Design Synthesis - structure.function.relation

Dawn of New Age

2009-11-10T22:52:00.000-08:00

So Dragon Age is really, really good.

But I've run into my first major gripe and it has nothing at all to do with gameplay.

EA uses authentication servers to validate your DLC. Which means that you must be logged in to play on a game with DLC active. Which means that if your save happens to have DLC content in it, then you can't play if you can't log in.

The problem is that the game says I'm logged in. I've even logged out and back in again, several times. Yet it still refuses to register the connection and won't let me play. I will repeat that: I cannot currently play a game that I spent seventy dollars on because of a server issue.

I'd say that this sort of problem is a herald of the future, but it's more like an annoyance of the present. Every company likes this sort of solution to their perceived problems. The downside is that they've apparently released a product that can suddenly not work.

In ten years will anyone be able to play a game from this generation?

The Old Republic is New Again

2009-08-24T19:07:00.000-07:00

There is a developer walkthrough up concerning the new Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic. At this point for every positive I can see some big negatives:

1. Fully voice-acted. Sounds great, until you realize that rolling out new content is going to be prohibitively expensive. Instead of a game designer submitting ten new quests it's going to be one quest with 90% of the budget immediately tied up in hiring voice actors, processing the sound files, linking them, lipsyncing them and having playtesters run through again and again. What's that? Multiple languages? Take your budget and multiply it by ten. Also, take your normal dev time and multiply that by ten - There's your new delivery date.

2. All the same applies when it comes to branching dialogue and their associated story changes. Every branch requires twice the amount of work. A quest with just four short branches could more than double the amount of work required. Then keep in mind that as an MMO players can't simply reload to see the changes, so you are working harder to deliver the same amount of content as any other MMO. There are always alts, but once the FAQs come out you're bound to be stuck with a lot of implemented branches that nobody ever takes because they aren't seen as advantageous.

3. Everyone's a hero. Thus far, however, there has been almost no word on how grouping will work. The walkthrough shows a two-player scenario called a Flashpoint, but why not spend those millions on a flashy co-op game that doesn't have to bother with the associated MMO overhead? So far they are staying away from the usual hard roles and I definitely like that but they haven't dealt with incentivizing groups. The Star Wars mythos is about heroes who want to be on their own getting pushed together against difficult odds and so far we've seen nothing about that.

4. In the aforementioned Flashpoint there were dialogue branches. It seemed that at different points the two players were each allowed to make choices. This feels more like a tabletop role-playing game - you can't always rely on the other players to do what you would and that can generate some nice dramatic conflict. Expect this to be a very hard sell, though. Game players, especially in the MMO realm, can be a controlling bunch and asking them to let someone else guide their play experience isn't going to sit well. Also, what would happen in a larger group? Will they have to shut people out of making choices?

5. Space combat? This came far too late in the dev cycle of the original Star Wars MMO. It's an integral part of the Star Wars experience. We've seen nothing so far, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

6. Even if they pull this off they're setting the bar so high that budgets are going to skyrocket further, which means even fewer chances for any kind of novel content. I would say that a normal MMO budget including marketing and infrastructure requires at least a 200 million dollar startup. That could fund a good 10-15 AAA titles on a next-gen system. Think of what 200 indie developers could do with a million bucks apiece?

If this thing succeeds it will be amazing. If it manages longevity I'll be even more surprised; Strong central narrative structures are pretty much the epitome of just-keep-playing MMO feedback loops. If they can deliver any kind of content updates in a timely fashion I'll be absolutely blown away.

Vista Nonsense

2008-06-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in awhile, and now I'm only posting on the off-chance that someone still looks at this blog from time to time.

My copy of Windows keeps pestering me to install Windows Vista. I'm assuming that I have some kind of evaluation copy, but it doesn't say that anywhere. I put in a legitimate key and it says it has been activated successfully but then it just displays the old key and pesters me. I have an installation disc for Home Premium, but the only option it gives me is to erase everything and do a fresh install. Fuck you, if I wanted to do that I would have done it long ago.

I'm sure that's what I'll end up doing anyway. Trying vainly to back up everything knowing that I'm going to lose a ton of data that I don't even really think about anymore. Preferences, website history, saved passwords, the works. And of course I have no idea if the version I end up installing will actually work or if it will just continue to pester me with bullshit about upgrading. Windows help does nothing and best of all they want you to pay them for even basic support.

At this point I'm almost completely done with Windows. I may just put it on there for the most minimum game support, then use some flavor of Linux for everything else. The fact that they even have some weird kind of time-limited license is bad enough, but the fact that there is no really good explanation for how to upgrade is inexcusable. I should be able to put in my legitimate key, it downloads some updates and I'm done, but instead it wants me to start from scratch.

Total horseshit.

Addendum to Up a Level

2008-02-21T18:24:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to start a series of programming books called "What the fuck does this mean?"

I will be a co-author.

I will sit in a room with an expert programmer. I will hand them a basic tutorial question and they will write out a small response. Then they will hand it back to me.

Then I will scream "What the fuck does this mean?" And I'll hand it back to them.

They will re-write it. And hand it back to me. And I'll scream again. This will continue until I'm satisfied that what they have handed me is a coherent sentence and not some recursive brain-melting word problem.

The whole book will be written in this manner.

I may have to escalate to electric shocks during the process.

Up a Level

2008-02-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

I think I've figured out that my difficulty with programming isn't the programming language itself, it's the specific syntax used to describe the language.

Every language builds up its own specialized syntax. Even when there are common terms the implementation of those terms can vary wildly.

I'm looking at Python again. Figured I'd give it another go. Fine.

This, for example, is mostly gibberish to me:

"The actual parameters (arguments) to a function call are introduced in the local symbol table of the called function when it is called; thus, arguments are passed using call by value (where the value is always an object reference, not the value of the object).

When a function calls another function, a new local symbol table is created for that call. A function definition introduces the function name in the current symbol table. The value of the function name has a type that is recognized by the interpreter as a user-defined function. This value can be assigned to another name which can then also be used as a function. This serves as a general renaming mechanism."

The tutorial hasn't mentioned local symbol tables. Call by value hardly makes sense since they haven't explained anything about an object reference. It's useless to me.

And this kind of shit is everywhere in "basic" tutorials. None of this syntax is the same in any programming reference I've ever seen. It even changes when you start talking about language variants or special extensions or "wrappers," whatever the fuck those are.

Not to mention that most beginner tutorials in Python do everything through the interpreter. This is, I guess, supposed to make things easier. But if you try to put the same stuff into an IDE text panel and then Run it from there, none of the examples work properly. Variables aren't initialized or you can't return a result from something something. No explanations whatsoever.

The tutorial starts so easy, too. Here is arithmetic. Here is a while loop. Oh, now here are twenty kinds of functions that won't work outside of the interpreter. No, we aren't going to explain any of the specific terms in use.

This is pretty much every programming tutorial I've ever read. It's like going to Cambodia thinking you have at least a conversational grasp of the language and suddenly you're confronted with a few thousand local dialects that sound almost nothing alike.

Bleh.

Request

2008-02-18T00:06:00.000-08:00

Can any of my older/more learned readers recall the names of any of those classic programming magazines? The kind of thing that would feature little snippets of BASIC code and simple algorithms. I'm still toying with roguelike stuff and it's tough to get a grasp on things. There are a few reasons for this:

1. The old code is in very old languages. Not only can they be very hard to understand but the implementation may be so vastly different that it won't be useful with a newer language.
2. The newer/maintained code has grown incredibly complex and fragmented. You have to understand every single part if you want to extract even one piece of it.
3. Some of the really inventive, new stuff isn't open-source. Both Incursion (which has a very robust implementation of the d20 SRD in it) and Dwarf Fortress (which is mind-boggling) are closed-source with no apparent plans to open-source. I don't think Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is open-source, either.

Any suggestions?

Avoiding Homework

2008-02-17T12:52:00.001-08:00

I've got homework to avoid, so I'm going to suggest some answers to a question posed by Unfettered Blather and backed up over at Man Bytes Blog.

The question at hand is: "Now, please explain to me why future weapons will have less options than weapons available today?"

With pleasure.

1. Technology implementation is not consistent across any culture. The things we use everyday do not correlate with the most advanced tech. In addition, often the most advanced tech can only be used at great expense and only rarely. Why do most firearms still use combustion technology that has been around for at least 700 years? Why isn't caseless ammo standard? It isn't a question of can you implement a technology, but can you mass-produce it, will it be reliable and can it be made for least cost (both labor and materials)?

2. What does Faster-than-light travel have to do with military weaponry? Seriously. Our submarines use nuclear reactors that allow them to stay submerged for months at a time, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the grunt in the field. Not only is implementation not consistent, but neither is advancement. There are often limits on knowledge that are not immediately apparent.

Most military organizations are conservative when it comes to changing tactics or adopting new machines. Patton was laughed at for championing the usefulness of the tank in World War I, and yet it became a pivotal weapon in the next World War.

3. All those fancy attachments don't necessarily make the weapon better.
Consider the M203 grenade launcher attachment for the M-16. First, you can't fire the rifle when the grenade launcher is attached. This is because it uses the barrel as a place to build up gas pressure to launch the round. Second, you have to reload after every shot and, even though it's a grenade, you can still miss. Third, you need extra training to use it and even more training to use it well. The M203 uses a leaf sight, which is only accurate if you know what you're doing, and even then you have to account for wind, recoil and other battlefield conditions.

Think about this: The M16A1 service rifle had the capability to go fully-automatic. The current service rifle, the M16A2, does not. This is because allowing full auto led to grunts spraying rounds without regard to where they went. It wasted ammo, weapons deteriorated faster and was less effective in combat. This is one of those clear-cut instances where fewer options actually resulted in greater combat efficiency.

4. In addition to specialized training, attachments require their own special maintenance. Yes, let's give everyone a laser sight. How long do you think that's going to last, crammed into a grunt's pack with sand and dirt and an entrenching tool, thrown into the back of a Humvee and dragged along the ground as the grunt low crawls into position? An improperly maintained and calibrated scope is less useful than half-decent iron sights. And if you can count on anything, it's that any equipment you send into the field will not be properly maintained or calibrated.

Here's a funny story. The Marine Corps was looking for a new pack to replace the ALICE pack, a canvas bag with a metal frame that's been used in one form or another since the 1970s. So a company came up with a super-advanced pack that was ultra-light and waterproof and modular with a durable plastic frame. The pack went through the company's own rigorous testing and then it was released to select infantry units.

The damn thing fell apart. The grunts rejected it 100%. The vaunted super-tough material ripped in a day's time after normal field punishment. The plastic frame snapped. The modular pieces got lost all the time. Despite using "advanced" technology, it was worthless.

5. The two most important characteristics an infantry weapon needs during a ground invasion are durability and ease-of-use. The weapon shouldn't break and any idiot should be able to get steel near a target. Every time you add an extra function to the weapon you make it harder to maintain and more difficult to use.

6. Fancy toys don't beat unit cohesion, smart tactics and solid weaponry. Look at our current state of affairs in Iraq. We have plenty of fancy equipment at our disposal and it doesn't matter. Even if we outfit every grunt with a computerized tactical HUD, auto-targeting weapons, thermal scanners, etc., it wouldn't do a damn thing against an IED stuffed into a coffee can.

So the short answer is: Maybe those options exist but aren't worth the negative factors of implementing them.

Or it could be game balance, I guess.

---

As a small illustration of my point, Rainbow Six Vegas has lots of cool options for each weapon. There's thermal vision, different kinds of scopes, silencers, firing modes and laser sights. Every time I'm in a firefight I have to take the time to sort through all the options available while I'm responding to real-time threats. For every time one of those fancy doodads is useful there's another time when it ruins the assault.

The laser sights tip off the enemy to your location. The 6x scope limits your vision. The thermal vision picks up all hot objects in the area. Full-auto has uncontrollable recoil.

Which means that there are plenty of times that I try to get all fancy when just shooting from the hip or going to iron sights would more than suffice.

I end up at the Reload Last Checkpoint screen a lot.

The Ground Went Sour

2008-02-17T12:41:00.000-08:00

This falls under the category of Ancient Pointless Trivia.

The movie "Pet Semetary" isn't horrible for a Stephen King adaptation. In other words, it's not a good movie but it's not the worst, either.

But the setup is terrible. This guy moves into a house in the country. There is a road nearby. Big rigs zoom down this road day and night.

Why didn't he notice that when he was looking to move into the house? Why doesn't he build a fence? Why doesn't he put a leash on the cat? Why doesn't he put a leash on his child? Why did he move into such a dangerous house anyway? Why can't he get a county ordinance passed to stop the trucks? Has Stephen King never heard or Business routes?

I know, I know, there wouldn't be a story without trucks barreling down the road. Not to mention that Stephen King and ham-handed plots are pretty much synonymous.

This one just feels a little sloppier than others.

Still, it's not the worst Stephen King story with murderous trucks. That honor goes to "Maximum Overdrive."

The Perils of the Digital Age

2008-02-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

One of the big drawbacks of companies merging is that suddenly you have one less way to recover your account should something go wrong.

Last year my Yahoo account suddenly rejected my password, the password I've had for years. The auto-sign in would show me mail going to my account but it wouldn't accept the password. Yahoo wanted every single last bit of information from when I opened the account, over ten years ago. Fuck them.

Well tonight I wanted to get into my Flickr account. Oh, whoops, Yahoo merged with them, so I can't access that, either. I can no longer access pictures of myself online. I hate these people. All the correspondence to Yahoo basically ends with, "Sorry, but we need information you entered ten years ago which, even if it were accurate, you probably don't remember anyway, like what your zip code was when you registered."

If anyone wants to take a crack at hacking my yahoo or flickr account, the account name is Thothanon. The password is anybody's guess.

---

I guess the real lesson in this is that using the internet for things that are even mildly important is a very stupid thing to do unless the service you are using has a real physical location. Otherwise you'll get cut-and-pasted answers back from customer service reps who barely even read your complaint. They won't be able to deviate from the company line even if you're willing to send them a photocopy of your ID and birth certificate.

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Update: This is actually kind of funny. Yahoo must have closed my account or something, because it no longer recognizes my account name. But the Flickr account still exists. The only way to sign in is with a Yahoo ID that no longer exists. I hate the fucking internet sometimes.

What?

2008-02-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

I just saw a commercial for Lost Odyssey with "White Rabbit" playing throughout.

It's fucking horrifying and probably the weirdest attempt to create an association between two completely different media creations I've ever witnessed.

Ron Pall

2008-01-22T21:16:00.000-08:00

Is it a requirement that the field of Presidential candidates must always include a third-tier wacko?

I speak, of course, about Ron Paul, he who has galvanized a motley procession of internet glibertarians, gold-standard tin-foil-hatters, colloidal silverfish and neo-paleoconservatives.

---

There is literally nothing about him that isn't batshit insanity masked by the most reasonable facade. He's a snake oil salesman peddling cyanide. Just go to THOMAS and check out his bill sponsorship.

He wants to repeal the estate tax. He wants to make it so that children born to non-citizens won't be citizens themselves. He wants to put into law that human life begins at conception. He wants to bar the Federal government from putting any funds at all toward family planning, which means Planned Parenthood would be completely gone (instead of just underfunded and gutted, like all social programs after Reagan's rape of The Great Society).

He wants to get the US out of the United Nations, because if there's one thing he learned from Bush's shitty foreign policy it's that the US needs to isolate itself from the world even more. He wants to "restore the second amendment rights of all Americans," which means that he doesn't want the government to distinguish between automatic weapons made for killing lots of people and sports rifles, and he doesn't want laws about child safety locks or safe storage. Oh, and you should be allowed to carry your Gatling gun into National Parks, goddammit. Also, no gun-free school zones; as long as the children are packing heat, they'll be fine.

Jesus, I can go on. He introduced a bill that would've helped out with his Colloidal Silver scam by making it so that if you claim your bullshit cures people then the FDA can't label it a drug unless there is no scientific evidence supporting it. Like you can't find a crackpot doctor to sign off on your bleach-flavored boner pills.

He doesn't want any Federal funds going toward any universal health screening program. Offshore drilling. Canceling fuel taxes when the prices reach a certain amount, thereby "promoting free trade," also known as "kickbacks to Big Oil."

He wants the President to have the authority to issue letters of marque and reprisal against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. If you don't know what that means, he wants the President of the United States to have the authority to pay pirates and mercenaries to capture persons and property affiliated with bin Laden or al Qaeda. I'm guessing the burden of proof wouldn't be on the mercenaries.

Fuck this guy. For every reasonable Puppies Are Cute Act he co-sponsors, there are three of his own pet projects that read like Sean Hannity's dream journal.

---

Look, just read this piece from Reason magazine. It concerns newsletters that bore Ron Paul's name and were published with his full knowledge and which he of course disavows. Smart, because the content is no better than the screeds put out by Stormfront.

I know he says he didn't approve the writing. Either he is lying or he's a fucking moron. Maybe both. It's very possible Lew Rockwell, a good buddy of Mr. Paul, actually did the writing, which doesn't make things any better. Lew Rockwell's a sanctimonious little shit, and just the type of guy to still use the term "comsymp" in 1991 (when referring to Martin Luther King, natch).

Vote for who you want. But don't fucking try to convince me that Ron Paul has anything in common with the left-wing just because he's up for legalizing marijuana and doesn't trust the government. He's pretty much a textbook example of a reactionary states-rights Dixiecrat with just a hint of Ayn Rand's anal-fixation philosophy.

Surfing With the Alien

2008-01-19T06:26:00.000-08:00

Audiosurf just may be the best rhythm game ever created.

Go to the site and sign up for the beta. Trust me.

