[Unorganized] Musings

Gradients

2012-01-24T12:58:00.003-05:00

I work in a youth homeless shelter once a week, and I do it as much for myself as for the kids. These are 18-25 year olds. They are officially adults, but this shelter was started because these poor castaways would otherwise go from foster homes and under-age care one day to rough homeless shelters and rougher streets the next. We consider them adults, but tell me that upon graduating high-school you were ready to go live in a shelter with grizzled 50 year old homeless folk.

There's a gradient to our maturity. Some of us never learn any, others learn too much. So many of these youth are struggling just to get beyond an immature and volatile world that left them in poor health and poor preparation for life. The life they know is beyond me to understand. I've been lucky. There's a gradient of people that are in the shelter. There are youth who are escaping abuse at home, others struggling with drugs, some whose homes were too poor to support them, still others who have never known a real home. There are those who are beating the challenges, those who may beat them, and others who will lose. There are more than a fair share struggling with mental health problems. There are youth I enjoy seeing, others I would have a hard time tolerating, were it my job to maintain order in the shelter.

Far above these struggles, and yet just as important, are high level government decisions, high level business and world market struggles. There are people who want laws to control everything we do. Others want laws to control none of what we do. And still more who see decisions one way over here and another over there. There are decisions about who to hire, who to fire, who to support, who to let down.

Don't mistake life for anything but a gradient. I learned that in art the use of pure black and the use of pure white are rarely desired. Give some texture, throw in some tint of a color. Life is better this way if we accept that our beauty and strength lies in the texture, the variety, and that such variety should be embraced.

And that's why, when we look at our troubles, at our struggles, the solution lies not in changing the individuals, because we will never win that battle, but in changing the rules of how we operate as a society. We need to change the rules that help people, that raise kids. We need to fix how we operate, and accept and embrace variety and diversity. We know that things are never black and white, so we need to keep working on the rules. And we will never finish fixing and refining, because the system always changes. But as long as we look at the system as much and more than we attack individual cases, then we might make progress.

I look at the youth in the shelter, and I know with a fairly heady certainty that we needed to help these kids long ago. We needed to feed some of them better food, we needed to teach others better discipline, we needed to find many of them better parents. But they are going to struggle now because their world's rules were defined and built long ago. There are billions yet to come, why not change the game rather than trying to mess with the pieces?

A Letter To Barack Obama

2011-12-22T02:46:00.006-05:00

I respect you Mr. President. But I am wavering.

Your intellect, the knowledge and awareness you have in regard to so many national issues far exceeds the typical politician. You are not a politician to me. You are someone who is fighting by using facts, who is fighting by using reasoning as your weapon. I love listening to you debate and discuss issues.

You are willing to talk, to compromise, to think in larger terms. Our country is immense, and you stand there to represent millions of different views on millions of different subjects.

When you talk, I listen. When you say something, I think on it.

And when you take a stance, I hear what your beliefs and values are.

When you back down, you lose me. You have the heart so many of us have. I've heard it numerous times in the way you speak. So stop backing down. Stand up and make your point and stick with it. No one is happy with congress, why should you accept them either? You are the voice of us.

I support much of what you have done and what you say you want to do. Take advantage of that and stop compromising. Be what you feel, because I know there's intelligence and respect behind your beliefs.

There is a fight upon us, and your backing down only defers the inevitable clash and makes it worse.

Thoughts on Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-16T13:53:00.002-04:00

We are forever beholden to the regimes and systems and networks that run our lives. This is as true now as it was two thousand years ago. We can decry the hurt that we have endured because of unfair policies and rule, and we should be thankful for the successes and innovations brought about by such governing.

As we become more aware of those around us, we are more conscious of the successes and failures of those same groups and individuals.

Occupy Wall Street, to me, is the public discontent arising from the realization that one form of success is trumping all others in this country and elsewhere, even when it causes harm.

Most people want to be rich, sure, but for one reason: to take their woes away. Money solves problems. You can solve every problem in your life if you just have the money to pay for the solution. Money pays to resolve problems, and it also pays for leisure, recreation, and entertainment. But that's it.

Most people want to work and then call it a day. Most people want to have time with friends and family, time alone, time learning more about something they love, time for recreation, time to eat.

Occupy Wall Street is about an inability by the leaders of business to see the small things in life, to only see this one element of life.

It is a backlash from people who do not care about being rich, they only care about having enough. In America it is not considered enough to own a restaurant on a corner where you can make your living, pay your employees, and call it a day. No, you are expected to expand to a second location, and then four more. To make more money.

And here's why you are expected to go the extra mile for money: because if you slip up, you better have that money ready. Because these days it only takes a single car accident or one tough month or one ailing relative to cost thousands upon thousands of dollars of damage. For those who are not rich, it might be years to recover. Perhaps they will never recover. You wanted just enough, but enough is no longer good enough. Now you are forever in the red.

We are told that every second of our time matters, every cent of our dollar has meaning. It only has meaning because it has gained meaning by those who care about money. And we are more numb to every cent because of this. Because there is no more context.

Money does not matter. Everything else matters, and we are discontented now because we see money being valued over everything else. Money should be just one of many conduits through which we stabilize, reinforce, and improve our environment and ourselves, and until we see those who would be our leaders of the financial and political world embrace these same ideals, we will be discontented.

OWS is a backlash to the soul-sucking efforts to wrest every dollar back from the majority of people who want nothing more than to live peaceably in harmony with the systems around them. When money becomes the problem, not the solution, it needs to be dealt with.

Daily Inspiration for Game Developers

2011-05-11T13:09:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite things about the universe is that it is beautifully balanced. This set of probably super small equations that run this incredibly complex machine that encompasses thought and stars colliding and clouds and cute puppies. Sometimes I find myself staring at a leaf and thinking how the patterns in it remind me of spatial arrangements of planets and stars. Or how the ingredients in my mocha settle just like a geological formation. I love the slow swirl and filtering as the sugar catches at points and stops, elsewhere, the weight of the heavier ingredients pushing onwards, leaving behind beautiful vertical formations.

They look similar because they are. The rules behind much of the systems are the same. Gravity, mass, tastiness.

I guess what I'm saying this morning is that you should be aware of this when building a game, when running your life, that all of life has a generally simpler set of rules that can be applied and expanded to accompany specific scenarios. The universe is generic. Are you aware of that when building your game?

Bejeweled is a series of jewels, all with exactly the same rules, except that here and there is a "special" jewel. But they all move alike. Most just have one fundamentally different variable which is a property that when the same value of that property is aligned in chains of 3 or more, they will disappear. Color, shape, or you could give them numbers, but that one variable is really all that game is. Move shapes around being aware of this one variable.

Minecraft, I've been sucked back into it. I had an idea to build a town. I'm playing the game solo. I know that when I want to, there's this world that is larger than I could ever explore, and the whole system is run by a few simple rules. When Notch added rain, I thought, crap, now there's more darkness. That's all there was to it. (I haven't dealt with gardens and harvesting and all that yet, so I don't know about rain's effect on that.) But that's the beauty of Minecraft, rain didn't fundamentally change how the game works, it took a variable critical to the game, light, and just inserted a little randomness to outdoor lighting conditions. Simple, but it reverberates.

Far Cry 2, you could say it's an incredibly complex game, but the laws ruling it are understandable. There are pieces to it, and those pieces, once you understand them, generally allow you to move throughout the greater world with an awareness of a system. I hated that every outpost was aggressive as soon as they spotted me, but that knowledge informed everything else. I knew what happened where and a new location was just another roll of the dice against a system which I understood. It was rolling dice, knowing that one of them was loaded.

This idea of balance across systems is important to us as game developers in every manner. Last week a theoretical physicist pal of mine (yes, bragging that I know one) tweeted about an xkcd comic which stated that Emmy Noether deserved a Nobel prize for her work which, he paraphrased:

@hundun2:"Fact: Emmy Noether deserves to be more famous. http://xkcd.com/896/ #xkcd Einstein's letter to NY Times on her death. http://bit.ly/bzzNKO

Her main contribution to physics was Noether's theorem, which says (roughly) that conservation laws come from symmetries in laws of physics. For example, energy is conserved because the laws of physics do not change over time ("invariant under time translation" in physics-speak). Momentum is conserved because laws of physics don't change depending on where you are ("invariant under space translation"). Noether's theorem is a fundamental result in itself. Also led physicists to look at symmetry as a central concept in physics."

Tell me, have you ever once thought about how the laws of physics don't change over time and space? It's mindblowingly obvious, but super critical.

I've been learning the hard way, don't do too many projects at once, use time efficiently. A good gamer knows how to use space and time in your game efficiently. Are systems utilizing that, or do things run differently here and there and everywhere?

My point today is that I love how straightforward the universe is, and the games that I enjoy function in the same manner. (I didn't talk about W. Wright's games since I assume we all know how they derive from the same concept.) Complexity can arise out of a very simple set of rules, so, as a builder, I strive for that, because then I have an incredibly fluid amount of control over the worlds I create. Fifty rules vs. fifteen, are you in control of your game, or being overrun by a flawed concept that the universe is made up of millions of separate situations?

Why I'm Hostile Toward GPS

2011-04-20T17:24:00.003-04:00

I don't like using GPS because I have good locational awareness. For others who don't have strong locational awareness, I have no real point of comparison.

GPS, or the idea of it that I am opposed to, is the function in which it gives precise directions on which turns to take where and how to get someone somewhere. I am not opposed to it as a map. I love maps, I think they are there to fill in our brains' gaps in specifics of scale and position. I use maps a lot, before and after and during travel.

The reason I am so opposed to punching in an address and not paying attention anymore is that the mere act of driving requires locational awareness. Where is your car on the road, where is your car in relation to the other cars around you, where is your car in relation to the next stop sign or stoplight? You have to be aware of these things while driving. GPS removes your awareness of everything beyond the immediate, but when it comes right down to it, your use of GPS is for that space close around, for that stop sign, should you turn there? So by using GPS, you are removing the context of each particular location you are in.

When using GPS all I am thinking is stop sign, stop sign, stop light, freeway, left freeway, drive an hour. When not using GPS I'm taking note of field next to stop sign, mini-mall, hills over there. My job driving is to be aware, so why on earth would I want to let the GPS become my awareness of the context of every location?

I don't think GPS is like transitioning from paper to the internet. That is a massive change in how communication works, it changes the amount of work and thought we have to use to get stuff done. But driving, using GPS I become more and more reliant without much benefit, whereas not using GPS I become stronger and stronger and more aware. It takes a lot longer to figure out an area when you're guided by wire rather than having the whole space.

The world is location location location, and I'd much rather be aware of how they are all connected and related than lose sight of that greater space for the blind trust of stop sign, stop sign, turn left.

Tapping the Theme

2010-11-13T19:34:00.002-05:00

So you decided to make a game. And you decided that it is going to have a sheep in it. Why? I have no idea. But I hope you have an idea.

The simple request I have is that you think about your theme and your gameplay as integrally tied together. For the sake of creativity, your theme is the best possible fountain of innovation.

I make iPhone games. I spend almost all of my time thinking about apps, finding ones I've heard about, researching, and playing apps, just because I want to know why and what people are trying to accomplish. Sometimes I have an idea for a game, and then I search for similar ideas on the app store. 100k apps, I will find forty apps for any keyword I search.

Recently I was thinking about sheep-herding. Plop your finger down, and the sheep are repelled. Corral them into their pen, add some obstacles, done. Finger-swiping good. I then searched for sheep on the app-store. Oh, there we go, several sheep-herding games, a couple of which were solid. Done, next idea. No point in being derivative.

But what about the other fifty sheep-related games: half of them were physics platformers and sheep-launching games. What the heck? Free the sheep from its dangerous surroundings. Tap the sheep to make it go higher and higher. Not bad games. But why the heck am I freeing sheep from a physicsy tangle of boxes and ropes. Or why am I sending a ram flying through some otherworldly space-portal?

I am being harsh. Worms is an excellent game, and worms have no relation to the theme of scorched earth. Angry Birds: totally ludicrous concept, top of the charts for months now.

But I implore you to please consider why you chose your theme. Or why you chose your gameplay? I know a lot of us are making iPhone games these days with the low overhead and strike-it-rich potential. And you need to stand out when making a game. I want to play your game, but unless it's top 25 or a unique concept/mechanic, I will ignore it.

Theme can help in your design struggles. For the sake of creativity and doing something different, you should consider how your theme can inform your game. If you are making a game about squirrels, ask yourself what makes a squirrel fascinating or funny or a squirrel. If it is the humor of eating nuts and acorns, perhaps you have an eating mechanic, a ridiculous challenge of keeping your squirrel's cheeks full of acorns.

Or you are in outer space, running out of oxygen. Oxygen in space, that is a pretty easy time mechanic. Or an FBI agent who has to balance breaking the rules with making progress in his fight on crime.

When you build a game, even if you just tacked on a theme because you don't want a game of abstract shapes, spend some time working out how the theme can help your game. And if you decide the game is not appropriate for the theme, perhaps you should change your game.

At TIGJam, I really appreciated Scott Anderson's talk on the plethora of indie platformers. It is easy to make a platformer, but who cares? Is that all that excites you? Do you have a goal in your platformer? You want to make a moody depressing game exploring isolation and fear. I would love a game about that where I do not even have an avatar. The game itself is this ethereal space that shifts and perhaps my whole goal is trying to bring the screen into focused, pure white, piece by piece. I have no idea how that might work, but maybe you do.

My point, one final time, is that you have the gamut of interactivity available to you. Why is your game of knocking over boxes any more enthralling than the last? Make me games about specific themes. I would love to be a pirate, a struggling housewife, a squirrel. But not in another platformer. Make your gameplay about pirating, raising a family and dealing with a husband, living as a squirrel. There are so many games we have not yet made because we cannot look beyond our conventions.

TIGJam 3: Day 4 And Retrospective

2010-11-02T19:39:00.003-04:00

The fourth and final day of TIGJam, last Sunday, was a great ending to one of the most satisfying weekends of my game development life. For the game jam crew, it was a day of polishing games, showing them off, and having a dinner afterward to discuss all that we had done and become.

I went into Sunday delirious and noticeably tired from a very late-nighter. Over the course of Sunday morning the various jammers appeared and slowly collected themselves from having climbed over the hill. Now it was already lunch for most of us before people were ready for the final few hours of game creation. (As always, there were some people already working hard by mid-morning.) In an effort to be a human being I returned to my friend's house and showered and ate and then returned.

During the final hours of an art project, in the past I have tried to go big. This time, as most people did, I just went for cleaning. Game creation (and so many other things) are about that final ten percent. So I just tried to round out my project. I cleaned up loose ends, I added some nice little art touches, and I worked up til the last minute.

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And then I got to see what everyone had accomplished, and it was impressive. Over the course of an hour we saw probably twenty different games, and even more were being worked on. Here are just a few unique highlights for me. (This is not fair and balanced and also ignores games I've already talked about. [also did not have time to grab information, so please update me with info/links about these games if you're aware])

Negative Spacecraft : This game was black and white. A simple space shooter that added a confusingly cool mechanic in which you and your AI opponent fire negative and positive space at each other (black and white). What this meant was that you could move and shoot in negative space(black) but be hurt by positive space (white), and then transition to the other way around. It was cool and confusing and I can't do it justice describing it.

Night Hike (a Carnegie Mellon University ETC student group): A procedurally generated night hike, this was a beautiful idea and showed the strength of non-violent interaction. Your goal, simply take a hike through starry fields and forests. The creators built a 2d-sidescrolling procedural system so that every hike you take will be through a different environment. A simple piece, but well done.

Desert Bus 2: Space Bus (Ben McGraw): Imagine flying to Alpha Centauri in a bus. Well, imagine no more! Because you can now experience the long, long, incredibly long trip in a game that simulates the realtime experience of flying to Alpha Centauri. A hilarious sequel to a Penn and Teller mini-game called Desert Bus from 1995, which involved driving straight from Tucson to Las Vegas in realtime.

Map Generator (Tyler Neylon): Though not a game, this deserves a mention for cool technology of the weekend. For his love of strategic games, Tyler sought to build a map creation tool that could create a Risk style map in a reasonable amount of time with a plausible geographic look and well-laid out territories. He succeeded. It was very neat technology for a weekend and I would love to see people play some Risk on one of his procedurally generated maps to see if it was balanced well.

In addition to the above, there were several games that felt very polished with their "feel". Kyle Pulver showed off a quick and crunchy 2d platformer with an impressive amount of art (I think he did it all this weekend). Phubans was working on a top-down exploration/upgradeable shooter that felt very satisfying to play. And Erin Robinson created a gravitational exploration game that allowed a player to change orbit smoothly between a series of planets with various gravities.

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And now I'll briefly talk about the game I made (my blog, my soapbox). It is called Sarajevo, and you play a civilian living in the city of Sarajevo during the siege in the mid-90s. All you can do is walk around a small portion of the city in which there are other civilians like you and also buildings you can enter and exit. You can talk to people to hear their mood, but otherwise it is currently a static world. However, every so often, an unseen sniper fires at a random character in the game. It could be you, it could be someone else. They probably won't hit. But they might. All you can do is hope to not get shot. But if you play long enough, you will get shot.

I think the crowd was a little taken aback by my game.

But that was what TIGJam was for. To scratch the itches we all have. To try something new or different or work on something we've had sitting in the back of our brain. You could see people proud of what they had accomplished, amazed at the positive feedback they received, creating their own lighting systems, trying a game and failing and then making a new game, pounding out incredible music, drawing up beautiful art.

TIGJam was recognizing that being an indie game developer is a lifestyle. You have to care about it. You have to want to spend your weekend tackling that stupid bug that has been killing you. You have to redo that art, or create twelve unfinished songs to reach the thirteenth that works.

After we showed off our games we had a wonderful buffet dinner at a nearby restaurant and chatted about what we had seen, what we were going back to, and what we would be doing next time. TIGJam helped foster a community that mostly occurs online, a social gathering for those whose usual interaction is text.

I had felt like an outsider before this weekend, but over the course of four days, I grew a lot and learned a lot and was able to find a whole new set of developer friends who have to create. Creation. That is what the game developer is about. It is always humbling to ponder what we do and of what we are capable. I am just glad to see the love of the craft continue so strongly in this generation of game developers that is taking advantage of all of the tools we now have at our fingertips. It really is the time of the indie developer.

