the-inbetween.com

IGF-off

I neglected to mention it before, but I've been challenged, by Walter "Ludonaut" Kim, to an IGF-off. I accepted the challenge -- perhaps foolishly -- so now that it's publically acknowledged, I can now be held accountable for my lack of delivery. I do intend to deliver, however, even if the delivery is a steaming, rotting pile of manure.

The challenge is as such: thou shalt make a game and submitteth it for judgement in thee Independent Games Festival. The submission period should be in September, so that gives me five months. Not a massive amount of time, but since there was no mention of quality or completeness, anything's game. Nonetheless, pride would dictate that it's best to do something playable. Even Driv3er-type of playability.

I have ideas -- oh so many, many ideas -- but I have no clue as to how I'm going to approach any of them. Even worse, I don't know where I'm going to find the free time for this, but unlike some of the others that were challenged, I ignored these concerns and commited. No commitment issues from me here.

And so it begins.

The middle-wareish platform that I've been considering the most for this endeavour is Torque 2D. There are other such environments that are under consideration (sticking with Flash because I know it so well, maybe Director, maybe Blitz, maybe Popcap's system), but I'm thinking that Torque is probably the best (and affordable) of them all. The one negative is that it lacks an in-browser player like the ones Shockwave or Virtools have, but I've heard that there are plans to make one.

The only thing I can't figure out is what is the difference (other than twenty bucks) between the early adopter version and the normal one. Anyone?

Now if only time and sleep could be purchased... zzzzz.

More Lumines

The one big problem that I think Lumines has is that the single player "challenge mode" doesn't ramp up the difficult fast enough. The challenge mode becomes as more of a game of attrition than a game of skill. I just finished a game (new high score!) that lasted nearly 40 minutes! Non-stop.

This is alright when you are playing a console, reclined on the sofa; but when you're holding the device for so long and staring at such a small screen for so long, it starts getting uncomfortable. Hands start to cramp and eyes get sore. Sure, you can always pause it and resume later -- but what if your battery is low? And for games like this, games that you need to get into a certain groove with, pausing and restarting every so often can be very disruptive.

Luckily, Lumines does offer a few time-limited modes of play, like a 60 second or 3 minute time attack. These are perfect for a portable device. You can pull the system out and play a full game during a commercial break or on the streetcar (though *I* wouldn't reveal my PSP on public transit, or public anything really). These work well. But, if you want to unlock all the various skins, you have to play the challenge mode and you have to play it for a looooooong stretch of time. Annoying.

Speaking of Q Entertainment's puzzle games, their DS puzzler, Meteos, has been officially announced for domestic release... published by Nintendo, no less. Though, sadly, it won't come until the end of June. Time to consider the import option again, as my last such consideration turned out great (Band Brothers).

Geekout

Spent the weekend at my parents' place, so the new PSP was used often. It needed some wearing in anyway, and nothing has been tasking the system quite as much as Lumines. Man, I'm hooked. Everywhere I look, I see two-coloured squares arranged two by two, falling, dropping, matching-up and exploding. It's the modern equivalent to tetris mind.

There isn't too much to the game, really. The play modes and styles are limited, but, really, so was Tetris and that didn't stop it any. I find some of the "skins" in the game to be over-designed and hard on the eyes (especially the one in vs. mode against that laser head thing), but overall they're all unique and interesting. Music's alright. But the game... oh yes, it plays well. Too well almost.

As you might have already seen, the "downloads" option in WipeOut Pure loads a built in web browser and accesses a "coming soon" landing page on SCEA's site. Since its standard HTTP, the requests can be (relatively) easily redirected, as was done here. Now that's all well and good, but another dude set up a DNS name server that redirects the SCEA request to his PSP portal. This is far easier to set up. Thus, I did. The above photo is proof.

So I can browse the web (and my site, above) on the PSP. Rock. It doesn't support CSS, but in the case of my site that's a good thing as it makes the content far more readable and accessible on a such a low-res screen. I knew this strict xhtml structure would pay off one day.

One last geek thing. The Rasterbator has provided me with this image, from one of my favourite (nostalgic) games of all time.

Maybe I'll put it up on my wall.

