I've been discovered!
Okay, that might be a bit much, but I have been invited to act as a featured Games blogger for MindSay.com. I'll be writing much the same stuff as I do here (in fact, I intend to republish a lot of this stuff on the new blog), just for a wider, more targeted audience. Apparently, the new blog is going to be promoted in search engines, grassroots word-of-mouth campaigns, and general blogging circles.

For those who read this blog, you'll probably want to update your links to point to http://gamecoder.mindsay.com/

Hope to see you there. I'll probably keep this blog alive for a while, but with less frequent updates. Maybe I'll just put the non-games stuff here. I don't know. To be honest, this is happening really fast, so I don't know what I'm going to do.
- posted by BrandG @ 10:10 PM 2 comments

 
My brief brush with greatness
My friends know this story, but I don't think I've told it here, so here goes:

A few years back (wow, it must have been about 4 years or so) I was sent to E3 as an emissary for the Microprose game "Gunship!" The setup was pretty simple: there were two of us in the booth. One would play the game, while the other talked about how great the game was to whoever seemed to be interested in it. Occasionally, one of us would take a break and walk around the floor, while the other one manned the station.

Now, at the time, you could tell just what Atari thought of Microprose, by how much floor space they gave us. Atari had one large cylinder of space, separated into pie wedges, and you could tell how popular you were by how big your companies wedge was. The corporate dealmakers section took up 50% of the pie, Hasbro Interactive (for kids) took up another 25%, Atari took up 15%, which left Microprose . . . cramped.

To add to that, we had a 12-foot tall statue of a MechWarrior in the center of our little pie wedge, and half a dozen games to display.

I guess what I'm getting at is, that it felt really crowded. It was especially crowded at one point where my demo partner decided to take a break. He was off walking the floor, while I played the game and answered questions about it. It was getting pretty close in there, and I scooted my seat forward to let traffic by, when over my shoulder, I saw a gaggle coming toward us.

It was a clump of people so big, that I could only judge the size of it by where the boom mikes and light stands were set up at it's perimeter. The gaggle moved slowly, inexorably, toward our station, and I thought to myself "Okay, this is our big break. Some TV show's going to be recording this section, so I gotta keep my mind on the game and show off how cool it is."

People pressed into our section, pushing me so close to the computer that I tilted the keyboard up to rest on my chest. I still didn't turn around to look, I just kept blowing things up, and demoing the targetting system, and generally making the game look as graphically intensive as possible. Suddenly, there was a furry head in my peripheral vision, so close to me that I thought it was resting on my shoulder. The man with the glasses and scruffy beard said, "Wow, this looks really good. You guys have done some good work."

I had to stop myself from recoiling. I mean, it was totally unexpected, and I was so intent on making the game look good, I hadn't even noticed this hanger-on watching the game. So, I did my best to seem cordial, saying, "Um. Thanks. Well, we're doing our best."

The furry man patted my shoulder, and moved on. About a minute later, the rest of the gaggle moved on. I turned to one of the booth babes in the Kids area (yes, Hasbro really did hire a sexy blonde to sell kids stuff in a short skirt and shorter apron) and asked her what that crowd was all about. She said to me, wide-eyed, "You don't know? That was Steven Spielberg!"

I was beating myself up about that for the rest of the day. Did I shake his hand, no. Did I introduce myself, no. In fact, when he said we were doing great work, did I say, "Oh, yeah. Well, you did a good job on Indiana Jones." No. At the time, the best I could do was to keep from recoiling.

Later, I found out that Spielberg is a huge fan of European Air War, another project I had worked on. So, I had something I could have chatted with him about, if I had just thought of it. Ach. I can't believe I'm still beating myself up about that four years later.

According to one news article, Spielberg said that he was introduced to European Air War by Robin Williams, who he referred to as his "digital pimp". Somehow, the idea of Steven Spielberg and Robin Williams sitting down to play a game that I made . . . I don't know. . . it just seems so freakin' cool. Sort of like the way Upton Sinclair must have felt when he found out that Theodore Roosevelt was reading "The Jungle". Okay, that's an obscure reference, but surprisingly apt.
- posted by BrandG @ 7:50 AM 4 comments

 
Flash Sucks
I'm sorry. I really want to like Flash. When I decided to put The Limit online, I chose Flash as my platform because I wanted system independence. I assumed it would be really easy, because they handle rendering movies seamlessly. Turns out, there's a big difference between building a movie, and programming a game in Flash.