As a game it has a mix of both timing and puzzle challenges, your speed is determined by the music tempo, you collect colored blocks that fill gauges and you try to grab three blocks of the same color (in a column or row).

The design is simple yet clever, with very small tweaks altering the gameplay significantly. Not only that, but they had the foresight to include a casual mode, where the puzzle element is gone and you merely have to ride along and collect blocks - or just ride along, if the mood strikes.

This game would be perfect for the iPod.

Dead Waning

2008-01-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

I'm glad I waited at least a year before purchasing the 360. It has a respectable catalog and the early titles are already released as Greatest Hits, putting them in the 25 dollar range.

I tried out Dead Rising and it is an example of how some of the best core gameplay can be completely marred by the worst design decisions.

Let me count the ways:

1. Timed fetch quests that culminate in escort quests. I decided I wouldn't bother rescuing any more people after I spent a half hour clearing a path for this lady only to have three things completely botch my progress.

A) Followers have to be a certain number of steps before they will follow you through load doors but the game doesn't tell you if they aren't close enough, B) if you don't get them through the door and then go back to the previous room their position will "reset" somewhere near the middle of the map instead of where you fucking left them and C) I hit a cutscene trigger as soon as I entered the door, but apparently zombies are spawned in based on time because when I went back the path I had cleared was entirely overrun.

2. Unblockable attacks. Zombies will initiate close up attacks. Sometimes you can shake them off, but you will always lose at least one health point. There is no 100% way to detect this, since the distance varies from zombie to zombie. You start with four health points. Whee. Most bosses have attacks that are unblockable and aren't interrupted by your attacks - not even when you slam a sledgehammer onto their heads.

3. The game is based around iteration but without saving any of your game progress. What this means is that you are expected to do a few "dry runs" where you level up your guy a lot and then you play the game "for real". Fuck that. The quests give you the most leveling points and most of them are terrible, so you're basically supposed to do horrible quests over and over again before you arrive at an optimal experience.

4. You'd think that killing zombies using found objects is perfect for core gameplay. Apparently the designers of Dead Rising thought it better to give you some hackneyed mystery plot where you track down zany characters. The zombie killing ends up being tangential because of the stupid time limits to get to the next mission.

5. Horrible characters. Across the board some of the worst, most insipid personalities brought to life by jerky animation and atrocious voice acting.

6. At a certain point in the game the large center park area will spawn a jeep with a .50 cal mounted on the back, containing three violent militia members. So instead of a nice wide open space to kill zombies it's now an area you have to run through as fast as you can while dodging psychopaths. Yes you can kill them but they respawn.

7. When Otis calls you on the walkie-talkie to tell you about missions, you can't fight. Even if you are surrounded by zombies. You have to run around like an idiot until he goes through his whole spiel.

The whole game is shot through with horrible design decisions. I keep trying to get psyched about picking it back up but playing it feels like an actual chore.

---

The worst thing about Dead Rising is that it could be a great game.

I would center the game around an extended siege, say, a week. You and several other survivors are trapped in a warehouse that is constantly under attack. The gameplay has two parts: fending off assaults and going into the mall to scavenge for needed supplies. The original game already has the player going into stores to grab new weapons/clothes, so wrap this into the core gameplay.

Maybe you'd be tasked with finding a first aid station to raid for medical supplies. Along the way you find a hardware store and pick up nails, which will help you restore some of the barricades.

In Dead Rising zombies are set dressing, a diversion while you deal with the annoyances of the main game.

It's hard to hope for a sequel when the original is such a mess.

Merits a Look

2008-01-02T17:52:00.000-08:00

I'm addicted to a simple, fun roguelike called Meritous.

The rooms appear to be generated fractally. On my current game there are 3000 of them. Part of the fun is going room to room and watching the larger pattern appear on the map.

It's not quite a one-button game but it's close. You move with arrow keys. When you hold down the spacebar you generate a psychic charge - when you let go the charge radiates in a circle from you.

The charge will destroy enemies and their projectiles. You go room to room, destroy enemies with your psychic charge and collect psi crystals.

Those crystals are used to upgrade your shield and charge.

The game is largely about movement and timing, dodging shots in order to build up a more powerful charge. Some enemies will only be destroyed by a powerful blast of psi power.

You'll be surprised at the depth to the system. I think it's genius that extra functionality is contained inside objects - the upgrade machines, teleports, save points. The primary verbs never change, you don't have to worry about anything but the core gameplay and proper assessment of your enemies.

Give it a try. Even the graphics are a delight.

Excuses

2008-01-02T17:31:00.000-08:00

Every time I miss the Round Table I always have some kind of dumb excuse.

Well, this time I have a real reason. I wanted to write a post. I tried to write a post.

But I already wrote it.

I wrote it June 19, 2005.

I spent a long time researching that post and a long time writing it. It was difficult, largely because I'm not overly familiar with the subject. I don't hesitate to say that I think it's one of the better pieces I've written on this now-and-then-serious blog.

I got exactly zero responses to it. Nothing. No e-mails. No comments, and I have open commenting. The post is even in my sidebar.

I didn't really feel right asking to have it included in the Round Table, but I offer it up again in case anyone wants to know what I thought two and a half years ago.

Hope it holds up.

Crysiswatch: Day Three

2007-12-21T17:47:00.000-08:00

The NVIDIA Forceware update released yesterday seemed to solve the worst of the problems, even though I still get a bad disc read error the first time I try to launch the game (the second attempt always works).

Until I got the Blue Screen of Death.

This game is doing everything it can to halt my forward progress. At this point I feel like maybe if I don't finish this game the world will end, that a malevolent force is ensuring my frustration by casting error incantations at my processor and video cards.

I will gather my strength by playing something that works, like Team Fortress 2.

Then once more into the breach.

Artificial Intelligence, Real Stupid

2007-12-20T21:38:00.001-08:00

Crytek has a job opening for a Senior AI Programmer.

Please, someone, someone very good, apply for this position. Hell, someone apply who has at least heard of AI, because the developers at Crytek don't know shit.

Nearly three years ago I wrote about Far Cry's horrible AI. It has gotten worse.

Not only are the dreaded player-seeking helicopters back, but there are several new tricks that basically amount to cheating. Koreans who can take three rifle shots to the face and at least seven to the body. Fifty cal machineguns with small armor plates that magically deflect bullets and even goddamn direct grenade hits.

There was the time I launched a fucking rocket into a sniper tower, blowing its roof off, and both of the snipers in it survived.

Or the time I very cautiously approached a position and thoroughly scouted the area. Completely clear. Then I got into a jeep. My radar lit up with three enemies in a circle around me. Yes, enemies spawn in out of thin air. These are not augmented sci-fantasy enemies with crazy powers - these are just grunts that apparently slide through dimensional folds.

When they aren't killing you over and over again, the enemies are outrageously dumb. They drive into obstacles. The boat drivers will putter around once their gunners have been killed, not even attempting to fight. When you cloak and decloak, most of the time enemies won't look at your last known position. Instead they'll just forget you were there and get distracted by some other shiny object.

I watched a tank turn its gun toward me. I cloaked. The turret swung back to the allied tanks. I uncloaked. Turret came back toward me. Cloaked. Turret swung away. Satchel charge, BOOM. Dumb.

It's pretty clear that the AI wasn't even touched between Far Cry and Crysis. The game's idea of challenge is waves of hard-to-kill enemies. And I've already seen instances of being out of range of the health tracking, so an enemy you're sniping runs around being shot and taking no damage at all.

---

So I got Crysis working for a little bit (obviously). Now it just freezes twenty minutes into a playsession.

Jesus what a shit game.

Crysis

2007-12-19T20:47:00.000-08:00

Crysis would be a great shooter.

If it weren't the buggiest piece of shit I've ever tried to run. Settings don't seem to matter. Display drivers don't matter. I even installed the RC1 beta Vista SP.

First it wouldn't read the disk.

Then it would crash trying to load saves.

Then it would shut off my mouse and keyboard.

Then objective updating completely bugged out.

DirectX 9 or 10, it doesn't matter. Low, High, Very High settings, it doesn't matter. I even turned on single processor affinity, which seemed to help things until it triggered a huge memory leak.

This thing is a buggy piece of shit on a computer pretty much designed to run a game of its kind: Core 2 duo, dual 8800s, 4 gigs of RAM.

When it runs, it looks great and runs fast. The gameplay is a sleeker iteration of Far Cry, which is also a blast. It's not quite a sandbox game, but you have a larger array of tactical options available at any one time.

But it has more major bugs than I've encountered in any game, ever. They might patch it soon, but I'm likely to uninstall it in the meantime.

*Sigh* Back to The Witcher, I suppose. Which is a post for another time.

Stasis

2007-12-06T20:17:00.000-08:00

If I'm reading this correctly, the big plan to help out people who are in danger of losing their homes is:

1. Pretend the plan will cover a large number of people.
2. Make the terms so specific that a much smaller number of people will benefit.
3. Make sure that the poorest people, i.e., those who would most benefit from the plan, are excluded from the terms.
4. Ensure that the plan doesn't actually do anything except delay the inevitable accounting in the hopes that a miracle will occur between now and the reset date.
5. Meet with the same fuckers who issued the subprime loans in order to devise a way to completely shift responsibility onto consumers - even though the current problems are endemic to the cash-grab business practices of the loan industry, which just happened to be de-regulated.
This totally makes sense.

---

It grows increasingly difficult for me to moderate my political feelings. Every time I try and convince myself that Republicans just have different ideas for running the government, it basically comes out that they'd much rather dismantle the government, sell off everything that isn't nailed down and roll back social progress to a feudal system.

Every plan they come up with is pretty much asking Big Business what would help the bottom line.

Since they've come to power the Republicans have done everything they can to completely erase the Great Society. Ronald Reagan sliced off its limbs and Cheney/Bush have been skullfucking its corpse.

---

Speaking of Cheney . . .

But his implication was clear: When asked if these men had lost their spines, he responded, “They are not carrying the big sticks I would have expected.”

This is really easy to understand, let me explain the context.

It's perfectly coherent when you understand that Cheney is pretty much the biggest dick in the known Universe.

---

The above news article about our crooked soul of a Vice President is actually quite relevant considering this month's Round Table. Cheney is making the argument that a woman, Nancy Pelosi, in a position of leadership in the House is emasculating for male Representatives. Poor guys.

Really, our world is so infused with the stench of sexism that the Vice President is threatened by a female Speaker of the House.

We really should geld all male politicians.

Video Games Versus Art - Part One Billion

2007-12-06T19:15:00.000-08:00

Videogames = Not Art.

A man dipping bugs in paint and then using light to manipulate their scurrying over a painted background = Art.

Devil is in the Details

2007-12-06T14:43:00.000-08:00

I think I'm broad-minded enough to give Mitt Romney a little leeway for his religion. There are some good sentiments in his most recent speech. I don't expect him to not speak to his own religious experience.

Then there's this:

"We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust."

No we aren't. No we don't.

I realize it can be hard to pander to Christians and discuss the founding documents of our nation. The best we've got is "Nature and Nature's God" or maybe "Creator", but those are so non-specific. "Divine Providence" might just end up confusing people. That's it in the Declaration of Independence.

The Constitution has even slimmer pickings. Basically "no religious tests" and "no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

It's almost as if the Founders knew what they were doing.

---

I don't even want to get started on what the sentence "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom" might possibly mean or portend or imply.

Honestly, I'd just like a guarantee from a candidate that they won't listen to God if He says something like, "Go and invade Iraq, er, liberate the Iraqis." Let's face it, God's a shitty strategist. He sent His people against Jerusalem without any siege equipment.

Procedural

2007-12-03T18:23:00.000-08:00

This is a bit old (May of this year), but I don't remember seeing anything about it.

The folks at Introversion, makers of the most delightfully stylish and interesting little games, have got another one lined up. A big one. No real clue what it's about.

But there are some tantalizing clues.

Go read this topic. Watch the video. See a city take shape before your eyes utilizing very simple rules that generate a chaotic result.

---

In about two minutes half of the game Crackdown has been created, with buildings you can actually enter.

Well, okay, not quite half.

Sandbox games utilize simple rules to create complex chains of interesting gameplay. The real bottleneck is creation of assets. If you begin finding ways to create rules that govern the content then you're a step toward simulating the complexity that human designers generate.

I don't think designers will ever be replaceable (I hope not), but I am always looking forward to better tools that allow tremendous flexibility with simple inputs.

Right now game creation tools are crude, the equivalent of hand-cranked film cameras. Everything has to be cut together piece by piece, lit only by candlelight; the medium on which we present things tenuous and prone to error.

To Search Again

2007-12-02T11:34:00.000-08:00

If you're really interested in the latest game-violence/real-world violence causation study beyond just skimming the press article, you may as well go to the website of one of the principal authors, Brad J. Bushman.

Dr. Bushman helpfully allows the download of almost all of his peer-reviewed articles. I've snagged three of them that focus on videogames and will do my layman's best to go over them when I have the time.

Homework never stops.

---

Before I read these papers, I will mention that one thing I noticed in the studies I've read previously is the disregard for the actual incidence of violence and lack of correlating any increases of violence in specific demographics with other social factors.

For example, in the last six years the gap between rich and poor has widened due to disastrous economic policies. This kind of wealth disparity has been shown to cause an increase in crime, and these crimes are the type that aren't motivated by violence but often result in it - carjackings, home robberies, muggings. And because college is often out of reach and jobs scarce, this type of crime comes from young people - who happen to members of a generation in which almost everyone has played videogames.

In fact, the biggest difficulty in any media violence study is attempting to control for all the variables. Are they correlating with children who played sports? Are they identifying the type of sport, e.g., contact vs. non-contact. What about music choices? What about different kinds of abuse? What were their social groups and the interaction between them? What economic status?

Without a good control group, and with the fact that pretty much everyone from the last three generations has grown up surrounded by videogames, these kinds of studies are nearly impossible. Then there is the difficulty of classifying violence - is Mario violent? "Realism" is often touted as being especially affecting, but what is considered realistic? Mortal Kombat was called realistic, but nowadays it looks cartoony. The goalposts are constantly moving, so how do you even begin to discern a metric for realism?

Media violence doesn't happen in a vacuum. I'm not going to disparage the people who make it their life's work to study it, but I do find that conclusive studies tend to be anything but.

Funny To Me

2007-12-01T20:12:00.000-08:00

If you follow the work of Maynard James Keenan at all you might be interested in his latest release under the name Puscifer.

The first video is here on youtube.

It's . . . well, the funniest thing to me will be the reaction from both Tool and A Perfect Circle fans who aren't familiar with anything else MJK has done.

But if you've ever listened to Children of the Anachronistic Dynasty, then you'll be a little more prepared, at least for the single. Weird, drum-heavy, ambient . . . music, with vocals that are more about experimentation or ornamentation than anything else - if that sounds like something you want to try, give it a shot. While Maynard never gets quite as crazy with his voice as Mike Patton, both of them like to play with intonations, effects, breath patterns, hisses, pretty much anything they can do with their sound.

I used to listen to CAD while trying to fall asleep, and while I found the album to be shit when fully awake, in that reverie of near-sleep it was great for triggering lucid, strange dreams.

Maybe Puscifer will be the same.

The Marilyn Vos Savant of Blogs

2007-12-01T15:17:00.000-08:00

That's right.

I wish I knew exactly what metric they're using. Spelling maybe, though I use plenty of nonstandard words. They certainly don't mark you down for profanity.

I'm guessing it just pulls your most recent post and checks one or two things. Maybe word count, percentage of misspellings, that kind of thing.

Or maybe it's random. I don't know. My blog's the genius, not me.

Regardless, you are smarter for having read this contentless post.

Daily Dose

2007-12-01T15:05:00.000-08:00

The President of the United States is not the fucking Commander-in-Chief. People do not elect a Commander-in-Chief.

The President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. That's it.

If you are not a current member of the military, he is not your Commander-in-Chief. He's not even the Commander-in-Chief, because that title is not applicable to a vast majority of the country.

If you're a journalist making this stupid flub, you're promulgating a dangerous error. The difference in context is not minor. It is the difference between a Republic (no matter how tenuous) and a Military Dictatorship.

It's telling that the President's own Press Secretary enjoys using this turn of phrase. But that doesn't mean you have to follow her deliberate propaganda with your own acquiescence.

Get it right.

And start acting like citizens, for goodness' sake. You're embarrassing us in front of the rest of the world.

Things to Consider

2007-11-30T22:49:00.000-08:00

I'm still seeing this whole "Are videogames art?" thing all over the internet, from serious discussions to parodies to outright mockery.

I've found one constant between all of these discussions: all of them assume that art has to be good.

I know I've talked about this before, that old X of Y Postulate. Where is the Mona Lisa of videogames?

But think about it. There is a lot of really shitty art out there, and yet plenty of people will accept it as art. When I see some enterprising Norwegian who has wrapped a building in cellophane and says it is a deep musing on human calamity, I can at least say, "Pretentious, moronic, insulting, ridiculous and absolute shit. But its art."

We really just need to remember that shitty art is still art.

---

I've kind of arrived at a way that I recognize art. I look for the intersection of technical knowledge with aesthetics for the purpose of expression.

Think about architecture. There are architects who are considered artists, because they used an intimate understanding of their craft and combined it with an exploration of their aesthetics and created something that aided their own self-expression.

What about painting? I can paint. Anyone can. It's a craft. What makes those museum pictures art-worthy is that someone used their internal processes of judgment to create a thing appealing to their own nature.

---

I'll say it one more time to break it down:

When people do the whole videogames vs. art debate, the art they use as a comparison is always a fucking masterpiece. But masterpieces constitute maybe .1% of every kind of art ever created in recorded history. Even some of the masters only made one or two masterpieces and a bunch of humdrum crap. Not every Shakespeare play is a hit.