Edit: Hmmmmm

Bridge Toronto and random bits

Bridge, with bitshifter, flight404, We Work For Them, and DJ Kero. April 9th, 2005. Be there or be 8x8.

My list of the top shows that I grew up with that do not have a DVD release:

1. The Dana Carvey Show -- the best show to last for six episodes ever. Just today I realized that the *other guy* on the show was Steve Carell. This makes me want it more.¹
2. Parker Lewis Can't Lose -- at least give us the first season!
3. Exosquad -- I really liked this toon. For what it was, it was amazingly epic and sprawling. Never got the attention it deserved and was relegated to stupid hours. I remember waking up at 6am to watch this on weekdays.
4. Herman's Head -- ok, it wasn't a particularly great show, but I think that anyone that watched The Simpsons during its first few years (during its Thursday night run) has fond memories of Herman's Head. Pure nostalgia here.

Caught the new Nine Inch Nails video on The Wedge and it was awesomely boring. Then, after it was done, The Wedge went and played Head Like A Hole. What a big tease they are! The video can be, for the moment, viewed here. As for the song, it's not horrible but it feels tired. The sad thing is, the other songs that I have heard off of this album are even less impressive than The Hand That Feeds.

The new NIN is setting up to be a disappointment. The new Garbage is already a massive disappointment. sigh. The 90s aren't quite what they used to be.

¹. Crap, now I can't get the picture of him and Dana Carvey paying a hooker three hundred dollars and then running away giggling out of my mind.

PSP Cons

The PSP is now in my possession and it is currently sitting peacefully beside the DS. There is harmony everywhere except in my wallet. It is a good machine. Everyone -- and I mean (Gary Oldman style) everrrrryyyyyonnee -- that has one is raving about it. I would probably do the same, but I am a technosexual whore, so every new toy is likely to do that to me.

So, since everyone is gushing and all the positives have already been mention a trillion times over, I'm going to solely focus on the negatives of the PSP.

• The price. It's too much. The $249 (300CAD) price-point was borderline reasonable, but the insistence on getting a bundle for $50 more pushed it over the edge. Fuck. In my day, we got games in our bundles without having to pay more and the included games didn't suck. Seriously. Gretzky hockey? Does Sony think that Canadians have an affinity for shitty hockey games? And the Spider-Man 2 movie? Bleh.
• This machine, as nice as it looks, is a complete smudge and finger-print magnet. More so than the DS, which actively encourages you to touch it! This shouldn't be, but I guess the initial two days of gloss and shininess are more important to the Sony Style than the layers of grease covering the device come June.
• So I'm paying $50 for extra crap and I get: a soft-case, a 32MB Memory Stick, headphones, a remote, a strap, a sampler disc, a crappy game, a crappy movie, and no USB Cable.
• The hype machine claims PS2 quality graphics. Don't believe that. That same hype machine said, before its launch, that the PS2 will be capable of creating a real-time Toy Story. Granted, the graphics are still pretty damned amazing for such a small machine, and they're far better than those found on the PS1 or N64 (or, naturally, DS), but they lag behind the PS2. Think of it as PS 1.5 graphics. But, really, this is a fault of the marketting and not the actual machine.
• I have no comments on the video, photo, and music modes because it did not include a USB Cable. Arg.
• It's cool that there's an analog... knob on the device, but it feels weird.
• Wireless is good. Typing in a 26-digit hex WEP key using its built in keypad tool is bad.
• White headphones... for an all black device. I understand that you want some of the iPod marketshare, Sony, but this is the wrong way to go about it. It looks stupid, and if you are walking around the city with the PSP's headphones on other people are not going to think that you have a PSP -- they'll think you have an iPod. See, Apple used the white headphones in its branding. That brand is what was cool; not the headphones, and certainly not your (even lousier than the iPod's) headphones.

That's all I can think of, and since a lot of those are minor complaints, everything else is looking rosy. Now it's up to the content producers to do something really cool with the device.

Rantcasting

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but....