Ever notice how all Flash games are pretty simple? I mean, I've seen the Trogdor Burnination game, and websites devoted to dozens of small Flash games , but I haven't seen any advanced games in Flash. I think I know why. I think Flash was made solely for movies, and any programmatic capabilities are happy mistakes.

First off, it has no typed variables. Okay, I'm used to that with many of the latest generation languages. I mean, it's not as safe for programmers, but so be it. But add to that the fact that you don't have to define a variable to use it. I mean, if you misspell a variable name, you've just created a new variable (even if you're inside a test condition).

But not to worry, right? I mean, if you create an error like that, the program will just crash out gracefully and tell you where the error is, right? Wrong. A Flash program will do the worst possible thing when faced with an error. It will ignore that line. A Flash program will just skip over a line it doesn't understand.

But surely, these errors can be caught when you compile the instructions, right? I mean, that's just basic checking, been around for ages. Nope. The closest Flash will get to error checking is making sure that you have the right number of braces, and that the basic syntax of a line is correct.

Also, if you start using a variable without explicitly defining it in a function, it will become part of the "root" object, and will exist beyond the function, gaining global scope. I mean, Holy Crap!! This system was made for errors!!

Okay, sorry about that. I know a lot of you readers are not actually code monkeys like me, so you probably don't know or care what I'm talking about. Long story short, I've created a Flash version of "The Limit" which is available here.

It's not finished, but entirely playable, and I'm still working on it. Currently, it doesn't show a score, or end appropriately when the game is over. So, it's got a ways to go, but if you want to play the game for free online, without any downloads, this is the place to do it.

And, um, Flash still sucks. Next time, I'm gonna use Java. =)
- posted by BrandG @ 5:44 PM 4 comments

 
Shirley Temples
My favorite drink is Cherry Pepsi, but there's almost nobody that stocks the stuff. Sure, just about everyone has Coke, Pepsi, Diet Coke, and that kind of thing. Each shop has one or two the specialty drinks, but it's difficult to find a shop that has your own personal favorite (for example, my wife's favorite drink is Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, see how often that shows up).

Anyway, I was thinking, all these different flavors (Cherry Coke, Lime Coke, Vanilla Coke, etc.) are Actually just your basic Coke with some other syrup thrown in. So, what if the different stores could stock up on Coke and Pepsi, then sell little packets with Cherry, Vanilla, Lime, and other syrups. That way, the user could buy a regular drink, then add their own favorite flavors to it.

In fact, that way, you could customize your drink even further. Want a double Cherry Pepsi? Just buy two packets of Cherry Syrup. Want a Vanilla-Lime Coke? Easily done. It's easier for the shopkeeper to stock the little packets rather than dozens of specially-flavored drinks, and it's more convenient for the soft-drink connoisseur.

In fact, since children are the most obvious audiences for soft drinks, this would be a great way to teach them about how different people have different tastes, and how things that look similar can be very different on the inside.

It would even introduce children to the concept of dosages, and how to make mixed drinks . . .

Um. Wait. I'm not sure that last bit is such a good thing.
- posted by BrandG @ 3:29 AM 2 comments

 
Sterilize the poor
Sound excessive? Sound like a raving madman, with insultingly stupid, illegally invasive solutions that no one would follow? Sound like the kind of thing that Klansmen would only whisper to each other at parties? Well, that kind of thing can happen here. And it did happen here. For 45 years, in America, land of the free.

In 1929, 33 states began a program of secretly sterilizing "undesireables", defined as people who were believed to be promiscuous and/or poor. I know, it sounds like conspiracy theory stuff, and if it were unfounded, I wouldn't believe it either, but the states employed in the practice are now dealing with reparation lawsuits, and presenting public apologies. Here, this ABC News story tells about a woman in North Carolina who was sterilized after being raped (because they thought she was dim-witted, and promiscuous).