Videogames are art. It isn't a big deal, so why do people treat it like it's some crazy unknown thing? Oh god, they're interactive, how can they be art? Oh god, they're commercial products, it's as if Andy Warhol never existed? Oh god, a medium in its infancy doesn't compare to music, which has had thousands of years to mature, or film, which has had over a century, or photography, over 150 years, or painting, or architecture.

Can we get over it? Then maybe we might be able to talk about how to make it better. And maybe someday get a masterpiece.

But even if we don't, big deal. Shitty art, which is most of it, still has value.

Kindling

2007-11-20T18:48:00.000-08:00

Amazon has released its own E-book reader, and it will probably flop just as bad as all the others.

I wrote a post once on my objections to E-books. My feelings haven't changed.

And now, reading Boing Boing's description of the harsh Terms of Service and mind-bogglingly prohibitive DRM involved in overpriced digital books, this looks like one of the stupidest gadgets. I don't doubt that someone, somewhere will plunk down money for this, the same type of person who regularly purchases from Hammacher-Schlemmer catalogs, but I doubt it will be as ubiquitous as an Ipod.

Let's go over the basics:

1. It's 400 dollars.
2. The books are 10 bucks.
3. You can't loan out the books to other people.
4. You can't resell the books.
5. It's 400 fucking dollars.

The screen does look nice, but I don't doubt that we'll see the technology used in other readers, hopefully ones that don't cost more than an Xbox 360.

I really wouldn't mind an E-book reader. The pricing sweet spot for me, though, is more like a hundred bucks, with books somewhere around 5 bucks.

Sometimes technology really isn't worth it.

Out of Time

2007-11-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

I got me a 360 for my birthday. It just felt like it was time.

Jesus but this has been a great season for games. Almost every thing I've played has been outstanding.

Mario Galaxy halfway in the bag. I'm at Bowser but still have to go back and collect the hidden shit.

Mass Effect waits for my sister-in-law to leave so I can wrest control of the television from my wife and the neverending stream of shows (the writer's strike is truly a shitty situation for writers, but I can't help feel a bit of relief that I might be granted a small reprieve from constant idiot-boxing.

Crysis will be a future purchase despite the fact that Crytek obviously hasn't done fuckall with their AI since Far Cry.

I still jump on Team Fortress 2 regularly. I feel competent with the Pyro and sometimes the Medic. Other than that I go from mediocre to awful, but with a pretty even match it's a good time anyway.

I tried out Crackdown and my judgment is that it's a great platformer and an OK action game. It's basically a futuristic mercenaries with a comicbook sensibility. I spend about 90 percent of the time collecting agility orbs and hidden orbs and then remember that there are gang leaders to take out or something.

Assassin's Creed will also be something to maybe buy when it gets cheaper. I spent about two hours with a borrowed copy but there was a scuff and the disc wouldn't load any intel points in Damascus. By now if you've heard about this game at all you've been spoiled for the sci-fi "twist," which apparently has the ability to instantly twist nerd panties into a knot of anger. It happens in the first five minutes and is about on par with a good Michael Crichton novel. I enjoyed the nods in the story to the real Assassins (stories that are no doubt apocryphal, but nevertheless show detail to crafting the world).

The real flaw of the game is that it's exactly like Spider-Man 2 - run around a city, do the same five or six kind of tasks until you earn enough plot points to trigger the next part of the story. It feels lazy, which is a letdown when you consider how much work was evidently put into the rest of the game. The combat's been criticized but I didn't have a problem with the implementation.
Rock Band's also out now, and there is no way I can afford it anytime soon. I'm not too disappointed. I don't have time to play single-player stuff let alone gather a bunch of friends together to bang on plastic instruments. Hell, I've been trying for a few years to find enough time and friends to get together to bang on real instruments.

I thank god that Grand Theft Auto isn't out yet.

---

The bane of all developers is player expectation.

Players can't help but talk about how they would have implemented a feature or designed a character or mapped a control. It's a natural thing no matter what the media.

But I've seen more and more reviews by supposedly professional reviewers that judge a game based upon player expectation rather than on the game itself. It's sloppy and lazy and one of the reasons that I read about games on joke forums where the users do nothing but flame each other over their choice of console/game/controller/avatar.

At least it's honest.

Long 'i' Live

2007-11-04T10:55:00.000-08:00

Microsoft's XNA program is a strange mish-mash of freeware, indie development and corporate culture.

The biggest complaint is the $100 fee to join the XNA Creators Club, a required step if you wish to develop for the 360. To me, it's a negligible cost for access to great dev resources.

There's another problem, though. If I, as a PC-only developer, wish to join the XNA Creator's Club, there is no way for me to do so without signing up as a 360 developer. That is, I need to have a Live Subscription (which means access to a 360).*

This doesn't make any sense, and it's illustrative of Microsoft's entire approach thus far to their Games for Windows "initiative." Piss-poor, nonsensical, a seeming afterthought. It was only recently that you couldn't sign up for Windows Live without purchasing a game (and even then access was only possible with the game running).

Still, the free SDKs are nice, and they get better and better. My only gripe is that the coding world changes so fast that tutorials are superseded quickly and stuff that is done to make professionals have an easier time can lead to confusion for newbies.

I keep on banking that someday I'll just "get" programming. At this point I understand every single basic concept, but then I look at basic code and it's like "How the fuck did you even find that? How do you know what it does and how to use it?"

Ah well. Dabbling is fun.

*There is a bit of logic here, but only a small bit. The Creator's Club resources are geared toward 360 development, so Microsoft might be trying to avoid complaints from PC developers that the examples don't help them with PC development. But the whole draw of XNA is how easy it is to cross-develop between the 360 and PC (and really, it's mostly just a matter of leaving out the 360 using statements).

Simulated City, Real Propaganda

2007-11-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

I was looking forward to the new Simcity. Tilted Mill did a decent job on its first title, Children of the Nile. Their follow-up, Caesar IV, was lackluster, especially considering its pedigree.

They really seemed to have an interesting take on the overly-familiar Simcity formula. The focus would be on developing a city's "energy," its overall feel - whether authoritarian, liberal, etc. It definitely sounds cool, dealing not so much with micromanaging spreadsheet numbers but shifting the emotional aura of districts.

But now I'm not so sure.

See, it turns out that BP, the energy giant, was so fascinated by the social implications of the title, that they generously offered to consult with the publisher. How we deal with pollution is very important, you see.

That's why, in the game, all the environmentally-sound forms of energy are branded with BP's logo. Gas stations, too, but automobiles miraculously don't cause pollution.* All of the high-polluters are unbranded; I guess we're lucky they aren't marked with BP's competition.

---

“We want people to understand the climate issue a bit better and understand that there are twice as many greenhouse emissions from generating electricity than from all forms of transport combined."

Holy fucking shit. I know that EA has been spreading their legs for in-game advertisements for a few years now. This, though, goes beyond product placement. They are now presenting industry propaganda completely unchecked. I really cannot support this game in any way. In fact, I would encourage people to buy completely legal copies and destroy them.

Here are a few of my own ideas for the game:

-When you build a BP headquarters, they will spend millions buying off your city officials in order to deregulate the publicly-owned energy utilities. Once that happens, they monopolize the energy industry. Then they start manipulating the reserve power in order to artificially inflate supply and thereby raise prices. You can actually zoom in and watch your old Sims freeze to death in the winter because they can't afford heat (alternately, you can watch as they pay for heat but neglect their prescription medication).

-As your city fills with automobiles, your oil demand skyrockets. The pollution they generate causes a high incidence of respiratory disorders. The BP board surreptitiously fixes prices at gas stations, causing ill will. You are forced to pay huge subsidies to BP in order to replace their oil rigs destroyed by tsunamis (an unfortunate side effect of global warming). A war in the Middle East causes gas prices to triple, business suffers, the crime rate skyrockets. Billions of dollars in oil is lost to the black market; BP is of course completely innocent.

-You have to levy huge taxes on your middle class citizens because, for some reason, you can't tax the upper class above 4% (the slider won't go higher).

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Not all energy companies are the same. They just all collaborate behind closed doors with the Vice President for some reason.**

*I recall Buckminster Fuller's take on the LA smog - a rebuttal to oil companies who denied that automobiles contributed a significant amount of pollution - and how Sunday mornings had mysteriously clear skies along with little traffic, surely a coincidence.

**For those who think I'm being unnecessarily conspiratorial:
"The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated."

Plausible Deniability

2007-10-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

I am all for game designers tackling social and political concerns through interactive media.

But there are certainly times when a designer tries too hard to convince people that their game is deep without actually adding any depth to the game.

That's what I think of when I read this Gamasutra interview:

Are you at all concerned that people are not going to get the message, and the game might, instead, glorify this situation? Because the characters themselves do look like the ultimate male power fantasy.

CF: Well I think that obviously when you see that armor and the masks and the guns and stuff -- we need an image to get people to go into the game, right? And the world is obsessed with it. I mean how many shooters are at the show today -- eleven plus? So it’s popular. People like guns. Americans love guns. The world likes violence. It’s human nature. People enjoy war, they enjoy this stuff. It’s creepy when you look at it... a singing game [compared to a] shooter, what the sales numbers are, it’s actually kind of scary in just the amount of violence. But what we’re doing is... we’re going to try to bring this to light subtly.

I look at it like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That movie came out back when, and people were like “oh, it’s a horror movie.” And some people took it at face value -- “oh, it's a horror movie... I’m afraid of body snatchers!” But other people realized that the underlying message was McCarthyism, and what was going on in America at the time.

We’re hoping that someone who plays the game a lot and who really follows the story, and doesn’t just skip through it and pays attention, that we can spark them to say “you know what, I’m going to look into this.” That’s all. “I’m going to gain interest in this, and find out what’s really going on here. What am I doing?” In the game you’re doing all kind of crazy stuff for this company. You’re sent on all these different missions, and then you find out what’s wrong with this deniability and what’s wrong with everything in general.

---

I would really like to believe Chris. It's very possible that he is in fact making a highly negative statement about mercenary armies through the medium of videogames. But every single trailer makes it look like any other consequence-free run and gun. The slasher-mask helmets, impossibly beefy main characters*, Dukes of Hazzard water jumps - I am just so totally reminded of Blackwater opening fire on civilians.

Chris isn't completely wrong. Violence can be titillating. Where he's wrong is that he thinks the widespread enjoyment of violence in media means that he has to portray it as enjoyable. Were he really interested in making a statement he wouldn't be crafting a game where two buddy mercs blow a bridge with rocket launchers. Radical, dude!

It isn't an impossible task to make a playable game that also makes a statement. It's just not as easy a sell as balls-to-the-wall murder.

A scenario I would like to see: Your character is attached to a squad that detains a group of civilians. You are told to pull the truck around. When you do, you see through the windshield that they have opened fire and the civilians are running for cover while the squad laughs. You have to make a decision - place your vehicle in the line of fire, watch as the civilians are murdered, join in, or radio to headquarters explaining the situation. A thirty minute game with these kinds of decisions would be infinitely preferable to twenty hours of gunning down faceless "ethnics" in a scenario based on the fantasy world of xenophobic right-wingers.

*The funniest thing to me about these roided out character designs that seem so popular in shooters is that I saw maybe two Marines during my four years that resembled those inflated ubermen in any way. Do developers not realize that military members are recruited from the general population and not grown in a genetics lab?

Doomed

2007-10-25T18:35:00.000-07:00

Jared Diamond's Collapse is an interesting read, in an absolutely chilling way.

I am always reminded of its lessons whenever I hear how a social organization designed to make human life better ends up creating the opposite situation.

Consider this firedoglake post about the California fires.

To sum up:

People form communities so they can collectively achieve more than they could alone. These communities pool resources in order to effectively deal with disasters. Then some of the people in the community become so wealthy that they don't have to worry about disasters, because they can insure their property for more than its worth and they can always move to their summer home. So they form another organization of other wealthy people who pitch a fit that their taxes are too high.

They use their wealth to gain influence, and use their influence to buy politicians. The politicians cut taxes to please these shitheels. Children starve. People walk around sick and dying. Food is contaminated. Toys leak poison. Cities are swept off the map because the levees weren't maintained.

And in California, fires destroy lots of property and kill lots of people.

---

The signs of our collapse are pretty clear. They are in the headlines every day. Not just America, but we're already in the disintegration process. We can shamble on for a couple hundred years as a husk - the Roman Empire did.

But we're at the point where we are squandering our resources at such a fantastic rate and lack the political will to take care of anyone but the superrich.

Our President, phony huckster fuckstick that he is, demands billions for his imperial ambitions and then threatens to veto a bill that gives health care to children. He should've choked to death on that pretzel. Too bad the opposition party can't muster enough courage to pluck a lame duck.

---

California burns. The budgets were cut more and more every year. Unchecked global warming increased the fire risk year after year. The National Guard is busy being overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan. FEMA was gutted by the Department of Homeland Security, who are too busy selecting targets to be kidnapped and sent to Syria for CIA torture to do a goddamn thing to save people.

It's not that things haven't been this bad before.

It's that I've got to fucking live in it.

This Blog Post Does Not Exist

2007-10-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

Portal might be a perfect game.

It has been criticized for being too short. Two hours if you catch on quick, four if you ponder or multi-task.

It is short, but it's not too short. There is a big difference. I found that the game ended just as I was craving more resolution. To me, that's perfect.

I finished the game wanting more, but this doesn't mean it was too short, either. Merely that it was effective.

The writing is excellent: alternately funny and menacing without ever going out of character.

This is one of those games that shows every single strength of the medium. You could make a Portal movie, or a book, or a graphic novel, but none of them would have the same impact. The interaction makes the story a personal journey.

Also, the end credits are the greatest I have ever seen.

Squash This Trend

2007-10-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

I absolutely hate the recent trend of putting "reaction events" in games. Maybe they're called Quick Thinking Events or Press Stuff Sequences. The shit like in Resident Evil 4 when you're walking along and they switch to a cutscene of a boulder and at the last second they tell you to press 'A'. You don't and you get the honor of watching a death sequence and then wait to reload your game.

It's lazy and boring and not fun at all. Simon is not a fun toy, not for more than five minutes, after which it is a nuisance.

There is no reward. Either you have fast enough reflexes or enough patience for unnecessary repetition.

These are barely tolerable in God of War, and even then there's no reason to use them more than once or twice, not all through the games.

They absolutely ruined Fahrenheit. Here's a sequence made of twelve different timed button presses, if you miss one you die and have to start all the way at the beginning, have fun. Not much of a loss, because the game itself was shit.

They may as well put electrodes on controllers and administer electrical shocks every time you miss one of those button presses. At least it would get my adrenaline going.

My most recent encounter was in the Jericho demo, an okay shooter capped by a Pres Butan sequence that added nothing to game except a chance to reload and try it again. Easy enough, but pointless.

The grandfather of these sequences is the Dragon's Lair laserdisc game. This game was not fun. It was cool to watch if you had a friend with perfect recall to play through the whole thing, but it did not provide enjoyment in a traditional sense.

Stop doing this, designers. You do not want to rely on either of these two variables to keep people interested in your game: Reaction time or Patience.

The Aging Process

2007-10-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

Apparently getting older entails growing increasingly frustrated at a world you barely understand.

I can feel it myself. That creeping suspicion that videogames aren't as fun as they used to be, or as good, or as meaningful.

So take it away, Mr. Bushnell:

"Video games today are a race to the bottom. They are pure, unadulterated trash and I'm sad for that."

This from the guy who made Atari the Playboy Mansion of videogames and then sold out to the highest bidder, not giving a shit for quality or meaning or message. This from the founder of Chuck E. Cheese, purveyor of shit-grade pizza, nexus of germ-ridden ball pits, token-eating ripoff machines and quarter-munching arcade blastathons.

Please, don't let the change happen to me.

Gaming War

2007-10-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

I understand that the new Resident Evil raised a stink for alleged racism because it takes place in Africa and black zombies get killed. I would like to state for the record that I oppose zombie discrimination.

But I also wanted to point out that there is another game on the horizon that probably deserves the attention more than Resident Evil.

I'm talking about Far Cry 2.

In this game you play a mercenary in Africa. You can accept work from two different warlords in exchange for blood diamonds.

Unlike zombies, there are actually mercenaries in Africa. There are also blood diamonds. And warlords who pay mercenaries to kill lots and lots of people.

I'm not going to assign blame to the game. That kind of formulation is ridiculous. But as videogames become more of a cultural phenomenon, I wonder how they might be used as a way of tracking the general emotional state of the nation.

---

What I'm trying to say is that our diversions don't make us, but they can say something about us.

Consider a game like NARC. The game structure is reflective of the time - technology, game mechanics, arcade sensibilities. The content is a perfect distillation of loud 80s ultraviolence and anti-drug reactionary politics in a garish, unregulated package.

That's not to say that we don't have loud, garish ultraviolent games today. We just have different reasons for them.

---

The glut of modern war shooters doesn't seem outstanding considering that war shooters are practically the bedrock of videogaming. But in tone and content they can offer small reflections of current events and attitudes.

And seriously, there are just a ton of modern/future military shooters coming out. This reminds me of the analysis that the return of the torture porn slasher subgenre was due to the Iraq Invasion and subsequent horrifying images as well as the disgusting admission that torture is now standard in CIA questioning.

---

I won't comment too much on my extended absence except to say that it happens. A lot. Lately I've hit some strange writing brick wall, which hasn't happened to me before. I can usually work on something. Now it all comes out a mess and I feel like I've completely forgotten how to make an English sentence.

Maybe I'll try nanowrimo this year.

