Dreamcatchers: Now with the fresh scent of pine!
I saw a minivan in a parking lot today, that had a Native American dreamcatcher (or at least, a cheap knock off) hanging from the rear-view mirror. A dreamcatcher is, as I'm sure you already know, a round or tear-shaped frame with twine laced around its interior. These are made by the Ojibway indians, and their purpose is to catch nightmares, and let the sweet dreams filter through (like and ancient Indian mental Firewall, I suppose). Ojibway parents would hang these up in rooms where the children slept, so that they would have nice dreams all night.

Hanging from the same rear-view mirror, slightly behind the dreamcatcher, was a pine tree-shaped air freshener, the kind you can get free at any filling station with a five dollar purchase of gas.

This brings up a few questions for me. First, why do you need to keep away nightmares when you're behind the wheel? I could understand it if this was hanging in a long-distance shipping truck, but not a minivan. I mean, how much sleeping does this person plan on doing while driving?

Second, does hanging the air freshener with the dreamcatcher make the dreams fresher? Does this make sure that the dreams which do filter through will all be sanitized? Do you end up dreaming of the forest?

Another question, If one decides to hang a playboy air freshener with the dreamcatcher, instead of the pine tree, does that person get an entirely different kind of dream? I mean, if I knew there was a way to have playmates in my dreams, I would have done this years ago.

- posted by BrandG @ 2:13 AM 4 comments

 
Dark Parable
Warning: Not everything in this blog is funny. I started writing this to share the things that I think might be interesting to others.

This, for instance, is not funny. It's pretty freaking dark, but it's part of a dream I had, and I can't shake it.

There are two men alone.
One has dark skin, the other is fair.
One has wealth and riches, the other has nothing to his name.
One has a religious fervor, while the other believes in nothing.
One is enraged, frothing at the mouth, while the other feels nothing.
One is huge, strong, and powerful, the other is small, weak, and tired.
One has a gun, the other has no weapon.

They fight to the death.

Which one survives?

Answer:
The one who has the will. All it takes is a willingness to kill another person. The ability to agree in your heart to take another persons life. All other factors are immaterial.


- posted by BrandG @ 2:06 PM 4 comments

 
TV Blocks
Recently, I talked about the major networks moving their shows around so that they could keep people from switching channels, and so that they could screw up DVRs. The way it works is, the networks will make a show last two or three minutes longer, so when one show is finished, people don't want to change the channel, because they might enter a new show late.

ABC scheduling chief Jeff Bader said, "It's not my job to make it easy for people to leave our network. Our whole goal is to get people to stay with us from 8 to 11." So, effectively, making viewers angry is not as dangerous as letting viewers change the channel. Screw the viewers, as long as the ratings stay up and the ad revenue rolls in.

I started thinking about this line of reasoning, and I figure they're not going far enough. I mean, if you decide that keeping your viewers happy is secondary to keeping your viewers watching, you could go a lot farther with this.

For instance:

Ten-minute episodes. Break up an hour long episode into four parts (each one 10 minutes long), then shuffle them together so that it works like this:

6:02 PM Alias
6:12 PM Commercials
6:17 PM Desperate Housewives
6:27 PM Commercials
6:31 PM Lost
6:41 PM Commercials
6:46 PM 8 Simple Rules
6:56 PM Commercials
7:02 PM Alias
.
.
.

See? Now, if you were an Alias fan, you would have to watch from 6:02 until 9:02 to get 40 minutes worth of an episode! Also, it would give viewers exposure to shows they might have otherwise not known about (in fact, if you juggle them from one week to the next, people will have to check their TV Guides to make sure they don't miss their favorite shows). Now that I think about it, the very fear that they might miss their shows could be enough to keep them locked on your network!

Also, since most of your 10-minute episodes will need a "previously on . . ." segment at the beginning of each episode, you can cut down the actual episode time to only 9 minutes (or 36 minutes per "hour long" episode). Did you notice I even managed to squeeze 20 minutes of commercials in there!

