I think full motion video has to be the worst major feature that's expected in a console game.
It's
1. Streaming
2. Usually dependant on blackbox libraries
3. Potentially visually impressive while lending almost zero gameplay
Which translates into:
1. Highly temperamental, likely to crash the game even if written correctly
2. Documented by experts for experts and it never works as a drop in
3. Every publisher wants it
Ah well, mostly I'm grumpy because I got the movie player working with minimum difficulty, it's getting the movie player to work in conjunction with our rendering engine[0] that's difficult. And due to various complications[1] I have to wait for someone to write some DMA code for me, which means that while I do get to go out and find someplace unhealthy to go drinking tonight, it means that I have to come in to work tomorrow.
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[0] We want to have nifty video playing in the background for the front end. There will probably be other uses.
[1] I do not speak PS2 DMA. I do not want to learn PS2 DMA.
Just a friendly word of advice to the person stopped at the light in front of me in Westwood this morning:
If you must plaster the back of your giant SUV with religious stickers (presumably to go with the religiously themed license plate), you should at least go to the trouble of making sure all the stickers are straight, especially the one stuck to the rear window.
I've moved my coffee maker into my bathroom (which adjoins my bedroom and places it about 5 feet from my bed). I've done this on the theory that I can set the timer on the coffee maker to coincide with my getting up and that the smell of freshly brewed coffee will do a better job of getting me to haul my butt out of bed than a loud beeping noise.
In other news, giving up coffee on the same weekend when you have to work a whole bunch is not a lot of fun, even if it prevents my caffeine addiction from spiraling out of control.
I do not like ants, Sam-I-Am
I do not like them on my pan
I do not like them in my room
I do not like them on my spoon
I do not like them in my dish
I do not like them on my fish
I do not like them on my floor
I do not like them on my door
But
I do not think they like this caulk
I do not think through it they can walk
I do not think they can get through
That wonderful white gloopy goo
(Ok, so I'm not a poet, at least I can put down a bead of caulk)
Actually I don't hate purses, I hate going to a club and having someone make me carry her stuff because her outfit has no pockets (yeah, I'm a nice guy, sucks to be me).
And the advertisement says that it's available from IsoTank for $18.99 instead of the list of $22.00.
I don't know if it works particularly well, but it looks kind of like a garter and has the potential to keep me from carrying someone else's stuff, so I'll be buying a couple of these things next time a paycheck rolls around.
Last thing I ordered from IsoTank was a Converter box set and it arrived promptly and in good condition. Amazon.com is probably a better bet for pop music, but if you're looking for something a bit off the beaten path you might want to check them out.
I'm starting to very slowly restock my wine rack[0] and every time I go to the grocery store I'm faced with a rather vast array of wine that I don't have the time, money, or liver to fully explore. It's a bit like choosing a linux distribution. Once you've tried a few linux distributions you have a vocabulary to describe common features and differences, but there are still a million flavors out there that you'll never (or at least I'll never) have had the time to try out. And then another year will have passed and the flavors will be different again. Of course, the bright side is that with wine you don't have to reformat your hard disc when you switch vintage.
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[0] It holds all of 12 bottles and bears a strong resemblance to a set of tinker toys, don't get any funny ideas about me being rich.
The schmuck has stopped.
My referrer logs (at last count) seem to indicate fat girls are more popular than bestality[0].
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[0] No, that's not the right spelling. It's porn. If there was an intelligence requirement it might put a bit of a crimp in the industry.
I am starting to work out again after a long period of laziness, and having discovered that I've lost significant muscular endurance, I have decided to slowly ramp up my physical activity until I get back to a level where I don't feel awful. Now, I don't care for the gym that's two blocks from where I work, both because I don't think it has anything to recommended it aside from it being conveniently located, and because the salespeople are extra sleazy[0]. Now I've done the math on how long it takes me to drive to my old gym and how long it would take me to walk to the next closest gym, and I've decided I'd be willing to go to my old gym to lift weights, but I'm not thrilled at spending the time to go do cardio workouts (particularly when I'm in fairly pathetic shape and there's only so much satisfaction I derive from treadmills and bicycles).
The answer: There's a Dance Dance Revolution machine located 2 blocks from my work that does 3 songs for $0.50.
So, if I take that $3-4 I've been spending every day on that mocha in the afternoon[1] and instead spend it on the DDR machine, which seems to do almost as good a job at waking me up as the mocha, I should regain the cardiovascular fitness I've lost in short order.
I can still do 15 minutes on a bicycle at reasonable resistance while maintaining around 90RPM, and I can tell you that a DDR machine is a much better workout. I sweat more, I breathe harder, and (most importantly) I have more fun, which keeps me going back for more.
Oh, and I've never had a group of attractive girls standing around and watching me[3] while I used a stationary bicycle. And I've definitely never seen anybody get applause when they got off a treadmill.