I'd like to believe that this is just another mainstream media screwup, like Rathergate, or Newsweek fudging the Koran-flushing. But when one of your sources is a current state representative, it's hard to think that they are wrong about it.

Now, yes, I'm shocked to find out that we were going overseas to fight (among other things) eugenics, while we practiced the same thing at home. And, yes, I'm shocked to find out that this was still going on until 1974. But the thing that really shocks me. . . this story came to light on April 23 of this year, and I only just now heard about it.

I mean, Jesus Christ! This is the kind of news that should be shouted from the mountaintops. There should be widespread criminal investigations to determine where this governmental push came from. It was multiple states, so that screams federal government coordination. I want perp walks with these doctors holding newspapers up to their faces as they're marched into the courtrooms.

I want criminal investigations for the politicians who found funds to pay for this procedure. I mean, is it just me, or does this just scream Strom Thurmond? I want to see them sweating under the hot lights, taking frequent sips of water, and whispering to their lawyers.

I think I need to walk away from this one for a bit.
- posted by BrandG @ 4:08 AM 1 comments

 
Evangelical Spam
Yesterday, as I was cleaning out my spam folder in GMail, I was surprised to see an offer to "FIND CHRIS*TIAN SING*LES IN YOUR AREA!!!!" It wasn't so much the idea of the message, as it is well known that there are thousands of swinging Christian ladies just looking for a good time. No, the part that surprised me was that they had to put an asterisk in the middle of the word "Christian".

It's an old practice to put special characters in the middle of words so that spam filters don't recognize them as spam titles. Common words are hor'ny, sing*le, unde-rage, Ere:ctile, Mort`gage, and Ro:ckha:rd. They're generally annoying, almost unreadable, and ultimately ineffective, because any normal spam filter can catch these anyway.

Still, it surprises me because, when the name of your religion is a signal for spambait, you might want to reconsider your methods of evangelism.




P.S. My favorite example of this was:

From: Mort`gage Direct
Subject: Jesus!

Sure, I'm not gonna click on it, but this Christian obviously feels very strongly about my potential home value!!
- posted by BrandG @ 12:52 AM 2 comments

 
An impotent media
So, I was reading today about the RIAA's latest volley in the war between people and property. They have introduced a Boy Scout badge for "Intellectual Property". A scout can earn this badge by sitting through one of their indoctrination videos.

I tried to imagine what the badge must look like. I figure it should be a phonograph. Linked directly to recorded music, and at the same time, linked to an antiquated, barely used, out of date format. Yes, that should do nicely.

Quick on the heels of that, though I realized just how impotent media has become recently. The issue of internet music sharing is a perfect opportunity with which to test the media. You know how people argue about the enormous swaying power of the media, how it can mold people's minds; Wag the Dog stuff. They say that the media can make or break a political candidate by affecting the unwashed masses.

Now here is a situation where the media truly feels (mistakenly) that they are under attack. They seem to fight this battle with every tool and weapon in their arsenal. They have used psychological warfare to get us to refer to file swappers as "Pirates". They have expose's, press releases, and short commercials dedicated to convincing us that file swapping just isn't "hip" (don't copy that floppy!). They have studies that show how file swapping is costing them billions of dollars (while all independant studies show that the studios are making more money than ever). They have created their own paramilitary enforcement wing, to raid duplication labs, and storm citizens houses. They have sued thousands of citizens, and settled almost all out of court (not one successful lawsuit yet). And today, they announced a badge that coerces Scouts to agree with their position.

But let's look at the results. After all, we're trying to test what the incredible might of the media can do to a single issue. The companies representing the RIAA/MPAA are no less important names than BMG, Apple, Virgin, Columbia, Time/Warner Brothers, Buena Vista, Sony, MGM, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and United Artists. These are the guys who control 90% of all TV and Radio in America. They make and break candidates based on their endorsements. So, surely one small issue like "We want this to be illegal, and we want to arrest everyone who does it" should be a relatively easy thing. A "slam dunk" to use the Bush administration terms.