You could even use it as a marketing campaign, "Get four times the comedy in ABC's Laugh Block! There's something for everyone in the Laugh Block, with 8 Simple Rules, Complete Savages, America's Funniest Home Videos, and According to Jim, all together in one block".

Sure, some of you might think that this would be horrible, that forcing people to watch TV for four hours just so that they could get one whole show is evil and manipulative. But if you think that way, you're probably a viewer.

Screw the viewer. "Our whole goal is to get people to stay with us from 8 to 11."
- posted by BrandG @ 5:06 PM 5 comments

 
Eggroll Porn
True Story.

At about 4:00 a.m. I couldn't sleep, so I got up and made plate of mini-eggrolls for a snack. I sat down and turned on the TV (which had been left on Showtime) as I took a bite out of the first eggroll. It split open and some of the (celery/carrot/chicken/other) burst out and landed on the remote control.

Well, I didn't have a napkin or anything to wipe off the remote, and it looked pretty clean anyway, so I started to lick the eggroll yolk off of the remote control.

That was when my wife walked in, to see me, in my pajamas, licking the remote control, while soft-core porn played on the TV.

Some things, you just can't adequately explain.
- posted by BrandG @ 3:46 AM 8 comments

 
Today's plumbing triumph
"I'm sorry, but we are not available to take your call right now. Please leave a message at the beep."

[beep]

"Um. Hi. This is Brand Gamblin. I had an appointment for you guys to come take a look at the clog in my kitchen sink.

Um . . The appointment was for about two hours ago. . . I've been waiting and . . .

Anyway, I started messing around with the pipes under the sink, and I found the problem. I took it apart, and fixed the clog, then I put it back together again. It seems to be working like a champ now, so . . .

I guess we don't need you to come out here. Thanks anyway."


God, that felt good. Saved about $100 bucks, too.

Not to sound too much like a geek, but I think that by making my plumbing savings throw, I just leveled up to a +3 house hubby.

- posted by BrandG @ 1:01 AM 3 comments

 
How I learned sheet music (in a day)
In the course of one humans events, I've had to take several music classes. When I was about eight years old, I had a guitar teacher who thought I was a natural. I could play anything I heard, and repeat it with near perfect precision, but I couldn't read sheet music. My tutor was sure I would become the next Clapton, but I could never figure out the sheet music, and I got frustrated. Eventually, I gave it up, and dashed his hopes. Such is the mind of a child. I've had many opportunities to look back on that in regret.

Now, allow me to explain why I had so much trouble with it. My brain is just wrong in some fundamentally odd way. I have a learning disability called Dyscalculia (bad math, bad memory, but an uncanny skill at the printed word), and a mild manic/depressive disorder. I am a concoction of mental oddities, but I'm cool with it.

I have a very simple system for learning. If something makes sense, it will stick in my mind forever. I can remember derivations of projectile physics formulas that would make Newton proud. However, I can't remember anything if you tell me, "Just memorize it." I still don't know my multiplacation tables. I can't remember them by rote, but my mind is quick enough to calculate it so most people don't notice ( 9 * 6 = (10 * 6)-6 = 60 - 6 = 54).

The rules are simple enough. Tell me why something is, and I'll never forget. Tell me to memorize something, and I won't remember it long enough to write it down.

Sheet music was rote memorization. The teacher would point at five lines and say "That is E, G, B, D, F. You can remember them by the phrase "Every Good Boy Does Fine!" I would ask, "Why are the letters all over the place like that? Why aren't they in order?" The teacher would respond, "Just memorize it. Remember the phrase!" I would then reply, "What phrase?"

I even found out that there were letters for the spaces between the lines, but those were just as bad, "F, A, C, E, you can just remember 'face' and memorize it!"

So anyway, I had similar results in all my school music classes. I had a better voice range than my choir teacher, I could pick up any instrument and play a song running through my head. But I never could get very far in music, because all the school curriculum wanted us to play specific songs, written in sheet music. Damn.

I learned to live with it. Sheet music kept me out of band, so I ended up working in journalism in high school (school newspaper, yearbook, that kinda stuff). I took up the theater, and went to the State UIL competition twice in high school for acting.