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[0] Hey, gym owners, here's a clue: people don't think they're getting a great deal because of the sales tactics, they're mostly really pissed off that you didn't have the real price up front and feel like you've waisted their time and made them deal with a sleazy person. I know someone who bought her car from Saturn for the sole reason that she wouldn't have to deal with the bullshit of a salesman, and I bought my car from a different dealership when I felt like the salesman was screwing around with me. And no, not all gyms are like that, when I signed up at Gold's Gym Venice they were very up front and reasonable about the pricing.
[1] Excessive caffeine intake leads to insomnia which leads to more caffeine intake in the process of chasing coffee[2]. It's like the Buddhist concept of Samsara, only shorter, and it tends to lead to things like the use of alcohol as a sleep aid.
[2] Yes, that's where the name "Chasing Coffee" comes from. It also serves as a reminder for the need to find balance in my life so that I can not play that game anymore (not that I'm good at finding that balance).
[3] No, they weren't laughing, thanks for asking.
The Dutch customs once thought my pictures were photos. Where on earth did they think I could have photographed my subjects? In Hell, perhaps?
H.R. Giger in ARh+
(first link may not be entirely safe for work)
I read Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.
Off the top of my head, it seems like in the first act all of the characters are trapped and unable to move onward. Estragon and Vladimir are unable to move on from their location because they are waiting for something that never comes. Lucky is paralyzed by the cruelty of his master weighed against the hope of approval. Pozzo draws his identity from his possessions and despite claims that he wishes to divest himself of Lucky his view of Lucky as possession causes him to be unable to throw Lucky away as throwing away a possession would be throwing part of himself away. Even the boy at the end is trapped, his subservient state causing him to move into fear due to the will of others.
It reminds me of how I felt during significant portions of my marriage.
The second act begins with a recursive song, foreshadowing how the act shows the characters trapped into repeating the same day over and over again. I suppose that parts of the dialog between Vladimir and Estragon could be taken as an attack on philosophy, pointing out how debate for the sake of debate is pointless and only serves to kill time and bring us closer to death.
In particular, Estragon who knows and remembers nothing, could be taken as a cruel caricature of Socrates. His state of truly knowing nothing causing only confusion instead of enlightenment.
Having Pozzo and Lucky return aged and decrepit could be taken to show the fundamentally flawed pursuit of material gain over all else, both as manager (who has gone blind, unable to see the things which once motivated him) or as worker (who has spent so long under dehumanizing conditions that he has in fact lost/forgotten the ability to speak when he needs it and has become not human).
The play is open to a wide variety of interpretations, perhaps it is most significant in that within the broken logic of the dialog we can see something of ourselves that we may not have wanted to see.
A perennial topic among geeks is how much dating sucks. So I thought I'd add my little bit to the topic:
In Notorious C.H.O. Margaret Cho points out an interesting correlation between the Ren Faire, Leatherfolk, and Star Trek[0].
Now, I'm not saying that every geek fits this profile (I, for example, preferred Known Space to Star Trek). But, if you're a geek who's searching for a partner, you might want to consider looking in locations that depart from the norm a bit[1]. There are girls out there who prefer geeky guys[2], and if you were a boy scout you might actually get to use some of that stuff you learned[3].
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[0] It wouldn't be nearly as funny if it wasn't true.
[1] I live in Los Angeles, so "norm" is a bit of a fuzzy term, especially in West Hollywood.
[2] No, really.
[3] Bowline: rabbit comes out of the hole, goes around the tree...
I met Fairuza Balk last night. The really weird thing is that she thought I looked familiar.
I rather suspect that she's much better at pool than she lets on.
Earlier we went to see The Animation Show which was just amazing. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. I think part of what made it so good was that the funny pieces were bracketed with pieces that were either dramatic or technically interesting. This prevented the funny from one piece from stepping on the funny from another piece or moving the audience over the edge to where things stopped being funny. I suppose it's the same comedic timing that makes everything funny, only on a larger scale.
And my friend Katy is leaving for Seattle on Monday. Damn, I'm going to miss her and I'm going to have to find someone else to drag me away from my computer.
Good luck, Katy. Everyone who knows you here in Los Angeles is going to miss you a bunch.
Every day I look down from my office on the 19th floor and I see convertibles parked on the street below, and every time I see them I have a sick desire to go up to the roof with a water balloon.
For those interested, the referrer spam breaks down as follows by fetish type:
1. Breasts
2. Penis enlargement
3. Lingerie
4. Amateur
5. & 6 Racial: Asian, Black (same number, assume sites served as blocks off the same links)
7. Fisting
8. Racial: Indian
9. Free
10. Gay
11. Hentai
With #1 vastly overwhelming all other entries.
