D@sher Prototype 1

Just kinda throwing my early efforts out there. No actual navigation as such, just some interesting arc deformation. There's a few bugs to do with that whole root 2 unit vector size problem, but other than that, it goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uIdWu1CzJ0

Otocky... a shooter/music hybrid.

I'm thinking about doing a shooter in XNA, and i think it'll be music based... or music generative. TYhe guy in the video above is using the no-death mode to make a bit of a performance.

The game I want to do was originally pitched for mobile, and only used two buttons which you can drum a beat on (these were also the whilst left/right button). You get a resultant bullet wave shooting out based on the kinds of beats you preduce. I can monitor frequency, time held, whether or not you're accurate on a backing beat. I'll experiment, i guess. Can shift pitch around by monitoring your X position, and also things like "have you been charging something up long?".... so, say you hold down a button for a while, then release it, then immediatey start laying out a rapid rhythm, the pitch could decline over time.

Sstill have to get XNA though, goddamnit.

http://tinyurl.com/2nn96a

Ooh. Very neat.

Playing through Bioshock on hard, I'm not finding a huge amount of challenge, I'm afraid. Ammo is super plentiful, as is cash (I'm buying out about 50% of hacks, until I get research up to hack bots turrets and security for free). Infact, I'm at the end of arcadia, and I've maxed research on everything except little sisters, big daddies, and nitro splicers. With the right ammo (which has been perfectly plentiful with good use of u-invents and ammo vendors), and sneak shots, people can go down in one shot.

I understand why.... the need to compete in the pure-shooter market, but yeah. I'm pining for a really really hard option, where ammo and eve are fully scarce, and levels take immense fore-sight to survive.

There's the definite sense of caution in it: "What if player's don't 'get' this feature? Our fallback must always be their existing shooter skills." hence the not-quite-as-limited-as-it-could-be resource economy. I saw one friend last night playing Welcome to Rapture, using up eve like there was no tomorrow, experimenting by zapping the world constantly.So I can see why a paucity of resources can't work for a mainstream audience, but it'd be nice if there was some super-hard version for people who are really into this game - who really min-max it, as I have been doing. Dissolving the Hardcore vs. Casual devide is a cool thing to attack - to show that there's not so much a hardcore as there is a smaller set of people who will put up with shittier interfaces in order to play possibly deeper (but more often than not, just as shallow) core gameplay experiences.

Until a super hard mode (please?), I'll think about self-restraint approaches - never use decoy or wrench while there's another option, never hacking etc. It's great that everything is so easy to use and manipulate, but at the same time, once you get a grip of these things, there's now little satisfaction in security-botting a big daddy to death, or kiting enemies into turret kill zones. For the starting player, it makes sense not to aggro a Big Daddy if your security system is hacked against him, but as someone who has played this game quite deeply now, it feels like a bit of an exploit.

I think it's further evidence of something I held true: A lot of games recently have had better and better interfaces - better useability, and less silly extraneous things like "breathing" buttons or "injecting adrenaline into the neck rather than the leg" toggles. Because of that improvement, we're making a better bridge into the core gameplay. That's why Bioshock has been so immediately immersive. You can just DO what you want to do - no big problems with interface. That better bridge destroys depth inherent in the controls, and therefore , we focus more on the depth of the core gameplay (which is what we should be looking at). Sometimes there's not enough in the core gameplay to stand up to this scrutiny: My favorite example of this is Spiderman 2 vs. Ultimate Spiderman. The first has way too many buttons to do simple things (I think you have to deflect the joystick while holding a shoulder button and B in order to wall run). The latter really simplifies the controls without loosing much depth at all, but exposes the fact that the core game itself is fucking boring.

Bioshock certainly has more depth than most, and thankfully stands up in this respect, but I still feel like I'm groking the limits of the system now. And because it's so well made and consistent, there's no real "noise" for me to try to filter out. The systems are very clear, and very consistent, so I grok them without any real pain, or wondering what's a fluke vs. what's a systemic inevitability. As much as I've enjoyed grokking it, I'm getting a feeling like I may not have much more depth to explore within core gameplay - meanwhile complete designer hacks in other games add some random value to an attack, and it fakes this feeling of depth - but it's completely unrewarding to figure out that your sword swinging and damage done is just this non-causal random behaviour. I mean, hats off to irrational for keeping it "true", but because I feel their systems are so "honest" and clean, and because I'm therefore learning them so fast, I'm hankering for more toys and more depth... not superficial additions like weapon #934093852, but really useful modifiers to gameplay, in the same vein as AI-behaviour-changing plasmids.

I think for the sequel, this kind of area is ripe (although incredibly difficult) for expansion... more modifiers to AI behaviour which interact with other systems. Splicers hacking BACK security and turrets (they can already use health terminals, so why not security systems?). Expanding splicers' vocabulary to almost match the player's.

Go with expanding the depth (while maintaining useability). It's the one area other shooters cannot touch you on.