TIGJam 3: Day 3

2010-10-31T12:32:00.003-04:00

And it's the morning after Day Three. Day Three was a period of deep introspective questions. I have been spending most of my last several days in the same room with anywhere from five to fifty-five people. I have done LAN parties of such length before, but this has been a strangely trying gauntlet of creativity for me.

There is certainly pressure to create something, but more-so, being surrounded by a group of creative types all accepting of feedback and willing to give their own, one cannot help but be overwhelmed by the hours spent thinking hard about everything game related. Yesterday was hump day, and it was a particularly humbling experience.

I had set my sights on a simple game. A simple world where you walk around and talk to others, and they tell you how they are feeling, based on the events around them and their outlook on life. This I actually got working yesterday, and then I started to think of how they should be acting based on their feelings. And so now I think I am supposed to create AI. I did not think of what I was doing as AI. Yesterday I came to terms with that being my goal. I struggled with what I wanted to actually happen in my game.

I spent yesterday thinking about the boundaries of my project. Now, in the morning of the last day, I have a good sense of how far I want the project to reach, but this is not a day's work. So some of my stress was relieved as I realized I could not complete my goal, so now I am just working on the halfway point. But enough about my little project.

Yesterday was entertaining, it was the day that everyone let themselves out. We were comfortable with each other if we had not been before. And we enjoyed ourselves. The highlights happened as the night progressed.

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In the middle of the evening there were a series of interesting short talks from a variety of angles. There was Derek Yu, with his pal Andy Hull, talking about the stress of working on a project, Spelunky, that has taken over their lives for the last couple of years. This weekend, for them, was a time to step back and enjoy the company of friends and see how the project is actually perceived from eyes other than their own. They also talked about the importance of fostering and maintaining friendships, having themselves met as young teens trying to make games.

Scott Anderson talked about how we are making the same, similar games. How many of us, he asked, were making "traditional platformers"? (There were many raised hands.) We need diversity in games, not in the people making them, but in what we are creating. But we do need new people, too. Indie game development is threatening to become a scene, he argued. We are slowly seeing the castes of the "in-crowd" and the "out-crowd", and our role as a community is to always foster new indie-folk, because we need that freshness.

Brendan Mauro talked about his struggle with the relevance games have beyond our gamer-world. It was a simple talk, but revealed how much people within our industry understand that what we do can and should mean something beyond our secluded desks in our apartments and homes and dorm rooms.

Timothy Fitz talked about being aware of why the big guys are making so much money. The indie developer seems to predominantly make games that could be on Super NES. Perhaps it is the scale of the project. But why, he asks, aren't we employing modern tools of social media and game mechanics? Farmville, he boasted sarcastically, was better than us. And we can do better.

Marc Ten Bosch outlined his efforts in creating a single level in Miegakure. His point, inspired by Jon Blow (which I heard referenced many times yesterday), was to try and make the simplest puzzle he could that meant something. Game mechanics, the need for player revelations, and player comprehension would add the complexity.

And at the end Matthew Wegner even gave us a quick, honest answer to the downfall of Blurst, Flashbang's experiment of every two months releasing a free online game. Simply put, he said, as beautiful as it was to live life the indie life 9-5, one cannot make a living off a product that is free.

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After the talks I played and looked at a couple more games.

I playtested one of Carnegie Mellon's thought-provoking student projects about communicating without speech or text. The team watched as myself and another tried to make our way through a platformer with invisible obstacles that only the other could see. We were entirely reliant on that other player, as they attempted to use their silent character to communicate with hand signals. A well-executed mechanic of waving one or both hands, players could make their character point to important or invisible obstacles. It was clever and an interesting experiment that has been pretty successful and I look forward to the finishing touches.

And then I witnessed the progress on a game about eating cheeseburgers to get fat and roll over people. A unique game, indeed. (Though it was a platformer, like so many other games here.)

Then as the night progressed and focus waned in and out, people mingled, relaxed, focused, and at 1am a Madhouse tournament ensued. I did not accomplish anything from 1-3am as I watched most everyone in the room take each other on in five minute 1-on-1 chaotic deathmatches. Balance was fairly askew, but laughter was present for all two hours as the creator and various other folk commentated on the proceedings.

And then at 3am I attempted to focus. I somewhat succeeded, but the day had taken its toll, and I just allowed myself to do some painting for the next hour rather than scripting. Around 4am the last of the jammers remaining started grabbing couches and the lone futon. I drifted off around 4:30am listening to hazy philosophical discussions of life and our existence. A few others were still playing and making games, but I was done for the night.

Now the final day and it is again already past noon. But that is okay, I am going to enjoy these hours working, but not stressing.

TIGJam 3: Day 2

2010-10-30T13:55:00.002-04:00

I've arrived this Saturday morning an hour later than yesterday, and there are less people this morning. Staying up late and chatting and gaming has its repercussions, apparently. Eleven AM and all of five people active at the jam. But it was also a much more active evening last night.

Day two was a much more cohesive experience. More people and more life to the party. The jammers are revealing how much they like to play games. One wall with a projector had a consistent string of Street Fighter matches while near my seat another couple fellows were pretty heavily involved in another older iteration of Street Fighter with their personal game pads (I personally can't tell the different SF games apart).

I played several games yesterday that revealed how much indie developers want to make something engaging. A cute and yet oh-so-gory 2d deathmatch piece called Madhouse by Phubans entertained me and a pal for a good twenty minutes while we discussed character balance. Not his main project this weekend, he's nonetheless made it center-stage as he gets everyone and anyone to playtest it for him.

The fellows next to me from Koduco Games were working on completely separate iPad projects. One was updating their awesome PongVaders, a very clever mix of Space Invaders and Pong built for two players on the iPad. Cole is working on a single-player mode so you can play without a partner. Meanwhile, his partner Jon is working on a meditative piece where you lay out the sand of a mandala.

Meanwhile, the guy across from me, Mike, builds an interesting game of descending slowly on a rope between spikes, fighting off angry bats. It's a clever little procedural game inspired, he says, entirely by level two of Battletoads.

Behind me, Rich Vreeland showed me a poetic pixel game built in Flixel using interactive audio to its utmost (that's his specialty). As I played the game and interacted with elements of the game world, my actions generated a beautiful soundscape of bells and tones, a melody that I won't be able to reproduce next time, but that is the point, isn't it? We sat discussing for a while all the different ideas we have come up with, and that maybe we will one day both create our own magnum opuses, sadly there is only so much time and so many things we are capable of.

But encouragement has become the meaning of this weekend, in my mind, as I see all of the interesting ideas people have. We become aware of the games and the people behind them and their motivations for creation. I have only touched upon a couple of the different games I got to mess around with. As many others are refining previous work, testing out new art and music and code ideas. And of course who can forget the game where you launch mustaches onto hairless men as they pass by.

My own project comes along. I added simple speech into my game and the world has started to interact with the characters. My own goal is to create a mood, a world that you can experience. I am not sure how far I will get, but my progress in coding has been rewarding nonetheless, as the world starts to come alive and interact with the player. Yesterday was slow but steady progress as I allowed myself to explore all that others are doing.

Now it is time to hunker down.

TIGJam 3: Day 1

2010-10-29T13:19:00.004-04:00

So I'm here at the beginning of day two of TIGJam3 after a full night's sleep. A quiet, friendly atmosphere, morning light streaming through the giant sky-light into this decently sized warehouse/garage. I have some unhealthy breakfast snacks beside me, purchased from a nearby 7-11 because I was too lazy to find any place better.

I arrived yesterday afternoon to TIGJam, having no idea what to expect. I am an indie developer, and local to Silicon Valley, so I had to sign up, but I still know almost no one in the industry, and I am terrible at frequenting forums. I spend most of my time in coffeeshops and my apartment, trying to feel artsy and indie, constantly checking gmail. Indie life is strange and solitary after coming out of a very social education. (I think social interaction is the most important element of our education, but that's a talk for some other time.)

So I came here knowing no one. You know of people; you have played some of their games, but suddenly you do not feel knowledgeable enough about any of their work to approach. And now I enter a room of indie game developers, part-time, full-time, some already with legacies! And as what always happens at such nervous introductions, you arrive, thinking the room will change now that you have arrived.

But no one cares. This is not the Global Game Jam with teams and set goals. This is TIGJam, and it feels more than anything like a LAN party, with the focus not to play games, but make them. Most people are focused, but there is chatter back and forth, there are some folks with great laughs. There are even some women! (The indie world seems somewhat male-centric right now, so it was good to see not a 100/0 split.) I talked and chatted with some people and I intend to do even more of that, because this is my opportunity to be social with like-minded people! But I am also here to make a game.

The first day of working on my game was spent learning what I should not be doing. It was a valuable workday, because as a friend once said, the quickest way to success is to make your failures quickly. I have plenty of failure ahead (there are three more days of TIGJam to fail), but at the end of a day of failure, I feel pretty comfortable. I am an artist by profession, but I decided to take on actually making a game in Unity, because it seems the less reliant we are on others, the better. I now understand the basics of what I am doing, I understand my goal, and hopefully I can achieve it. There's nothing interesting to say about the actual scripting (I have some scripting experience), but it is getting done.

I feel good this morning. It is eleven now and more people are starting to appear and get to work. I had been expecting an amazing, immediately mind-blowing experience. But this TIGJam appears more appropriate to our scene. Hunkered down over our computers, looking over occasionally to help those around us, but just trying to create something interesting.

Micro Reviews: Backbreakers and Bonecrunchers

2010-10-18T00:47:00.004-04:00

For the last two days I've been playing Bonecruncher Soccer and Backbreaker: Tackle Alley, two iPhone apps that are solely about the quick footwork of soccer and football. I like both of these games a lot, with one major, backbreaking caveat: most of the challenge you will face is from the camera.

Each game is built on the simple premise of making it down the field safely with an increasing number of obstacles, the main ones being opposing players trying to tackle you and get the ball away. The games are very similar. Simple controls make your player either dodge or spin to the right or left while tilting steers you. Bonus points abound for being the best at evading opponents and finishing with a flourish (showboating slowly down the field in Backbreaker, and shooting well in Bonecruncher).

There is a lot of fun in the act of dodging out of the way as your opponent slides in to steal the ball, or spinning away as a big linebacker attempts to barrel into you. Both games succeed at how they emphasize this key mechanic of dodging, building it into an entire game. You run right for a guy who's running right at you. At the last second, bam! He got you. You were too slow. Rinse, repeat. But it works because dodging successfully is super satisfying.

Sadly, I have found that the games are crippling me from getting any better. The in-your-face sensation of each game is tied to a camera that sits just behind your player (slightly offset as in all 3rd-person games these days). Unfortunately, the camera is low enough that you cannot see anyone directly beyond your avatar. So I found myself maneuvering the player at times just to change the camera angle. Further, it's a narrow field of view, so you have absolutely ZERO awareness of any players coming up on your sides. The camera in each game has prevented me from enjoying the game at a more experienced level. It is really frustrating because I like both games a lot.

Control-wise, BCSoccer uses swipe controls while BBFootball uses virtual buttons. I prefer the swipe controls as I have trouble with the virtual buttons and a lack of feedback which sometimes means I don't dodge when I intend to. Football has a better presentation and a really wonderful ability to skip straight to the level, passing all of the little cutscenes and replays. Soccer almost has that, but feels just a bit slower with camera-work.

My opinion: they are both well worth a dollar. I got my time out of them, and if either of them deal with the camera by making your avatar partly transparent or do some other trick to make the camera friendlier, I might actually try to beat one or both of them. Great fun iPhone apps, just some troubling issues holding them back.

Randy played Bonecruncher after reading a review and then decided to pick up its inspiration, Backbreaker, shortly thereafter.

iTunes links:
Bonecruncher Soccer
Backbreaker: Tackle Alley

Is your game comfortable?

2010-08-15T19:38:00.001-04:00

I had a brief but thoughtful conversation with a woman who worked at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design. She told me how her museum was striving to get functional pieces of craft and design to be recognized in a similar vein as fine art. They were struggling against institutions such as MOMA that do not willingly recognize furniture other than from certain periods such as the Bauhaus. Indeed, it seems that few people recognize the beauty of a chair beyond the comfort of IKEA and Herman Miller.

I sympathized whole-heartedly with her struggle because, years before, I had been exposed to the work of Wendell Castle at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, who was clearly an artist. Sitting in his creations I have never been more comfortable and, further, I was in love with the simplistic organic curves that composed his furniture. But I am also an artist, so I look to any man-made creation as potential art. Do others recognize the art of furniture-making? Apparently not, according to this woman.

So what about furniture makes it unworthy of the MOMA? Well, perhaps it is about utility? If something is useful, can it still be art? And that is where I arrive at my thoughts for the day. Our struggle for recognition in the world of art beyond our own is that our art is a craft as well. And craft is user-reliant. Furniture is user-reliant. You ultimately do not care about how a chair looks. You care how it feels. I do not care how a game looks or sounds. Those component parts may be beautiful, but in their own right they do not make the game. The game is feel. It is how I feel when playing. We are crafting an experience for the user that is greater than the individual artistic elements. We are making furniture. It has to be comfortable, too.

Whenever I get deep into a discussion about games I inevitably find myself espousing the importance of interaction. Indeed, many of the games I come up with are not even games. They are just forms of interaction between a user and a world. Are you thinking about the interaction between your game and the player? If that interaction is incomplete, can you still succeed? Are you thinking about the most sensible form of interaction? Have you made a bed without realizing it is better suited as a table? Have you made an iPhone game not realizing your audience was elsewhere?

Why do you build games? Are you trying to fill a void? Are you trying to teach a lesson? Are you trying to build a skill? Because you are making the game for someone. Maybe just you, but most likely not. Your game is user-reliant. You are making art for someone. As a utility for them. Do they know what that utility is? Are they comfortable? Do you want them to be comfortable? We do not have to make comfortable craft. The purposes of a chair are limited. The purposes of kitchenware are limited. We have much more freedom and I hope you think about that fact when crafting a user's experience.

Fine art is a whimsical world where anything goes and the public can only gaze in wonder from time to time but they are not really participants. They are witnesses. We make craft. And I am proud to build and construct crafts because I believe in engaging both myself and the world. What does the world need? How can I craft that?

Spider: Bryce Manor HD for iPad

2010-07-20T20:09:00.004-04:00

http://bit.ly/bDVjuM

Available now and awesome! Currently in the top 10 paid apps on the app store for the iPad. You seriously should check it out. It's App of the Week!

Shameless Promotion! But totally valid promotion! Yeah!

The Purpose of a Game

2010-07-15T14:13:00.003-04:00

I think that sometimes our discussion of games as art and purpose seems misguided. I am not trying to spark anger, but conversation, so bear with me. I believe in making games that have a message, I think that games such as The Unconcerned or iBailout!! play a vital role in expanding what we do as gamemakers. I like that we have this push and pull and people get angry and tired of the discussion of how games are art and what purpose do they have. That means we are getting somewhere, right?

The problem is that we are making "games". This is not a semantics debate, this is whether or not, when I start up your "game" or whatever the hell you wish to call it, am I trying to beat your game? Am I trying to win? Am I putting in effort into what you created so that I can reach the end? This, again, is not specifically about whether or not I enjoy your game or those unrelated questions of whether it is well-built and so on, it is about what you are asking of me and what I am expecting to do.

I loved Loved partly because it caught me off guard with who I was and what my role was. When playing the game you are never sure really what the purpose is. You know you are playing a traditional platformer. But there is something off about your goal. Is it a "game"? Yes, it definitely is. But it changes your perspective on why you are playing. A short little experiment, but it easily sweeps you into its world and does not feel like a "game" at first. It does devolve into a game, but even that is well done because the goal becomes as much about beating the game as it is about playing against the "game" itself. Therefore, the purpose of the traditional platformer is tucked neatly into a mind-game with your computer. But even this is still a "game". I beat Loved!

Just Cause 2 is a game I love to play for at least a few minutes a day. The sensation of exploration, though there are so many cookie cutter templates within it, is almost complete. Grabbing a fast jet and just flying around for a few minutes staring out at all that is the world of Panau is awe-inspiring. It is still a game, though, and my purpose is to rack up points and defeat the enemy. I have specific goals in thousands of collectibles and destructibles. I am aware that it is a game. Sometimes I stop caring about the game elements, but I always return, because eventually I have to make progress. I want to beat the game. Along the way I will enjoy the scenery, but that victory, that conquest, is my goal.

My point is this: we want to beat "games". We have a motive for playing the game. We might want to stretch our brains a bit, we might wish to just get adrenaline pumping, but we are putting purpose into games ourselves as soon as we start them. And if a game diverges from that expectation, do we keep playing out of a desire to overcome this piece of art? Do we have to win? Do we give up out of frustration that the game is not what we wanted to "play"? Introducing purpose that is above and beyond winning into something that we do not just observe but interact with, that we already place purpose into, that is a noteworthy accomplishment.

[Is there a game that you have not felt compelled to beat but rather compelled to experience? The interaction has been strong enough to erase all goals of mastery or winning? Do we want to create that experience? Is that a worthy goal?]

Catching Up with the Cave

2010-07-05T12:04:00.003-04:00

I accept that, besides a few exceptions, I will forever be behind the times when it comes to gaming. But I also thought I was alone for a while. Now I notice with increasing clarity that we all can never be entirely caught up with games, unless we are a games reviewer, and even then, reviewers are strongly biased to a platform. I am not trying to limit myself to a platform, however, and I still have this immense backlog between iPhone, PC, PS2, Gamecube, DS. But these are my current platforms.

I have been able to keep up with iPhone, I think, just because the games are so cheap that I am willing to spend that dollar and then feel great if I get an hour of gaming. I spent a dollar on Angry Birds and have stopped after completing the first campaign, which is only about half the levels available at this time. I am totally satisfied with my stopping point. I got the enjoyment from "another physics puzzler" and now I have HAWX loaded up for another dollar and we will see what transpires.