But the sheet music thing always bothered me. It's always been something of a personal failure to me. Something that I just assumed I would carry to my grave.

I keep a guitar by the desk here at home, and occasionally I pluck at it. My wife bought me a 'Guitar for Dummies' type of book, perhaps to rekindle some interest in playing. Yesterday, I opened up the book, and as I flipped through it I cursed aloud to see my nemisis in bars staring back at me. Every clef was a middle finger, insulting me with my own deficiency.

So I started reading it from the front, and when they got to the half-page explanation of sheet music, they pointed out that all the bars were E,G,B,D,F and the spaces were F,A,C,E. Then something astounding happened. The book pointed out that if you put the bars and spaces together, you get E,F,G,A,B,C,D,E,F. I just blinked at the page. It was so simple. So obvious. It was all the letters in order, one right after the other. There was a reason behind it. It made sense.

And it clicked. After an hour or so, my hands were hurting, and I'd thrown away that book in favor of my internet search on Paul Simon solos. Holy crap! I can find any note now, and I don't mean I can read it off the page. I mean, I can hum it just by seeing the note. I can tell what 4/4ths means, I can find sharps for given notes. Baby, I can play!

Now that my fingertips are throbbing and I've stepped away from it for a while, it makes me think about alternative education. Why the f*%# hasn't any teacher thought to mention this? Is is just so obvious for normal people that it's not even worth mentioning? Or is this simple measure just one that's been forgotten by music teachers that grew up with the "Just memorize it" school of thought?


Technocrati tags: music, guitar
- posted by BrandG @ 2:48 AM 2 comments

 
GTA Jetpack
As the more astute readers may have noticed, I changed the name of the blog to get rid of the "mind of an unemployed video game programmer". I saw what it looked like on other people's blogrolls, and figured I should fix it. Nobody's blog should take up three lines. Sorry about that.

[GTA Spoilers]

So, anyway, I noticed something odd about GTA about two thirds of the way through the game. Now, I have always loved flying in GTA, ever since it was introduced in GTA:VC. As soon as I got access to a helicopter, I flew it everywhere I could. It gave me such a great sense of freedom while lifting me above traffic, police, rival gangs, or any of that. There was nowhere I couldn't go, nothing I couldn't do. If I couldn't find a good landing place, I could just bail out and only take minimal damage.

So, when I started playing GTA:SA, I was drooling at the prospect of those new planes. I thought it would be so incredible to fly the planes across the map, viewing the countryside from a whole new perspective, and bailing out anywhere on the map (this time, with a parachute).

As it turns out, you don't really get full access to flight until near the end of the game. And once you get in a plane, all sense of wonder is lost. They start you out in a P51 Mustang, one of the greatest planes in WWII. However, as soon as you stop taxiing over the runway you realize that the flight controls are way off. I mean, they're really bad. That's coming from a guy who's written flight controls for two published flight simulators. I'm not saying they needed to be more realistic, I'm just saying they needed to be more playable. I could go into what was wrong about them, and how it should have been handled, but you don't really want to hear me bitch about flight controls.

So anyway, saddened, I went on about the game. Then, after the mission "Green Goo", they unlocked the jetpack for me.

Wow. I mean, wow. That thing is the ultimate in vehicular freedom. You could fly anywhere, land anywhere. If you want to cross the state, it takes maybe two minutes. If you want to see what's written on the top of the tallest bridge in the game (yes, there is something written there), the jetpack made it easy. You could target and shoot at enemies while hovering. It was the ultimate expression of freedom in the game.

And that was the problem.

Up until that point, I was working on my driving skills, my bike skills, even my boating skills. But as soon as you strap into a jetpack, they all seem trivial and silly. Then, when you go back to the normal missions, there's a hollowness to them. The missions are great, but their greatness is dulled by a little voice in the back of your mind saying, "This would be sooo much easier with the jetpack."

I'm familiar with the feeling, it's one I used to get at work a lot. When you're developing a game, you usually walk around with god mode turned on. Infinite ammo, all the weapons, stuff like that. You turn all that on because you need to be able to work in the world, not just play around.