<Bezzy> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=460981&in_page_id=1770 - this is my old school
<Bezzy> when I left, I helped block the entrance of the school with one of my friends' brothers' cars, without his permission.
<Bezzy> his car was sorta easy to break into because the window would roll down if you pushed it down
<Bezzy> so we just took the hand break off, and pushed it up the hill, sprayed it with shaving foam ("Pete's shaggin' Wagon")
<Bezzy> oh and to turn it (because of steering lock) we had to bounce it on its suspension.


Juvinile, I know. But then, we were Juviniles.

We had a power outage for 3 days after a wind storm.

I got bored and shaved my head.

I still have the crick in my neck, but it's slowly getting better.

Just so you know :)

I couldn't work today. I woke up with an impossibly bad crik in my neck. Hell exists between my shoulderblades and boils 8 inches up and down my spine. ligaments reach up behind my ears, conducting the pain.

I tried sleeping through it, but just kept having dreams where I wasn't in agony. And then I woke up and it was still hurty.

Gah. I want to be well enough to procrastinate again. Now I have an honest excuse for not working. This blows.

http://www.pistolwimp.com/media/57861/

Chump outed!

I am here.

From Blather, Rinse, Repeat.

- Chaim Gingold had a presentation which was the closest thing to a Will Wright talk, both in terms of content and presentation. His discussion was looking at the "possibility space" of a tool (Maya has a huge space; it can model almost anything. Sim City has a smaller space; it can only model cities), the "probability space" of a particular user with that tool (put a random guy in front of Maya, he won't produce much, and it'll be a different set of stuff than a trained 3d artist would create), and the "desirable space" (harder to define, but if you can make a tool that makes it easy to create good stuff and hard to make bad stuff, you've won). The basic idea isn't hard to grasp, but I appreciated the vocabulary for the discussion, and the examples of how Maxis has struggled with the tools they'll be providing Spore players.

Man, mark up yet another thingy which we've just been talking about, and then someone at GDC says it.

Every. Fucking. Year.

And yet, I'm sure I'd be terrible in a presentation situation... just ranting on, probably.

I'm having a real incompatability with opposing points of view right now. How come everyone is wrong from my perspective? Why can't they shut up and conform?

Well, this day had to come sometime, I guess. Someone finally left a negative comment on K:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1iELMw4qBM

Could have been worse, I guess. Could have been insightfully cutting. This, I can live with.

POG 2 - The Sequel: Haha, to be fair, K was horrible. ;)

^He is right.

After rework though... it could be good.

This edition of the laughably bad Heroes spin off comic might be one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I've ever seen.

Bezzy: my god. these heroes comics are bad.
Bezzy: they write sentances like this:
Bezzy: "I've got to get close enough to 'hear' his computer"
"Don't get too close or the men with big guns will come out"
Bezzy: fucking, shows you the target audience, eh?
Tommunism: yea I saw that
Tommunism: I gave up after the first one
Bezzy: the whole "wireless" premise is so fucking daft, man
Bezzy: bah
Tommunism: yea
Tommunism: I liked the idea of wireless girl
Tommunism: buuutt...that comic is weak
Bezzy: "I have the ability to see SMS, MSM, AIM (but not ICQ)"
Tommunism: I got though the first one and went...nevermind
Tommunism: Does it say that?
Bezzy: no no
Bezzy: but i just saw the worst frame transition ever
Tommunism: oh yea?
Bezzy: while being interrogated, she uses her powers to turn on a sprinkler system...
Tommunism: Oh I saw that
Bezzy: and in the next frame, out of fucking nowhere, she's holding a machinegun and grabbing this interrogator's tie
Tommunism: yea
Tommunism: that...that was special
Bezzy: hilarious
Tommunism: thought process:
Tommunism: "WE HAVE YOU NOW"
Tommunism: "AHHHHH WATER AND STUFF"
Tommunism: "OH NO MY GUN"
Bezzy: hahahahahaha
Bezzy: and she dives out of a window, and she clings onto an american flag to slow her descent
Tommunism: HAHAHAH yea
Tommunism: I was just thinking about that
Tommunism: How fucking patriotic
Bezzy: hahahahahahaha. this is actually the most unintentially funny thing i've see
* Bezzy can't stop laughing
Tommunism: I'm glad the show isn't that bad
Bezzy: "I can see the e-mails clearer up here"
Bezzy: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA
Tommunism: hahah yea...in the forests
Tommunism: Maybe it's a mental thing
Bezzy: ROFL
Bezzy: i am have a laughing fit. i can't help laughing at every frame of this thing
Tommunism: I like where she's tracing back through everything...like back to her mom or whatever and she had the grandmother outside of the jet with the Israli flag out there
Tommunism: hahaha

There's a first milestone build of a community project called "Guy Balding". I did the ledge grabbing animation in it. I also did two others (a ledge vaulting one, and a lateral jump) which aren't being used, but which may be added later on.

Still early days, but moves pretty nice already. Give it a go if you've got a spare ten minutes.