Meanwhile, on my mac, my iPhone development device, a platform I was not even intending to be a gaming platform, I am playing a port of Cave Story. Wow. It really is as great as people say. Accessible but difficult, plenty of story weaved behind a much greater emphasis on gameplay, and a pseudo-linear game-world. (Or would that be pseudo-open-ended?) I started Kingdom Hearts recently to see what all the fuss was about, and I do not know if I will have the patience to keep going with it just because I am not playing it, I am watching it. Cave Story has this awesome integration of story, it is broken up into bite-sized chunks in a great balance between platforming gameplay, boss battles, and story. None ever seems to overwhelm the other. Granted I am not near the end yet (do I ever finish games?), but even when I get to a boss battle with story exposition before, I find that I do not tire of getting through the cutscene. I almost don't mind that there's no skip-cutscene button. Almost.

The inspiration for this post was partly Ian Bogost's recent blog post on Plumbing The Depths. In it he talks about the failure of designers/coders/the industry in really exploring all that is possible with each new round of technological invention. It seems to me that it is because we are moving so fast that we have not thought of a new game mechanic before someone ups the processing power/input capabilities of consoles. Technology moves fast because it can. Game design is an arduous, experimental, whimsical process that cannot move as fast because it is bound by our creativity which, no offense to anyone, tends to get stuck in ruts. Game designers, even the greatest, have their idea, and then they keep pushing it. Sim City, the Sims, Spore. Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid: Rising. Civilization, a bunch of other interesting strategy games, back to Civilization! And I am not criticizing, these are amazing guys. But we have our niches. We have our interests and our ideas, and when one is successful, we stick to them. (I also just looked at popular designers who have pressure to build upon their successes, so that was a bit biased.)

What I perceive is that designers are thinking of what they can do with the tools available, not dreaming up new tools. And then we get new tools thrown our way without our consideration. Are designers dreaming up the tools? Or someone just says hey, we discovered new ways to detect human motion. Go think up something! That is why there is so much derivative work. People still like swords and dancing, let us dress them up with a new input. We had not even done all we could with swords before, but we have a whole new interface.

This is one other reason I like Cave Story. It has awesomely refined gameplay. From the single life with well-spaced out saves to the awesome interplay of weaponry upgrades and damage taken and damage received. This game is great, cleverly designed fun opportunity spaces. In the end, when I am playing Cave Story and other older games, I do not really care that I am a generation behind the times. I have played Wii. It's fine. I know Cave Story is even on it. But I have my Z+X+arrow keys and I am having more than enough fun for free to feel the need to pay hundreds to keep up with the technology curve that has yet to redefine my thoughts on gaming.

Hardcore purchasing of bottled water

2010-06-16T21:24:00.003-04:00

So I just saw a girl with tons of tattoos, and some punk band t-shirt with the word "hardcore" come in to this coffee-shop and purchase two bottles of water. Bottled water. The biggest swindle of the last fifty years. Bottled fucking water! I don't understand how someone visibly labeling themselves as so anti-establishment could support such a ridiculous thing as bottled water. Perhaps I didn't read the tattoos closely enough. Perhaps they were Coca-Cola logos and advertisements for Curves fitness centers.

Bottled water. Ugh.

But here I am with a Northeastern WRBB Radio t-shirt and a sticker for Tiger Style slapped proudly on my macbook (with its nice shiny Apple proudly beaming).

I guess in the end we're all just full of advertisements these days.

Enter the Fray: Welcome to Indie Life

2010-06-09T02:29:00.004-04:00

I guess I was indie a year ago. I had just graduated, lived at home, was searching for real work, and holed up many many hours a week working on Spider's levels. Tiger Style brought me my first gig that actually saw light in the marketplace. Then I got a real job that paid my bills. It was nice. I liked coming home and being able to not think about making games. At least that's what I told myself.

So I originally wanted to write a post about all of the reasons I left the corporate world. And then I realized that none of that mattered. I am fine with the corporate world. It funds lots of incredible games. I would say that the corporate and indie worlds are closer than they probably want to recognize. We all want people to play our games. We are making entertainment. Whether you call them art or product, whether you are Cactus or John Carmack, you want to construct something for others. (Always exceptions, I know.)

Most people want to make money from their games. Whether just trying to survive, or to actually turn a serious profit, most of us make games and sell them. For those of you out there putting out your games for free: I respect you. Especially if you put out a truly great game for free. And not freemium. If you pour your heart and soul out there and just put it out for public consumption, I respect you. I think you are a little crazy, but still, respect. The rest of us like to eat.

I sometimes don't know if I am indie, honestly. I try to define indie as a mindset as much as a precise definition, but it is hard. At Digital Chocolate my mentor was as hardcore about game production and design as any indie developer I have ever met. But his role was not to make a series of perfect games. It was to try to deliver the best products within a certain timeline. And dammit, he cares about what he does. The reason I do not like the corporate world, however, is that people who do not care about the games are also involved.

I do not like the facebook gamespace because of those involved. I am not opposed to the games, but the purely entrepreneurial money-grubbing spirit of so much of what you see online. By that I mean the groups that enter social games with no goal but making money. (I should qualify that Digital Chocolate is not one of these purely entrepreneurial outfits.) I hate seeing every single clone of every other form of Mafia Wars and Farmtown.

I do not hate facebook or all of the games on it.

But I am making games to be creative. I have gone indie because I have original ideas. I believe that there are cool products that have not been made and I want to create them. Whether creating a 30 second app for the iPhone or an intricate social game for facebook or some splitscreen title for XBLA, it is the challenge of crafting a new experience that is fascinating. Right? If you are an artist, you want to learn from the greats so that you can paint your own unique landscapes and characters. If you are a composer, you don't want to make J.S. Bach's music, I hope. You want to make your own. A programmer who is doing the same thing as the programmer across the aisle is wasting text and time. And if you do not have those ideas yourself, you can undoubtedly find someone else to guide you in this tiny industry with a new take on what we do.

That is why I guess I had to do indie, because I had to do something new. The lead on Farmville spoke this year at the GDC Awards when his game won for Best New Social Game. He told indie developers everywhere that we should consider joining his team at Zynga, that's what an indie outfit can be. But my thought: You aren't original, and that is what I want from indie, I want creativity, and that is what I believe the real indie mindset is. Zynga makes products, but they dare not take a risk. I took a risk, I went indie. Maybe I will make money as an indie, but maybe not. I guess in the end, that risk is what it is all about for me. That willingness to go all-in on ideas I thought up. To create a product or art, I want to put my soul inside it. That is fun. That is why I am a game developer.

Lucky enough

2010-05-23T15:17:00.003-04:00

Are you lucky enough to live inside? Sometimes living in Berkeley is humbling. The lifestyle of people in this strange town varies as wildly as any place can. I sometimes cannot tell those who chose their lifestyle here between those who fell into it unwillingly. I encounter a higher percentage living on the streets than I have seen in any other American city. This is not a large town. But to walk down a standard residential street and see a man curled up in a secluded spot between two bushes, it throws me for a loop.

Here I am, shopping for apartments right now, squeezing every ounce of satisfaction from the process, certain that I will find a place that is in a safe neighborhood, is a comfortable apartment. I will not settle for less. How privileged I am. How incredibly lucky enough must I have been to be born into this life with my parents, my opportunity. I may have some issues, but not many. And you know what, I am most struck by the lack of privacy these homeless endure.

I have quirks. I have strange behaviors, I have need and desire for privacy to hide myself from the world at times. I am not only that which you see, but that which you do not see. And hopefully those two inform each other in positive ways. We should all be lucky enough to have that privacy. Yet there are those who do not. That is sad. I cannot imagine what it is like to go home and for that home to be a flat space of dirt in between the sidewalk and a parking lot. To go home and find only the privacy of one's mind.

We have so many problems in this world. We always have had these problems, and it would not be crazy to assume we always will. So what problems need to be addressed? What should we focus our energy on? What should my role be? This guy who draws, how does he change the world?

Too much of a good thing

2010-04-26T21:35:00.004-04:00

I bought five games last week. Six, if you count that I pre-ordered Starcraft 2. The other games were all for my gamecube and ps2. Why did I do this after vowing I would only play the gorgeous exploration-friendly Just Cause 2 (on PC) for the foreseeable future?

It seems I have injured my precious index finger, a precious resource in PC gaming. There are downsides to being a 3d game artist. The inability to distinguish leisure time from work time; explaining to people that you make video games, not Pixar films, and no, you don't want to make Pixar films, but yes you like watching them; and working in a stationary position for hours upon hours upon hours, moving naught but your fingers.

My fingers have become a big problem for me. I enjoy rock-climbing. I like gripping tiny holds with the tips of my fingers, balancing precariously, slowly shifting my body in any direction to ascend slowly up a sheer face. This requires a lot of finger strength. And working on a wacom tablet for hours at a time does not relieve one's fingers. And then typing ctrl+z repeatedly over and over to get just the right stroke on a 2d photoshop painting. That does not help my fingers or hands. And typing this tale (I enjoy typing) does not help my fingers.

The main issue I have with my choice of career, which I would not give up for the world, is that it taxes so little of me that I feel as if I am wasting eighty percent of my being. We are animals, built to exert ourselves, and now, through overuse of those few parts that I do use, I have made it even more difficult to exercise the other eighty percent of me. (At least, in the manner I'd prefer.)

So I have bought a bunch of games for my last-gen consoles because they rely on my thumbs, and this will give my wounded index finger a rest.

The Sonic Mega Collection was one of my purchases, and for the past week I have been playing through Sonic The Hedgehog for the first time (well, I have now played it about fifteen times over the last five days). This gauntlet of trial and death is fascinating. I like the excellent little curve that allows me to get about a level or two further each time. The sequel (I did play Sonic 2 in college) was much faster in one's movement around the levels, and so I find this slower trap-laden method of level progression to be more difficult. I will have to check out Sonic 2 after beating this and see how it compares after playing the first.

I guess I am a little glad for this break from current games. I am only now coming into my own as a gamer. Absorbing all of these various classics for the first time (Sonic, Metroid Prime, Kingdom Hearts, Sly Cooper) is a fun important exercise of its own. Heaven knows I can't give up gaming completely. These might still use my hands, but at least I will be beating my thumbs up instead of my other more tender digits.

(disgusted rant on social games)

2010-04-09T11:27:00.003-04:00

So 'effing tired of hearing about designing for social games. All the special considerations! You have to bring back players! You have to make them like your game! By social we mean you have to make your friends play it to get bonuses! You really don't give a shit how they play the game as long as they send you some coins every once in a while. That's not social! Design consideration for social games, huh? Figure out how to make your game actually social! Ugh.

Acknowledging Trackmania's non-racing mode

2010-03-26T03:47:00.003-04:00

Trackmania Nations Forever is an incredible game. And tonight I am arguing this because I came to realize yesterday that it has allowed users to actually "play" the editor. Have you ever seen a Press Forward track? This is a tm track in which a player only presses forward and they will reach the end of the track.

The editor of TMNF is very simple and powerful, letting you create any track that you have played in the game. Using a simple system of track pieces and props, you create a Hot Wheels-esque stunt track that might be very tough and narrow and slow to navigate, maybe you make a nice fast track with wide turns and many turbo-boost tiles, or perhaps you infuriate the player with a 30 minute track of death and crazy stunts that are almost impossible to complete to reach the next stage of the track floating 300 feet in the air. All of these and any combination therein is possible. But the real gems as I have discovered, are the press-forward tracks.

I find Press Forward tracks to be the result of "playing" the TMNF editor. The editor is so easy to use and it is so easy and simple to test, that people create a piece of track, press forward and see where their car goes. Then they create some more track and add a jump. Then they see where their car goes. Then they build track up in the air where their car ended up. Then they start adding more and more pieces and creating a maze of speed. This is really easy too, and it all hinges on two simple factors: testing is almost instantaneous and there is no randomness in TMNF's physics. It is beautiful.

Press forward tracks are like movie-making, but even more satisfying, in my opinion. To play a track is fun. It might be almost exactly like watching a youtube clip of a PF track, but there is a very interesting dynamic in the player always needing to press forward. Play one of the best tracks and then stop pressing forward at some point. You screw it all up and you feel as if you are backstage at Disneyland.

Press forward tracks are an interesting phenomenon created by Trackmania's wonderful and intuitive editor. I have spent more time with Trackmania than almost any other game (and it's free!). Check it out sometime, and consider the editor and what it has done. It has created an intricate alternative Rube Goldberg-machine-maker.

The Thrill of Navigation

2010-03-20T03:55:00.005-04:00

I have been playing, almost every day, the Just Cause 2 demo. After playing it for two days, I decided that here was a game I would be willing to shell out to get on opening day. It has been a while since I have had that urge. Oblivion perhaps? And what is even more amazing is that I am shelling out money for a game that freezes on me every time I play. I have only once reached the 30 minutes that the game allows you to play before kicking you off with a sweet enticing trailer. Every other time it freezes or just disappears. Other than that, however, I am entirely indebted to this game for getting me to play games on the PC every night again.

--------

I have been spending an inordinate amount of my time playing iPhone games. There are two reasons: they are simple to pick up and play for a short time and the ones I enjoy the most understand the mechanics of touch-control. I have talked about Canabalt previously, I am playing Spider again, and lately I have also been enjoying Mini Squadron. Each one is enticing to me because of the wonderful speed with which you interact with the world. In MiniSquadron, a fun little dogfighting game, you loop your plane around to dodge and attack with varying quickness, and they smartly slowed the various bullets down to the point that you can dodge them. It lends the simplicity of the game a really fun strategic element, making you stronger than such a real dogfight would ever present.

And the game is comfortable. You really feel the bullets as you fire, their sound effects joyfully punchy, and once you press down on the directional pad, it keeps track of that finger wherever it goes on the screen, always maintaining the same centerpoint. This allows you to rely on the feedback much less. Not only can you watch the plane respond to your finger, but you know it will respond as long as you have your finger down anywhere on screen. It is smart and always works in favor of the player. Indeed, even the shooting button extends noticeably past the space marked on screen. Just get within 50 pixels and you should be fine. That is strong understanding of our interactions with the device.

Spider, as I was able to present at GDC last week, worked because 95% of the game was controlled with three super simple mechanics, all of which controlled the actions of the spider. Tap to prepare a web, flick to jump with or without a web, and hold to attract the spider to your finger. I was able to rapidly explain the game to a newcomer and then go back to chatting with someone else. Fantastic! Control has kept me playing around on the iPod Touch for the last three months that I have had one. I am seeking out the latest games that use the device for all its power. A new method of interaction and navigation, that has distracted me from my DS, my PS2, and even mostly from my PC as a gaming device.

-----------

But let us steer back to the road that got me onto navigation in the first place: Just Cause 2. I think it is a superb game (demo at least) because it lets me run, fly, and drive around a world with the simplest of ease. Using Rico's grappling hook and parachute, I can quickly transition from any form of transportation to another. I can jump out of a helicopter and parachute to the ground. Or grapple back onto a helicopter. The game does, admittedly, have slight control hiccups in these transitions. As you enter or grab onto a vehicle, you notice your normal movement controls disappear, but the developers clearly recognized that you only needed a few controls to navigate around the vehicle, and then the main controls for handling the vehicle. In the end, it works well.

I am still getting comfortable transitioning from vehicle to running to another vehicle and then jumping to a third. But I am having fun doing it. And that is why I personally play games. To experience the thrill of navigation. The developers of JC2 have made a fun game. An open world with lots of things to destroy, and plenty of vehicles to get from destructible to destructible. (And of course I spend half the time destroying the vehicles I drive.) Hopefully when I install the full game I will keep finding new thrills, or at least that this main mechanic will not wear old. [And hopefully they will resolve this major crash bug.]

GDC and the value of our lives

2010-03-05T03:08:00.002-05:00

So I'm writing this while I still have time before GDC's massive gathering of developers. That godly mess was both inspiring and humbling last year. You realize how little one person can be in that crowd of thousands, and I cannot even imagine the numbers that do not or cannot attend. But you also realize how many people share your passion for games, whether seeking fame, fortune, or something more.

I volunteered last year and I am doing the same this year. Last year I traveled from Boston and crashed in a friend's apartment for a few hours each night. This year I am living across the bay in Berkeley. Last year I attended a few different parties and got to talk to people who had roused my spirits at the Indie Games Summit (such as Jonatan "Cactus" Söderström, who was quiet and told me he was totally disgusted by realistic violence, which made me contemplate the difference between his violent unrealistic games and those oh-so-violent mainstream AAA realistic titles). This year I plan on attending as many parties.

There was one thing in last year's events that stood out to me more than any other occurrence. I do not know how many people noticed it, but Todd Howard, the director of Fallout 3, upon receiving the award for Game of the Year, talked about how he once again missed his family vacation with his growing children. His wife had asked, as he was finishing the game for release and she was leaving with the children for vacation, if it was worth it. Then he held up the award and walked off the stage with his team. I was so struck by that moment. I still cannot say how he felt, but it seemed the most bittersweet moment to me.

What are we doing with our lives? What do we want from our lives? Is our drive to create the masterpieces that shape the world? Do AAA titles redefine who we are? Do indie games affect us immeasurably? Is that what we want? Is it more important than the people in our lives? Are the people we care most about, are they the men "in the trenches" and cubicles beside us?

I do not know the answer to these questions, and I know each person would answer differently. But I am thankful that in my development career so far, the people I have worked with and under have recognized the importance of our lives beyond games and encouraged my other sides. Games drive us, but they cannot take us everywhere. And with that extra mile beyond the limits of games, we have that much more under the hood when we get back on the road of development.

It's late in here, but some gaming recaps

2010-02-24T03:49:00.005-05:00

So I am super thrilled to once again be attending GDC as a volunteer. For 15-20 hours of work I get a pass worth over a thousand dollars and all the associated networking and education and fun that goes with enjoying a gathering as epic as GDC. Not only that, but this year I get to go as a nominee for a GDC Choice Award! I still can't get over that. Nearby, at some other table, will be Double-Fine! And other big companies. But I'm still a dreamy little fanboy who just happens to have a beard and a hit title as well.

In other news, I have been playing iPhone games like crazy lately. They are so easy to pick up and play, they are so cheap, and the interface really is so simple and enjoyable that I cannot help but keep buying more $1 games. When looking for games and recommendations, I often check the top of the list, but also I frequent TouchArcade.com (they really supported Spider) and they have an interesting associated podcast that has developers on every session to talk about success and the development community. It is very weird to me that it is such a large deep platform, because there still seems to be this relatively small group of games that I ever hear about. I really wonder about simple things such as naming your game well to get recognized. It really is this next step of the gaming market.

