04.27.07
Posted in Humour at 10:09
Randall Munroe of XKCD is trying to sort of hi-jack a viral ad by (apparently) Ask.com. I think that’s such a hilarious concept, I am compelled to help out. My contribution will be a small and probably largely insignificant one, as my blog isn’t exactly A-list, but what the hell:
THE ALGORITHM CONSTANTLY FINDS JESUS
THE ALGORITHM KILLED JEEVES
THE ALGORITHM IS BANNED IN CHINA
THE ALGORITHM IS FROM JERSEY
Funny that it’s from Ask.com, actually. My first guess was that it was from Google. Can you imagine how much sense that would make? How easy would it be to advertise for Google? You just chuck some nonsense on a billboard, and the first place people will go to find out what the Hell it is… is Google! Easiest job ever.
Speaking of Viral ads, they (like most advertising) sometimes have the opposite effect on me (but for different reasons than normal ads). Good viral advertising is creating something hilarious and posting it to the ‘Net; it’s hard as hell to do and virtually uncontrollable, but if it works, I will gladly help distribute it. Especially if it’s something to do with cats. But if you post something cryptic on a billboard, hoping I will be curious and Google it, all you achieve is to make me spiteful. The latest example was a billboard on my way to work saying “Auris means gold”. I still don’t know what the Hell it was advertising, because I stubbornly refused to play along with their stupid scheme. Trick me, will you? Exploit my natural curiosity? I think not!
- Music: Story of the Year - We Don't Care Anymore
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04.23.07
Posted in Game design, Games at 16:50
I got S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (henceforth “Stalker”, FFS) to work by disabling the dynamic lighting. Now everything looks way less impressive, but at least it doesn’t crash every 3-5 minutes. There are two immediately obvious structural differences between Stalker and Boiling Point or Oblivion:
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- Location: Chernobyl - The Dark Valley
- Mood: Slightly paranoid
- Music: Nine Inch Nails - Survivalism
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04.18.07
Posted in Games at 19:36
My first experience with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl has yielded two different crashes. The first one appeared when I asked for the tutorial, and just shut the program down but left my monitor in 1024×768 resolution, the second one appeared when I was about to leave the starting room, and locked up my PC with a “Program error” forcing me to reboot the hard way.
Both times, my control scheme settings were reset to default. And I haven’t managed to get anti-aliasing to actually work yet. Also, the game seems choppy in the menus, even though my PC surpasses the recommended requirements. Oh and this is after patching. I haven’t even made it out of that starting room yet.
I love this game already!
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04.16.07
Posted in Personal at 21:04
So today is my birthday. Got another 2 hours left, but I figure nothing substantial is likely to happen in the intervening period, so an evaluation of the day would be in order. First off, I gotta say hands down: The weidest thing about birthdays is getting a bunch of automated congratulation e-mail from Internet fora I’ve barely set foot on. Such as the Atari Europe forums, on which I’ve made not a single post ever and barely even realized existed, which even upped the weirdness-factor by sending me a mail in Danish! But hey, at least my ‘gratz from real living people outnumbered my automated congratulation mail by far.
Here’s the mandatory list of material goods added to the stash this year:
- A spare battery for my still pretty new laptop.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for the NDS.
- Mer de Noms by A Perfect Circle.
- Donnie Darko director’s cut.
- Half-Real by Jesper Juul (it’s a book).
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl - okay so I bought this for myself, but still!
- 10 dollars donated to TNM by EER! Pwnage.
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- Music: A Perfect Circle - Breña
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04.08.07
Posted in Game design, Game news at 17:38
Gamasutra has an interesting summary of a GDC ‘07 lecture by Randy Smith, kick-ass lead designer of Thief 3.
It’s about how to prevent the player from loading too frequently, thus overriding his own actions and damaging immersion, by design rather than restrictions. The main point seems to be that whenever the player takes a loss (to health or ammo in a shooter, for example), he should feel that he has gained more than he lost (by beating a tough boss or somesuch). Interestingly, Smith used Thief as an example of a game where the player is quite inclined to load if he slips up the least bit because regaining what you lost is much more trouble than simply quickloading and trying again.
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- Music: Van Halen - Ain't Talking 'Bout Love
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04.06.07
Posted in Games at 20:00
I’m not usually big into casual games, but PopCap has somehow succeeded being the only casual games company to make it onto my radar, and that alone is cause to admire them. Not a lot of casual games companies manage to profile themselves as well as they do, and on top of that, they even make really good games! Indeed, they’ve made the only casual game I’ve ever bought: Bookworm Adventures. But now Kieron Gillen posted a link to the Peggle demo on his blog, speaking highly of the outburst of Ode To Joy that is the game’s way to reward you for completing each challenge.
I downloaded the demo, and today I realized that Peggle is the first game since Deus Ex that has made me throw up my arms in triumph and laugh out loud in amazement over my own actions. Most recently, this occurred as I had ONE ball left, and there were two orange balls left on the screen, in different corners. Somehow I managed to bounce my ball off the first orange one, hitting a blue one, bouncing off that across half the screen, hitting the last orange ball perfectly, bouncing off that to another blue one, then off the side of the screen and into the purple bonus-ball, and then flying neatly into the 100,000-point end bonus hole in the middle of the bottom of the screen. That was an unparallelled thrill, rivalling even the best moments of Jade Empire.
But I still suspect Jade Empire will be a more lasting experience.
Oh, and Kieron was right about Ode To Joy.
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04.04.07
Posted in Game design, Games at 09:33
(Heheh, if I had my own column somewhere, I’d totally call it Bored at Work.)
How do you reckon interactive dialogues can be split into different types, different methods? If at all. Interactive dialogue is of great interest to me, because dialogue in general is useful in telling a story, is a very fundamental part of the way humans interact, and is really rather difficult to pull off in an interactive way.
I guess the first step on the way to categorize methods of dialogue in games is to think of various games that have done it in different ways. I’m not very interested in discussing linear dialogue, because it can only really be pulled off in two ways: A specific exchange of words that can be interrupted and a specific exchange of words that cannot be interrupted. Sure, linear dialogue that can be interrupted is sort of, nearly, almost interactive, but only in the same way your television is interactive because you can change channels. Sure you can watch something else, but you don’t really have a lot of control over what they send, do you? In other words, I’m not interested in Half-Life (wherein no dialogue ever includes protagonist speech, which is interesting) or Max Payne (which has some lovely dialogue and even lovelier monologue), I’m interested in conversation trees and the likes.
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04.02.07
Posted in Humour at 22:05
If we attempt to turn on the vaccuum cleaner hooked up in the living room, the lamp over the coffee table lights up. If we turn on the light in the garage, we get very dim light in the garage but a reasonable light level in the living room. The light switch in my parents’ bedroom toggles the light on the piano downstairs… my father is no electrician.
I’m glad my room is apparently on a seperate circuit.
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