Something I've Noticed

2007-09-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

After poring through scores of samples and tutorials on C#, I've found that nothing covers how to use the visual aspect of these IDEs.

Even if something specifically says it's for Visual C#, it will inevitably talk about initializing your form data through code. Not that this isn't good information, but when you create stuff with the form designer that code ends up looking quite different than when it's done by hand.

Which means basic tutorials require looking through every last bit of code generated by the form designer in order to figure out what has already been handled so you can try and figure out where to put what hasn't been included.

Is this just a result of the people who write these tutorials preferring to do everything by hand? Or do they just assume that people will immediately see how regular coding is placed into a visual environment?

Code Talking

2007-09-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has got the Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 stuff up on their developer sites.

I just started poking around, and it turns out they've got some pretty fantastic support. Signing up gets you access to all kinds of webcasts from all over the place. I downloaded an intro to C# webcast given by a Princeton professor. For free. Can't get a better price on education anywhere.

As much flack as Microsoft gets for being bad for development, it really seems like things have changed without anyone noticing. Getting a complete visual development IDE for free is great - it keeps me from having to track down another solution without as much functionality or continued support (just look at DevC++ for an example of a great IDE with spotty support).

Mostly this is just to scratch the programming itch I get every few months. The upside is that C# is so simple that a Hello World tutorial only takes 30 seconds. They also have a decent 20 minute web browser tutorial that gives a good overview.

---

Yeah, I know it's actually been up for awhile. But I'm only now just getting around to it.

Ping

2007-09-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

I've got this wicked idea and no means to pull it off. Mostly I'm just trying to think it through, look at different angles.

If the proprietor of Cathode Tan is interested in discussing some pie-in-the-sky ideas relating to past and present interests, please shoot me an e-mail at thothanon [at] gmail [dot] com.

---

In unrelated news, I finally uninstalled World of Warcraft. I was leaving it on my hard drive in order to facilitate re-subscribing, just in case (I hate waiting on 3 years of updates). Today I said, "fuck it," deleted the damn thing and hope never to return.

I also unsubscribed to Lord of the Rings Online. I couldn't snare anyone into playing and running around by myself grew tedious. I'm trying to streamline a little, so I can attempt to get these quest writeups and mod done by November. Eve Online is nice because I can queue up a skill and leave it for a day or two (or more). When I come back my character will be more effective. I'm still dallying with Roguelikes, too. Again, they let me work on other things. I can pop over, play a few turns, die horribly and then get back to research.

I need games that let me keep a schedule and have a life without punishing me.

I Hate Yahoo

2007-09-05T14:29:00.000-07:00

One day I tried to log onto my Yahoo e-mail, the one I've had for at least eight years.

My password was denied.

And denied again.

And again.

Sure, I can have my password if I only give them all kinds of information, including all the original information with which I registered the account. Information I haven't looked at in at least eight years and which was most likely fake because I didn't want them knowing it.

So it's all gone. There was a lot of information in that account.

I could almost reach it, too. Before the cookies in my computer expired I could still watch the e-mail come in, but Yahoo's automatic sign-out (despite me clicking the box to stay signed in) asked me to re-authorize (even though the cookie was already accessing the account).

They tell me to fill out the page for a lost password, except my password isn't lost. It's been changed. Either the account's been hacked or their system fucked it up.

Fuck them. Seriously. Three e-mails and it's like a broken record: "Please give us the zip code under which this account was registered." I've lived in at least fifteen different zip codes since then, and that's assuming I used a real address.

This is just here for catharsis.

I'm glad I've switched almost everything over to Gmail at this point. They have an actual security question, one which I am prepared to answer (because they actually told me to remember it).

I guess the moral is: Yahoo is a shitty service that apparently can't look at a log and realize that my current IP address has been logging into that account for at least a year now, and that something is broken on their end.

In the Way

2007-09-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

I was working on a Round Table post and couldn't find anything really interesting to say, so I scrapped it. Mostly it was about how the concept of hardcore is mostly semantics and self-identity and that industry people who concern themselves with hardcore vs. casual are spitting out buzzwords and run the danger of disconnecting their metaphoric understanding from the way people play in real life. I prefer a system that is measurable, not based around endless ego-inflation. Developers need to pay attention to two things: accessibility and duration.

How difficult is the control/concept/customization? How long does it take to play a session/reach the next "carrot"/finish the game?

There you go.

---

Extraordinarily busy right now. I've got more games on deck than ever before. The big thing, though, is that a design internship position is opening up at work and I've got to put something together. This is pretty much the dream. Even if I'm shunted back to QA after the intern period it's still the opportunity of a lifetime. But it means finishing a mod and putting together some quest writeups with dialogue. I've got concepts and stuff down, but the learning curve for the mod stuff is pretty long.

---

I've also found my tastes in video games suddenly changing. I don't know why.

Maybe not changing. More like expanding.

I've actually started playing roguelikes and enjoying them. The last time I tried them (which was also the first time), I played for two minutes, quit and uninstalled and vowed never to bother with them again.

I also started up Eve Online and am considering picking it up, at least for a few months. This is my third or fourth time trying it out. The other times I never played for more than a day before uninstalling.

It's very strange. I think I'm just enjoying minutiae more, which used to turn me off. We'll see where this leads. Probably to me picking up a Warhammer 40K Chaos army.

IGN Spreads Ill Will

2007-08-21T05:26:00.000-07:00

Kotaku's got a story up about Direct2Drive offering up Bioshock.

Apparently some people were able to jump the street date and play it right after downloading.

Now IGN is sending threatening letters to anyone that downloaded the game.

Kotaku is making it sound as if all these people were actively hacking. But from what I'm reading elsewhere, people who simply pre-loaded are also receiving these letters because the files were sent to their PC. They didn't even have to try to launch the game.

Get this down: People who paid money to pre-load the game and then pre-loaded it are being sued because some other people might have been able to play the game a few days before the street date.

Sue first, admit your own screw-ups never.

I'm really glad I got it on Steam.

Lord of the Rings Online Revisited

2007-08-16T19:31:00.000-07:00

My reaction to the LOTRO beta can be found at this link.

I've actually been playing for the last month and started a subscription. The game is much improved since beta. I also updated my PC, which really shows off the gorgeous amount of detail in the game world. It can be an adjustment coming from something as colorful and stylized as WoW, but the graphics definitely fit well with the lore and themes. The LOD is still ugly, but I've learned to deal with it.

One of the best things about the game is how much the developers interact with the community. Book 10 goes live this month with countless changes based upon player feedback. Book 11 is also due out this year. The goal is to put out as many free updates as possible, not just tweaking classes but adding in new content across all levels.

The main reason I got tired of WoW was the focus on high-level content. I never leveled a character beyond 54. But I leveled at least six characters into their 30s, and even more into their 20s. I like to try everything, but nothing ever got added to the low-level game. It was always Wailing Caverns. Over and over. No soloable instances.

Developers should not put all their focus on the people who burn through all the content, get to the highest level, and raid over and over. Yet ultimately those are the people who bitch the loudest and threaten to quit because now they have nothing to do. Boo hoo.

Try enjoying yourself.

---

A good example of the way that players can completely subvert design intentions is LOTRO's Monster Play.

Monster Play can be accessed once your character reaches level 10. You can make one of each class of monsters (or "creeps," as they're called).

Creeps were designed to be considerably weaker than player characters (or "freeps"). They're the underdogs. The best way for them to win is zerging.

Turbine never planned on making Monster Play a focus. They didn't consider that some players might grow attached to their creeps, often to the exclusion of their freeps.

They also assumed, since players can be monsters at level 10 but must be at least level 40 to enter the PvP zone as a player, that monsters would greatly outnumber freeps. This was a faulty assumption for several reasons:

-As a creep, you are dropped into a PvP zone without a revealed map and no idea what to do. If nobody is willing to help, you will probably leave and not come back. A lot of first-time creeps are on for five minutes, then leave and never come back.

-You are also much weaker than freeps. If you get into a skirmish you will probably die A LOT. Again, five minutes can turn someone away forever.

-The entrances to Monster Play are in out-of-the-way places in major cities. They also don't show up on maps. Some people have probably gotten into the higher levels without ever knowing where to access Monster Play.

-Some people do not enjoy PvP.

I would hazard about 50% of players try Monster Play and only about 10% stick with it long term. When you factor the "flippers" (people who PvP as both freep and creep) the number of creeps rarely gets above 40-50 at a time, max. Sometimes much, much lower.

What this means is that more often that not creep and freep numbers are balanced, but the deliberate imbalance of creep stats/skills puts them at a very, very noticeable disadvantage.

Turbine could've just left it at that, explaining that PvP was never a priority for the game (which would be true).

Instead the Senior Content Designer engaged the community and collected tons of feeback from PvPers. Book 10 is going to introduce a lot of changes to Monster Play to make the creeps more viable for the long term (including access to your monsters from the login screen).

I'm sure there will still be a lot of work (after all, how do you balance something that is meant to be unbalanced?), but the process of actually dealing with a community is pretty great to see.

Experts

2007-08-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

Look, I have the greatest respect for Freeman Dyson.

But just because you know very much about a certain thing does not mean that you know very much about certain other things. Just because you are fairly certain about the things you know very much about doesn't mean your certainty is automatically transferred to things of which you know very little.

To put it simply: You know about as much as I do about climate science. You even admit your lack of knowledge.

But then you rationalize your bullshit contrary opinion with the notion of climate scientists who never go outside, never take real measurements, and somehow work only with computer models. Climate science is not wholly done by simulation-only shut-ins. Even fucking weathermen look out the window and use barometers and thermometers and all kinds of real world science.

Climate scientists correlate much more data on a much larger scale. This isn't rocket science or advanced physics. It's basic knowledge about a very general field of scientists studying our actual physical world using actual physical data. They don't sit around and say, "Hey, it's warm out, must be global warming."

That kind of sloppy thinking is pretty much confined to mush-headed corporate apologists and disingenuous fundamentalists: "If there's global warming then how come it's so cold outside right now?"

In other words, Freeman Dyson is very intelligent, but that doesn't mean he isn't acting like a moron.

You Can't Kill the Revolution Tie-In

2007-08-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

I attended the Virgin Festival in Baltimore.

As Ben Harper played and sang the same old songs about revolution I thought about how easily movements are co-opted, how ideology is a game of constant hypocrisy we call compromise.

Harper needs a carrier wave for his thoughts of against-raging and spliff-smoking and his label needs to target the demographic of dread-locked college kids, old hippies, young hippies, and People Who Give a Shit (Who Will Never Change Anything). So they engage in this sickening relationship, a commercial venture that binges on the culture of excess and purges it with war whoops and anti-government bravado.

But he plays the dobro like he wants to crack open a fault line, eking out roaring waves of feedback that clang and clatter. This is what the Devil's fiddle-playing sounds like, and it's heavenly.

I saw Ben Harper almost ten years ago and he hasn't altered his shtick a whit. How could he? Being a revolutionary means always saying the same thing.

For Your Consideration

2007-07-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

If the Bratz "girlz" have no "nosez", how will they ever learn to snort cocaine?

Unofficial Sequel

2007-07-11T22:20:00.000-07:00

I remember Tabula Rasa from when it was called Anarchy Online.

Wait, I guess it still is called Anarchy Online.

Synergy

2007-07-10T19:57:00.000-07:00

"The innovative program is called the Nintendo Fan Network. For a fee, the network uploads a program onto the user's DS Lite and allows fans to order food and drinks, watch the live television feed of the game, access stats and scores and play trivia, all from the comfort of their seat -- whether it's a premium seat behind home plate or in the top row of the stadium."
-Link

This is a very cool example of how Nintendo is integrating their consoles into our lives.

I'd come up with an actual cartridge, too, something that would let you track stats yourself, swap virtual cards, even compete in a fantasy league. A signature book would be awesome, but I'm wondering how the players would react to digitizing that aspect of fandom.

There are all sorts of cool possibilities. Maybe even the ability to post messages to the Jumbotron (I'm assuming they'd employ a human filter to check for the naughty stuff).

Makes me almost want to go to a baseball game. If I got bored I could always pop in Pokemon.

Turing Test

2007-07-10T19:48:00.000-07:00

Found while looking around:

Originally Posted by Acidbaron
You can never be sure, by just looking at their behaviour ingame, bots are getting harder to detect also, so i don't think it really is that easy

Sorry, but I disagree with that ...
Ok let me give you some hints to identify a WoW bot in 10s ....
1) you have a player which name is like "Hghfgfgfgh"
2) He is more than 90% of the cases a Hunter class, though now it's less the case because they are identified too easily
3) He is the whole day at exactly the same spot, and moves only when he his too high level. He is always at those spots where a maximum pack of mobs spawns, but are soloable, and don't wander around.
4) When you talk to him he never answers.
5) The behaviour : on a pvp server when you fight him in Bot mode, he fights really worse than any noob. He nevers attacks you when he's on the other side. When you kill him over and over, you notice that the Bot modes turn off, and as he tries to get rid of you from his hunting spot he plays better while PVPing.
6) When he dies and respawns, or select a new target, he always do exactly the same actions and pathing.
7) You can see in the Auction house Blue World items sold by another player names "Erfgrerggr" that is for sure the mule of "Hghfgfgfgh"

Now tell me Bots are tough to identify ...
-Anksunamon

---

According to this list, my actions in World of Warcraft have me pegged as a bot. Other than the weird thing with the names, it's a good description of how I roll.

I hate Philip K. Dick moments.

I Will Never Do This

2007-07-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

This follows on from my discussion yesterday regarding permadeath.

I was reading some forums on that very subject and someone mentioned that all MMOs already have a permadeath option.

It's called deleting your character.

If you're so keen on permadeath, then when your character bites it for the first time, don't resurrect - simply logout, delete char, type in the confirmation code and reroll.

I suspect that people who are very keen on permadeath as a game function like it that way in part because, if given the option, they will rez their character like everybody else. They want their hand to be forced so they don't have to resist temptation.

But what I suspect it really hinges on is creating obstacles for other players. They would argue that permanent death gives more meaning to quests, more risk. This is true.

It's also what would worry me most about such a system. Online games aren't known for their level-headed communities. Instituting permadeath is basically ceding emotional resonance to the griefers.

So remember: If it's that fucking important to you, delete your character the first time you die. If you can't bring yourself to do it, then never again make a bad faith argument about how much more exciting it is to risk it all to server lag, trained mobs, and overpowered bosses.

The Itch

2007-07-05T23:38:00.000-07:00

I got the urge to play WoW again the other day, but it very quickly turned into boredom. This is good. It saves me time and money that I would've spent re-activating my account, playing hours a day for two weeks, getting burned out, and quitting in disgust.

But I've still got the urge to play an MMO. Problem is, I've played 'em. Very nearly all of them. Even the Korean ones.

---

For some reason I'm really looking forward to both Age of Conan and Warhammer: Online.

I don't know why I'm suddenly enamored with the Conan game. I loved the first movie as a ten-year-old kid, which is understandable, but haven't thought of it much since then.

While Conan is still a fantasy world, it falls into magical realism. Something about it feels grittier and more mysterious.

Funcom, developers of Anarchy Online, are trying for real-time combat with out-of-the-way number crunching. I'd like to see them pull this off. My guess is that 56k will be shit out of luck. While Anarchy was almost incomprehensible, what I've seen so far looks very straightforward.

They're going for an M-rating, which hasn't been very common in MMOs (I can't actually name any thus far).

Warhammer's the other property I've only lately delved into, courtesy of the 40K RTSes.

I really would have preferred to see 40K. Sci-fi isn't quite a dead horse yet for MMOs, while fantasy has been dead, beaten, deboned, and ground into chuck.

But maybe the sheer mindless brutality of the Warhammer universe will carry the day.

From what I've heard Mythic is also looking at an M-rating. Waagh!

---

The thing that will clinch it, that always seems to clinch it, is how these games will handle death.

Just to get it out of the way, I hate the idea of permadeath. I wouldn't care if developers made it a switch at character creation, no problem there. You either choose it or you don't, and go on your merry way.

The problem I have is that pro-permadeath people typically either want everyone to be affected or they want some kind of fucking reward for being so hardcore. If it's a choice they will bitch about balance. If it's required then the game is doomed.

I also hate experience debt. And item loss/degradation. Basically, I hate punishing players for playing.

One of the joys in an MMO is the sheer scope of the world, which naturally appeals to explorer types. They want to see everything.

It can also appeal to hardcore types. They might have a challenge to run through a dangerous area and make it as a lowbie into some hard-to-reach settlement.

Permadeath/xp debt/item loss punishes players for risky behavior.

When these things are implemented, people are more cautious, or they quickly learn to be. Why try to take on an enemy you might not be able to defeat? Why test out a difficult tactic? Why do something daring or stupid? Why travel to an area that might be out of your level?

WoW seems to have it right. You have to make a corpse run, or take a penalty at the graveyard. Minor annoyances, but they don't have the effect of setting you back.

City of Heroes lost me because XP debt was exponential - you hardly noticed it in the early levels, but the higher you got the more debt you incurred and the harder the missions - therefore the more you would die, therefore even more debt. It would spiral out of control, especially if you sidekicked. You were incredibly vulnerable as a sidekick, so you could come out of a mission with barely any progress. The XP debt made the sidekick system, which should've been awesome, into such a high-risk venture that I didn't bother with it.

A permadeath system could have the effect of keeping even more of the player base away from high-level content, which would not only lead to anger at the top (not enough high-levels for raids/dungeons) and at the bottom (no chance to access high-level content). I know that I still have yet to bring a WoW character to 60, but at least without permadeath there's a chance I might.

All of that just to say that I'm watching Age of Conan and Warhammer: Online in anticipation of how they will handle player death.