Top games for me right now:
-Sword&Poker, a really entertaining dungeon romp in which you deal damage to enemies through poker hands. There is a free version which still has me going, so check it out.

-MotoXMayhem: I know this was one of the few games that stayed ahead of Spider when it reached its peak in the appstore, and I finally bought it a month ago out of curiosity. It's just like those billion Flash games where you tilt your motocross rider back and forth and use gas and brake to navigate a hilly course. But you know what? I've been addicted to those simple physics racers countless times. There is nothing so fun as backflipping when you're not supposed to, and then failing and watching your rider pop into the air like he's a jack-in-the-box. It doesn't use backflips/tricks enough and I wish the levels were a little more extensive, but for a dollar, it's fun to master.

-Canabalt: I cannot say how many hours I've played this game. I'm winding down on it now, but I will still put in some playthroughs every few days. A simple game, your goal is to jump from building to building for as long as you can, but through flawless art direction and subtle random game mechanics, it is just a superb gaming experience. Totally worth the $3. Completely and totally worth it.

-Lilt Line: Frustrating at times, this game tasks you with guiding a line through a maze using tilt controls and occasionally tapping to the beat. The integration of music and play makes it an engaging time, because, like Guitar Hero, if you screw up and miss a sequence, the beat dies. It uses a very abstract and trippily simple world that hits the perfect chord with the music, including the subtle effect that whenever you tap the screen, your line wobbles a little. My one major complaint is that sometimes you have to tap slightly after a beat, because the visuals don't always match with the music, and it cares more about visual alignment than musical.

OUTSIDE OF THE IPHONE WORLD
I am playing a bit of Mass Effect. It is an awesome and epic game and I immediately felt like I was almost in Knights of the Old Republic. Bioware's signature is clear. I really like the merging of gunplay and RPG and it's a gorgeous game. I will certainly have more to say later, but I will mention that I will always be amused at the demand that the largest games, no matter how serious, always work in a variety of humorous elements. Mass Effect's being the elevator music. Yeah, elevator music in some structure that's been around for 50,000 years. Don't ask me, I just play the game. Does it take me out of the reality of their universe? Totally. But at the same time, I laugh. So does that seem like a poor decision on their part? I honestly don't know. Breaking third walls seems to be more and more common these days, and their desire to link elevator music to our current humor is admirable. But does it really work? Eh, probably not. But I won't be stopping the game for that clear infraction of game fiction.

So gaming doth continue in my world, and now I have to figure out whether I want a ps3 just to play Uncharted 2. Is it really the next step in games as movies?

work the network, a n00b's take on the industry, take 2

2010-01-24T18:28:00.002-05:00

When people say that everything is connected, they are not kidding. Have you ever looked at the way cracks form in a window. Or the way particles are arranged. Or the layout of a galaxy? Or that everything seems to exist on a bell curve? The golden ratio is artistic and scientific and beautiful.

I am an awestruck person, and constantly invigorated by life. Life is about our connections. When we make connections we thrive. Play a couple violins and a viola and a cello and you have a beautiful string quartet. Bring some people together and you have a party. Stronger than the individual elements, right?

And isn't that why interactive entertainment/games/whatever-you-wanna-call-them are potentially the most powerful medium of expression ever? They are more than a medium, I would say. I would call them a fullium (yup, a new bad joke). The ultimate power of games is in their bringing together music, art, animation, simulation and requiring you to make them happen through your interaction.

That act of uniting all these separate elements is a worthy fight, and I wait for the game that brings together all elements in such harmony that it can affect me more than music. I believe music to be the most powerful medium. More powerful than a visual, its physical resonance actually strikes me in ways that are scary. But a good beat, a melancholy solo, a rousing orchestration, I live for a beautiful music album. And perhaps I have not felt the same with games because the demand of a game is wholly different. It is not something to let wash over you while you sit with eyes closed or as you dance with a partner in a throbbing crowd.

You are part of the game you play. The game would not be itself without you.

And so in turn the game is nothing without its developer[s]. And for a n00b in the industry, let me tell anyone still trying to get in, that the connections, the network you have, is the strongest tie you have to this field. Everyone knows everyone. Talk with people, talk with anyone. Make something with someone, and then tell others about what you are doing. I made some poor choices by neglecting various communities because of my rapid movement from one interest to another. If you like mapping, create Source maps and communicate with www.interlopers.net. They have professionals on that site, and because I only create a new map every two years or so, I missed opportunities that were hidden in that site. I randomly frequent the site. I am a second cousin twice removed at interlopers, no one knows me. And for that I did not get the chance to enter the industry right off the bat as a level designer. At www.TIGSource.com I only follow the front page. I never make games and submit them there. I don't follow the forums. If I were tight with tigsource, who knows what I might be up to.

But I do have a family. I worked at a couple game studios as an intern. I worked with MIT's incredible GAMBIT game lab. I found my current gigs through a former high school teacher's husband and the other through a previous boss. Be grateful for networks out there, and for gosh sakes, don't try and exist in a vacuum. You can, sure. But is it any fun? And is it rewarding? Who will have your back? Embrace networks. Embrace friends and family and everyone, for in the game industry, and out of it, connections are what keep us alive.

Life...

2010-01-12T02:39:00.003-05:00

...is awesome and beautiful and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to stop and reassess. I go outside sometimes at night to go walk or ride my bike, and the longer I ride the more I am cognizant of how beautiful existence is. It's fucking awesome. Look around and think about every little thing that stirs, and every other little thing that doesn't appear to stir, and imagine that you can see how at levels so small it is stirring, and looking exactly like your stirring self.

I don't care what you believe in, as long as you love. Love something, anything, someone, anyone, everything and everyone. Right? If you don't love this life, if you don't let it pull you along and embrace you, then how can you say you know life well? And don't you want to know life? I don't understand those who are not in constant awe of reality. I am perhaps too in awe, but that has never hurt me. It has only filled me up to the brim.

You should be loving and living life. I live life, and I do it quietly sometimes, and other times it is loud and all my being. But in each of those moments, I am sucking it all up. I am letting life enter me. My existence is my beautiful existence and yours as well.

This life is alive. This life is yours. Isn't it fucking awesome?

STOP DRIVING AND FLYING THE MACHINE, a n00b in the industry: take 1

2009-12-24T02:46:00.003-05:00

So here I am, a n00b in the game industry, with a world available to me, and I thought it would be informative to relate the trials and tribulations I face as I face them. For the majority of you who don't know me, I am the figurehead of indecision. Or maybe I'm not? (Sorry, bad jokes may appear in this column.) But right now I am choosing between Tigerstyle games or Digital Chocolate. And I don't mean where to work, because I work for both right now, but which I prefer.

Let's start with a little background. I have been dipping my toes in game development for fourteen years now. I can't say I dove headfirst, because much of my childhood was spent riding my bike, reading every Star Wars novel until Phantom Menace demolished the extended universe, and focusing on schoolwork. My parents encouraged me to do well and try new activities, and so sitting down in front of a computer for twelve hours at a time always seemed wasteful of my existence.

But I knew early on, even before I was allowed to play games (I never owned a console until college), that games were this powerful outlet for art and entertainment that I wanted to be a part of. I wanted to create games that everyone would recognize and love. Entertainment. And I am still happy to find the entertainment out there. From Don't Shit Your Pants to Far-Cry 2, the player is in it for the thrill, however low and dirty. And I point out those games because they do exactly what a game should do. They have an interesting game mechanic that is well-executed and entertaining. But now that the wonderful realities of the world have appeared since college, I am stepping back and looking at my path.

What do I want from game development? At Digital Chocolate I have been enjoying the perks of a large business that tends to my needs. Even as a contractor, I am taken care of, and after the day is done, I can come home and eat dinner comfortably in my nice little apartment. I can play some PC games, do some reading, and just generally be a responsible adult with a good income. (Good income is a relative thing for someone just out of college and living in a cheap part of town.) But is contracting for a large company fulfilling for me? I cannot say for sure. I love having weekends to go out and hike and bike and see family and friends. The comfort of being able to eat a nice meal. And I'm not trying to brag, I am just stating the simple fact that, like my father before me, I am a jedi. No wait, like my father before me, working at a large company brings flexibility to one's lifestyle.

But these perks are offset by the fact that Digital Chocolate is a business. They make games to make games to make money. And that's exactly what they should be doing. Make games so you can make money to make more games. And I got a job with them! They acknowledged that I am good enough to help them make money! And I'm proud of that. I want to make people money. I really want to support the efforts of others.

But what is my goal? Because while I create art assets for Digital Chocolate, I have been lucky enough to work on Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. Tigerstyle games has been this wonderful garage development experience. I helped make Spider while living in my parent's house seeking out a real job to pay bills. Because Spider is one game. A labor of love by a group of people who deeply care about what we do. And so I heard the term just recently by the designer, that Tigerstyle is a lifestyle company. Spider was made because the guys had a great idea and wanted to make it a reality, not because anyone thought it would make millions. We hoped it would, but regardless, we wanted to make the game to make something awesome, not just for profit. (More specifically, David and Randy had to make the game.) That's powerful, is it not? That you need to do something because you are passionate about creation. And that is art to me. Sacrifice. Putting in that time and effort. Blood, sweat, and tears. That's what makes something a piece of art versus a product.

So right now I debate between art and product. I love art, and it takes sacrifice. Am I willing to sacrifice and strike out fully on the rocky indie development road, or do I keep this steady position that I might live a life beyond these completely unimportant games?

Gaming as an opportunity

2009-12-13T04:54:00.003-05:00

So I have been playing a surprising amount of GTA: Chinatown Wars. Even now, a week after finishing the main story, I find myself pulling out the DS in spare moments, loading up Liberty City, and trading some drugs. Even as I bemoan the point of games like Farmville, I find that I am drawn back into GTA just to reach for that unattainable 100%. I know I won't get there. Partly because I don't care THAT much, and partly because at my next available opportunity I'll be purchasing the new Zelda.

But here I am right now, taking random 30 minute breaks in my Saturday, trading drugs and dodging cops just to finish buying all of the safehouses in this little city. And it's terrible. I think the game is repetitive, I think its driving involves far too narrow streets, there are too many cops, I still have a hell of a time figuring out what section of the city I am in, I have trouble avoiding cars because I'm watching the GPS too closely (which is an annoying crutch). There are a lot of reasons CW annoys me, but I keep playing it. And I think it is for that sole reason that handheld games are really easy to start up and play quickly. A five-minute session is super simple. I even will gravitate toward internet games because I'm already on the web and I can just load up kongregate or Canabalt, or the link will be there as soon as I type the first three letters.

The point I find myself arriving at somewhat unsurprisingly (though I had no idea this was what I was going to say when I started writing this post), is that it matters to me a very great deal how quickly I can actually start playing a game. I don't intentionally work that way. I would rather play a wonderful epic masterpiece that takes five minutes to get into meaningful gameplay, but when there are those small opportunities to play a game during the day, I am going to pick the game that is right there in my pocket that will take thirty seconds to get into.

The Grind

2009-10-10T16:36:00.004-04:00

Two unusual games are on my current playlist, games that I have simply been curious about. If my tastes and preferences for games have never been revealed, then let me say this: I love doing the impossible. Those games that thrill and excite me, that strike that amazing balance of unreal existence and epic environments, I could play those games for hours on end. I play games like Pyschonauts, Fallout 3, or Mirror's Edge for the thrill of unreal worlds. To be in places that are beyond the realm of my hometown. There are enough beautiful moments in reality, enough vistas to make life wonderful. A game hits me when I know that within my lifetime there is no chance I will experience such wonder.

Likewise, games like Max Payne, Mirror's Edge (again), or Shadow of the Collosus are games to be experienced. To play with, to enjoy the fact that, as a player, I am capable of things that would never ever be possible in real-life. Situations that are not feasible. Climbing astride a beast hundreds of feat tall, clinging to its fur, and then climbing further up, that is worth my money. Or how about a gun-duel with multiple enemies? I will never in my life be in a gun duel. And I'm okay with that, because Max Payne gives me all of the joy with none of the reality of me getting shot and dying.

Many games these days are not what I really envision as games because they seem to no longer embrace the fun or the challenge. So out of curiosity I am currently playing Lord of the Rings Online and Farmville. I have wanted to know why people would play Farmville, so I joined the ranks in an effort to determine whether or not Farmville is even a game. After probably an hour of actual playtime I can announce that it is not a game. The premise is to farm a plot of land and to raise money to farm more land and add more types of crops, add random visual flair to your farm, to add neighbors, and to add, add, add! As far as I have been able to discern, there is no negative element to the game. You cannot lose, there is no series of interesting choices, it is merely the progressive collection of elements that may or may not exist on real farms anymore. I have come to the conclusion that Farmville is not a game, it is a tedious chore.

So yesterday, after harvesting my soy crop and planting a new round of seeds, I tried Lord of the Rings Online for the first time, and was slightly disturbed how similar it felt to Farmville. "Oh please, Tinuriael! We need to kill 6 of those Blighted Insects!" "Oh thank you! Here is some experience and silver!" "Oh but this man wants to see you about killing 3 Rustling Mugwumps!""Oh grand happy day! Have an old leather shoe! Now there are 8 Goblin shoes to be collected down the road which we'll trade you 6 more silver for! And if you find any vegetables to pick... Off you go, please!"

I have never really been into MMOs, but I thought I would give LOTRO a try, because I was told that it was a beautiful game with lots of exploration elements. Frankly, it is a beautiful game, and I was pleasantly surprised by the well designed environments, but was this slow grinding going to kill me? It destroyed WOW for me very quickly. LOTRO does have grinding, but at least it's not Farmville. Why not? Because you can die! You can fail, lose, get hurt, have to run away from too many enemies. It contains the very real possibility of failure, and I like that. My accomplishments in Farmville are not many, but they feel like even less, because every step I took put me closer to the accomplishments, whereas LOTRO contains steps that carry me backward, further from one destination in my efforts to seek something new. I visited Bree quickly after the world opened up to me, because I wanted to see Bree. I was quickly out of my level-safe area, but it was fun because I felt like I was giving up one quest for my own personal quest of exploration. What has Turbine done with Middle-Earth? I am finding the answers to that.

I enjoy games that give me thrills, and LOTRO has a beautiful thrilling world, but unless I can soon escape the tedium of its action, I might have to give up on another MMO. Perhaps I just don't appreciate the subtlety of MMO action, but games are my hobby, I play what I want, and I want a game that not only gives me an unbelievable world, but one where my actions are also impossibly awesome. However I can say for sure that Farmville (like too many Facebook apps) is not a game and is definitely not something I want to deal with anymore.

E(ART)H

2009-10-04T20:50:00.002-04:00

Okay, I'm all for clever thoughts and witty commentary and yadda yadda yadda.... BUT sometimes I find that people are trying to be clever without any actual understanding of how or why they might be clever.

Take the title of this post. This is a new bumper sticker that I've been seeing around Berkeley, that most wonderful eclectic town where half the residents still believe we live in the sixties and Priuses roam unchecked and unchained. You might have seen the E(ART)H bumper sticker as well, because clearly a few years ago someone thought that would make a great sticker, it would strike people as clever and awesome and a declaration of their love of the environment. But I don't accept it. Unless of course this is actually all a ploy by theists to show us that the earth is a great piece of art created by God. That's an argument I can understand and accept.

But I guarantee the majority of people say, "Oh looook, it's art AND earth!" It does not make any sense to me for those two, although both nice things, just don't really have any reason to be stuck together, or one extrapolated from the other. Maybe someone can explain it to me, perhaps I'm just being narrow-minded. In the end, someone is making some nice money off that bumper sticker, and that guy does not care in the slightest whether the earth is art.

Admirable

2009-09-25T02:44:00.004-04:00

First off, I really dig this Kickstarter website concept. But secondly, I really love developers that create "games" with messages, with artistic and political intent.

One piece that originally opened my eyes to the power of games and interactivity was September 12th. The laziness of the bomb, the brightly chilling sound when you turn a mourning family member into a terrorist, and the simple but fascinating intro to the "simulation".

Also recently discovered was a game from years ago that was recently noted on TIGSource, World War 1 Medic, another game that is made the more chilling by its bright optimistic sounds.

Game developers have messages they want to get out, and the best games take a slice that hits you, whether it's due to amazing controls or chilling actions. That is the goal of a game developer, to make you feel. And I hope that The Unconcerned can make your actions mean something like in September 12th, or ultimately mean nothing, as in WW1 Medic, both games revelatory in their own ways.

Tutorials

2009-09-21T03:22:00.003-04:00

How the hell do you make a multiplayer tutorial? I have been pondering this for a few weeks now, because I think that it is indicative of the delicate balance required for all the elements of a multiplayer game. I am working on a Team Fortress 2 map, and I'm finding myself continually reworking the level, knowing that the spacial layout is key. But I was also playing the game a bit and I really took notice of how different the learning curve is between single- and multi-player.

In a solo linear game, even in a nonlinear game, you can introduce players to each concept, slowly ramping up the difficulty and complexity of the scenarios/levels/missions. In a multiplayer game you are introducing a player to the game, explaining the basic concepts and then throwing them out to the wolves. Play Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4, or, heaven help you, the venerable Starcraft, and the multiplayer games will hand your ass to you several times over before you give up in frustration or finally catch on to a trick somewhere and then slowly climb the tree of experience.

Multiplayer has never been for the weak of heart, but often hardcore games do try and ease you into the challenge over time through different methods.

Firstly, many games have a singleplayer mode. Starcraft you can train by playing through the campaign. I faced as tough a time at the end of Brood War that I faced online. Then again I never surmounted either Brood War or multiplayer SC; instead I conceded defeat against such brutal opposition. With Call of Duty there is also singleplayer, and many major games place just as much importance on the woven yarn as the multiplayer arenas.

Other games have excellent Bot modes. Unreal Tournament and its sequels have always been favorites of mine because they have excellent bots that you can play through the game as if you were playing an online match, but instead you play against whatever skill level you wish.