The downside is that, by the time you've finished the game, the challenges all seem kinda hollow to you, because you keep thinking, "This would be soooo much easier in god mode."

So that was the problem. An otherwise excellent game gets tainted by having too much freedom, then losing it in the game. As I coasted over a gas station the other day, I found myself wondering how to go about fixing this.

Then it hit me. Fuel!

What's really missing from GTA is fuel. They already pay attention to how often you eat (forcing you to eat periodically, and making your avatar grow too fat if you eat too often), so why not pay attention to the fuel consumption of the vehicles?

This isn't just a simple way of annoying the player, either. With fuel, the player would be forced to decide which vehicle they want to take for different missions. Some vehicles have a massive benefit over others, but if those were the gas guzzlers, you might think twice about it. Also, this idea gives a new possibility for gameplay challenges. Imagine a mission where the player has to drive this huge, gas guzzling, two-lane wide, vehicle from one end of the map to the other. Not only would the player have to make sure that he doesn't take damage from the oncoming traffic, but the player would also have to map out his route so that he could periodically refuel. The mission could make every leg of the route a challenge, because suddenly the player has to worry that climbing too high a hill would use up more gas than normal.

Also, you could give realistic fuel consumption to the jetpack. From what I've heard, a real jetpack can only run for about twenty seconds without running out of fuel. Now, compared to the GTA jetpack, that's a huge limitation, but imagine if you could use it as an inventory item. You get to where you want to go, switch to the jetpack, and fly over an obstruction. That way, the jetpack becomes more of a tool, and less of a dominating vehicle.

Anyway, that's what I'd do. Your mileage may vary.

game, gta, jetpack
- posted by BrandG @ 5:53 PM 2 comments

 
My brief foray into Hymenoptera
I'm staying at this old hotel (really old, I mean, it's Barton Fink old). There's a convention of the "National Honey Association" staying here, and I've been kinda interested in poking my head in to see the hardware. Apparently, it's mostly hive hardware, and chemicals for beekeeping.

Anyway, this morning I went down to the restaurant for their continental breakfast, and I was more or less seated with a bunch of beekeepers. Now, at 31, I'm probably the youngest person in the room by about 15-20 years. I'm dressed mostly in black, with a "Microprose" T-Shirt on. Of course, nobody in the room knows what Microprose is, so I think they are relating it to some type of bee chemical (Micropores?)

I think I was the subject of much speculation before one of the old men asks me, "So, what do you think of it so far?" I knew he was talking about the convention. I knew he had mistaken me for either a presenter or a beekeeper. The intelligent, mature thing to do would be for me to set him straight, and tell him that I had nothing to do with it.

I said, "Well, it's good stuff, but so far it won't work for my projects." In the back of my mind, my superego is giving my ego a sharp slap on the back of the head. One of the old man's eyebrows inches upward and he asks, "Really. Can I ask what you're working on?"

Now I realize that several people are watching. They think I'm a young upstart in the world of beekeeping. They think I have some new chemical or process that's cutting edge. Well, at least it's not too late to set the record straight.

"It's still in the early development stages, but we're working on a system for providing spider silk from our hives." Inside my mouth, I'm biting my lower lip.

"Really? Now how do you go about that?"

By now, I've given myself over to the lie, and the sci-fi writer in me starts coming out, "Well, you may have heard this past year about a genetically-engineered goat that secretes milk which can be processed into spider silk. My company's contention is that, what with insects arachnids being so much closer to insects than mammals, bees make a more direct route to spider silk. Genetically modified bees can be used to fill a hive with spider silk rather than honey."

Suddenly, it's like one of those E.F. Hutton commercials. Everybody's looking at me with the same slack-jawed acceptance of one who is currently out of their depth.