Find That Game

2007-07-05T21:27:00.000-07:00

The new website GameHunt looks like it could become a very useful resource, given enough time.

You can look for games based upon lots of common parameters. Right now it's pretty much brand new and lacking in games, but there is a way to submit games to the database.

There is a lot of room for gaming this kind of system in order to generate false positives (tagging your game with all genre types), but hopefully some kind of rating system will be put in place to show confidence in the information, as well as a way to mark an entry as spam.

Give it a look.

Lack of Support

2007-07-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

I think I figured out why Jamlab doesn't work for me.

The drivers that are supposed to ensure 32-bit Vista compatibility aren't compatible with 32-bit Vista.

Which, yes, they're beta drivers, but you'd think that basic functionality wouldn't be spotty.

The device shows up fine in the Device Manager, but it won't start. The installed driver still shows up as the default (dated 2006) even after installing the update. Manually uninstalling the old driver and installing the most recent one has no effect. I believe the old driver may be installed by the device itself.

So I'm back to where I started.

I'm pretty sure I won't be buying any M-Audio stuff in the future. The support is just terrible. I can't even find any official forums.

---

On the other hand, I've gotten a look at Native Instruments Guitar Rig 2 and it looks mighty sweet. I have the fear, though, with computer audio, that things will not work or be glitchy or become obsolete. Understandably.

Plus it's a fuckload of money (370 bucks) to drop on noodling gear.

Jamlab Update

2007-07-04T16:33:00.001-07:00

I was excited to see that M-Audio released Jamlab beta drivers for Vista.

The install seemed to go off without a hitch. Now I've got the little icon down in my system tray.

Then I tried installing GTPlayer Express. No Asio driver detected - GTPlayer wouldn't even attempt insallation.

I installed Asio4All and restarted. Tried GTPlayer again. No luck.

I have no idea what other program to even attempt with Jamlab and I have no confidence whatsoever that any other program would work. Not to mention that I'd be without a simple amp/effect interface which was the whole reason I bought the damn thing. To jam.

I have no desire to spend several hundred dollars on a hardware/software interface for my computer because I just want to bust out some power chords and maybe play along with MP3s.

Shit like this makes my Mac-lust flare up, visions of Garageband flying through my daydreams.

Of course, that conflicts with the whole not spending money thing.

Odin Sphere

2007-07-03T06:21:00.001-07:00

Odin Sphere is a good game.

It's wonderfully drawn and animated, reminiscent of Darkstalkers. Details like the character idles are so subtle that you could miss them. Layered backgrounds scroll by like a watercolor with real depth.

This is a game of simplicity, art, and imagination. The story is told in a postmodern style, character arcs occurring out of temporal sequence. The stories are fairy tales, seemingly cliche but with surprising turnarounds. Characters exhibit their own motivations, resisting neat, happy resolutions.

The game system itself is of the eternal recurrence type, bringing to mind Otogi: Myth of Demons. Each level follows the same guidelines, enemies spawn and must be completely defeated. Clearing a level yields a rating based upon time, damage done, damage received, etc. Managing your resources and timing your attacks is the strategy for success.

To illustrate the strange, clever beauty of this game, consider this: You regain health and earn experience by eating food. You can buy certain foods from vendors or earn them as rewards - milk, cheese, the like. Then there are the seeds. You plant seeds. As you destroy enemies, small particles of light are released called Phozons. Seeds absorb Phozons and sprout right before your eyes. When a plant has matured you can harvest the fruit. Take too long and the fruit will drop off the plant and rot. The greatest seed you can find is the one that sprouts sheep, which ripen, then pop off the vine and run across the level.

I would also like to note that the game looks great even on a 50-inch HDTV. I can't say the same about any 3d PS2 game.

I think I paid 35 dollars for Odin Sphere, brand spanking new.

It's well worth it.

---

The only negative thing I can say about Odin Sphere is that the action can slow down quite a bit when there are a lot of enemies onscreen.

I'm surprised that this happens, even with last-gen hardware. I often wonder if all the attention lavished on 3d affected the development of 2d. There are lots of optimizations for geometry and textures, but does that naturally carry over to animated sprites?

Anyone out there have any information on this subject? Would a game comparable to Odin Sphere suffer slowdown even on current-gen systems?

---

The same company that created Odin Sphere is coming out with a 2d RTS with the same art style. I have no idea how this will work.

I have confidence that it will, though.

A Feast

2007-07-03T06:20:00.001-07:00

All I can say is that Scooter Libby should've been staked to a hillside so that crows could eat his eyes and tongue.

Tag, I'm It

2007-06-29T16:37:00.000-07:00

Thomas at Mile Zero has tagged me with one of those Intermemes.

Here are the rules: Eight random facts or interesting lies about yourself. Send me the link to your post when you're done. Tag 8 more people. Drop a comment on their blog to let them know they've been tagged. Don't sit by your maibox waiting for thank you notes from those you've tagged.

1. I didn't get my first driver's license until I was twenty-four years old.

2. I used to live in an apartment above the Rocky's Pizza in downtown Athens, Georgia (Rocky's, sadly, no longer exists).

3. When I was a kid, the movie Gremlins made me afraid of the dark for many years. But for some reason I watched it repeatedly.

4. I think "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck is the Great American Novel.

5. I have been an atheist my entire life and have never once come close to practicing any kind of religion, unless you count dropping acid.

6. I lettered in Theatre. Yes, I know.

7. While I have difficulty remembering historical dates, I have no problem recalling the lyrics to old rap songs. Around the Way Girl, At the Playground, Rumpshaker, Crossover, and others too embarrassing to mention.

8. I very nearly got a part as an extra in the movie Enemy of the State. I went to a cattle call where they took my information. Then I got a call back, stood in a line-up and met the director - they were looking for someone younger than me (I was seventeen or so). I got another callback. The appointment was in DC. I exited at the wrong Metro stop, had to walk about fifteen blocks and missed my chance completely. But they still paid me 12 bucks just for showing up - sweet deal!

Tig Old

2007-06-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

In the new screens released for Soul Calibur IV, Ivy can be seen with two pendulous globes dangling from her chest. They look like tumors.

If I were in charge of her character arc, here's how I'd plot it:

Ivy has entered the competition in order to fund her dangerous love of surgical modification. Her obsession with breast size has seen her go under the knife six times now, the increases leaving horrible stretch marks on her skin and layers of scar tissue beneath each breast. She plans to go bigger next time, despite warnings from her doctor. If she can win the tournament, she'll have enough cash to fly to Eastern Europe where a doc exists who will do the surgery regardless of the risk.

If you win as Ivy, the final cutscene shows a series of snapshots of her in a skimpy bikini, breasts swollen to even more gigantic proportions, smile plastered on her face. It fades into a dimly-lit room, Ivy on a surgical table, a doctor smeared with blood, his forehead covered in sweat. The heart monitor flatlines, the doctor works furiously for a minute, the nurse handing him gauze and sutures, but to no avail.

Close-up of Ivy's blank eyes as the announcer says, "Ivy has been defeated, but the soul still burns."

Movie Time: Black Christmas

2007-06-24T22:26:00.000-07:00

There is a point in the Black Christmas remake, right near the beginning, where one of the characters suggests that they call the police. This is in response to a very disturbing call that purports to be from a spree killer incarcerated for murdering his family. The female characters are members of a sorority, staying in the spree killer's childhood home.

They don't call the police, opting instead to talk about opening gifts.

That tells you everything you need to know.

This is a stupid movie, even for a slasher film. Rent the original.

---

I'm not sure what the deal is with remaking decent horror/slasher films. There are plenty of stinkers from which to choose.

I'm of the opinion that you should only attempt a remake if you can do it better, or at least do it different enough to feel original.

I feel the same way about cover songs.

Galaxy Questing

2007-06-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

I'm addicted to Rogue Galaxy, but I get the feeling that I shouldn't enjoy it as much as I do.

The gameplay hits the sweet spot between determination and frustration. To use the modern term, it has Flow.

But this game has the most inane dialogue and plotting I have ever encountered. I'm not using hyperbole. Conversations are bland, slow, repetitive, and lacking any subtlety. This is a game that would announce a devious scheme by having the bad guy say to himself, "Now to put into motion my devious scheme of stealing things and fighting." In fact, that might be a quote.

I don't think this is a localization problem, either. It's probably just as awful in the original Japanese.

Characterization also stinks. There are some great character designs that definitely feel part of a coherent universe. Then the whole effect is spoiled by the introduction of the most hideous, ridiculous NPCs. They are non-sequiturs, ruining any possibility of a unified style. In other words, they completely shatter immersion.

Which is a shame, really, because the actual meat of the game shows some great refinements. Cutscenes can be paused and skipped. Special ability animations (think of those long summons from Final Fantasy) can be skipped. There is a skill system similar to the FF XII license board but with much better organization and less hassle. Combat is challenging but the direct control gives the player a strong feeling of agency.

There's a good game in Rogue Galaxy, but it's bottom of the barrel when it comes to story. This might be the reason why I saw seven or eight used copies in Gamestop.

Psychosis

2007-06-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

I wrote about playing Psychonauts two years ago.

I never got past the tank boss.

Gametap's got it, so I downloaded it to try again.

Now, let me preface by saying that Psychonauts has some of the best level/character design out there. It is absolutely brilliant in the way it takes thematic elements and translates them to gaming elements.

But it has a huge, huge problem.

Bosses.

The game is plagued with horrible, shitty, overly-complex boss fights. I managed to beat the tank boss this time around, and from there the story goes right into another fucking boss fight.

The camera angles make it hard to fight the bosses. The short lock-on distance makes it hard to fight the bosses. Every boss has two forms, an annoying form and an even more annoying form. I thought I was doing okay until I went to gamefaqs to figure out how to beat the goddamn Lungfish.

The Lungfish is the third boss. There are eighteen bosses.

In the future I'm going to try to talk about Psychonauts as if it were two different games: 1) a brilliant platformer with fun, intriguing collection elements and clever levels and 2) the worst game in the world.

Wedding Bells

2007-06-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

Had a great four days away from work.

My wife and I went down to Athens, Georgia in order to see my old friend, Cash Morris, get married to the love of his life, Jacki Macker.

I've known Cash since 7th grade. Fifteen years.

I was away from Athens for 7 years. It's hard not to love that town.

But now I'm back and decompressing. Long drive. I'll put pictures up at some point.

Polynesia and the Spread of Humanity

2007-06-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

"Polynesians made contact with the west coast of South America as much as a century before any Spanish conquistadors, her findings imply."

This could alter (yet again) the currently understood paradigm of human settlement.

What I find particularly awesome is that this new evidence lends some credence to Buckminster Fuller's notion in GRUNCH OF GIANTS:

"Landed at many North and South American coastal points from Alaska to Chile, these raft-landed Polynesians separated into many groups as they moved eastward over many routes to both North and South America, to become known as the American Indians."

Hardship

2007-06-04T23:37:00.000-07:00

Ugh, Presidential Primary season.

Guess what, GOP, you're not the only party who can shamelessly exploit religious sentiment.

I'm asking way too much, but I'd like the head of the Executive Branch of the United States to not believe in some magical fucking sky-being and his wacky undead son. Please?

Really, whatever. Hilary wants to reassure us that she will carry a great huge bag of deity-worship into the White House just like any other candidate.

Edwards, too. And Obama.

Thanks, guys. That will serve us well - schizophrenia with a firm grounding in circular logic - as we tackle issues of global import.

I get that we will have a black lesbian President before we have an atheist President, I do. I just wish someone could articulate that religion should be made as separate from policy as possible. Could we get a candidate who will promise to disband the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives on Day One?

Just once I'd like to see someone called on it when they say that faith got them through a rough patch. What does that mean, faith? Faith in God? So you relied on a nebulous image of something good and powerful and loving to comfort you, visualization can be relaxing. Did you pray? So you talked to yourself, not a bad way to think through a problem. Did you go to church? Oh, so you spoke with friends and authority figures, that's another good way to work things out. Did you read the Bible? So you read a vaguely-written pseudo-history and managed to apply it to your situation and draw comfort from universal similarities in the human condition, cool, you should try using something by Mark Twain next time.

If you can't tell, I love both politics and religion.

Late Night Lessons

2007-06-03T22:44:00.001-07:00

Just because a movie is called Bang Rajan, and just because it stars someone with the first name Chumporn*, it is not necessarily pornography.

Submitted for your edification.

*Also noted, chumporn could either be a fairly banal sex romp (first set of definitions) or an extremely-disgusting-to-contemplate fetish (second set of definitions).

The former definitely exists and the latter . . . well, let me just invoke Rule 34 and leave it at that.

I Don't Get This Strategy

2007-06-03T19:05:00.000-07:00

In a move designed to make me hate everything tangentially related to music, GuitarTabs.com has received a cease & desist letter from a law firm representing the National Music Publishers Association and The Music Publishers Association of America. I've been following the online tablature battle for at least fourteen years. It's disheartening to think there hasn't been some kind of compromise.

Tablature was just about the most important thing in the development of my guitar skills. Especially as a jobless teenager without an allowance. How was I supposed to buy 25 dollar tab books? I still remember when olga.net first went down, years and years ago. I was devastated. And they're still going through that bullshit.

---

I've been trying very hard to stay on the side of the artists, to hate the corporations, and to support things like Creative Commons. But it can be a real chore.

Copyright issues are starting to make me hate the artists themselves. Recently an Italian student made an animated Calvin & Hobbes short for his final project. It was clearly a labor of love. It was also issued a DMCA takedown by Bill Watterson. I understand that it's the creator's prerogative, and that Watterson doesn't want Calvin in any other form, and that he fucking hates those stupid stickers of Calvin urinating on things . . . but I'm still within rights to think it was a dick move. Really. Fuck him for that. Boo-fucking-hoo, a student practiced his animation skills on your precious strip.

In some parallel universe someone has re-animated Shakespeare and he is suing the shit out of a lot of publishers and film studios. Suing them into bankruptcy.

---

"In fact, U.S. copyright law specifically provides that the right to make and distribute arrangements, adaptations, abridgements, or transcriptions of copyrighted musical works, including lyrics, belongs exclusively to the copyright owner of that work."

"In so enforcing the rights of the creators and publishers of music, it is our intent to ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come."

This does not make me sympathetic to your cause. I understand that you have a revenue stream that is drying up. Since music is easily transcribed onto computer and printed out, your service is not as in-demand as it used to be. Please consider this an opportunity to alter your business model.

Think about this: the people who create tablature on their own and the people who then look for and use that tablature are the same people who buy tablature. Do you think you should maybe engage your community before alienating it?

Fiction Addiction: His Majesty's Dragon

2007-06-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

I'm almost done reading His Majesty's Dragon, the first volume in the Temeraire series.

I had to hit the first chapter at least four times. I'd read, get bored, put the book down for a few weeks, come back, read, get bored, rinse, repeat.

Last week I slogged through the opening chapter using pluck and determination. Now I'm almost finished with the book.

Yes, it got much better.

For those unfamiliar with the book's concept, Napoleon is rampaging across the Continent and has set his sights on England. Pretty familiar story.

And there are dragons.

This ends up being much cooler than one might expect. The only deviation introduced thus far is dragons - no nods to any other kind of magic or fantasy.

One thing became clear to me while reading: the book is a Romance between a human and his dragon. Not in an erotic way, though I'm sure there is plenty of fanfic exploring that aspect; The treatment is purely platonic. In this respect it fits into the class of books like Where the Red Fern Grows or The Yearling, in which a protagonist lucks upon an animal that becomes a constant, enduring companion, forging a special bond which is unbreakable.

The author, Naomi Novik, has her own Livejournal with updates and interesting notes about her work, including some of the real-world places from the Temeraire series.

Turns out that she worked on Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide. According to her bio, "she realized she preferred the writing to the programming, and, on returning to New York, decided to try her hand at novels."

Smart move.

---

It's old news now, but word is that Peter Jackson was set to option the books in order to bring them to the big screen. I can't find any updates, but hopefully the deals are progressing.

---

The natural progression of things, then, is the inevitable video game.

First, the likeliest result:

EA licenses the movies and makes a straight-up action-shooter. The graphics are good but the gameplay is repetitive and uninspired. The primary complaint is that it's just a retread of Lair, which was itself essentially a prettier retread of Panzer Dragoon.

EA goes on to make six games in the series that get progressively worse as they farm the work out to less-experienced dev teams.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft licenses the novels and puts out a serviceable action-RPG nearly indistinguishable from a beat-em-up. There are some unlockable combos but the whole thing feels uninspired.

Second, what I'd like to see:

A strategy-tactical game similar in form to Star Wars: Empire at War. The strategy map has simultaneous turns, where both sides give their orders and then the turn plays out. This map is used to manage supply routes, order your dragons, and keep an eye on the enemy.

Information in your territory will be completely manageable, but any time a flight is sent into unowned territory then the player must issue scouting orders, which the unit will attempt to follow (with the danger of being attacked/shot down).

The tactical map will be like Homeworld, a full-3d view of the battlefield. Play will be pausable, orders can be queued up, or the whole thing can be done in real-time. Formations will be the key to managing the battlefield and achieving superiority. While the player will be solely in charge of the dragons, they will fight alongside AI-controlled naval and ground units, scenarios which will require striking changes in thinking.

Dragon, pilot, and crew will have their own stats that are interdependent. In addition, units in a team will earn bonuses as they train together. Maneuvers will allow more sophisticated variations as a team advances.

There are several different campaigns with different levels of detail (much like Civilization's map size variations), including a worldwide map. There are several different countries available for play, but only ones which have a sizable dragon contingent.

---

Enough speculation. Since the author has prior experience in the game industry, it might be that the inevitable licensing will yield something grand.