And finally, other games simply have tutorials, videos, or text and images to tell you what you should do when you're thrown out onto the field of battle. But these are the least helpful, frankly. Team Fortress 2 works with such simple tutorials because every element of the game is so plainly presented in the game. When you are a pyro, you immediately know you're a frontline soldier, intended to torch the enemy, and that's all you really need to do. You can see a giant glowing enemy signal, go to it. Play the doctor and you know right away what to do because as soon as you enter the game someone is yelling for a doctor and an arrow is pointing toward them.

The more complicated the game, the more complex the introduction, the more effort is put into singleplayer. Indeed, as I ponder, I am realizing that a game like Counter-Strike can throw you right in, because there is a simple goal and a simple mechanic to CS, it is the balance, the delicate interplay of all the little pieces, that make CS such a joy to master. People play CS for the challenge and if someone does not like CS, they will know it right away.

Likewise, when someone does find a mechanic they enjoy, they will stick with it. It just has to get easier. A player has to get better at a game. They have to feel progress. That is the joy of learning a game: the growth of the player.

Therefore, a multiplayer tutorial needs to reveal a game's central mechanic and hint at the strategies untold. A tutorial merely needs to explain the central tenet of the game, and if you cannot do that in a sentence or two and a couple images, then perhaps it's not the tutorial that needs fixing. The player needs a revelation merely by grasping the main game rule. And once they say, "Ahh, that's a clever concept," or, "Yes, I want to experience that," then the game must have the depth waiting on the other side.

So now it's the other side of the column for me, so thanks for reading. Next up: I have absolutely no idea.

Amidst the fallout

2009-09-10T03:29:00.003-04:00

I finished Fallout 3 a few days ago and thought it was a pretty solid ending. I will have to go back and play through things a bit differently, or realistically I will move onto another game and never look back, because I don't often return to games that I've actually gone to the trouble to beat. I am curious about the evil path (I always take the good path) so perhaps Fallout 3 will finally be the game to bring me round to a second playthrough.

Scratch that, there is another game I've played multiple times, possibly my favorite: Max Payne. Both the first and its sequel were immense pleasures to play and I reluctantly await round three. I've written previously about the location of MP3 and the attitude of the game, but I wait to see what they end up doing with it.

In other news the awesome Flixel Bros, Adam Atomic and Danny B, have released another awesome little time-waster. Canabalt is a simple procedural, six-tone game in which you're playing a one button, sidescrolling Mirror's Edge. All you do is jump obstacles and leap from building to building, crashing through windows as you gain speed, allowing you to leap the greater distances as the buildings grow farther apart. Fun for a short time or a bit more than that, I highly recommend the minute it takes to click on the link and get hooked.

Speaking of Mirror's Edge, I finally was tipped off by my girlfriend to a coupon that saved me half the cost of the ME map pack, so I grabbed the new time-trial maps the pack has to offer. They are slick levels, ditching the cities for giant floating boxes that feel like they should be designed by VW and Apple's lovechild. The levels are fun and challenging, just what I like, though I need to give them some more time to truly appreciate the $5 I added to EA's pockets. DICE did well, and I think that you should give Mirror's Edge a chance if you've never done so. [Factoid: I applied to intern at DICE, but this was when I had absolutely nothing on my resume that would make an international developer such as DICE recognize me as anything but ordinary. I still might feel that way, but my resume grows steadily, nonetheless.]

next week on []Musings: I discuss singleplayer vs. multiplayer tutorials.

2009-08-27T12:45:00.001-04:00

Pictures like this make my day: http://www.fred.net/slowup/xmasword.jpg

an urge to play videogames

2009-08-23T13:00:00.002-04:00

microblog: It doesn't always happen, but right now I've the strongest urge to play some videogames. I am guessing that I've excess energy that can only be taken by the totally absorbing experience of playing something like Fallout 3 or perhaps the new Batman demo?

Unfortunately I'm not playing for a bit yet, since I've got visitor obligations and who can deny going out to breakfast on a Sunday morning?

Happy! Beautiful mother, beautiful father, happy!

2009-08-17T03:25:00.003-04:00

It is a happy accident that I met my girlfriend three years ago. It's a happy accident that I have continued to email and keep in contact with one of my old high school teachers who, it turned out, had a husband with lots of amazing connections and got me my current job. It's a happy accident that I don't really remember what incited me to open up blogger to write this evening.

But I'm continually in amazement over the simplicity of this world. The fact that we create these beautiful tapestries that we call lives, we create them out of the simplest events. Going to dinner with someone, reading a book, playing a video game, traveling into the wilderness to bond with friends and get attacked by mosquitoes. Eating, drinking, walking, talking, playing. Am I playing games to escape all of these beautiful things? No, I guess I am playing for my desire to extend my life beyond its normal bounds.

Recently I have been reading the Harry Potter books and I finally did it for two reasons. A) I finally noticed Ginny in the latest movie and thought, hey, she's pretty cute. I wonder what she's like in the novels. And B) I understood that there really was a depth to the world that Rowling had created. My Tolkien elitism settled down and I've been able to enjoy a fascinating world that expands my imagination. The imagination is so powerful and it holds the special place in my heart that recognizes my dreams and thoughts of unreal things can matter just as much to the internal tapestry of my life as any tangible reality.

So, despite Harry Potter not being real, that addition to my mind of a fantastical school of wizardry extends my universe a little more. He is, at times, almost as important as the hike I took a couple weeks back. Or as prominent as the unfortunate homeless I pass on my way to work. Or as captivating as the movement out of the corner of my eye late at night in my apartment that gets my adrenaline pumping? Isn't that amazing? I have read Rowling's words, and now her real imagination is part of my own intangible existence.

annoying invention of the day

2009-07-28T15:57:00.003-04:00

If you cannot afford to put a regular soap dispenser in your home or office, why not get one that is exceedingly wasteful and ineffective? That's right. When you grab the following dispenser: http://www.newtondistributing.com/panel/fotoprod/BRA%206501.gif
You will find that it is difficult for the soap to come out, and when it does, it will just drip slowly. Grab it now so that you can detest using it and wish people never came up with it.

Blogging!

2009-07-22T21:58:00.004-04:00

Here I am sitting at work, not working, because it's after work and I'm only here because my pal is getting to the nearby airport 4 hours from now. That's a long time. However, there's no sense in me driving home, because that takes approximately an hour and a half. So I would be spending all my gas to get home and then leave again shortly thereafter. So why not blog a little?

Hello! I'm Randy O. I work at Digital Chocolate as of two days ago. I spend my time now making sweet art for stuff I can't tell you about. I like signing NDAs. It's about the closest I will ever get to being a secret agent. In fact, it's as close as I can get because it makes me a secret agent because I keep secrets as an agent of this company. I'm ignoring the somewhat inappropriate usage of "agent" and so can you. This is cooler than my normal life because I don't have to keep anything secret. Though I do love mystery.

And there are still a few people here at 7pm. That was definitely not how it was at my last job. Then again, surprisingly, people show up here even later than people at the previous place. How do they do it? Okay, I know the answer to that: they have sleep schedules just as screwy as mine. I'm changing my schedule because I've got no other choice. 2 hour train ride to work at 7am, ya got no choice but to not sleep at 3am every morning.

This change of pace in life, it really gets to ya. I'm tired right now, but, well, I could take a nap. Perhaps I shall. Oh, to be napping at my workplace (after work hours!) after three days here. I am amazing.

[Oh, yah, so this all means I have a job. Go me!]

WoW

2009-07-13T00:55:00.003-04:00

I was scrollin' the internet through the power of the Nethernet, and a portal took me to TOSBack, a site that follows certain EULAs and such, including Blizzard's EULA for World of Warcraft. I decided to scroll down and I discovered this addition from a couple months ago:

"BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or the EULA."

Can I just highlight "BLIZZARD MAY...TERMINATE... MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS... FOR NO REASON"?!?!

Wow, that's scary. What kind of rights do you get with an MMO now? The right to what you paid for? Now back to Fallout 3 where multiplayer doesn't get in my way.

Ghostbusters: The Videogame

2009-07-10T03:43:00.002-04:00

73/100

(I played the version for the Wii, so I can't comment on the graphics of the other versions, or if there's much difference otherwise.)

Ghostbusters is a fun game that uses a single mechanic too much while treading ultimately blocky repetitive levels. What the game does well is really give you a solid mechanic for tackling a variety of ghosts that are, in general, fairly similar. They either fly around in circles ocassionally swooping in to attack or they run/drift at you, trying to swarm you. You hit them repeatedly with various forms of energy until they either disappear right there or can then be wrestled with until they lose the fight and you can drop them into a trap. It's a fairly simple mechanic of shooting enemies without draining all of your energy and having to let it replenish. I felt energy drained slightly too fast, but still, once you had knocked enough out of the ghost to get a lock on with your proton pack, you would swing the remote in different directions, slamming the ghost against walls until you had defeated it. That was a lot of fun, I thought, and, unfortunately, it was the only really satisfying part of the game to me.

The story was decently clever, and the various actors did a good job of bringing it to life. Except Bill Murray, who seemed far too calm and quiet during the whole affair; it almost seemed as if he were whispering out his lines. I do wish they had recorded a little more idle chatter, however, as they were fairly quiet when the cutscenes weren't occurring.

As a level designer/environment artist, I was somewhat disappointed by the all-around blocky levels. They were bright and colorful and interesting for a couple minutes, and then many would descend into the same routine of extending the levels by copying sections and then pasting them over a few more times so you had more distance to cover. In particular, I wasn't a fan of the graveyard and its strangely tight corridors. I guess I've never been to graveyards with winding corridors of stone walls... Although I should say there were also decent levels, my favorite being the museum with its open halls.

Much of what annoyed me doesn't seem so bad in retrospect (a week after playing the game), but I distinctly came out of the game just glad it was done. I felt engaged for parts of the game, but at other points it was just slogging through to the next interesting checkpoint. I played through with a friend and we decided it was a good game to rent, but not to buy.

Up. My review

2009-07-02T13:32:00.002-04:00

My review will be very short in my writing, rather start by reading Matthew Sorento's review here: http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=11758

I agree with the points that Matthew makes and it really does hit the nail on the head that Up seems to take a great concept and throw it into a blender with a bunch of other random ideas. Three questions that arose in my head over the course of the movie.
-Why do the dogs always yell squirrel when they've been raised in a jungle where I doubt squirrels exist?
-Why is a man who is at least 25 years older than the main character at least as spry?
-Why do we see the main characters trudging through jungle when every time we see their environment from afar they are at the top of a huge rocky ridge?

I thought the movie failed to really explore its exploration concept further and instead went on a more typical romp for the second half, however the mood of the first half was strong enough to carry through the characters for most of the movie and I did indeed come out of the movie wanting to accomplish something with my life. The movie was very strong emotionally, and hopefully they can tie that up next time with just as cohesive a narrative.

Angry at game-makers

2009-06-30T06:21:00.003-04:00

I am angry for two reasons this evening:

1. Seeming ignorance of real-world issues. I was reading about Max Payne 3 a week ago and I came across a comment that really stirred me up. Rockstar's VP of Development talks about going down to Sao Paulo, the new location for Max, and getting tons of real-world documentation for the game. They scanned people living in the favelas, they did 3d scans of locals to be authentic!

'Oh, I'm sorry, you're a Brazilian in America, you're a little too thick to model our game characters after. We want thin sickly people, so we're actually going to grab some locals just to make sure they look right. And to get their tattered clothes.' And continuing on, Barrera, the VP, says, "The favelas are like little mazes. We looked at the structures and how they are built and said, 'Oh this would be fun.'

There is something about the article, which you can check out in GameInformer #195, that just doesn't sit right with me. I know you want to go grab reference, I know you are there to get the mood and documentation to help create a game in that setting. But, whether or not it was just the reporting or the reported, these are opportunities to actually bring to light real-world issues in a more constructive manner. Go out on a limb, bring awareness of Sao Paulo's troubles to a teen male audience and see if you can get the issue to resonate... I doubt it will, but I'd love to see Max Payne 3 do just that.

2. Plagiarism is repulsive. I'll keep this short since it's quite late, but I spotted on TIGSource a sidebar noting that the new iPhone game Blopo is actually a complete ripoff of the game Tumbledrop.

Tumbledrop is a cute, well-put-together flash physics puzzle game made in Unity and freely available at: http://www.tumbledrop.com/

Blopo (originally named Blogo), is a not very cute, not very clean or flashy version of Tumbledrop, and you can see it in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7wcLLRW0A8

Ripoff? So incredibly obviously a ripoff. I just think it's sad that people who can make games don't come up with their own ideas. COME ON! Be creative! Make your own damn work. I can't deal with this anymore, I'm going to sleep.

2009-06-13T16:29:00.001-04:00

http://www.trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/flyGuy.swf

Rich moms driving unnecessary luxury SUVs OR My time with Far Cry 2

2009-06-04T20:39:00.005-04:00

Far Cry 2 spoils its amazingly diverse world by trying to too hard to maintain the reins as a leading First Person Shooter. It's really too bad that the game doesn't do exactly what it attempts to set up in the beginning "cinematic". The intro sequence creates villages of normal people tending animals, rolls your vehicle through aggressive checkpoints where the NPCs scrutinize you but let you go and shows you how gorgeous the world of Far Cry 2 is.

Then you get your first mission and you find out that apparently everyone, including the people on "your side", will shoot at you. This is the most frustrating element of FC2: you are supposed to choose sides and yet it never matters. Everyone outside of the cities will fire at you and no one in the cities will. Perhaps the point is that no one can be trusted, and yet it immediately destroys this fascinating take on a video game that the opening presents you with. Perhaps that's just the way games have always worked. Let the opening build a cohesive world and then drop you in the game where the systems have to balance and be entertaining.

But wouldn't it be more entertaining to have those safe outposts that you could flee to? Then when an enemy jeep is hot on your tail you can arrive safely to have the barricades and friendly guns take out your aggressors? It's unfortunate that this was not how the game went, because otherwise the game is quite full-bodied and such a meta element to the world would have tied in its shooting so well. And believe me, the shooting is very solid. The game offers such fun gunplay because of its open world. Stealth is a much more tenuous game in the outdoors and the variety of guns and different ideas FC2 brings to the table make it all the more addictive. It's fun to replay certain sequences with such innovations as buddy back-ups and weapons jamming. Or just to light the grass on fire and watch it sweep across a field of enemies and perhaps burn down a tree.

The game looks gorgeous when burning things down or blowing things up. It even looks gorgeous just driving boats and jeeps around or sneaking through the jungles. It has a dreary color pallet of greens and browns but makes up for it with fantastic lighting and texturing and foliage. However I do have one gripe with the terrain. In an effort to make you take certain routes the game does something that has always annoyed me: it puts up impenetrable cliffs. I detest that solution. Especially when the map so clearly outlines where giant unwalkable areas are. Please, put some random routes through those mountains. I HATE being funneled through regions when I feel that a game is better when it doesn't put artificial barriers in any way. If I want to spend the time to climb the mountains where no jeep can go just so I can assault a fortress from above, give me that option please. Don't always route me through chokepoints, especially when you're touting such open-world scenarios. Chokepoints don't always exist in the real world.

But I like Far Cry 2. I have invested considerable time into it, even learning how to play a shooter on a console. I still prefer the ease of mouse and keyboard, but FC2 has lots going for it: new gameplay elements for shooters, an incredibly expansive world, and a gorgeous engine. It's just too bad it can't break free of certain traditional shooter elements: everyone is an enemy and you always have to pass chokepoints. Give it a try, I am sure you'll love it. It's the FPS equivalent of TES4: Oblivion. Just be wary, it doesn't break as much ground as it clearly wanted to.

2d side-strollers

2009-05-06T10:07:00.004-04:00

There are as many 2d platformers produced every minute as babies. Until my recent foray into indie games, I had believed, like so many others, that 3d was the way of the world now. But I have discovered that it is not. No, indeed, it seems that the mass majority of games are in 2d. And I'm trying to decide how I feel about that. So I think it's great that indie developers are making 2d platformers because they are producing games. But it seems like almost ALL of them are making platformers.

It must be due to Gamemaker, I just don't know. Please, though, stretch your horizons. I want to play some new types of games. And I know there are a billion other games out there. But half the time I go to tigsource I see a new sidescrolling platformer. I just don't know how to feel.

Bottle caps

2009-04-18T13:21:00.003-04:00

I think the decision by bottle manufacturers to remove the grip from their plastic caps was one of the most ass-backwards move of recent years. I can't open a 20oz bottle of soda anymore. Who made this decision? And who is still backing it? "Hey, let's make it so people can't open their soda bottles unless they have sandpaper on their fingertips!" Bottle caps worked fine 3 years ago, and now they don't. THEY DON'T WORK ANYMORE! The only possible explanation I can muster up is that someone hurt someone by scraping the rough surface against their eyeball and the soda companies determined that they could get in trouble for having a slightly rough surface on their bottle caps. WTF.

All I know is that it just took me far too long to open my iced tea.

Pointing Out Problems, Pt 2: Survival games

2009-04-13T10:30:00.006-04:00

Do I hate survival/gauntlet games? I love and hate knowing that I should not win a game. Let me examine further. I love the idea of victory. If I don't immediately see victory within reach, I will probably move on to another game. So this becomes my problem today: to endure the challenges of a game where the end is unclear.

I do NOT endure unclear challenges because I prefer immediate success. If a game cannot present me with immediate goals and rewards, then I will not continue. Tell me what I am going for. Show me what I need to do. Do not leave me in the dark.

That is the point of some games, however. By not playing these games I am not understanding a section of the game spectrum. This section of games grows larger still because I generally dislike the zombie genre.

So here is my task: to beat Omar's Orthogonal Oyster Outing. A zombie survival game with unclear goals. And to clarify, the game does give the goal of reaching a helicopter. However, this is only stated within the readme and at this point I have yet to find any evidence of a copter or its whereabouts within the game. Therefore: unclear goal.

[note: I am also playing through Chrono Trigger, which is epic, and it could be stated that I am unclear on where the game might take me, though the goals are generally clear and close. But I am liking my first true foray into a jRPG.]

Pointing Out Problems, part 1?

2009-03-30T22:49:00.003-04:00

If I were a man of few words, this would be easy as pie, but instead I spit out words because I stuff myself to the brim. My problem is as follows: I am not aware.