But here's the thing: there has been more music, movie, TV, and video game piracy every year since they started this campaign. The lawsuits slowed down file swapping temporarily, but when people did the math, and found out that they were more likely to win the lottery than get sued by the RIAA, those people started coming back to "the scene". As the lawsuits made online music swappers more afraid of the RIAA, they learned more about privacy, and they found alternate paths. When one BitTorrent site was taken down, the others saw a sudden explosion in patronage. People move their allegience from one file-swapping format to another (Kazaa today, BitTorrent tomorrow, IRC the next day), which seriously messes with all attempts to track them. Because the population shifts, the RIAA points to a format with decreasing patronage and says, "There, see! The people are running scared now!"

But remember: these are the people who make or break public policy. Remember the incredible power? Remember the earth-shattering potency of their work? It's been almost a decade now, and they haven't managed to even cut down on this "piracy".

From the very beginning of this war, people have been asked why they do this. The answers have been universally the same:
1) Media costs too much.
2) Media isn't portable enough.
3) Artists don't get the money anyway.

The RIAA/MPAA chose to counter those complaints with lawsuits, slander, name-calling, and privacy attacks. They tried to raise prices (to pay for all the piracy, don't you know). They made the media less portable (just try to make a backup of an Apple ITunes song on a new computer), and they forced the artists to speak out against file-swapping, even over the artist's objections.

Now people hate them, artists hate them, they are losing the battle worse every day, and each thrust they make in this battle ends up as a punchline on Slashdot.

These were the titans! They had all the power! How is it possible that they did not utterly humble the file-swappers?

Simple. People online, in general, know what they're doing. When a person is introduced to the internet, the first thing that hits them is how incredibly free everything is. News, Weather, Sports, Opinion, there are sites out there for every possible interest, catering to every possible fetish, without worry about governmental strictures.

Once they are acclimatized to that environment, they suddenly see stories about how a company is tracking people online, how they are raiding houses, ransacking privacy, and attacking their own customers. When faced with the ultimate freedom of the internet, these attacks seem like an affront on their own personal privacy. Every single person feels insulted, violated, and angry.

One of the most common arguments for the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that the Japanese would never surrender. Conservatives shake their heads and say, "If we hadn't dropped the bombs, every single citizen would have fought to the death to bring down America. We did it for peace, to save both sides."

This is the same situation. Every single person who logs on to the internet will feel like they are being spied on and attacked by these huge, American conglomerates. And they will fight, to a man, against these attacks.

Following that logic, the only sensible thing that the RIAA/MPAA can do is to Nuke the Internet. Take it out, switch it off, for our own good. You know, like China does with it's Internet.

When the smoke clears, they will be able to count on the goodwill of the returning customers, much like the goodwill that America enjoys from the descendants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- posted by BrandG @ 10:04 PM 5 comments

 
Duke Nukem Whenever
I was cleaning out the library today, getting ready to turn it into a sound studio, and I came across a whole bunch of old games. Diablo, Populous, Syndicate, Requiem, Colonization, just a lot of great games that I hadn't thought of in years.

Then I came across Duke Nukem, and I paused. You know, for the time it came out, Duke Nukem was one of the coolest games around. At the time, people were saying that first person shooters were the closest games to reality. All there was at the time was Doom, and some Doom rip-offs, all of them dealing with shooting demons, usually in space, surrounded by occult imagery. Now along comes this game where the player had a character, the indomitable cross between Clint Eastwood, Schwartzenneger, and Ash (from housewares). Suddenly, the player had lines to say, witty quotes to throw at the bad guys. It pulled the player in enormously.

For the first time, we were playing a fps in an urban setting, with real props that mirrored the real world. There were inside jokes, references to popular movies (remember Tom Skeritt's "Kill Me" from Alien? It's in there), and lots of attitude. Sure, you were still shooting aliens, but this time, you were shooting them in a titty bar, or in a darkened alley, or porno store!! It was the coolest thing!

They made some sequels, just add-ons really. You might still be able to find "Duke it out in DC" in the bargain bin. But the big promise would come later, in '98, when 3D Realms announced that they were making a real sequel, Duke Nukem Forever. They were going to use the Quake II engine, and the demo looked astounding. Then, they decided they were going to use the Unreal Engine instead. And, if you've ever worked with the two engines, you'll know that kind of conversion requires almost a complete rewrite just to keep your framerate up.