Someone Spent Time Writing This

2007-05-31T18:17:00.000-07:00

LOLmacros have undergone an Explosion event, wherein they have crossed over into commercial culture. When this happens, the community which spawned the meme subsequently declares the meme dead at the same time that commercial media declares the meme alive - I call this the Maxwell's Demon Indicator (MDI). The MDI comes into play every time an underground punk band goes mainstream.

The primary reason for the LOLmacro's success is due to, in my estimation, the meme's high rate of mutability. Mutability is determined by how much alteration a meme can undergo and still be recognizable as representative of the meme.

I have devised a way to measure this mutability that I call the Novelty Index.

Here is how it works:

Novelty Index (NI) = Number of points of alteration / Total points in the meme (each word/picture/gesture counts as one point)

This requires an in-depth example:

Consider the meme "All your base are belong to us."

This takes the general form "All your [noun] are belong to us." Replacement of the noun is the most accepted alteration. While changing the verb might still lead to recall of the meme, tolerance of this variation is considered too low to qualify. Therefore, the Novelty Index is 1/7.

As the NI approaches a 1:1 ratio, the longevity of the meme increases. The Novelty Index is never greater than 1:1.

A meme with more total points will have a lower rate of transmission. Simpler is better.

Type Acceptance (TA) is the number of possible elements that can be utilized in a modify point. Suppose it were acceptable to write "All your [verb] are belong to us." The modify point would then accept [noun] and [verb], two separate elements.

A simple one-dimensional categorization of TA can be found by multiplying the number of points of alteration by the number of possible elements. For the original All Your Base example, 1 x 1 = 1.

A higher TA not only increases longevity but increases the chance that a meme will spawn a new subtype.

To sum up, All Your Base has an NI of 1/7 and a TA of 1. With only 7 total points, its transmission rate is high, but its longevity is quite low. This is a meme that saturates quickly but holds no long-term amusement value.

Note the "i'm in ur base, killin ur d00ds" as diagrammed by Anil Dash has an obviously higher NI.

---

When classifying elements one must keep in mind the subset. LOLmacros are the parent set of image macros that utilize altered leetspeak, as noted by David McRaney in this post. Therefore, LOLcats is a subset that exclusively uses cat images. This specificity must be factored into any calculations.

---

As a case study, there are many crossover elements between (1)I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?, (2)Cute Overload, and (3)ytmnd. All three are heavily image-based yet dependent on text.

(1) is made up of elements that can be easily reduced to an automated process. However, the text must still conform to bastardized leetspeak and will no doubt be judged harshly if the phrasing seems inconsistent. While no unified grammar exists at this time, there are aesthetics which can be gained by exposure to examples - and like any specialized art community, whatever is accepted is what is acceptable, whatever is rejected is excluded from the set.

(2) is similar to lolcats, but it employs a baby animal as its centerpiece. Text is not deployed on the picture but in a post body, blog-style. Nevertheless, the text is a vital element in the overall composition. The speech employed can be either pedantic or an altered babytalk.

(3) has one of the highest NIs possible, as should be apparent by the number of new sites created every day. The front page explains the simple formula: "It stems from an idea that, using sound, and image, and some text, the users can convey a point, funny, political, or otherwise, to the general media." To be more specific, it follows the form [tiled image/looped video (often altered)] [sound loop] [splash text]. The NI is 3/3 (though it is acceptable to leave out the text) and a TA of 12. The challenge in creating a ytmnd is to link all three elements into a unifying concept, much like the creation of a punchline.

---

It should be noted that the mathememetic analysis detailed in the first part of this post utilizes very simple calculations.

There is a more advanced method for obtaining the TA, but it uses matrices to track points, possible elements, and acceptability in order to arrive at several limit sets.

But that requires Alolgebra.

Dictatorial

2007-05-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

When I talked about inefficiency in city-simulators, I neglected to mention Tropico.

Tropico is an interesting game that never quite lived up to its central theme: you get to be the fearless leader of a tropical island, ruling your people with an iron fist while pleasing the Americans and trying your best to look like a democracy to the rest of the world.

The problem is that the game lacks teeth. It's clear that the vibe is meant to be satirical, but the gameplay is so straightforward it comes off as bland instead.

I would rather see a more realistic simulation: death squads, torture, duping UN inspectors, fending off CIA-led invasions, nationalizing corporations. Make it brutal. I might have noticed that, at least.

The game did have a bit of the chaotic effect I was getting at, though.

Here's an example from my most recent playthrough: I was in charge of getting a tourist industry up and running. Everything was great until I lost my college professor. I didn't have enough money to lure another one from abroad. I tried firing qualified personnel from other professions and raising the professor wages, but nobody would fill the position. This meant that my brand new power plant wouldn't operate at maximum efficiency (it required college-educated operators). Which meant that my brand new tourist attractions were useless. Out of money, my people growing unhappy, I was forced out of office - I couldn't even afford to steal the election.

The problem was indeed in the challenge. It took me awhile to figure out why things weren't working properly. And when I did finally suss it out, there was little that could be done. Having one worker change jobs sent repercussions through my whole city.

Maybe I shouldn't be talking about chaos but rather catastrophe.

Run, Shadowrun

2007-05-29T18:42:00.000-07:00

Shadowrun is in stores, apparently. It looks interesting, but I'm not fond enough of competition to buy a multiplayer-only title.

Well, not without a demo, that's for sure. Word is that a 360 demo will drop on June 6.

From what I've seen, there has been no announcement of a PC demo.

This is a very odd way to launch Microsoft's 360-PC synergy.*

The proper way, of course, would have been to make damn sure there was a PC demo on launch. Starting up the demo for the first time would take the player through the process of creating a Live account. Then there would be a few screens showing all the very cool things that Live has to offer PC players.

Assuming, of course, that Live has anything more to offer PC players than stat-tracking, matchmaking, and cross-platform play. And that's only if you choose to pay the 60 bucks a year.

It would've been nice if Microsoft had decided to get a full-fledged Live service up and running for PC users. That means the downloadable games, movies/tv shows on demand, and demos available right now to 360 users.

Or how about this: Offering a discount for PC gamers registering a new Live account and purchasing Shadowrun through digital download.

I'm not sure who they're trying to convince. At this point Microsoft doesn't need to make a successful product. They just need to keep throwing money at it until it works the way it's intended.

*Halo 2 is apparently also part of this overarching plan to stun the world with mediocrity. A last-gen game for current-gen prices? Pathetic.

And while I'm on the subject, look at this Games for Windows page. The Coming Soon column lists a bunch of games that are definitely not coming anytime soon, except for Lord of the Rings Online which happens to be out already (as is made clear since it's listed up top in the Featured Releases section). Their commitment is certainly in evidence.

The Scam

2007-05-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

Here's how the scam works:

Spend billions on military toys to prop up the for-profit defense industry. Most of these are pet projects that will never see the light of day, or superiority weapons systems that are completely unnecessary since they far outclass anything they'd have to face on the battlefield (until we start selling them to other countries). House and Senate members beg to receive the contracts for these toys because they want the revenue and jobs - and because we're too goddamn shortsighted to spend the money on what Buckminster Fuller called 'livingry' (the opposite of weaponry, natch).

Then, after blowing the defense budget on toys, tack on supplemental funding for necessities like body armor, ensuring that the funding will be approved.

This is the opposite of a budget. A budget means that you prioritize what you need and trim things that aren't essential.

We're stuck. The military-industrial-corporate-government complex has gotten too large, too powerful. They can play the budget game for a long time, demanding billions and billions for kickbacks and tacking on a meager amount for the boots on the ground, and then attack any politicians opposed to their waste as 'troop-haters.'

Take a minute to see what might be accomplished with all that money we throw at the Pentagon.

Just as an example, Maryland's share going to the Iraq Invasion for FY07 could be used to give 1.6 million people health care.

Ah, wishful thinking.

Inefficiency

2007-05-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

I revisited a couple of the old city-builders: Caesar III and Zeus.

One of the things about these games is how everything functions as closed loops. People harvest food and eat food. They shear sheep and purchase wool. They demand culture and attend the theater.

Where's the waste? Where's the inefficiency?

There is an assumption in these games that expansion is linear. A cluster of houses will be supported by a fountain. Another cluster will need its own fountain. But the number of fountains won't put a strain on the whole system. And everyone seems to use everything properly. Fountains aren't busted by morons or vandals.

I don't know if the most recent SimCity took fluctuating stresses and exponential system growth into account. That's something I'd like to see, though.

I want to see the vast differences between social/economic classes, not just housing upgrades. Holidays should increase demand across the board and produce a lot more waste. Upper classes can support leisure pursuits but put more strain on basic services - more consumption, more waste, large social events, big families, servants.

Maybe that's too much for a game. Dealing with a chaotic system would probably be heavy on challenge and light on game.

I can barely sustain a city in Caesar III as it is.

Repercussions

2007-05-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

"I remember talking to [Paul] Wolfowitz, in his office, in the Pentagon, and telling him -- this was after the propaganda build up had started, before the war. I said, 'You know, these guys are not going to welcome you.'

"He said, 'Why?' I said, 'For one thing, these guys detest foreigners, and the few who really like you are the least representative of the various breeds of people there. They're going to fight you, then, if you occupy the place there's going to be a massive insurgency.'"

"He said, 'No, no, they'll be glad to see us,'" Lang continued. "This will start the process of revolution around the Middle East that will transform everything.'

No, Lang told Wolfowitz, "that's not gonna happen. It's just an impossibility. They're not like that. They don't want to be us."

-via The Washington Note

Wolfowitz was a Team B mutherfucker, that group of know-nothing sad sacks whose job was to invent Soviet Union supervillain scenarios in order to push their various agendas: direct conflict, inflating defense budgets, undermining the CIA. Team B was fantastically wrong about everything. The big question is whether they bought their own bullshit.

From the opening quote it seems that maybe Wolfowitz swallows bullshit for breakfast. Maybe he really thought there were Soviet stealth submarines. It certainly sounds like he believed in our own Reverse Domino Theory, US fairy dust sparking off the Glorious Owners' Revolution. Or maybe he's just good at regurgitating the party line and was signaling to Lang that real expert analysis wouldn't be necessary.

They weren't cherry-picking intelligence. They were cherry-picking stupidity.

And ensuring that the stupidest were given the plum jobs.

Lost Season Finale

2007-05-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna lay out my own pet theory about the season finale before I forget about it.

Spoiler warning.

Jack and the Losties weren't just rescued back to the mainland - they were rescued and brought back in time.

A few things: When the hatch imploded (or whatever it did), Desmond went back in time and met someone else who also received visions. Assume that this actually occurred in a parallel timeline. It could be that certain members of Dharma (or some other faction) are able to insert themselves into other timelines - that they could use this to learn hard-to-find information or alter the course of events.

Regardless of this, back to my main conceit. Assume that the Losties on the beach were left behind.

If the Losties were rescued and brought back in time, this would explain:
-Why Jack spoke about his father as if his father were still alive. In the new timeline, Jack was able to stop his father's death.
-Kate's appearance and actions. In the new timeline she is still married to Callis. She is pissed at Jack both because of her feelings for him and because Sawyer was left behind.
-Why Oceanic Air is still in business. In the main timeline, the airline went under because of the crash. In the new timeline it is still in operation.
-Why nobody recognizes Jack as one of the survivors of Flight 815. Because in the new timeline it didn't crash. Maybe the flight never even happened. If the Losties were able to convincingly warn Oceanic about the upcoming crash, this might explain the 'gold passes' that allow the Losties to fly anywhere for no charge.
-Why Jack wants to get back - he couldn't save everyone.

I was reminded of two different works: the film Millenium and the novel Timequake.

There are still a ton of questions, of course. I'm probably completely wrong. But it's fun to piece things together.

Headache

2007-05-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

If you ever want a serious headache, try to make a videogame.

I scrapped my original prototype because Gamemaker's collision code is just too buggy.

At this point I think I had three weeks. Not good.

I spent a week prototyping new ideas. I got some pretty complex behavior going using the built-in pathfinding/avoidance code.

Unfortunately, I neglected to do one thing: find the core gameplay element.

I had backstory. I developed very messy code that would activate quests and show conversations with NPCs. But every conversation had to be created as its own object, which meant opening my paint program, making a .bmp, creating a sprite, turning that sprite into an object, and then altering custom code to display the object under specific conditions and destroy it otherwise.

Two weeks down. I was creating almost all the assets by hand because I wasn't happy with what I found online. This was very, very tedious.

In the end I hacked together what I could, tacking on a lame end boss. It was awful. Boring.

After the class tried it out, almost all my feedback said one thing, "Too complicated." Nobody could figure out what to do or where to go, even with the controls written out.

Failure.

It was pretty sweet.

Stats

2007-05-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

One of the problems I have with newspapers is the struggle to keep track of the reliability of particular journalists. With so many stories each day, I might remember only one or two bylines, and then it's usually because they've done very good or very bad work.

Seymour Hersh, for example, is very good. But how to arrive at that sort of conclusion?

There are several metrics that could be useful:

1. A breakdown of the types of sourcing -anonymous, named, government, think tank, corporate, party affiliation. The tenor and target of that sourcing - supportive, hostile, whistleblower. Shown as percentages.

2. Track record. Charts claims made by the journalist, i.e., the "story" and whether they are descriptive or predictive. If descriptive, is the claim supported or contradicted by readily-available data? If predictive, are hard numbers given or is the thesis vague? Does the claim bear out over time? Shown as ratios - Descriptive supported/Descriptive contradicted and Predictive vindicated/Predictive wrong.

3. Case studies. There are two case studies in particular that would be useful for journalistic context (and these, of course, could be amended or changed as new cases gained notoriety): The Clinton investigations and the run-up to the Iraq Invasion. In both of these instances, the conduct of journalists is especially relevant. Both contain large numbers of falsehoods that were repeated as conventional wisdom long after they were debunked. How many stories did a journalist file about the subject and how many accepted falsehoods were contained in the pieces?

4. Money. Who pays the journalist? Do they accept speaking fees? Have they written, edited, or funded books? How much do they earn and from where?

5. Affiliations. What kind of friendships have they claimed? Do they regularly dine with elected officials, corporate boardmembers, or known partisan activists?

You could fit all this data on a fairly small pop-up. Or a deck of cards.

This is the kind of thing I'd do if I had good enough organizational skills.

Time

2007-04-24T18:12:00.000-07:00

Is this blog still here? Man.

This isn't going to be an announcement for some kind of hiatus. Every time I say I'm taking a break I end up doing a post about a week later, which makes me look like a liar.

But I do have finals coming up, which means 1) completing a game and documentation and 2) memorizing a bunch of scales, triads, and inversions.

I also dropped WoW because, just as it became a habit to play, it became a habit not to play.

Which doesn't mean I've gained any time, because I also got some new toys:

1. A DS Lite - Puzzle Quest combines the addictiveness of Bejeweled with the addictiveness of RPGs; you may as well just soak your brain in opiates.

2. A Casio Digital Piano - 88-key and weighted. I've always wanted to learn, and it makes learning theory easier.

3. A Wii - Just found it today. Best Buy had five in stock at the Customer Service desk. Did a few rounds of Tennis and Bowling and loved it. Picked up Zelda and hoping there won't be a Water Temple moment for me in it. Will also give the online service a shot - there should be some classic games that will interest the wife.

In addition I've set a goal to complete a second draft of the first novel this year - quite a timeline, but this thing has been 90 percent written for six years.

The greatest band in the world is also meeting for the first time on Saturday. Five people, two of which actually play instruments. They will tremble at our thunder.

Hope everyone else's schedule is as chockful as mine.

Round Table Pictures

2007-04-15T00:07:00.000-07:00

Little One

little one rises
peeks beyond the horizon
searching for sunshine

Moving On

yellow moves onward
rolls forward with urgency
can the spring be far?

The Doorway

here is the doorway
but how can this room exist?
nothing is blooming

Please visit the Round Table's &amp;amp;lt;a title="Round Table Main Hall" href="http://blog.pjsattic.com/corvus/round-table/"&amp;gt;Main Hall&lt;/a&gt; for links to all entries.

Toi!

2007-04-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

Something to keep an eye on . . .

The Toi world-making . . . thing. Production suite, I guess.

It's in a very rough state right now, but has a lot of promise.

I tried it out last night. The terrain engine is very streamlined. In a few short clicks I had a world created and was playing around with a large chunk of flat terrain. Basic controls - raising, lowering, smoothing, flattening. I wanted a way to generate noise, both over the whole terrain or specific areas (and maybe that functionality is in there, but I didn't find it).

Objects are the same way. Click to drop one in, then place, move, rotate.

Particle support and the PhysX engine, too. I haven't gotten to those yet.

My only complaint thus far is that the icons need to be larger and have floating tooltips.

No word on the licensing yet, which is always a bit worrisome. Gamemaker thrived on having a free version that lacked some more advanced features but had room for lots of clever workarounds.

---

I also tried out Torque Game Builder.

Not bad, but not as user-friendly as they would have you believe. If you're an experienced scripter, then it's definitely a useful product.

I think my biggest disappointment was going through the tutorial and finding out how to make my fish swim back and forth: first, navigate to your game directory, find your game.cs file, open it in notepad, create the fish class, give it an impulse, save and exit your script, exit your game and restart TGB.

That's just a ridiculous workflow. I expected an IDE that would show me available functions as I typed as well as their parameters. And I didn't expect to have to restart everything each time I wanted to see what would happen.

Since I'm just finally putting coding together in my mind, I iterate in very small increments and test every single time I make a change. The way TGB does it is probably the worst for my way of working.

Version 1.5 is supposed to add support for attaching Behaviors through the editor without mucking about with scripts. I'll keep watching that and go from there.

