9: have you tried it in IE9? Did it work there?

We developed a web based game BattleCell that uses Ajax/CSS instead of Flash for all the heavy lifting. We discover at least one new bug in the IE rendering engine every month. Our pile of IE bugs in the back room that we have to track every time we develop a new feature is testament to the dread with which we view this new hardware-based rendering engine. We know what we're doing.

Just last week, we learned that once you have a stack of enough semi-transparent layers (combination of PNGs with alpha channels coupled with DIVs with various opacity CSS settings), IE fails to render the top-most layers. This doesn't happen after 20-30 layers. This happens after 5-7 layers. At first we thought our code was faulty, until we realized that scrolling down such a page with multiple layers will cause text that was previously "invisible" to suddenly be rendered in its specified color... as we kept scrolling, the text would then disappear again. You get the idea.

Obviously, this all works flawlessly in Safari, Chrome, Opera. For IE, we get to re-architect all sorts of work-arounds --a house built on sand.

You mean like BattleCell? Offensive/defensive military strength of each cell depends on troop counts as well as altitude differences between cells. (Yes, we used STRM data to acquire our altitudes.)

Why not Risk on Google Maps instead? Something like BattleCell ? It should have:

1. Troops that travel (of course)
2. Ships that can attack by sea (new)
3. Topographic component (altitude matters in a battle)
4. Instant Messaging (language translation?)
5. Allies (allies are important... maybe they can give me stuff?)

It would have to be all AJAX. Flash slows everything down. Plus, Google Maps API is a great AJAX implementation anyhow. The graphics would have to be decent. It can't look like a web page... should look like a console instead... something like Starcraft. That would work.

Ballistic Missiles could make things interesting too. That would be a new concept. But, it would have to be something similar to Scorched Earth that requires players to refine their projectile settings. Maybe make things interesting depending on the warhead used?

Then, one guy can conquer the whole planet... I wonder how that would compare to Monopoly...

Why not Risk on Google Maps instead? Something like BattleCell? For example:
1. Move troops
2. Attack via ship
3. Nuke booby trap cells
4. Allies. (share troops?)
5. Instant Messaging (language translation?)

No flash, of course. That slows everything down. All AJAX instead, which should work nice with the Google Maps API. It has to have decent graphics... so it doesn't look like a web page. Might be a pain to do right in Internet Explorer though.

Something like ICBMs might make things more interesting. Letting people interact from a distance. Maybe something like Scorched Earth; let the player refine the settings to hit their desired target?

Curious to see how this Monopoly will stack up.

...and it will continue to fall until IE can get its act together. Browsers have evolved far past where they just need to render pretty CSS pages properly.

IE 8's Javascript may be faster, but it's still broken. When coupled with its garbage-quality garbage collector, this just means modern sites that use things like jQuery and Prototype crash sooner. IE has had trouble with their garbage for years now: JScript Memory Leaks, QuirksBlog: IE 7 and Javascript

Now this may all seem trivial to those who visit traditional sites and regularly restart their IE, but sites such as BattleCell can cause memory starvation issues within 30 minutes or less on IE.

Some people are initially surprised when we tell them to use any browser other than IE. Though, after a few months, their own conclusions of what this all means creates an effort barrier that Microsoft must overcome in order to bring people back...

We're doing this with BattleCell. (Risk on Google maps for millions of players)

Slashdot Submission

There are many variations, but the weather makes a good example. Say that you have cells in Florida. Now, suppose that the real-world Florida gets hit with a hurricane. Naturally, production rates of your cells in Florida will suffer.

Obviously, news can be applied in many ways to keep things interesting.