Okay, so the rewrite slowed them down, but even after a decent interval, we still didn't hear anything about it. People started mumbling that there were problems with the game, that it was in danger of being shelved, or just relegated to vaporware. Then at E3, in 2001, they came up with some more clips, which showed how well the game was moving along. The clips had some amazing screenshots of a plane crashing into a building, and one of a woman falling to her death (presumably jumped from the building). In light of the September 11th attacks, 3D Realms had to go back to the drawing board a bit for that.

So, one would figure by conservative estimates, that means they would ship in late 2002. Or early 2003? Maybe make the Christmas rush of 2004? No.

Even though we occasionally hear about them incorporating new features (there are rumors that they are moving to the new Unreal engine, which would mean another rewrite, or that they have some new fangled engine of their own), this game has been on the vaporware hitlist for too long. In fact, it has been MIA for so long, magazines don't even list it in the vaporware awards, because it wouldn't be fair to the other competitors.

So I started thinking. At this point, if I was 3D Realms, I would ignore the issue completely. After all, anybody who's played it probably played it from 1996 - 98, which was nearly a decade ago. Chances are, they've forgot about it. We don't have to even think of it as a sequel anymore. If we think of it as a totally new game, then we don't have to watch the clock at all. Anyone who played the game is probably an adult now, and most of them have given up on games.

So, thinking of it as a totally new game, rather than a sequel, we can rehash the same old jokes, make the same old characters, and even use the same maps. The only thing we can't do is let it be technologically lacking. It has to be up to par with Half-Life 2, Unreal 3, and Doom 3 (funny that ID managed two iterations of Doom and an entire Quake enterprise in the same amount of time that 3D Realms has taken to NOT release one sequel).

So, the needed direction is obvious. Get some good voice acting, rehash the story, use the old levels as a basis for the new ones, and license one of the new heavy hitters. But, whatever you do, don't rush. Because, after all, there's no hurry. It's not like anybody's expecting you to FINISH the game, after all.
- posted by BrandG @ 10:03 PM 1 comments

 
Recent happenings
Hey, I just realized, if that was the night that they hung an innocent man, then why did all the lights go out in Georgia? I always thought that was because they electrocuted the guy. But if they hung him. . . nevermind.

Okay, as some of you have pointed out, I haven't been updating this much. I could point to all the stuff that I'm working on, but the fact is, I've been totally immersed in World of Warcraft. I've been playing it to the exclusion of all other things. However, yesterday, divine intervention stepped in. My laptop blew up.

Not literally, but there were bad sectors in the FAT table, which made it unable to boot, format, or even partition itself. Long story short, it's dead, and I have no system butch enough to play WoW on.

There are two positive aspects to this. One, I'm getting more work done. I've just finished my first outline of the sci-fi story that I'm converting to a radio script, and tomorrow I'm going to start retrofitting my library into a sound studio (hanging up egg-crate foam, closing off vents, blocking out the window, general soundproofing). I've also got a basic outline for a second radio show based on a monsterous hungry sleeper sofa.

The other positive aspect is that I'm playing other games again. When I took my laptop to be repaired (hard drive replacement, rather) I also bought a PSP. So now, I'm playing games again, and I'm back to ranting about all the design mistakes. I'll leave that stuff for another post.

In other news, the PocketPC version of "The Limit" is now at about 95%, although development has been stalled somewhat by the loss of my laptop. I'm going to start looking at Flash development soon, to see if I can get a Flash version of the Limit available online.

I've also got an idea for a new game based on cutting in line. It's a little hard to describe, I'll try to put together a mock-up so that I can explain it better.

You know what's really weird. I've been gripped by a need to get something done all week, and yet, I've been immobilized, unable to do anything. I know the feeling well enough to recognize it as a depressive swing in my manic/depressive cycle, but I don't remember it lasting this long before. Maybe I need more exercise. All I know is, I feel like I need sleep, all the time.

It sucks.
- posted by BrandG @ 10:05 PM 0 comments