At the moment I've decided to stick with 2-d for many, many reasons. For one, it's easier for me to mock up a temp sprite in Paint than muck around in Blender. For another, it's simpler to visualize behavior and work out the math involved.

And for my long-term goal (tokenization of conversational data) it works just as well as 3-d.

---

Oh, and I looked at the Unity3d thing. Sounds perfect, but for one thing: Mac only. And no indication of a future PC port. That's too bad. I've considered getting a Mac Mini, so if I do it will go on my list of software, but right now I have no space in my work area for even a Mini.

Let's Not Be So Negative

2007-04-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

"But Shimon Gibson, who was part of the team that excavated the tomb two and half decades ago and who appeared in the film, is quoted in Pfann's report as saying he doubted the site was the tomb of Jesus and his family."

I think the funniest thing about the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" is that it really is the tomb of Jesus.

Just not the Jesus they were looking for.

Vonnegut's Gone

2007-04-11T22:10:00.000-07:00

A shame, now, Kurt Vonnegut swallowed up, too.

I had the privilege of hearing him speak to a room of a few hundred students, faculty, and staff when I worked for the University of Georgia.

He was a hundred times funnier than his books and about a million times more profound, even when he was just reading excerpts.

My favorite of his books has to be Cat's Cradle. Some part of it just stuck to me. I remember having a new respect for the Grateful Dead when I learned they named their publishing company Ice-Nine.

Then there were those words. "No damn cat, and no damn cradle."

Some people might consider that sentiment fatalistic, much like the inevitable apocalyptic nature of the book.

I always considered it freedom. Once you stop trying to find the cat or the cradle you're free to see anything.

Or nothing.

---

I blame the man for telling me about Eugene V. Debs and, from there, hastening a slow decline into humanism and socialism.

So it goes.

---

Here is the cat's cradle conversation in full:

Little Newt stirred.
While still half-snoozing, he put his black, painty hands to his mouth and chin, leaving black smears there. He rubbed his eyes and made black smears around them, too.
"Hello," he said to me, sleepily.
"Hello," I said. "I like your painting."
"You see what it is?"
"I suppose it means something different to everyone who sees it."
"It's a cat's cradle."
"Aha," I said. "Very good. The scratches are string. Right?"
"One of the oldest games there is, cat's cradle. Even the Eskimos know it."
"You don't say."
"For maybe a hundred thousand years or more, grownups have been waving tangles of string in their children's faces."
"Um."
Newt remained curled in the chair. He held out his painty hands as though a cat's cradle were strung between them. "No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle."

No wonder kids grow up crazy. Not enough Vonneguts.

Prototype Problems

2007-04-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

If anyone would care to play around with my game prototype and clue me in as to why an object that is collided with from the top will sometimes pop through the floor? This can also occur when two or more objects are being pushed by the main character - as they bounce one will just 'foop' and be gone.

I've tried all sorts of tricks with gravity, vspeed, move_contact_solid, etc.

So try it out if you wish. I will provide a link to an .exe and, if you don't trust that, one to a .gmk. You should be able to execute the .gmk from an unregistered version of GM7, you just won't be able to access some of the functionality. If you do this, wherever you see a blank action is where I used custom libraries, either a kinetic bounce or a treat as solid.

The graphics are temped in from the original Gamemaker resource packs. It is my understanding that these are free to use.

The controls are the arrow keys (left moves left, right moves right, up jumps, down does nothing). If you press the spacebar you will shoot out a beam that, when the spacebar is released, will push the movable objects away. This is also an error - I've been trying to get it so that the pushing occurs until the object is free from the beam's collision, but I think it's having trouble - I probably have a set vspeed to 0 for all objects in one of my collision events.

Anyway, here it is, help is not expected but would be appreciated. I've thrown up questions twice on the Gamemaker forums and gotten some views but no replies.

Link to .exe file.

Link to .gmk file.

And once again I found myself saying, "Rigid body physics can't be too hard, dammit!" only to walk away frustrated hours later.

This Will Not Work

2007-04-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

I'm tagging myself with a meme called "comment on the O'Reilly list of Proper Netiquette."

I'll let people know right now that a Code of Conduct for blogging is the second-to-worst type of wankery.

Commenting on a proposed Code of Conduct is the worst type of wankery.

Go here for A Good Citizen's Guide to Not Making Death Threats on the Web.

On Rule the First:

I'll take responsibility for my own words. Comments, though, no fucking way. That doesn't mean I won't enforce my own standards on comments. It just means that if I fail to catch something libelous and it sits on my blog for a few days, then a statement saying I take responsibility for all comments means I'm now the world's biggest idiot. A farfetched scenario, maybe, but this is a farfetched world.

I don't care about the "Civility Enforced" standard. Civility is too often a code word for a load of placating bullshit that masks an inability to stand for anything. Civility is letting Vice President Cheney spin more lies about an al-Qaeda/Saddam connection without calling that mutherfucker on his treacle.

Which obviously means I won't ever disavow ad hominem attacks. It's a weak logical fallacy, I know, but really good ones become pearls of wit.

"He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin."

That's Hunter S. Thompson right there. When I make ad hominem attacks I don't come anywhere near that level, but you can't get better without lots of practice.

If I delete a comment, I don't owe anybody an explanation. Thankfully, I don't have enough readers to worry about it.

On Rule the Second:

"We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person." Gibberish. Say to whom? My boss? My mother-in-law? My friends in the Marine Corps? My old roommate? This doesn't make sense for a reason I will get to later.

On Rule the Third:

Eh. Since most of the blogosphere is about publicly commenting on things, this is impossible. So what if you do decide to talk to a person privately and they don't respond? Are you then suddenly, magically, justified in writing a post?

There is a thin line between "misrepresenting" and "lying through your fucking teeth." People who do the second aren't usually interested in a dialogue toward conflict resolution.

On Rule the Fourth:

If you're offended by something you see on the Internet, ask for all the amends you want; just don't expect them.

Threats, though - that's a matter for law enforcement. No argument there.

On Rule the Fifth:

Anonymity or even pseudoanonymity is a necessary element to the free exchange of ideas.

I understand that some people will use anonymity to be absolutely horrible to other people.

There's always a price.

Easy for me to say, I know. But I don't think I'll ever be surprised by the extent to which human beings can act like absolute shits toward other human beings.

But anonymity also ties into the second rule. Sometimes there are things a person might need to express that they wouldn't say "in person." Maybe it's a personal experience and they're using the Internet as a kind of catharsis (Livejournal is filled with examples). Or maybe they're living under a repressive regime and wish to make political statements that they wouldn't dare say publicly, not even to their friends or family.

Point is, anonymity is not the problem; people are the problem.

Getting rid of the former won't fix the latter.

On Rule the Sixth:

I don't have very good troll radar, because I don't ever get trolls. I'm blessed with a small readership. But yeah, ignore trolls.

---

That's a wrap.

And, unlike Corvus, I obviously use lots of blue language.

But that's only because vulgarity so often proves my point.

F--. Yeah.

Reversal

2007-04-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

I may have this thing cracked. I finally got at least a very rough prototype worked out.

The trick was something very simple (naturally). I was trying to just work with the hspeed of my player object and pass that to the movable objects. It didn't seem to pass hspeed as a negative, though (for "left" direction). I could move it to the right, fine - no matter how I collided with the object.

The key was, in a collision event, to pass the direction of my player object to the movables. And this is done by calling other.direction (simple, I know).

I also use two .libs, Ultima Actions v3 and Platform Basic 2.0 - one of them has a decent solids code and the other a rough kinetic collision event (probably just a bounce event with some kind of damping, but saves me a headache).

There are two major errors, and I may end up going to the community for help:

1. If you push a movable object against a wall, when it bounces off the wall it will penetrate the main character's collision. They're both solids, so this shouldn't happen, but I think it has to do with using the jump to position command - I may have to try and find another way to move the objects.

2. If one movable object falls on top of another (or sometimes while pushing several of them together) one of them will pop through the floor. Again, probably something to do with jumping to position. I can fix some of that by playing with the vspeed, but this won't work if the object is in the air (setting the vspeed to 0 in those cases makes the object hang, of course).

I'm also not happy with the way my wall collisions function right now (a simple bounce, but then the character shakes if you keep pressing into it), but that's not rightly a bug.

Hopefully people aren't getting bored with my worklogs. This is a good way to keep track of my progress and the various things I've tried. I hope it might also help other people using gamemaker.

Get used to it, though. I haven't even begun to incorporate the graphics or sound or menu functionality.

---

And while I'm on the subject, I wanted to talk directly about Gamemaker itself.

Go to Yoyogames' site.

Look around a bit.

It sucks. They barely tell you about the software. It looks like a generic spam or placeholder site.

The original Gamemaker site is still up, but isn't being updated. The tutorials absolutely suck. There is a message about v7 and a whole bunch of new developments for March. Version 7 came out at the end of February.

And here we are in April and the Yoyogames site hasn't changed. They haven't migrated the forums or released new extensions or done much of anything. They don't even have a news feed to tell people what's coming or if they're doing any work.

The creator explained his decision to sell as a way to keep development going since he no longer had the time. That's reasonable. But now there's not even a peep from the new guys.

Not the way to build a community.

---

64digits is a good way to organize a community, if you can wade through the endless Naruto references and adolescent depression.

---

Don't forget about April's Round Table.

Half-A-Yard Stare

2007-04-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

Something I do not recommend:

Becoming so obsessed with your imagined game that you spend all your time trying to find some way to make the core functionality of the game actually work.

Especially after the original solution seemed so promising but turned out to be incompatible.

Then downloading some kind of Tokamak .dll and fiddling with that until you realize that you can't just call the Scripts, you have to call functions and pass the correct parameters, which you will only figure out through excessive trial and error. And for some reason every time you change the slightest thing the simulation stops working.

So you look for another solution and come upon ODE.

For god's sake, do not spend hours coding in movement and gravity and pondering how to properly use external_calls and even more nebulous parameters. It just isn't worth it. You will never figure out how to stop your player from bouncing and spinning (maybe something to do with torque or angular velocity but there's no way your code will be correct).

And why is it so damn hard to include a simple way to make static bodies?

What you should do is basically lament that 1)The new version of GMPhysics isn't ready, 2)Gamemaker doesn't have a built-in physics simulation, 3)You have to use Gamemaker, 4)There don't seem to be any other physics add-ins that do not require the same amount of knowledge to use as creating one from scratch, and 5)You ever thought that getting a little ghost to push a bunch of blocks around would be an easy thing.

---

I'm not yet ready to scrap my game idea.

But I'm getting there.

The First Brick Wall

2007-04-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

I've apparently reached the first major obstacle for my project.

Turns out that GMPhysics isn't fully compatible with Gamemaker 7. There is a limit on the number of physics object you can have - too many and the game won't load. So I can get an 800x600 map working with about 30 static objects and 6 physics objects, but more than that and . . . error.

They no longer allow you to buy version 6.1.

No word on a newer version of GMPhysics anytime soon.

So I'm going to look for some other solution to getting the physics in my game.

Here's hoping.

Trouble Sleeping 2

2007-04-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

Patrick, were you referring to Unity 3d?

Thanks for the tip, but I'm kind of stuck using Gamemaker as part of my class.

More fiddling last night.

After many fruitless hours I finally discovered how to get GMPhysics working. I'm convinced at this point that part of the reason programming isn't as accessible as it could be is because programmers take so much basic knowledge for granted.

The .dll thing, for example. Gamemaker's help file says almost nothing, only some cryptic stuff about making one and that you have to initialize it . . . somehow. Good luck.

There were three things I managed to crack last night:

1. Installing GMPhysics.

The easiest thing to do would be to open up one of the included example files (Platform, Polygons, or Water). Delete all the sprites. Delete all the objects EXCEPT for the one labeled "control."

Now save the file as BlankGMPhysics or something similar. There you go.

The other thing you can do takes more work but lets you import it into a work in progress without having to start over.

The good thing about Gamemaker is you can open up multiple versions of the program. So open up one of the GMPhysics examples (I'll refer to it as Platform) and simultaneously open up your project.

Look at the Platform project. Under the Scripts tab you should see a Group labeled "GMPhysics." If you open that Group you will see seven more Groups such as "Polygon" and "World." Those are the Scripts you need to import into your project.

Select the Polygon Group. On the top of the project you will see File, Edit, Resources, Scripts, etc. Click on Scripts. The second item in the list is Export Group of Scripts. Click on that now. Name it the same as its Group name and Save.

Do the same for all of the Groups.

Now, in your own project, click on the Scripts menu. Choose Import Scripts. You should see all the Scripts you saved with the extension ".gml." Import all of them. Then, just to clean everything up, Right-click on Scripts and Create Group. Call this new Group GMPhysics. Drag-and-Drop all your imported Scripts into the GMPhysics Group.

Easy enough, right?

Now comes the real annoying part.

In the Platform project, look to the left and find the Global Game Settings. Double-click to open them. Choose the tab that says "Constants."

Now open the Global Game Settings in your own project and navigate to the Constants page. It should be blank. Press "Append." Now type in the first item from the Platform project.

Press Append again. Type in the next item down the list. And so on. And so on. Make sure to put these values in exactly as you see them.

There. That's all it takes to get GMPhysics into a project.

But that won't get it to work.

2. Getting GMPhysics to actually work.

So I was happy when I figured out how to set up a project with GMPhysics. I was ready to start tinkering.

I put in my temp graphics and hacked together some objects.

Run the game.

Nothing but errors. Error in code line 1.

Bullshit. Impossible. What the hell was going on?

I tried it again. And again. And again.

I took one of the physics examples and put my stuff in and tried it out. Errors. So many errors!

Fuck it. I tried to go to bed. It's 4 AM by now. I toss and turn. 4:30. 5:00. I feel terrible, dizzy and tired and the arthritis in my back is radiating tremblors of pain.

And all this time I'm turning over and over in my head my complete failure to get the goddamn program working. It should work, dammit!

Then it hits me. I'm House, that faraway look, the moment of inspiration, the puzzle solved.

I got up. Turned on the monitor. With all the lights out the monitor's brightness caused sharp pain in my eyes. It took a few minutes of blinking to adjust.

Here's the trick, then, for those who have lasted this long:

Remember the object labeled "control" that just seemed to sit there? It's in all the GMPhysics examples. There's a good reason it's there. It's where the whole thing is initialized.

Which means you need one of those objects in your project. If you created a blank project from one of the examples then you should already have it. If not, here's what you do.

Create a new Object. Name it objControl or something similar. Don't give it a sprite. Set its Depth to a very high number. Make sure it isn't checked Solid. It can stay Visible, however.

-Add a Create Event. Drop in a code block (under the Control tab on the far right) that says "init_physics( );" This is also where you would initialize a ground plane depending on your game type.
-Add a Step Event. Drop in a code block that says "update_bodies( );"
-Add a Game End Event. Drop in a code block that says "release_physics( );"

Now that you have your Control object comes the part that I missed. The part that frustrated me for hours.

Make sure you place your Control object into every Room in your game. That's it.

So Create a new Room. In the Objects tab choose objControl and drop it somewhere in the room.
Done.

3. Working with GMPhysics.

The nice thing about this add-in is that you can put nearly all your object's properties in its Create Event and then just call object_update( ); in the Step Event.

Now, for a beginner it's best to stick with the Body Scripts. Double-click on a Script and you should see a pretty good description of what it does and what arguments it needs. Try to ignore the external_call information at the bottom.

Let's say you have an object. A cube 16 x 16.

Do the usual Gamemaker steps - create your sprite and then your object.

Now, in your object make a Create Event. You want this to be a floor, so it doesn't need to move and won't react to any physics. There is a specific argument for this in the create_body Script called "STATIC."

In your Create Event drop a code block and put "create_body(x, y, STATIC, SHAPE_BOX, 16, 16);" That's it. You could also assign that code to a variable using the equals sign.

Just be sure you update your objects in the Step Event and destroy them in the Destroy Event.

Have fun. Get frustrated.

---

The Problem:

For some reason my physics objects are encountering an invisible collision plane. I have a STATIC ground block. All objects are SHAPE_BOX types. The boxes start in the air and fall, but won't touch the STATIC block.

On the other hand, I created an ACTOR type, so I can move around a little. The ACTOR sits fine on the STATIC block.

Which makes me think the problem is with the physics boxes.

Still, it's a lot easier than trying to fake the physics using Drag & Drop items. Which means more time I can spend tweaking my gameplay.

Hopefully.

Trouble Sleeping

2007-04-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

I've been having trouble sleeping lately.

So Sunday night through early Monday morning I sat down and started fiddling with Gamemaker.

I had already come up with my main idea.

My method was simple: I wrote down some themes in which I was interested. Then I wrote down a list of all the verbs that I thought I might be able to do in Gamemaker. Which meant simple stuff - nothing like "God of War-style attack system". Things like "move," "jump," "push."

So I had the big idea. I had a list of interactions.

I managed to prototype my idea by fiddling. Which means that so far I approve of the software. It took maybe four hours using temp graphics.

It wasn't perfect, of course.

Actually, let me explain. The collision system is pretty terrible. I have read suggestions to use masks but no in-depth tutorial on getting them to work properly.

Which means the objects that I can push around sometimes collide with my main character and get him stuck. Or sometimes they clip right into the supposedly solid brick floor.

I also can't make it so that if the main character pushes objects in a line that all of them will move.

I was thinking that maybe a decent physics system could solve this much faster. But there's no help whatsoever for the Gmphysics lib. I have no idea where to even begin.

Ah, the joy of making games.

[beats head against wall]

Standards

2007-03-31T14:11:00.000-07:00

I went ahead and bought a special offer for an Eidos three-pack on Steam for a little over fifty bucks.