I'm well into my stride now, so I just plunge on, "As you know, spider silk is one of the strongest flexible materials made in nature. One of the most famous uses for spider silk is a bulletproof vest that weighs less than a tenth of a Kevlar vest." I pause for a moment and make sure that I'm nearly ready to leave, "One of the funny things about this project, the bees refused to produce spider silk exclusively. Despite genetic engineering, they fill one out of every three cells in the hive with honey. For the moment, we're just extracting the honey and storing it. Who knows, it may be considered a novelty item later. 'Honey made by spiders' or something like that." I smile at everyone, get up and leave.

I still don't know why I do that.


beekeeper, funny
- posted by BrandG @ 7:10 AM 17 comments

 
Bad Pun
So, I was on a plane today, and I saw something kinda funny. I have a bad habit of reading over people's shoulders, and I saw a magazine article about reddish swimwear under the title "Coral Fixation". Okay, I get the pun, add a "C" to Oral Fixation, combine it with the reddish color of coral, and suddenly it's funny.

I was just wondering, if it was an article about bluish G-String bikinis, would they call it "Canal Fixation"?

- posted by BrandG @ 9:09 PM 1 comments

 
Riot
[ Warning: GTA Spoilers ]


In the last few missions of GTA: San Andreas, the game is radically altered. Burned out cars litter the streets. Cops jump out of burning cruisers that coast down the street before exploding. People are looting, fighting, and killing. The sky changes color only between different shades of an oppressive red. Fires are lit all through the city, making the whole city burn.

It is truly excellent.

Here's the cool thing. I've been playing that game for months; Now, out of nowhere, the game feels like new again. There is a new element of danger that didn't exist before. The whole world is harder, angrier, and much cooler.

Suddenly, I find myself wondering, "Hey, I wonder what it looks like downtown?" and "Hey, If I base jump in the middle of the riots, will I be able to see all the fires and killer homies?" "I wonder what the VineWood sign looks like now?" I start running through the streets, totally ignoring my missions, just so I can see all the cool new stuff in this world.

This is, needless to say, a pretty rare thing in games. It's not often that you see a game where the developers are willing to change the overall fabric of the world just to show this cool effect. Occasionally, you will see an alternative version of the level you walked through before ("This is what the world would be like, little one, if you do not save us all!"), but usually, those are in pre-scripted missions with a very similar map, and different textures.

Now GTA is a generally unique game, because they allow far more freedom than other games. But was it the open architecture that allowed them to completely change the world? I don't think so. I think it was the will to do it that made the difference.

Whenever you see that world-shift in other games, it is temporary, cosmetic, and brief. If you think about it, an "alternate world" is just another level for the gamemakers. In fact, it's easier than that, because you only have to edit the current one, rather than build a whole new one. I think, the only reason game developers don't cotton to that idea much, is that they don't believe in the coolness factor. I think they see it as a gimmick, something that's kinda cool, but not that big a deal.

I started thinking about this, and came up with the following idea. Going along with the original ideal for Fable, and to a limited extent KOTOR 2, what if you made the entire world shift constantly to fit your current player needs.

In Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, everything bends slightly in the path of the beam. "The Beam" is a lay line of power that runs through the world, unseen. While you can't see the Beam, if you look at a forest, you will see tree branches leaning slightly in that direction. You will see subtle paths in the grass that flows in the way of the beam. You will see leaves falling slightly against the wind, in the path of the beam. The clouds seem to flow in that direction. It is the kind of effect that can't be seen when you look at any one of those, but when you let your view relax, the lines are there, clear as day.

Now, imagine you changed a game world to work like that. Not necessarily using the "Beam" analogy, but just set your game objects to subtly change based on current situations in the game. For instance, imagine this: You set up a "dirty" texture that blends with the standard diffuse texture to make the image of a house. As the player commits more evil deeds, the "dirty" texture gains opacity, making the house look dirtier. At the same time, you set the house's mesh to become slightly tilted, angular, evil. You could create about eight versions of each building (from friendly and rounded, to dirty and angular) and pick the texture and mesh based on the player's "evil" rating.

Now, there would need to be limitations, of course. It's a huge undertaking to make multiple meshes for all the buildings in a game. However, the argument could be made that you only need to do multiple meshes on the highest level of detail mesh, so if you say eight levels of detail for each building, and eight versions of the highest LOD mesh, you only have 15 meshes per building. It's still a lot of work, but it's adjustable depending on how much work you want to do.