I suppose this could indicate that we're a sexually repressed culture, where most people are insecure in their physical capabilities, and seek to mask their own perceived inadequacies and those of their partner through extraneous trappings, and that the other entries correlate to population figures that show that we are mainly seeking connection to those who we perceive to be similar to ourselves.
On the other hand, it's referrer spam and probably should be ignored.
Now if you'll excuse me there's a full moon I need to go howl at.
I'm trying to figure out what the worst part is about receiving referrer spam
So far I'm down to the following three:
1. That awful moment when you realize that if you did write something tremendously interesting to thousands of people you probably don't want them all coming in from a domain that prominently features the phrase "big-tits".
2. There's not much you can do about it aside from tracking down the parent hosting company that's ultimately responsible for this particular traffic and referring the traffic back to them. (which is more effective, yet less fun than my original suggestion of forwarding the traffic to rush limbaugh's website)
3. The fact that the spam that came from the penis enlargement site easily amounted to 6x your daily readership.
And a big thank you to Kasia who manages to do an amazing job as system administrator and can look sexy while she does it. If only my coworkers were half as competent as she is.
Windows trick for those who hate using the mouse:
Press ALT to get into the File menu then either
press Space
or
press LeftArrow then UpArrow
to open the menu with the Move, Size, Maximize, and Minimize controls.
(most applications seem to work with either the space or the two arrows)
From there, n minimizes and x maximizes.
I can now get my day started without touching my mouse.
"You have reached the office of Dr. Flakey, please leave a message at the tone."
Beep
"Yes, I'd like to cancel my next appointment and all future appointments. We've reached a breaking point, but thanks, you've been a big help with that."
(no, I didn't actually leave that message)
Today GFP (Grumpy Former Publisher)[0] decided they wanted their PS2 dev kit back[1]. So, I had to swap devkits. How long did this take? Well, not counting the time to trundle the new devkit up to my desk.
1 minute to shut down the old dev kit
30 seconds to unplug old A/V cables, controller, USB keyboard
30 seconds to replug the cables into the new dev kit
1 minute to boot up the new devkit and get the IP address (yes, this one still displays the IP address)
1 minute to flash using the v2.7.1 .bin file
1 minute to completely shut down
1 minute to come up from a cold start
6 minutes elapsed time.
This is the way products are supposed to work. You plug it in, and it works. This should be a rule of thumb in all fields of design. Your product should be installed with the least possible number of steps possible, and it should be by default set up in a working configuration. Then you expose all the configuration options for the advanced users. There are exceptions, but most of them involve phrases like "We're sending an installation team to set up the product and show you how to run it".
People are ignorant by default. Don't expect them to know what they're doing. The more steps they have to go through the more likely they are to screw it up. This counts double for people who do know what they're doing. Do you remember every setting you changed when you were trying to get that print driver to work at 4:30am? Didn't think so.
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[0] No, I'm not saying who.
[1] There was a SNAFU where GFP forgot to cancel our order of devkits when they acquired their Former-ness, we were supposed to have straightened things out and bought the devkits but apparently (either through their being grumpy or someone being incompetent, no way of telling which) the devkit was not purchased and needed to be sent back. I'd say something pithy about how the games industry is like this, but really, every single industry is like this.
At work I have been forced to "upgrade" from Win2k to WinXP.
If I ever find the schmuck who decided that in explorer Ctrl-F should take you to an obnoxious menu instead of the useful generic find, I will break his kneecaps.
Thank god TweakUI lets you turn that off.
What rolls down stairs
Alone or in pairs
Rolls over your neighbor’s dog
Truck dismount
(because being productive at work is overrated)
On a serious note, Open Dynamics Engine looks to be a decent physics engine. Of course, I'm not a physics guy and I haven't tried to use it, so there's only so much weight my opinion carries.
And yes, you can get the guy to fly over the wall.
Special rules are an anti-pattern. If you have a guard character and you want the player to have to snipe the guard in the head in order to prevent a second guard from being alerted, then you shouldn't set it up as a scripted "other characters are alerted UNLESS this, that, or the other". It's far better to set up some rules for determining how the guard characters can see things in the world, and then giving the player the opportunity to take advantage of the placement of the guards. This leads to a world where the parts work in an internally consistent way which leads to better immersion. Also it makes the guards situation a problem solving situation rather than an equivalent of guess the verb[0] or find the button[1].
From a design & programming perspective, it prevents scripts from becoming spaghetti. Special cases become a matter of situation rather than inconsistent behavior.
One thing we've done in the past is to have animations tagged with gamestate altering behavior (e.g. the headshot animation has a tag to kill the character who was shot). This does tend to enforce consistency throughout the game, but I'm not convinced it's the best way to go.
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[0] Note: I'm not trying to criticize interactive fiction in general. I spent far too many hours playing Zork and Planetfall to be able to do that. Mostly I was too lazy to find a better link.
[1] Final puzzle, it's not a light, it's a button.