Three games: Just Cause, Project Snowblind, and Rogue Trooper.

Just Cause --

I was looking forward to this game. Until I played the demo and found the control scheme absolutely horrible. But I heard it was improved before release.

They fixed that, almost (they needed a lot more customization, especially for sensitivity). But then, that's not really the problem.

The problem is that it stutters constantly. Every five seconds or so there is a noticeable hitch. No matter how high or low I put the graphic settings. Running a google search on 'just cause stutter' brought up plenty of hits, so it's definitely a known issue. The official forums have several posts on this problem, with no response whatsoever from a representative. No word on a patch. How this wasn't caught by QA or by official reviewers boggles my mind.

Which brings up some interesting questions: How much does Valve do in terms of vetting the games they sell on Steam? Did they ask about any outstanding issues? Did they research possible problems and get a guarantee of a future patch? Were they counting on any continued support at all?

This is a new game from a major company. The last time I saw support ignore a game to this degree it was Vampire: Bloodlines, and that's because Troika went out of business.

As for the game itself . . . well, it's GTA in the tropics.

Also, if you can believe this, there isn't even an attempt to have the characters lipsync during cutscenes. Half-Life had puppet-style mouth movements almost ten years ago.

So that's one of my new rules - you can't call your game next-gen if you don't give your characters the barest semblance of lipsyncing.

Project Snowblind --

Okay, it's the gameplay and art style of Republic Commando mixed with a Deus Ex theme. It is The Future and you are an Augmented Soldier and you get Nano/Bionic Implants and Cool Guns. It's all shooting gallery, objective-hop and really satisfies my finger when it gets itchy and triggery.

I have a soft spot for second-tier FPSes. This kind of game is like bran, it goes right through me and cleanses my gaming colon gummed up with RPG storylines and RTS tactics.

Sorry for that image.

Rogue Trooper --

Based on a comicbook that I had no idea ever existed.

The all blue guy is a little strange, but if I could accept Dr. Manhattan then he's okay by me.

This is a third-person shooter with some great visuals and a decent amount of fine maneuvering necessary to complete objectives - using cover, flanking, sniping, taking over mounted weapons.

I haven't gotten into it enough to pronounce any kind of judgment, but thus far it is both ludically familiar and thematically novel (obviously if you're familiar with the series you will have a different reaction to the material).

The one problem is that Steam does not like to launch the game. I typically have to restart my computer and then it loads fine. It's not a deal-breaker, but enough to limit they time spent playing.

Notes on The Marriage

2007-03-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

As usual, Corvus hits a lot of points that had struck me after playing The Marriage by Rod Humble.

I like the way that sounds, Title then Author. More games should do that, instead of American McGee's Re-tooled Gothed-up Children's Story X. Maybe we'll see Spore by Will Wright on a box cover.

But I digress. A lot.

So I present a bulleted list of minor judgments:

1. The Marriage does what it sets out to do.

2. It sucks. That is, it's no fun to "play." Maybe if this were 14,000 BC and you showed it to a local artist who just finished daubing charcoal on a cave wall it would be impressive and elicit grunts/clicks/howls/intonations of approval and worship.

3. Number 2 doesn't matter very much.

4. Who cares about Rod's wife? That doesn't matter, either. It's not called Interactive Metaphor For Rod Humble's Marriage.

5. On the other hand, I think that Mr. Humble's intent is very important to the piece:

"The game is my expression of how a marriage feels. The blue and pink squares represent the masculine and feminine of a marriage. They have differing rules which must be balanced to keep the marriage going.

"The circles represent outside elements entering the marriage. This can be anything. Work, family, ideas, each marriage is unique and the players response should be individual..

"The size of each square represents the amount of space that person is taking up within the marriage. So for example we often say that one person’s ego is dominating a marriage or perhaps a large personality. In the game this would be one square being so large that the other one simply is trapped within the space of it unable to get to circles and more importantly unable to 'kiss' edge to edge.

"The transparency of the squares represents how engaged that person is in the marriage. When one person fades out of the marriage and becomes emotionally distant then the marriage is over."

This seems straightforward enough.

6. Despite Mr. Humble's generalizations, the game isn't about The Marriage. But it can be about A Marriage. Maybe he should change the name.

7. Perhaps you had a different interpretation of the game; This is okay. Just don't pretend that it says anything about Mr. Humble. It sure as hell says a lot about you, though.

8. Without the context - which Mr. Humble was reluctant to provide - there's just not much there, but this hardly means it is a "failure." So much of art requires divorcing the content from the intent. Consider the paintings of Jackson Pollock - what makes his paintings matter is that he means them. Mr. Humble means it, too.

9. Elaborating on number 8, try giving the piece a different title - "Grief" or "Explorations of Parliamentary Procedure." Change the colors of the pieces. Make some go slower or faster. Does the metaphor remain unchanged?

Game Creation on a Whim

2007-03-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

Begin Dream Sequence:

I'm sitting at my desk in a bad mood - maybe something at work or an argument with the wife - and I want to sublimate some of this emotion in a creative way.

I can write - load up Celtx or OpenOffice or even Notepad and just start typing. Or put together a blog post. Heck, maybe just grab a Post-It and start putting words down.

I can draw - there's Paint on the computer or Inkscape or I can grab one of my sketchpads and doodle to my heart's content.

I can pick up my guitar and, even without plugging it in, pick out some riffs or blast through some chords.

But the one thing I can't do - yet - is tinker with gamemaking, not with the same ease.

There are two threads to this dream.

One is the desire for a program that makes it truly easy to assemble non-specific games. Getting a blank canvas and going through a huge database of objects and animations and interactions and laying out how they interconnect, testing right from the engine, plugging in code changes that work by selecting object associations. In short, something that has a relatively short learning curve but allows the flexibility and creativity of other programs. A game-making instrument, if you will. Visual, easily-modifiable, instant-compile, fuzzy.

The other is the desire to have a way to make games in the moment. Hence the first desire. As I said, I want an instrument. I want to sit down at my computer after tripping on LSD and assemble a rough cut of the videogame equivalent of Purple Haze. Or a way to capture depression in interactive form. Or joy. Or ecstasy. Or righteous anger. A basic way to put together a game based upon emotion while still in the throes of that emotion, the way Stairway to Heaven was hashed out in one night and only tweaked come recording time.

Maybe there are certain people using certain programs able to prototype in a small amount of time. But I've yet to see a program that handles things organically, that treats a game like a succession of steadily-more-refined sketches or whittling away at a clay block.

Things like Spore will probably be the tech to push toward this program in my mind.

Someone will get it made someday.

Faster, please.

Spoke Too Soon

2007-03-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

Issue #3 - Vista does not support my Lexmark printer at this time. In fact, my printer is one of the last to be supported. I'm assuming this is because the company focuses on getting their business printers up to speed (even though businesses are probably not the most likely to early-adopt) and then they focus on their home printers.

The end of April is the ETA for the drivers.

Going to try again tomorrow to hook the printer up through my wife's computer (running XP) despite the fact that the software didn't seem to like her DVD drive the first time (it showed the installation disk as blank).

Issue #4 - I have a Sony External DVD burner, a DRX-820U. My PC thinks it's a USB Mass Storage Device (maybe it is, technically). The software doesn't correct this error. The Sony firmware upgrade does not install at all (it restarts your computer automatically and tells you to run the upgrade once it restarts. When you run it after a restart it tells you the same thing - do NOT believe it the second time).

I solved the problem (sort of) by going into the Device Manager and selecting DVD/CD drives and telling it to look for new hardware after unplugging the USB cable from the back of the drive and plugging it in again. I don't know why that worked, but it showed up almost immediately.

I have no idea if it will actually burn disks.

Of course, my computer still tells me it's a Mass Storage Device and that I can Safely Remove Hardware.

---

I'm pretty sure that I could have avoided a lot of these issues if I had a dedicated server. Vista has no problem connecting to a computer running XP, but the other way around is apparently impossible.

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It has been said that technology helps us save time. This is clearly a lie.

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To be fair, WoW and Half-Life 2 run beautifully, Celtx, OpenOffice, and Inkscape installed with no hitches, and the whole presentation is smooth and clean.

Minor Technical Issues

2007-03-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

Issue #1 - For some reason certain games cause my computer to emit an incredibly high-pitched whine at regular intervals. I am particularly sensitive to this noise. Every time it occurs I wince a little, then it goes away and I'm relieved, and then it happens again and I get the urge to smash something.

The whine appears when running Oblivion and Guild Wars.

It does not occur when playing WoW, which is to Blizzard's credit (people often wonder why WoW is so popular, and there are many reasons, but I think a big one is that the game runs on most of the major OSes from - at least - the past seven years - even, apparently, Linux via Wine - and loads up fine even in Vista without having to download support drivers).

From basic searches it sounds like the problem might be a video card fan. The fans are usually spinning at a percentage of their maximum and running intensive 3-d causes them to spin faster. If they aren't [seated properly/constructed correctly] then there can be a whine. I have no idea what I will do to fix this, other than NOT play Guild Wars or Oblivion.

That won't be acceptable for very long.

Issue #2 - The M-Audio Jamlab doesn't work with Vista. Just flat up will not install a few simple drivers for a USB port.

On their website they say Vista support is coming, but they don't even have Beta drivers yet.

I realize that in some sense this is still the early-adopter period. Maybe there were such major changes to DirectSound that the M-Audio guys need some time.

It still sucks.

Now We're Cooking

2007-03-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

Saw TMNT on Friday - it was a blast.

The general tone is a mix of the comics, the cartoons and the movies. There was some trouble with the plotting but overall it was fun. They eschewed the wink-wink jokes-for-adults that some animated movies work in, which was probably a smart move.

Go see it.

---

My new computer arrived on Friday and I finally got it set up and the network kinks worked out.

It is a beast of a machine: Core 2 duo, 4 gigs of RAM, dual 8800 GTX cards.

I can't wait to give it a game in which to really sink its teeth.

Scooby Snack

2007-03-21T17:16:00.000-07:00

Buffy fans can rejoice at the milk bone thrown out by Joss Whedon: Season 8.

Sure it's in comicbook form, but don't let that stop you from checking it out.

As usual, the writing is sharp; Joss Whedon doesn't just turn a phrase, he pirouettes it.

Wow, Pwned

2007-03-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

In its roundabout way . . .

Via acid for blood (who's on my regular reading but wasn't on my blogroll . . . fixed) a story over on One Hundred Little Dolls regarding a post at Kotaku bemoaning the dearth of female videogame bloggers. OHLD completely demolishes the entire conceit of the Kotaku post.

Excellent.

There's a saying about making assumptions that might apply in this instance: "Don't make assumptions, please."

"While I think that strong woman writers who cover gaming are not proportional to the number of women playing games, the bigger issue it seems is that there aren't a whole lot of immediately recognizable female writers on the net. I think the ones out there now need to be more vocal perhaps, or maybe I'm just not reading the right sites."

I'm not sure this passage needs to be fisked, but a few points:

1. I get what that first sentence is trying to say, I think. But it's still a stupid point. Strong writers who cover gaming aren't proportional* to the number of people playing games, period. There's no reason to be gender-specific there unless you're also trying to say that there are simply scads of strong male writers who cover gaming - in which case you're wrong.

If there is any group of game writers proportional to the number of gamers it's the number of people who write obscenity-filled screeds about games, consoles, and companies on message boards.

*I'm also a little bothered by the use of proportional, because there's no specific information about what number of women gaming writers might be proportional to the number of women playing games. 1:1? 1:100? 1:1000?

2. "[I]mmediately recognizable female writers[.]" Does this mean he thinks it matters whether you can immediately tell that a writer is female? Why? I read a lot of blogs and am unaware of the author's gender on maybe 50% of them.

3. How does one be more vocal? Does he mean comment more? Does he mean beg bigger sites to link to you? What kind of self-promotion? A little hint would be nice (for all of us). Also, it's not anyone else's fault that you haven't noticed them.

4. You're not reading the right sites.

Some people are of the mind that the post's substance doesn't matter much since it yielded a rich treasure trove of links. I am not of that mind.

Anyway, I'll be going over the One Hundred Little Dolls list to find some new reading.

---

Not that anyone is wondering, but here's my basic method for adding links to the blogroll:

-If someone comments and I can click on their name and be taken to a page with a link to their blog, then I add them. If I've missed anyone using this method, just send me an e-mail. Hell, you don't even have to prove you commented. Sending an e-mail is enough.

-I go over to Corvus' page, throw some furniture around, scream at full volume and generally act like I own the place. Then I use his blogroll as my own personal portal. If I see a new link on there then I click it, read some posts and, if I like it, add it to my own blogroll. That's right - I scavenge. I prefer to call it "utilizing the power of the network."

-On rare occasions I will find a new blog by running google searches on topics related to whatever I happen to be posting. But I'm generally not very happy with the results.

-I used to go to gameblogs, but stopped when I didn't see anything new being added. Now they appear to be restructuring everything. I wish them the best.

Whither?

2007-03-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

I think that, as someone who wants to be designing games of my own someday, having a goal is important to my development. It would help me focus on certain aspects of game design at a deeper level - like choosing a specialty.

There are people who work on making fun toys or who chase after dynamic storytelling or push toward photorealism or ever more convincing physical simulation.

One thing that's in my head is largely an abstract at the moment, though becoming more concrete the more I work on planning out actual game mechanics and deal with the nitty-gritty stepwise calculations. No design ends up as smooth as the one in my head (of course).

Anyway, on to what I will call The Focus: I'm fascinated by the idea of merging human social/political/emotional interactions into an actual gamespace. I'm thinking The Sims, only instead of pictographs and Simlish you're swapping tagged and valued snippets - facts, arguments, music, smells - that determine . . . something.

I'm not looking to do some kind of 3d social space - I found Second Life to be far, far from compelling; Awe-inspiring, maybe, then horrific, then boring.

But I'm thinking more of actual stories that play out with some kind of beginning and end, only they incorporate real discussions.

If a game right now were to deal with Socialism, it would be at the broadest, most idealized level. A few simple characteristics, the way RPGs set up racial structures, uniform. But in that game about Socialism there would be nothing about social contracts or alienation from labor or the rumor that the foreman has been skimming from the till or strikebreakers jumping you and half-beating you to death.

In my system, each of those list members could function as a token with its own associations.

One might appeal more to intellectuals/upper-class/noble. One might be hopeful/working-class/metaphysical. Those characteristics don't have to reside together - after all, you could have a hopeful/intellectual. Or a noble/working-class. Or maybe something a little negative, a vengeful/prideful.

But of course, how to do this?

If I knew that for sure, I wouldn't be setting it as a goal for myself.

Now this isn't meant to be an everything-engine. But the system could be used in different games as a social system that does more than dialog trees.

Who knows, though? Maybe dialogue trees will end up being the better route.

One of the more specific ideas I have for this system is a game centered around growing a religion in a harsh desert climate. Talking to the locals to find their hopes, fears, dreams, nightmares, desires, lusts and then using your oratory to grow your followers.

Think Black & White, except you're deciding the actual text, not just the tone. "No pomegranates before Febtember." Maybe that would be an easy one to follow. "Don't breathe." Hopefully your followers aren't too fundamentalist.

The system of conversation wouldn't be the commands, but a way to influence people. And I want something that would be nebulous but responsive. You would learn who amongst your people is reliable and who is lazy. Maybe you want to keep the lazy but loyal.

I'm getting far away from myself.

But at least I've got something to pursue.

Tokenized information exchange with nebulous but directable consequences - and memory.

Sounds easy.

The Endless Comparison

2007-03-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

Would you rather play Metroid Prime or watch Catwoman?

Would you rather play Resident Evil 4 or watch Leprechaun 4?

Which contributed more to world culture, Pac-Man or Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS?

Which had a better script, Knights of the Old Republic or Independence Day?

If you think about a great director - Spielberg, say - consider that he honed his craft on the back of almost a hundred years of technical, artistic and critical history. The first film camera was invented in the 1880s. By 1920 film was an art form on the rise, taking risks, learning its boundaries. By 1950 it had become the premier medium, with a voluminous body of criticism, different schools of theory and hundreds of thousands of examples from all over the world.

This means that videogames have 20-30 more years before a decent comparison can be made to films from the 1950s.

And Spielberg works in a sequential, non-interactive medium whose final output has to grab attention for, on average, 2-3 hours.

Let me be kind and assume that technology is progressing a little more rapidly each year and that our increased ability to communicate is driving innovation and criticism faster than in the early years of film. Even a conservative estimate would mean that in, oh, around 2060 games will be on par with the movies of today.

Unless you're like me and think it's all bunk and the comparison doesn't even make sense.

Which was better: X-Com or The Wild Bunch?

Why Do This?

2007-03-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

Dear God of War 2 team,

I'm glad you spent millions of dollars making a great-looking, fun-to-play action platformer for the Playstation 2. I'm not as glad that you insisted on filling it with bloated, unskippable cutscenes. I'm also not happy with the fact that you cannot adjust the difficulty without starting a new game, something that then requires sitting through the long, unskippable opening sequence just to find out if the difficulty is acceptable.

But the worst thing, the most inexplicable thing: Why spend millions of dollars, thousands of hours, crafting a cinematic last-gen masterpiece without putting in an option for subtitles?

In case you're wondering why this matters: "Does anyone know if God of War 2 will support captions or subtitles? It wasn't very fun for me to have to read transcripts on the computer while I played the first game. And before you ask, yes, I'm deaf."

Almost 100% of movies and tv shows have captioning. It is standard for media. Except, for some reason, in the videogame industry, where it remains something put in at random.

It's stupid and makes no sense.

Subtitles. Standard. Make it happen.