Random noise on the wire:

Campster: Oh god, [A developer] signed with [xxxxxxxxxxx].
* JunkerJames vomits
JunkerJames: i'm glad all the people I know got out, then
JunkerJames: did you know that he's not a multi billionaire? He's a millionaire. A multi millionaire. Just get that straight, alright?
chmmr: he's all style over substance, and he's one of those "gameplay == technology == irrelevant" people.
and god DAMN his clothes are fucking clown outfits from what i've seen.
JunkerJames: when i hear people in the industry talk about him, it's never good
JunkerJames: you don't "work with [xxxxxxxxx]" you "survive [xxxxxxxxxx]"
Tommunism: that's the kind of bad ass persona he wants though
JunkerJames: true
Tommunism: He wants that "I'm a hard ass because I'm good at what I do" buzz.
Tommunism: and he's soo fucking arrogant...that the fact that people hate him...enforces that belief in himself
Tommunism: "They hate me because I'm that good"
JunkerJames: did i mention that he's a cunt? does that help explain what an incredulous wank stain he is?
Tommunism: I believe you have before
JunkerJames: hmm. good. good to know.
chmmr: there's also that "ahead of one's time" illusion that hits rather close to home for all of us... sometimes people assume that getting called a crank or an idiot makes them "too brilliant for the masses to comprehend" or whatever. when really, sometimes you are actually a crank.

THREE GUESSES WHO WE ARE TALKING ABOUT.

Man, I don't know where to go with this, but I just watched the new Charlie Brooker's screenwipe, and I totally love it, and charlie brooker said that STEWART LEE is on next week, who I love the most! I am so excited and I just had to express my voice!

I think that me and Charlie, we could be best friends if we ever met, except, the only way I'd ever meet him is through the flatmate who my sister knows, but they're dead now (the flatmate, not my sister. [I used a third person plural to adrogynate the pronoun because I don't know if the flatmate was male or female, but then it created an ambiguity which suggested that both the flatmate AND my sister are dead. No. Just the flatmate. Unless my sister died a second ago. But no-one tells me anything in this family, so whatevs.]).

Anyway. No chance of being his best friend now.

I got drunk sorry.

Via TIGsource (which is now starting up a forum which could be good), the cruelest platformer I think I've ever seen.

Anyone else get a boner reading will wright interviews?

Most of our educational system is designed to protect you from failure. You know – here's how you write a proper sentence, here's how you do a math problem without failing. So basically, they don't let you experience failure. Failure is seen as a bad thing, not as a learning experience. And even when you get to the professional world, things like architecture, engineering, industrial design, they teach you how to do it the right way. Where it used to be you would build five bad buildings and they'd fall down and you'd learn yourself – that was more the apprenticeship, craftsmanship model. You'd build 20 bad chairs but eventually learn how to build a good one because you would learn the failure states yourself, inherently – you'd experience them directly. Whereas when you go to engineering school they teach you how not to fail, so you're never directly experiencing those failures. It limits your intuitions. Whereas a kid playing a game – the first thing they do is they'll sit there and play five or six times and learn from that, and they learn at a very core level in a very different way. They've actually explored the whole possibility space. It's not that they've been told 'don't go there because you'll fail' and so they never go there and never experience it directly on their own. They're encouraged to do that all on their own, in fact they're directly building that possibility map.

Yaay! To fail is art, and also, edumacation!

He also dislikes grind/treadmills. Yaaaaay!

If me and Will Wright had a kid, we would be heavily fined by a Scientific Ethics Committee.

This week's Charlie Brooker's ScreenWipe (which I just missed, but which is repeated in 2 hours' time) is about video games. Until a torrent or youtube copy comes up for you yankees, I'll just link you to this in anticipation.

The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal "adventure" in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993.

Basically, Mitchell and Webb are doing the "I'm a Mac." and "I'm a PC" adverts for the UK. PeepShow, which they're famous for, is fantastic comedy. I bought the boxed set last week in london, and then came out of the virgin to see these ads everywhere. Sorta made me a bit embarassed to have bought the show. But not really. I just share a bit of a hate of the pomposity of Macs.

My sister said that she knew Charlie through a flatmate, but that flatmate is now dead, so I'll never ever be his best friend now.

[Edit] The show was decent as ever. His main thrust was that "Saying video games aren't 'worthy' of public admiration because they'll 'never make you cry' is like arguing that ballet doesn't do the trick because it doesn't make people fart". That's not quite spot on, obviously, but close enough, and amusing to hear from him.

Games can and should be anything they want to be, and if the makers and consumers want to judge a game's artistic value via the amount of bodily fluids excreted, then that's for them to decide.

I guess I was sorta worried about whether or not Run would be too close to whatever the Metanet (N) guys are doing. So I did a bunch of snooping around, saw that their next game (Robotology) is done in opengl and c++ (which atleast gives them a fast possibility of 3D). I also found this mini documentary/interview of them, which is sorta fun.

I've also sent them an e-mail just to ask if they're doing something with 3D... and if they are, that I'd probably step out of the way for them.

Anyway. Erm. I should focus on the current game.