That's right, dear readers, I, yours truly, the man of this blog, ruler of all that is a[muse]ing, am completely utterly and hopelessly unaware of things. Progressing forward in life I shall attempt to document that of which I am not aware and hopelessly I will document my struggles to overcome this most massive of hurdles/cliffs/mountains(/planets?).

Let's commence at the beginning. My problem today is this: I am unaware of the metaphors behind great writing. I want to believe that things are as they seem, and I am fighting to read between the lines. I just love text! And I love seeing it! Unfortunately, the spaces between the lines are invisible, that point where we're supposed to be unconscious, sleeping. That third of our life of silence and blank existence. Sadly I don't often sleep all that much and I have been missing that thing called silence and sleep so I am no longer conscious of sleep and space and reading between the lines. Perhaps tonight I'll sleep. At least for a few hours. No! Seven hours! I must. (Haha, I can dream. [No, you cannot!])

Thoughts and prayers to my professor

2009-03-30T09:27:00.002-04:00

How easily we brush away words. Words contain so little weight with us, and indeed we're taught to learn to ignore and to heed them at the same time. Where does sarcasm melt into sincerity?

I'm writing this because I do not know the state of health of my Spanish professor and I believe it to be poor. All last week I was in San Francisco enjoying the Game Developer's Conference, enjoying life and networking and my career, and completely ignoring my Spanish homework. Which is fine, because it was my choice to do so.

Here to Boston I return and find that my professor has been gone all of last week and again today he isn't teaching. Two months ago when I first began my GDC planning I told my professor that I would be gone. Remind me in a month, he said, he could be dead by then. A sarcastic comment from a professor who we've known to throw as much humor into his teaching as he could muster.

But it seems those words were not so hollow and light as they appeared to me. I am praying for you professor.

The grifters and the peddlers

2009-03-10T02:44:00.002-04:00

Tonight I was approached by a man who has approached me on at least two other occasions. I saw him coming from a mile away as he crossed an intersection at a very odd angle just to catch me. And of course not a single person nearby for me to hide behind. As expected, he needed a dollar. He had four quarters. Well I told him I had no dollars. So then he asked if I had a five, because he had a few dollars and needed a fiver. Strange. I thought he had no dollars.

I do not carry much money with me these days, especially on campus where my student card gets me my meals. But it must be a hard time for small-time grifters these days. What I mean by that is that I am guessing the average guy asking for a buck today is about half as likely as someone asking thirty years ago because everyone uses debit cards these days. We all love to keep digital transactions of every time we spend money. We like to carry around a piece of plastic to pay for things. And most of all, we don't have change when the people who may or may not need it ask for some.

So to all you non-helpless people out there asking me for some change or a dollar for four quarters (I still don't get that one), I apologize that we do not carry change around to help you make a living. I am sure somewhere someone has got a modern trick up their sleeve that will sweep the nations of their debit cards and PIN numbers.

Hoppin at the AvoCondos has entered the kongregation

2009-03-01T20:08:00.001-05:00

That's right, yours truly is now a kongregate game. Support me with a half cent or perhaps a .1 cent by visiting http://www.kongregate.com/games/upriser/hoppin-at-the-avocado-condos

I don't think you'll be disappointed.

enter the confusion, pt. 3

2009-02-28T12:41:00.002-05:00

As the day started to slip away, I felt a fell breeze whisper through the trees around me. Goblins, probably. The grim thought remained with me as I trudged through the undergrowth in a verdant valley. I was learning its layout very quickly. This was the third time I had passed that cluster of rocks, and I was quite sure I now knew where to go to exit this strange land. Up the hill, to the right of the rocks, I spotted an open field. From that vantage point I should be able to see what was next.

Stumbling over myself I climbed the slope. I was starting to get tired. I might need another apple soon, I thought to myself. Strange too, as there had been no goblins yet to sap my health. Why on earth would my health be dropping for just traveling? I couldn't even ask my companion for help as he had disappeared hours ago, intent on finding more nuts to throw at passersby.

Exhausted, I made the top of the hill and the field that sat upon it. Beyond the valley I had been struggling through seemed to lay another valley. Great. I had quite the quest laid out ahead of me, it seemed. Onward and upward...

GDC 2009

2009-02-27T18:52:00.002-05:00

I'm going to GDC! I realize this is actually about a month late, but I had yet to mention this on a blog primarily about games. So now you all know! I am really really really looking forward to going and getting to experience all that is the legendary GDC. I have got a to-do list right now, basically trying to make myself look good by then. I need business cards, a resume, a killer set of images and game-work to show people. Hooo doggy, there is lots to do. So why am I still writing about this? Time to write important things! Like stories and designs and other things of that nature!

Le Tranchant du Miroir

2009-02-16T19:07:00.003-05:00

Everyone is making a mistake with Mirror's Edge. Players, critics, and even DICE themselves are trying to believe that ME is a first person shooter. It is impossible to escape genre cliches in a game that so heavily relies on them, with constant firefights erupting around you, helicopters above shooting at you and the ability to use not only melee skills but guns as well to retaliate at your aggressors. It's even more impossible when the game's loading screens seem intent on showing you how to fight enemies with karate-like "flow".

But play the game and you're shown a different focus; holding a weapon eliminates most of your dexterity. Melee is only beneficial to disarm one man and then use his gun to take out others. You keep wanting to fight, you want to refine your melee skills, but in the end you are outnumbered and underpowered. Why? Because you aren't meant to fight. The game was made for you to run.

Mirror's Edge is a racing game. You want to run, and you should. Each level is a course with a few different ways to move through the level and one of those ways is the fastest. It seems harsh when the game is criticized for requiring just the right touch because that is exactly what a racing game is about. Play Trackmania for more than ten minutes and you know that just the right angle around a corner will lose you that Gold medal time. So it is the same for Mirror's Edge. You are trying to make the most efficient use of space and time to manuever your way to the exit. In Story mode it gives you helpful red markers, but finish the story mode or turn away to the Race mode and you see that it really is all about getting that exact right line. Learning the movements, finding the route to propel you the most quickly to your destination.

I am really enjoying the game. I acknowledge random small issues that annoy me, such as sometimes unclear goals or the somewhat common lock-up. But I love the challenge the game has presented. I'm still working through the story, but I've got to give DICE props for making what I think is an incredibly solid Parkour game.

Oh, and it's gorgeous as well.

Pixar: The Thomas Kinkade of the Animation World?

2009-01-23T23:11:00.002-05:00

Perhaps? I just had the thought and I had to share it with you all.

You are too connected when...

2009-01-17T10:57:00.003-05:00

You bring your laptop into the bathroom with you.

I realize that I work on the same floor as Google personnel, but seriously? This guy came in and set his laptop on the sink as he took a leak. I hope to heaven there was some crazy macbook thief on the loose in his office. Otherwise, come on!

Oh, and you're a very ballsy girl if you wear a miniskirt out in weather that's less than 10 degrees. I say this because a couple nights ago, sure enough, I saw some girl bundled up heavily down to her waist wearing only a miniskirt with lots of leg showing. How clearly can one look like they want sex? Or, put more diplomatically in the words of my girlfriend: "suffering in the name of fashion".

enter the confusion, pt. 2

2009-01-14T01:28:00.002-05:00

I awoke with a start to find the beast staring hard at me, its fangs glistening as it -- well, no, it was just a squirrel. Looked like the little guy hadn't eaten anything in days. Which was befuddling, because I was surrounded by acorns. In fact, I had been woken up with an acorn right in between my eyes. Apparently this squirrel had never received the memo on what one does with acorns.

Pop! It chittered and hurried away as I recovered from another nut to my face. This was not my idea of a great time. I scrambled to my feet and looked around. Nothing new or unusual to be seen except this slightly confused squirrel. I dropped my kitchen knife to the ground and began to arrange my items. An apple was gone! No, wait, I had just eaten it before the nap. As I finished repacking my items it seemed forward was my only option. Forward into the wilderness. The sun was beginning to drop low and the burrs were particularly clingy to my jeans and socks. I was going to have to seek out shelter soon otherwise I'd be in trouble.

As I walked through the grove of magnificent, magical oaks, I heard the squirrel chitter away as it scampered after me. Interesting, I thought, my party grows.

2008-12-31T03:48:00.002-05:00

I sat on the hilltop looking down. Below I saw the silence of my town. Settled peacefully into a rut that only a few had any idea what mud had gotten into it, the wagon wheel of progress slowed to a halt, or more amusingly from up here, it spun in place, going back and back again to the same innovation. How on earth could stereo sound still impress so many people? But I guess that's the way of the world. I knew history repeated itself, but seriously, it was a bit of a letdown.

I smiled, though. I was done with them all. I had set out with exactly three apples and 15 copper coins in a knapsack and a kitchen knife in my hand. Also, I was wearing straight-up jeans, no metal armor or anything for me, and a t-shirt that was far too comfortable to pay the holes in it any heed. At that point I turned around and headed down the far side of the hill. The grass was sorta green, which was better than the dead grass I had left behind. I meandered down the grade and found myself in a valley with a nice little stream. Trees filtered the sunlight upon me and I knew it was time for a little break and one of those apples.

Crunching into the delicious cherry-red apple I looked around. A sudden chill came to me, and I knew then that my kitchen knife would be necessary in a few moments. Mountain lion, bear, something unknown was watching me. But I wasn't going to get all worried. I had protection.

So down I sat with my back against a tree and the knife laying safely next to me and my hand on the hilt. I waited. Moments turned into minutes as I waited for the beast to appear. Minutes lengthened into large amounts of minutes. Still, I knew the beast would appear. Then I would kill and harvest the meat and make better protective clothing for myself, with an added bonus of such hides making me more stealthy.

All was going to plan as I waited for the beast.

phew

2008-12-24T06:47:00.003-05:00

I spent the past 3 months working nonstop on an animation project for my senior animation class at Northeastern. It was an intense process and indeed I'm glad I did it. I directed a team of 4 others and we attempted to create a realistic city block and composite a live actor into the cg world. In many ways I think we very much succeeded. There are gorgeous shots and the overall story seemed to be represented well.

I was the main camera and timing guy in addition to running the team, and it was spending those hours just running over the edit that I had the most fun. Really looking at what was important, what we didn't need, and just how it all flowed together. At a reasonably fast pace we were able to establish a character, a dilemma, and build it all up to a climax and a resolution. It was awesome!

So the story goes: this guy is walking along when he discovers he's walking along a glowing blue line. He tries to step off of it but the world rotates so that his step away from the line is now back on it. Confused and rattled, he tries again, but again the world responds, so that every time he tries to move away from the line it twists the world just so he's back onto the darn thing. Well now he's just gone loopy and going to have himself a ball. And he does, until suddenly a pot falls and almost takes him out. Flustered and fearful he takes off, only to discover that he's arrived at the end of the line where a glowing blue X awaits. He hesitates only to have the world tilt him forward. Bam! A girl runs into him and they fall to the ground. He looks up and- love! The end!

And that's my call to sleep.

p.s. urge me to write more, people. I love writing, I just don't do it often enough because I seem to think other things are more important. (and they're not)

2008-12-13T20:41:00.002-05:00

If a server goes down in the computer lab, does anyone survive? These are the questions we ask ourselves in the precious times when all that is near and dear crumbles under the fact that it is a collection of ones and zeros.

Sanity, my friends, that is what I'm losing. Madness, I am gaining. And now I'm hungry. Dinnertime!

2008-12-09T14:13:00.003-05:00

Nerve endings
Dissolving
Dissolution
And salutations to you proud nations
With crumbling numbers
As colors crunch.
Fading leaves and tattered
While light dissipates
My blood accumulates in white cells
Where poetry dissolves back into energy.
Potential resolutions gone
And hoped for.
Fall, I fall
I whisper softly to my fate
While the heart yearns through years and sees nothing
But fading light
Burning brighter and brighter into the reversing night.

2008-11-28T02:02:00.001-05:00

When the day came for the warriors,
They stood up and were counted.

The leader of them stepped forward and looked upon his fellow tribesmen. Boys danced among their ranks, eager to see those they would one day follow. Dark clouds held over their village as they listened to the rain fall upon their forests and their people. The hills glistened in the downpour as the glow over the hills raged on. The men were silent as they thought to themselves of their sons and daughters and wives. The children continued to dance and began to tumble about, warring in their own worlds as the chiseled faces and furrowed brows above relaxed at the sight.

Darkness was across the sky, a blood red hue, but beneath the pouring thunder there was light, shining beyond the sun.

Camera!

2008-11-09T11:48:00.003-05:00

So I played the Tomb Raider Underworld demo and found myself begging for mercy. Tomb Raider is exactly the type of game that I love: acrobatic world-exploration with fighting interspersed. But the core of the game is movement around luscious environments with a plethora of movement puzzles that force Lara Croft to pull off awesome looking stunts. And when the events work right, then the game is really cool. Hanging on ledges, leaping to rock outcroppings, doing random backflips, awesome stuff. All of these things are set up in a fashion so that each puzzle is a twisting rail that you've got to navigate to create a beautiful balance beam routine.

However, between each routine the game hates on your movement. There are so many context-sensitive dynamic events that the computer doesn't realize when you're just trying to run around or enter one of these things, when you're near something. I have never experienced before a AAA-game where I pressed a few different direction keys and nothing happened. I don't know if I want to see my character run in place, but not even having that image of the game being confused, it threw me. When I press the forward key, something should happen! The game is a lot of fun when it works, but be cautious about approaching anything while running on level ground. You will be stopped and Lara will attempt to do something and often fail.

In addition, I found the camera far too sensitive. I would set it up how I liked, but moving only slightly would shift camera position dramatically. This is especially an issue in tight spaces, where you might suddenly get a wonderful close-up on Lara that is appreciated for the few seconds before you attempt any movement, and then the camera freaks out. Also, I actually found myself sometimes falling to my death because I would approach a ledge while the camera stayed too low for me to know that I was about to plunge very far down.

All of this is too bad, because the game has a lot of potential. It feels very fluid at times, and animations interacting with the world are very enjoyable, especially the often easy ability to pull off incredible stunts. Perhaps the final game will correct these camera issues and movement sensitivity, but I'm not holding out immense hope for these things to be corrected to the point that I'd buy the game...

We'll see, Lara, we'll see.

Insomnia?

2008-11-03T02:46:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure if this is an issue, but is it insomnia if I actually sleep quite well, it's just my inability to go to sleep? I find myself working here in the lab and it's almost 3am, I have to
get up in about 5.5 hours, and I only slept about 4 hours last night? I feel tired, but I find myself slightly strung out, not able to just drop things and leave? Am I allowed to leave? I've got more to do before I sleep but I think instead I should just sleep.

I want to play Mario Super Strikers though, or perhaps God of War, both of which have been preoccupying my random spare moments of late. Both incredibly addictive games for completely different reasons. But files are finished transferring now, so I best do some work and sleep while I can. I'll talk more about my respective experiences with those games in bit.

Mass Across The Charles

2008-10-11T01:36:00.002-04:00

I wonder how often people dive off this bridge.
And when they do, what are they thinking?
The challenge set, to enter and escape
Or let winter waters swallow one whole.
Do they see infinity or an end?
Does the city crumble in their vision?
Or conquer the sky?
Do they sweat or freeze with the serenity below.
How long will trees last here?
Laughter, what timeline for that?
There's so much clarity as the darkness cools to black.
How long will these lights last?
Will the wind ever die or the mirror give up?
The water answers,
Its four dimensions clear.
But I comprehend not,
I am lost in this moment.
Forever right now.

A new poem

2008-10-05T23:00:00.002-04:00

Do I know what action is?
Sometimes I say the answer's yes.
It's not true, just a presumptuous guess.
And I know it's wrong
Through every note of this song.
From each thought unhad,
Action silence-clad
So don't ask me if I know the way
When I'm taut with decisions
Fraught with revisions
Molded into the fray.

I didn't ask for this confusion,
I thought I've always had questions
But now those questions are absent,
I search and wonder if I've curiosity left.
A million reasons in every direction
I can't be bothered to spell them out,
Stretching far as I can decipher
The way is clear but it's so dark out.
Even still, moves so fluid,
A partial step so long to start
Momentum is strong the action ain't over,
Silence keeps flowing, one part, next part.

These actions continue, seen or not,
In quiet, cacophony, calm or storm.
With winds whistling harsh approval
Of time exploding, reducing form.
So the ripples leave me,
A shell of previous,
True or devious art
I lose the blue,
As nothing grows
Swallow my absence
Tender reaction
That nothing knows.
Way, not way,
Path unwound
Bitter tear I'm sick and tired
You've done your damage, be gone I ask.
Inaction is the same as action,
Priorities, really, that's the task.

Extrasensory perception

2008-09-28T20:50:00.004-04:00

I used to believe that I could sense when people were looking at me. In fact, even today I'm not sure whether it was my imagination or not. There was just this other sense when I was younger, much younger, that I could feel eyes looking upon me. I would turn around and people would be looking directly at me. I would glance over to catch eyes upon me. There was never a question in my mind that I had this power of perception, this sixth sense. It never failed me.

But then there came a point when it stopped working. Suddenly I had no idea whether or not people were looking. A sensation of people watching would come and I would turn to see nothing. Or people would turn to see me staring. What happened to what I had? My power of perception disappeared. Was it just simple science that when a little kid starts to turn his head you glance over at him?

I'm a strong believer in science, but I think there are elements of the universe that are beyond our current understanding of said science. Every couple hundred years we realize we missed something simple and yet extraordinary. So perhaps we're missing something big right now, like those things we can't "test". It's hard to justify this, yet I do believe there are things beyond our current understanding of reality. Ghosts, who knows? God, I think so. Everything being related, most definitely.

So maybe I did have this extrasensory perception and then I lost it because of my lack of belief in it or my increasing scrutiny of the ability. Trying to understand it, I lost it. That's how the tao works, after all. What does this say about life? I believe that we need to accept the wonder of it all, and hope that we maintain a sense of awe. Not that we shouldn't try and understand, we just need to love what's here and keep believing, keep stretching our thoughts and imaginations. Because maybe if we believe and keep believing, our thoughts will carry into our actions. And then who knows what might happen.