Now, there would be multiple uses for this, other than the "evil house" analogy. You could make the entire world catch fire, or switch to a translucent X-ray view, or turn slowly into Smurf huts.

Oh, this would be cool. What if you were doing a "Back to the Future" kind of game, where you have to save the world before it all disappears. As you're playing the game, the world could slowly devolve, not just by losing opacity, but by changing its very mesh (picture the Escher building they used in "Memoirs of an Invisible Man").

The idea of changing the world to fit new situations in the game is an extremely attractive and seductive one to the player. I just hope more developers can see that it's worth the expense.

- posted by BrandG @ 11:08 PM 5 comments

 
Cool quote
We have a huge library of DVD's, which has only grown this holiday season. We've got a huge glut of media to get through, and I was trying to choose which one to watch with dinner. I asked my wife which one she wanted to see, and she said dismissively, "I never could pick my favorite spot of blue out of the sky."

That stopped me cold. I just stood and thought about it, and after a moment, she said, "It's not that deep, Brand." Still, I'm unconvinced. I keep coming up with symbolic interpretations for the quote. It speaks to the multitude of options available from choices in our lives. It talks about how similar all the choices seem when we see them. I don't know, maybe I am reading too much into it, but I was still pretty impressed.

- posted by BrandG @ 11:31 PM 1 comments

 
Just not sure about Halo2
After living through GTA for the last few months, I finally started playing it like a game, rather than a way of life. By doing that, I finished it pretty quickly. (which reminds me, I gotta write down the blog posts about the Riot levels and how the jetpack hurts gameplay).

I've written a few posts that pissed people off. Very few, actually, because I'm a pretty amiable guy in general (although, the Apple guys probably have me on a bad list by now). Either way, I'll probably upset some people on this one.

I've started playing Halo2 now, and I just don't get it. I mean, I'm running around again, shooting things again. Remember how Halo (the first one) started off with you on a space ship being overrun by the alien baddies? Guess how the second one starts out?

Don't get me wrong, I like being able to wield two weapons (although I don't see why that's better than wielding all the weapons I pick up, a la Doom, Quake, GTA, and just about any other action game), and I like being able to drive vehicles without worrying about their physics model. And, sure, it's pretty and all that. . . but. . . it's the same old stuff. I mean, okay, I'm not very far into it yet. I haven't found out what the "flood" is or any of the cool storyline. But I guess that's the point. I've got almost no interest in finding out about the storyline. The game is linear as all hell, with the same baddies jumping out at you and the same weapons all over again.

I think it's the linear thing that really gets me. Maybe three months of GTA has spoiled me to linear gameplay, but it just feels like . . this is gonna sound weird . . it feels like a street luge game. There's only one direction to go, and if you go fast, you don't even have to worry about obstacles in your path. A couple of times, I just ran past the wall of teeming enemies that stood as the only thing between me and my goal. Of course, then I just ran through the next wall of teeming enemies that stood as the only . . . blah blah blah.

Oh, and yes, I am playing on the "easy" difficulty level. Rail on me all you want, but I don't think a bad game is made better by me dying more often.

Now, despite the "sameness" of the game, I really do like the cutscenes. Remember back in the old days of graphical text adventures? Back in those days, the gameplay would be the same in every level, but you'd play through just to see the cutscenes. Like letting Leisure Suit Larry walk out into traffic because they had that cool LSL factory floor cutscene. On the games with bad puzzles or graphics, people didn't play for the games, they played just to get to the cutscenes. I feel like I'm doing that now. I'm not playing because I enjoy the game. I'm playing so that I can get to the cool bit.

But I'm progressively more afraid that the cool bit is going to be just like the other bits. Like the story is the only thing that makes this one any different from Halo1.

Am I wrong about this? Is there light at the end of the "Day on the beach" level? Say it's not all just running through a linear path, shooting down the same old guys. Say it ain't so!

- posted by BrandG @ 11:56 PM 5 comments