Election games

2008-09-25T02:49:00.004-04:00

So we often call each other liberals and conservatives (I myself would probably/hopefully be labeled liberal), but what exactly do we mean? There seems to be this idea that liberals embrace change, whereas conservatives are, well, conservative and want to keep things the same. However, I view things in a slightly different manner.

I don't believe that liberals really like change any more than conservatives, or conservatives any less than liberals. Rather, I feel that the concept is more about what is change to the individual. A conservative has a more restrained view of how things perhaps "ought" to be. There is a tighter vision of what is normal and what is not-so-normal. Gay marriage, for instance, does not fit within the normal vision of certain conservatives, and as I see it, people are against gay marriage because it doesn't make sense to them, it is beyond them, and would require a change to reality of sorts. The liberal doesn't want to change things by making it legal, but rather sees it as something that was already there and is no change to reality. Therefore, a law would only enforce the freedom of what is already a fact of life.

I would keep going, but I feel a crash coming. Before I crash, I have to mention that election games are awesome. I've now done a turn-based battle for the US, popped other candidates' balloons, and, probably best of all, fought kung-fu against the various candidates. Look up election games. Not very complex, not very helpful about the election, but fun. Definitely worth the search.

Edit: I was really tired when writing this post a couple nights ago, and I don't think I emphasized anything about the election kung-fu game and it's much tougher a game than the other ones, much more soundly built for what it is. It's fun, and you have to actually settle down for a little and learn how to block your opponent and take the open shots where you can and each one definitely gets harder. They're very aggressive opponents (except John Edwards...). You get many choices of the candidates (from about a year ago) and they all have special moves and really seem to have different styles, at least visually. The only way you'd know they were candidates would be from their faces, but it just makes the game all the more amusing when the rest of them is a sumo wrestler or some crazy assasin ninja. Go play it if you like fighting games or just want to see Bill Richardson as a sumo or Michelle Obama kicking some bloody hurt into any and everyone. Funny and fun.

And here it is: Election Kung-Fu

Forgetful, but not about Crysis

2008-09-17T01:36:00.003-04:00

Here I am, completely forgetting what I had thought of earlier. A muse that I thought would truly draw thousands to this blog. Bring people here every day to see if I've made another amazing philosophical breakthrough. But I forgot it.

But I guess that's alright, because that means that I don't have to post here every day or every other day. I can continue my sporadic entries, and I believe I shall.

So I've been playing Crysis, and I believe it to be one of the best FPSes I've ever played, and despite me not having played most of them out there, I'm sure most of you would feel the same with a computer that ran it so well. It's a gorgeous game, first off, really bringing you into your environment. A tropical paradise with waterfalls and beaches and villages...and explosions. The physics add to the beauty of the game, and the way things fall apart, the glorious fireballs that erupt from destroyed tanks, it all comes together in a beautiful opus of mayhem. What further enhances the beauty of it all is the free-roaming capability of the world. It supports stealth through the forests surrounding enemy encampments. Or perhaps you want to use speed and blow past the enemies. Or just blow the hell out of them with superstrength. It is your choice!

That might be the greatest strength of the game. Any play style can be fun, and whichever you choose, the nanosuit you start the game with allows you to play each role to its maximum potential. The enemies also really allow the variety in playstyles, being, overall, quite smart, and the game is good about throwing them at you, with reinforcements being brought in if you're overly aggressive or open about your attacks.

At the point I'm currently at, I have really come to appreciate the cinematic quality of the game. I just got dropped in to a war zone, and instead of starting out on my own, I'm taken through the US defenses as a jet crashes into the hillside next to me and I'm ordered to take out the AAA guns I can see across the harbor peppering the sky with shells. Maybe some stealth and some speed are in order. Maybe some raw explosives are about to be served up. This is good stuff. Highly recommended.

(I'll try and have some actual musings next time. I'm taking an Intro to Philosophy, so my brain has definitely been pumping with this jazz.)

New addition on the way

2008-09-07T05:13:00.003-04:00

That's right folks, I just spent the last 5.5 hours on newegg and throughout the internetting finding and purchasing all the components of a new computer. Mmm, she's shaping up to be a doozy. I'm feeling great right now, as long as the newest nVidia card will fit into my case. And as long as Vista doesn't fuck with my soundcard as it apparently likes to screw with soundcards... But I'm happy and it's 5am and I really should go sleep now.

Here's to my next wave of gaming! (as my ps2 cries in the corner)

Space (Under?) Siege

2008-08-30T18:54:00.006-04:00

So yesterday I spent a good chunk of the day downloading the Space Siege demo. About 930mb later I had the tantalizing demo waiting on my computer. I was ready to spend all night checking out the new action RPG from Chris Taylor.

Well, I watched the intro cinematic, a pretty looking attack on earth with capital and fighter ships dueling on the edge of Earth's gravity. Finally, the awesome movie ended, and I was taken to the intro menu, where the same movie began playing again, but this time with a menu around it... So I started a game and after a short in-game cinematic of aliens assaulting my ship I commenced my defense of humanity.

The game uses the WASD setup to control many things, except movement, and I have to say this threw me. The mouse moved and controlled firing while A and D were used to rotate the camera and W and S zoomed in and out. The controls otherwise were very convenient and straightforward, but finally as I began to get comfortable with the non-FPS scheme, the demo ended.

I'd say I finished the demo in not more than 30 minutes, after downloading almost a gigabyte. I was disappointed. I think it was a fun game, and it looked awfully pretty, but I'm back into a phase of trying demos of all the new games, and it's hard for me to discern if my excitement of a game is warranted after 25 minutes, especially with such a hefty download. I realize that's how games are today, but you'd think I could get a little more content for a gig. Also, I'm still trying to figure out if the game is deep or not. It was straightforward, and though pretty, also quite simple. Well, Chris Taylor, the ball is back in your court. I'm intrigued, but not sure yet about $50 of intrigue.

A game called reality

2008-08-17T05:48:00.002-04:00

So I'm now home for a couple weeks recovering from actuality before I head back to my senior year of college and work and all that jazz.

What exactly is this actuality that I'm dealing with? I decided to ride a bicycle from Boston to Washington, DC. And I did it! I'm one who often doesn't do a lot of actual preparation, I usually prepare in my head and then either do something or don't. I find so many things fascinating that a large-scale project is daunting and unlikely. I do lots of little things, except for when I'm at work or school, because having that framework gives me a solid set of boundaries that I actually find the most comforting. Pressure, I need a box to not necessarily be thought within, but to allow myself to bounce off the edges and come back to reality.

But rarely do I think about non-creative endeavors. I certainly think about travel, but just about how I should go travel, go visit other countries. Never solid plans. So lo and behold, I thought that this summer would be the ripest time, a last ditch effort to be crazy in college, for some sort of road trip. And I settled upon a crazy biking trip, realizing that a trip between Boston and DC would be feasible and probably fun. I started preparing by telling everyone I knew that I was thinking about it, so that if I didn't go they would call me out. Then I got a bike (somewhat necessary) and just started biking again. Then I alloted time for the trip, asking for a leave from work and not having school anyway. I followed this by continuing to tell people about my trip and started making a list of things I would need.

Then I just continued to ride and began to train with a friend. We went a solid 150 miles one weekend to test out the items needed. It was good we tested our equipment and what would be needed, because I was not entirely aware of all I would need. But then I bought that, I kept biking, and then, well, after some route-planning, I found myself stuck on the trip.

It was great. It was really a learning experience, a challenge, a mission, and just relaxing. I had worries during the ordeal, but they were so pure and simple that I think my brain really enjoyed the trip. Never again do I plan on doing a long challenging trip like that alone, because a pal would have made it so much more fun. But it was nonetheless an incredible experience that I definitely am proud to say I completed.

570 miles in 7 days of riding. Not bad, eh?

Now back to games!

Karateka

2008-07-29T21:24:00.004-04:00

I often find myself trolling from one classic game download to the next modern game trailer to a Flash game. Having not been a gamer for the golden age, or whatever you think the period should be called from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, I often download full games in about 20 seconds and then play a few levels. And then sometimes I find even older games and download them in 2 seconds.

A couple days ago I ran across Karateka, a game by Jordan Mechner, the creator of Prince of Persia. Clearly the precursor of POP, Karateka has the player moving a ninja forward through a flat environment and a wave of opposing ninjas. Like a typical fighting game you have movement and then keys for upward, straight, and down kicks and punches. Finally, there is one more button to switch your character from running to fighting stance. Your goal is to move forward and rescue your love at the end. So simple, and yet pretty enjoyable.

In terms of gameplay it was very simple and I never really felt much depth to the combat, but the simplicity of the presentation made it all work. You've got arrows at the bottom showing your health and your direction while whichever ninja you're currently battling has the same health arrows. Anytime you defeat a ninja your health returns to full and you can run forward until you hit the next ninja. Just be careful not to still be in running mode when they attack or it's game over. My fascination with the game ended, however, when suddenly a gate fell on me as I ran forward under it. No warning, just spikes falling on me. The revenge of old games and their arbitrary deathtraps! I decided then that I didn't care for my pixelated love enough to fight through the hordes again.

And I found out about this game because apparently Karateka shall be returning in next-gen form sometime in the future with Mechner at the helm.

the original Karateka

the new news

A Pox on me

2008-07-07T21:31:00.002-04:00

So here I am, once again finding myself a couple months past posting. This is a tendency that I must correct. I did not realize that Trackmania sucked up that much of my time. I got pretty far in, but now, being without a computer of my own, I have turned to an online ccg by the name of Pox Nora. Partly the allure was joining the ranks of co-workers who play, but having had the opportunity to go through a few games, I think it is definitely an interesting ordeal.

There is always a bit of me that rebels at purchasing better cards, but I also have to admit that
I was an avid Star Wars CCG player for a few of my younger years. So here we are in a game that gives you 20 card decks (with cards having recharge rates after death/use) and, the kicker, an actual playing field with which to spread out and battle. It's definitely a fun system, though I am still coming to terms with the various abilities and perks that each unit has. The frustrating element of the game for me is that, though the entire system is basically supported via browser, I feel as if the whole interface was built somewhat poorly. Information in regard to actual decks and strategy and spells and such seem all to be very spread out.

The buddy system is also clearly unfinished, as it really doesn't allow much to be done. In the end, it seems that the game itself has quite a lot of potential, but much could be done about presenting information in a clear and logical manner. For example, when any action is taken by anything in the game, any tooltip you have floated open is then closed. Simple things could make the whole interface simply cleaner. Which is all too bad, since the actual artistic element is about as high as it could be. Beautiful art adorn the cards and make the whole game feel very rich. It has many factions, lots of depth to strategies, a quick pace via timer-constrained turns. So many good things. You really just have to get past the interface.

Trackmania Addicted

2008-05-13T20:46:00.003-04:00

So I've returned to an old habit. That of spending spare minutes logging into the hypersensitive Trackmania United Forever. Right now I'm in fact debating whether or not to abandon this post just to grab a few more moments racing around a ridiculously large arena and its fascinating and varied tracks. Trackmania United Forever is the pseudo-sequel to Trackmania Nations, and it would seem to be almost identical in many respects.

The game is a free download available on Steam (maybe elsewhere) and tasks you with racing around ridiculously clean tracks, trying to beat a series of racing-times. The posted times are the classic Bronze, Silver, and Gold, but there is also a fourth medal which is unstated but won when you beat the fastest developer time. Only on a couple occasions have I won that medal, and only in the previous game. The fact is that the two games seem the same sans the different interface and the new tracks and track types. The game looks the same and plays the same, with simple arrow key controls and a convenient restart button. It requires careful handling as you progress through the game and much patience to master each track.

The game excels in its simplicity. I really don't have any complaints because there is so little to the actual design. You are given a track, a car, and a time to beat. The car handles beautifully, responding to the different kinds of tracks with great give, and there's much fun to be had in sliding around certain corners. The one gripe I have actually comes outside of the game itself. The game tracks your medals against all the Trackmania players in the world, your country, and your state. But for some reason when playing via Steam, the account only loads locally, so logging on to the server, I can't unlock my medals won on a different computer. Just a little frustrating.

Either way, I highly recommend the game. Especially for the price of nothing. I'll be the Randallion Stallion, crawling my way up the leaderboards.

Spring time and early birds

2008-05-04T03:24:00.003-04:00

On my previous internship (last January through June), 5 students total were brought on as paid interns. One of the ice-breakers the leaders of the company did was to have everyone (including the heads of the company) go round and declare their favorite toy. I was amazed to discover that at least three of my fellow interns chose Sega Genesis. Having played many games on the system, such as Shadowrun (as previously mentioned on this blog) and Aladdin (one of the funnest platformers I've played through), I can attest to the Genesis being the 2nd heyday of the consoles after the original NES.

My favorite toy was something else entirely, though, and it was actually somewhat sad for me to hear that a favorite toy was a gaming console. Don't get me wrong, I love games in every way, yet my favorite toy was my bike. Shouldn't that be what we strive for? I realize that as American children we go through so many toys so that tools (the game system and the bike) become the single object we remember most. But is that what we want of children in the world? I hope that if I ever have a son or daughter, he/she will not choose a gaming console as his/her greatest possession. I hope to raise a different child.

And on a final note: I love spring. Right now there are birds in the trees at this early hour (3am) chirping away beautifully. My close friend informed me that the lack of darkness in Boston (so many streetlights and such) is the probable cause, screwing up the sleep patterns of birds. Either way, it's a great way to leave a building early in the morning.

I'm out, gnight everyone!

2008-04-07T09:38:00.001-04:00

By the way, the point of the previous post was to encourage any people who haven't to find and play Shadowrun.

Emulators: http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/genesis/

Shadowrun ROM: http://www.romnation.net/srv/roms/20252/genesis/Shadow-Run-U-h5.html

Fantasy on the Street

2008-04-06T13:04:00.004-04:00

One of my favorite games of all time is Shadowrun, a game for Sega Genesis (and SNES, but I don't know how that was between differences and control scheme). The game created a full region of Seattle and surrounding regions where the player could choose an amazing number of paths, from working with the law or against it or working for or against major corporations. It was an incredible experience where I really felt like I was part of a major city with the choice to actually attack large million-dollar corporations if I wanted, and not only physically with guns or stealth, but also through a whole secondary game mode via hacking through cyberspace. I liken it to a more open-ended gta 3 and I still wait for them to produce a true remake to that masterpiece. They recently released a team-based shooter and though I haven't played it, I know that a team-based shooter is not what I'm looking for.

The reason I bring this game up is that it took a cyberpunk world and placed elves and dwarves and ogres into the world. It was thrilling and totally worked. Sometimes when I'm walking (a surprising amount of the time) I will encounter people that look like they should be in a storybook. I see gnomes and elves and it's awesome. I'm not sure if I had the power to place them in their appropriate world, if I would. Because after all, they also make this world a little more magical to me. Getting to walk by a man who should have a hut in the forest where he cooks food for his numerous wolf-friends, it makes my mind wander. I'm thankful for so many things that make this life awesome, and just having a little fantasy in reality satiates my imagination.

2008-04-01T03:56:00.002-04:00

So let's just say that it's really late at night and I'm not that tired but realize I will be in a few hours. Sometimes I work really late in the animation lab even though I've not the heart. I am finding myself more and more drawn to interactive simulations. I've begun to read up on AI and I'm really just fascinated by the concept of emergent gameplay. How will my personal project end up actually feeling in style, I wonder, as I know that the development of the world in my mini-game will be entirely dependent upon balancing variables correctly. I believe that these variables will determine the mood of the outcomes, so how difficult will it be for me to actually find the correct values? I want to start building a mock-up/alpha of the game, but I fear that if not everything is spec-ed out, then things will unravel.

In other news, Geckoman, the game I've worked on nearing 2 years now, finally got its release at the Boston Museum of Science. It was fantastic, but unfortunately my eyelids have decided that now they are sleepy. So good night to all.

p.s. my boss has worked with: Richard Garriott, Doug Church, Shigeru Miyamoto, Chris Roberts, Ned Lerner, John Romero, Warren Spector.
This. Is. Awesome. Methinks I need to drill him for more advice.

Unnamed project

2008-03-17T01:57:00.003-04:00

That's a lie. My project does have a name, but I'm trying to keep it off the web, as it's still very much in the design stage. I mentioned this, but I am trying to work on game design daily, because persistence is the key to success. Right? I love simple ideas like that and all the exceptions they allow.

But onto the project. Tonight, since I must get up early, I am combining my blog with my game design thoughts and musings for the night. The questions I have to ask as I'm constructing this series of game vignettes is: what do I want the player to experience? What is my goal for making this game? Do I want the purpose to be on an individual level? What should the player feel after playing? Do I even want to use the term that the person "plays" the vignettes?

The potential I see within games and the particular area that fascinates me the most is the idea of simulation, specifically an organic simulation, such as Will Wright's godly game Spore set to arrive in a few months. I have not really gotten into playing an MMO for the simple fact that I want my environment to be authentic. I'll admit that I'm looking into Lord Of The Rings Online, as I heard it was a great game for entering the environments, but in general, the environment within an MMO is set by the players, and thus just another social world. The possibilities that I see revolve around creating entirely new simulated systems and placing the player within. How does a player react to the world around them depending on how that world lives? MMOs are safe social environments, they're about the interaction with other humans.

But my vignettes, I've realized, along with the games that I'm either most interested in or most interested in making, create simulated worlds. Set the starting conditions, and let artificial life have its go. Indeed, one of my games will be a derivative of pac-man and part of the reason for that is that pac-man is one of the earliest game biology simulators. It puts the player into an environment with 3 hostile creatures that will navigate terrain to eat the player, meanwhile the player has to consume all the food (white bread tablets?) to survive until the next environment. And maybe I'm putting Pac-Man on too high a pedestal, but that simple game still is one of the most renowned "video games" of all time and I would argue it is because it created a simple simulation system with varying environments to change the challenge. And so, in addition to attempting to create a variation on that, I'm working on multiple other knock-offs of other games, all the while trying to make it worth my while. Hopefully my imitation will pay eventually.

Surfing my music

2008-03-10T17:30:00.002-04:00

Well, I've discovered the game that everyone else is discovering via Steam, and that game is Audiosurf. It would seem that I've become most enamored with 5-minute games of late with my limited free time, and Audiosurf is the perfect game, because it's a game that makes music interactive. I am a radio dj on my college station, wrbb ( wrbbradio.org, Sunday nights 9-11pm EST ::wink wink:: ), and part of the reason I volunteer my time 2 hours a week to working at the station is that I love the depths of the music world. There are so many genres and so many amazing pieces of music that I can't help but enjoy playing music for others.

Meanwhile, Audiosurf allows me a new way of interacting with music by building a simple Puzzlequest/Guitar Hero game on top of any music you have on your computer. It analyzes your music and constructs a 3 or 5 lane track with various blocks spread out over the length of your song and placed on beats. You must collect the blocks into groups. The thing that makes the game great is that it gives you a real sense of the flow of your music, from the tempo changing how fast your character moves to the beats determining the frequency of collectible blocks. Also it gives a multitude of play styles available through the choice of avatars, which interact with the track in different ways or affect the difficulty of the track. I've been playing on the simplest mode (albeit at medium difficulty) and the game has allowed me to explore my music. It's a fun diversion for random times and further destroys the little amounts of free time I still have.

So don't play Audiosurf unless you're in the mood for only listening and experiencing music. It's great for that, but an evil timesink otherwise.

Meanwhile I'm trying to work on game-design half an hour a day no matter my other tasks, because I need to start really getting better at this stuff, and only with persistence can I complete my goals. Struggle onward, readers, fight through. And rest once in a while, that's the other thing I gotta work on...

-the musater

Cell-phone waist clips and Fez

2008-03-01T12:04:00.004-05:00

What do you think about people when you see that they're wearing their cell-phone on a waist clip? I think nerd, and I wonder if the person wearing said clip thinks nerd? There is something about wearing a utilitarian item in view that makes people look like they want to be known for what they do. And so you're either a sandwich-board crazy or you're a nerd. Well, I guess you also have policeman with their belts, and then there are construction workers with their tools. But nerds break the boundaries, because they continue to exist as such beyond their working hours. Even the sandwich-board guy probably doesn't wear his hellfire filled piece of plywood around during all of his waking hours. I wonder if he has some sort of carrying case for it.

Has anyone ever known they look cool when they have something clipped to the side of their clothing? I often forget to take my nametag off after meetings/events and realize a couple hours later while riding public transportation. I know right then I'm not cool. I also will check my hair in the windows of the subway at that moment to check for double-humiliation. I guess my point is that I found recently the waist clip that came with my cell-phone and I laughed at its existence. I realize and want to acknowledge that some will wear the clip for a set period of time and with the utilitarian view in mind. I just want to be there for the person that found that clip and couldn't wait to try it it.

And how many people wear fezzes? Is that a common thing elsewhere? Where? The reason I bring up fezzes is that I was recently shown a game called Fez that looks brilliant. In the vein of Paper Mario (which I have not played but seen), this game takes a 3d world and brings a 2d element to it. But one of the coolest interpretations I've ever seen. The basic task I saw was to ascend from one floating platform to the next (woop-de-doo, every platformer ever...) in a 3d world. However, when you switch views, you go into a 2d-view and the z-depth is no longer relevant. So if something is almost directly North of you by a couple hundred feet , go into the North-South view, and suddenly the North-South distance is taken out of the picture! Only East-West and up-down matter, the other axis is negated as it becomes a standard 2d sidescroller. And then once you've gotten to the new platform, go back to 3d. Awesome. Check it out, people, check it out.

http://kotaku.com/359004/fez-gdc-trailer

A plethora of people

2008-02-15T00:11:00.002-05:00

It still amazes me to encounter the variety of characters that exist in this world. At times I'm saddened by it, other times overjoyed, and in the last couple of days I have just been perplexed. Maybe it helps that many of these perplexing people are out on the streets, but I am amazed at how people survive, how they actually stay alive in the winter streets of Boston (and everywhere else in the world).

A couple nights ago I went for a walk out to the Charles. It was snowing and the atmosphere just felt right for an evening stroll through the powder white streets. It was snowing a little heavier than my ideal conditions, but nonetheless well worth it wandering that evening. During this walk, however, I encountered some of the strangest people I'd ever been near. They were a couple old men, must have been at least 70 each, and they were standing in the doorway of a store, just out of the snow. They looked normal enough, almost what I would picture as the standard fellow in London a hundred years back in terms of garb. But one was snarling, almost like a dog. Just standing there, like a rabid animal, a man of some 70 years. What can I feel about his situation, because I was definitely lost for words. To think that this man has lived to this age, and something in that time has created who he is now. An old man snarling like a dog in the snow in some closed store's doorway. And right behind him another man stood, speaking random things, occasionally singing. After we had passed, I turned back to look at them, and the more sane [?] man was peering out from the doorway, looking quickly back and forth and then withdrawing back to shelter.

Unreal. The other person I was walking with thought that perhaps they were intentionally trying to weird people out. I feel different. Society does not always work for people. People grow up and are molded by their environment. But what happens when their minds fight back against what society is teaching them? Is that what happened to these men? When did people know they would be doomed to such a life? Did their relatives once take care of them and then, upon passing from this life, leave them to their own confused lives? I don't know why the world works the way it does, but it boggles my mind. I can only hope that I maintain my own hold on society. I care about these snarling, confused men, and what does it mean to share or not share their fate?

The Rules of Fashion

2008-02-07T00:50:00.000-05:00

So every once in a while I have to stop and stare at the people around me, because people dress so amusingly (here's one of my "usually amusing muses"). Like, just last night when I was walking home from the gym, I saw this kid across the street and his beanie looked like he had pulled it too far down, as it more than covered his ears and hair, and it looked as if it was even over his eyes. But I considered it only a trick of the light and the distance. Until I realized that he actually had his neck craned back. He couldn't look straight forward without tilting his head back to see from under his beanie. That, my friends and readers, is stupid. It reminds me of one of the characters from a comic book, I think one of Harvey Pekar's tomes, if I recall, with a character so strangely stylized as to have his beanie pulled down over his eyes (but if I recall correctly, he also had holes in his beanie).

But let us move on to gangstas. Gangstas, so called because they are incredibly hardcore, have often been spotted wearing airbrushed giant t-shirts of Captain Crunch and Mario (one of those two famous brothers) blinged out. This is clearly a sign of subtle corporate branding that was somehow successful when they were little children. And now that they aren't little, they see these commercial icons to be role models of cool. And Mario and Cap'n Crunch are cool, but we respect their coolness by eating their cereal and crawling through sewers. Hmm, Nintendo cereal, sounds fantastic.

And then we get to the main focus of my post on fashion. Girls who wear EVERYTHING. There seems to be this trend, intensifying since probably about 2000, where we no longer create anything new. Thus, instead of new styles (architecture, clothing, movies), new fashions, our fashions are the remixings of previous eras. And this, my dear readers, has ended in disaster. There are certainly people who know what they are doing when they select from their variety of clothes and create an intriguing ensemble. But the majority of people don't know what the fuck they are doing. Hell, I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to keeping up appearances. Just please, people, clashing clothes are, almost always (in fact, let's just say always), unpleasant to look at. Don't wear clothes over other clothes that aren't intended to be layered.

And for heaven's sake, just think about how you want people to see you. I don't care, much of the time, so that's why I wear the easiest thing I can find. If it's clean, I'll probably wear it. And that's how my rule of fashion works. How do your rules work?

2008-01-30T01:26:00.000-05:00

It's late, and I'm just back from the gym, about to go to sleep (or rather, about to lay in bed and play Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for a bit), but I've been pondering at random points during the day (at the encouragement of my wonderful girlfriend) Christianity in today's world and I feel I should solidify my thoughts.

You might be noticing a sort of God/religion trend in my posts, and I hope you don't mind, but I'm not trying to make any of you Christian that don't want to be. In fact, let me tell you that, after talking with my animation "professor" this evening, I apparently have a mindset much closer to Eastern (Buddhist?) thought, as I look often at the environment before the individual. For, well, the environment is what is beautiful to me, and this is apparently what Easterners look at first, whereas Westerners are much more likely to look at the individual (Jesus!).

So while I sip my apple cider and deal with this slowly overbearing mustache getting in the way of drinking fluids, I wonder how the transition came about that has changed what exactly a Christian is, and in fact, what has a Christian meant throughout the ages? Unfortunately, I am no scholar at all, more a naive philosopher, who likes to think that Christianity was the socialist struggle against capitalist/totalitarian oppression. Jesus fought with his words (and miracles of healing) against doing everything for oneself. It was always about doing things for others and ultimately, for God. And God was everyone! That seemed always to be the point he was making. In letting a poor man die, we were letting God die. In praising God, we were praising our own existence. The path, Jesus argued, was to live in harmony, trying to bring everyone up rather than creating crisply defined tiers as are found in capitalist societies then and now. He and his disciples fought to change society.

But what is society now and where does Christianity lie in the spectrum? Christianity now is about maintaining our current values. So what that says is that we have done what Jesus asked, and we want it to stay that way. We have found Jesus's path, and need no more. But what is Christianity really like as seen by myself? (I would argue "as seen by the majority" but I won't pretend to know such statistics.)

Christianity is a force by which many are led to believe that only belief in Christ will save us. Only by strictly following guidelines set forth by one man (and later translators) may we shine in the light of God. No! Jesus was against that! He wanted us to break with the standards of the time and be willing to LOVE EVERYONE. He didn't have contempt for others. And my issue with this whole thing is that Christianity can still be found marketing itself as "underground". Various Christian organizations promote themselves as the new underground. Join in counter-culture, they say. But Christianity is the culture, and the problem is that what Christianity has become is not a way of life, but rather a set of beliefs.

Get it? Christ doesn't matter. As far as I can tell He knew that. He only wanted us to look at him for inspiration. He would have preferred us to follow him like many follow Buddha. A teacher to mentor us. A light burning strong in the night to find solace in. And if we don't see that light, or we don't need that light, then fine. As long as we try to find our way through the rocky tumbling seas.

In the end, we will be embraced one way or another and rejoin the universe.

Saturday nights, a broad

2008-01-27T02:10:00.001-05:00

I clear the night sky of electricity
I arch my back but lean forward
I'm lost in the tunnels and streets
Carried by no particular feet
To destinations of comfort and social ambiguity.
You're not here
Not so near
The waves smear
The shores
Of refuse.
And you'll sit thinking of me, beside the lonely crowded bar
Where I'm not.
I'm caught.
I fought
For you from my heart
Random chances blown out of proportion.
Dissolved into mists around who I am.
In your arms
I fade into you.

Good and Bad

2008-01-20T11:15:00.000-05:00

When I was a little kid I took CCD classes. These were Catholic church lessons that I went to once a week to color in pictures of Jesus and learn that God loves us. One of these times our teacher asked us who God loves, and I've always been one to answer the questions in class, so I did.

"God loves good people," I responded, feeling pretty sure of myself. But the teacher looked at me and explained that no, God actually loves all people. This was new to me, yet as soon as she told me this, I knew my answer had been deeply wrong. How could the world really go on if God had it out for bad people? cause people do lots of bad things. And then how do we define people as good or bad? Do we average out the good and the bad elements? How many of our thoughts on even those attributes are just opinions?

I still struggle with accepting people. It's funny, because I'd like to think I'm tolerant, but it is a constant battle to look beyond the faults of others. Maybe I can't get beyond my own faults? God loves all of us, but does he love me? If he doesn't, then I need to be better. If I need to be better, certainly every flaw I spot in someone else could be improved upon.

God loves all people. But I don't. I get stuck in the mires of judgment. I wade through the swamps of filth that inhabit my mind as I look up at the countless bright leaves that inhabit the character of people. I see the red, poisonous leaves. With difficulty I look at the other leaves of green. Couldn't I just drop my head instead of craning it, couldn't I just take note of the thick, well-worn and comfortable trunk of that person? Or maybe the spindly trunk, trying to hold up poison while green leaves struggle forth? Or even the branches, couldn't I tell which ones have the fungus eating away at them and which others are strong and peacefully climbing to the heavens?

I am in the forest, and I can't see my own leaves, I'm caught under them, and not letting them be part of me. I need to become all of myself, I need to accept what is me. Then I might notice how beautiful the trees are, how glorious this forest is.

Commuting

2008-01-13T10:59:00.000-05:00

That's right. The arduous task that many billions of people go through everyday to get from their home to their place of work. Of course, now that I'm thinking of my commute, I wonder what exactly would be the shortest commute. If a homeless man begs for change, is his change from unconsciousness to consciousness a commute? Well, I guess now that all depends on your view, but in the end, I guess the point is that no matter the distance, physical or psychological, it is a task. And I think I have a great commute.

My commute takes approximately an hour, with me leaving me walking to the T (the Boston subway system), taking it for about 15 minutes, waiting another 15 minutes, and then riding a train for about 20 minutes. After I leap off the train with a superhuman jump, I walk not much more than a minute to work. That is a great commute because I don't do anything for that time, it's a period where I can focus on my own thoughts or read the thoughts of others. I love that feeling. It gives me peace for a good 45 minutes, amidst the madness of others rushing from point to point (not that I don't sometimes [read: often] run to the T). But I get to relax for a time, and I like to read or play games on my Nintendo DS. These two activities allow me to settle back and enjoy the work of others, instead of feeling like I should be accomplishing something.

There is something about the environment as well, with the throngs of people milling forward and backward, shuffling and asleep standing up or hyped on coffee, that impresses one with society. Why, I can't really say at this point. [Or perhaps I'm just leaving out a voluminous tangent on crowd dynamics.] But the unique people who don't accept normalcy or strive for that impossible standard are the ones that I love to watch. The man I enjoyed watching this week was a musician in a T station, and I agree with my friends who are impressed by the T performers, he was good. He was a flutist! How about that? And he was playing Ravel's Bolero, a song I don't normally care for (too repetitive), but this man standing in the middle of the crowds playing Bolero, it really was a wonderful experience.

That man made the location. He transformed it with his simple and well-intoned flute-playing. I love that kind of person, and I wonder who he is. What brings such inclination to him? Does he enjoy playing the flute as much as I enjoyed hearing it? When did he start? Was this always what he wanted to do? Probably not, but to him I tip my hat. He was stepping out of the crowd. He didn't hurry along like myself and the thousands, millions, and billions of others. His art made my morning better. And now don't I wish I could pay him to continue his art.

Happy new year

2008-01-01T01:36:00.000-05:00

Fears
In new years
That might surface
With no purpose
But end
That tear and rend
A vicious blend
I’m seeking to fight
Late in this night
With victomless might
I’ll try to write
Against those leaders
Ignoring the bleeders
Losing limbs and other parts
Maybe most of all hearts
Can I see you cry
Without celebs in your eye?
I try to fly beyond it,
But I get hit
In the pit of my stomach
Dark and black
Take me back
To where I was
Looking on war
I dropped my jaw
At what I saw
The children dead
The parents bled
Wounds I read
In newspapers and nets
On trains and jets
But I just did nothing
While they cried and died
I think I’m running
From the monster come munching
The grass and trees
He don’t notice the pleas
Masses on their knees
Just more of the same
To put up buildings in some name
Does Dubya get the blame
Or a dedicated building for his crimes
Cause presidents so deserve
No matter how they serve
In these trying times
I’m sick of these rhymes
And their associated subjects
I wish they were rejects
Instead of the headlines
Pumped out for deadlines
That take in the cash
Like Iraq
Overbearing like Shaq
A slowdown for us
We took the wrong bus
I guess I better get off and start walking
Cause I'm sure tired of talking.

Hometown winter bike ride

2007-12-29T20:54:00.000-05:00

Today I rode my bike at a time later in the afternoon than would normally be wise. It had already began to feel as if the darkness were coming on, but in the winter time, it always feels like the evening is ready to descend. I love the evening, and one of the strongest determinants of that chilling atmosphere is cloud cover. I detest flat gray clouds hovering far beyond my reach, filling the sky with one somber tone. But I adore when the clouds break themselves up with shafts of blue sky and the sun is always just hidden, granting clouds glowing outlines.

That was today. Cloudy with the sun ever striving to appear. And so I went on a bike ride as the sun started its retreat down into the hills west of Gilroy. The air was crisp and clear after last night’s landscape shrouding rain and my bike felt good, a tool for me to get farther from the city than my legs would take me. So, not foolish exactly, but aware of the slowy descending darkness, I went out to Day Road, just at the northwest edge of Gilroy, and made my trip out into the western hills. After crossing over hills and twisting back around toward the city via Watsonville and Burchell Roads, I finally came up the backside of Mantelli hill, at the cusp of Gilroy’s western side.

I almost always ride the reverse of today, starting by going over Mantelli and returning by Day. I’m glad I broke from normalcy, because just as I rode up the first hill and turned around to one of my favorite lookouts, I caught a stunning sky blending with the hillsides by way of dark blue clouds clinging to the forests. The sky directly over the hills was orange with a hint of pink and purple hues as the sun remained visible only through the glowing seams of the clouds. Retreating east were dark vibrant blues, tinting the dark green hills. Tendrils of cloud and fog hung over the high hills and I wish I had had a camera, though no photo would have done that panoramic view justice.

I say all this because it is such times that I am thankful for my existence, and that I feel that my purpose might be clearly to exist. I imagine you aren’t surprised at my words turning philosophical, so I will state my final point simply here: People question what the meaning of life is, and I say that life is the meaning. Existence, more specifically, is our purpose, the meaning to our lives and the greater universe. One of my great friends says that we exist, and there is no purpose, we just exist, there is no creator, the universe just is. Get that? The universe is. But my feelings, my dreams, my spirituality cries out for more. I say instead that the universe is because it is meant to be.

Purpose. That’s what I put forth. I think there is purpose and meaning, but I think it is simpler than good or bad, large or small. I feel that the state of the universe to exist is beautiful. Yes, I also think we can make it not beautiful, by causing things not to be. I pray for the power to exist and not harm those things that also exist. I can only try and regard everything with respect. To just exist and experience the earth is enough. But of course not everyone allows things to just exist, and to them I put my sincerest hopes that they let destruction be nature’s call. There is enough destruction naturally, and it alone is a thoughtless cleaning and clearing. We, who have sentience, have not the right to such thoughtlessness.