I've been rather curmudgeonly all week (or two), and very ranty as a result. There are numerous reasons for this, none of which are interesting. However, the rant queue was piling up with topics and I was too tired to tackle them so I'm just going to purge the whole list. You can make your own rants on the following subjects:

1. UBI Soft's increasingly annoying marketing and branding, and how the Sam Fisher Blog (guh) fits in alongside the "fragdolls" and the "And 1" licensed basketball game and the next PoP sequel.
2. The May 1st Reboot and the bitter taste that the 2001 event still leaves in my mouth and the still existant hostilities toward the event by those present for that debacle.
3. God of War and its content and designer and what it means in the grander scheme of things, but this rant is tired already and I want to avoid it. *cough*
4. Jeff Weise and the extremely predictable finger pointing at video games, even though there's been no evidence of him actually playing any games. Nevermind the fact that he was a teased kid with an interest in Hitler and Nazism with a mother in a coma in a hospital and a father that committed suicide.
5. other stupid things

Instead, since it's the long weekend and I'm going to chill, do nothing and play with my new toy. One thing that annoys me about the new toy is that, for all the stupid bundled crap that Sony included, one thing that they neglected to toss in was a freaking cheapie USB cable. And since all the USB Cable stores in the USB Cable district are closed for the holiday, I can't try any of the video, photo, and music features of the PSP. Damn. Wipeout Pure it is then!

Hmmm, I just noticed that my side-bar isn't updating with my latest del.icio.us links anymore. If you're subscribed to that then you haven't missed anything, so I highly recommend that you subscribe to it. Yes. Edit: seems fixed.

I also highly recommend checking out Venetian Snares' Rossz Csillag Allat Született. It seems well received and it is much more accessible than his recent Winnipeg Is A Frozen Shithole release. Though, really, I only mention that album because the man's hatred for Winnipeg is quite amusing. I lived in Winnipeg for less than half a year so I can't quite compare experiences, but I do think that tracks with titles as Winnipeg is a Dogshit Dildo, Die Winnipeg Die Die Die Fuckers Die and Winnie the Dog Pooh tell me all I need to know about this man's appreciation for the winter wonderland of Winnipeg.

But do listen to Rossz Csillag Allat Született if you can, it's outstanding.

nCast

First there were Podcasts, which were mp3 clips passed through RSS and synced with iPods. Since they were mp3s, they could be listened to on any mp3 player and the iPod connection became kind of moot. But the name remained and it annoys me. Others agree. As I posted there, I've seen a few people justify the seemingly iPod connected "Podcast" terminology by saying that the "POD" stands for "Personal/On-Demand". I think they're full of shit..

It's a stupid name based on a brand that has little to do with that brand and isn't very clear to those new to the terminology.

Then, of course, someone went and coined PSPcasting. Please stop. It's stupid. It's not clear. It's not even easy to say pee-ess-pee-cast. Please stop with the <corporate brand>cast garbage. What's next? A DScast? Zencast? Network Walkmancast?

If you put your rss feeds or mp3s on your Palm, are you Palmcasting? No. You're syncing data. And, in this case, you are syncing syndicated media; this isn't synonymous with broadcasting. Um, synesthesia in a synod in Sydney. Please find a better term for this. Or, just use something simple like "video syncing".

ChipTune Toronto

If you are one of the geeky Torontonians upset that the Data Destruction tour, featuring bit shifter, nullsleep and covox, isn't coming to our centre of the universe, then read the following, otherwise ignore.

If my sources are correct (hah), there was an attempt to have a Toronto date but no venue was found. But don't fret, for I have heard that bit shifter will be making an appearance at fitc. Official confirmation on bitshifter's events page. He'll be performing with flight404? That could be interesting.

I'll probably check it out as I will be there at the conference (again) this year as I am (again) judging the awards show. Or, as I like to call it "laying down the critical smackdown."

Shadow Link

I've been playing around with my first imports ever, Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits and Daigasso! Band Brothers, but I want to talk about the next Legend of Zelda.

The new GDC trailer caused an avalanche of reactions ranging from "holy shit I'm buying Nintendo stock" to "I miss the cel-shading already". My thoughts mirrored the latter opinion. It's no secret that Nintendo was planning on making a follow up to the Wind Waker using the same cel-shading engine, they mentioned it themselves, so what happened between then and last year's E3? I was hoping to see that very engine applied to a more finished and less rushed game than the Wind Waker (don't get me wrong, it was a gorgeous game and still a top 5-percenter), but that is looking less and less likely. Well, less likely for this generation.

As I rewatch the GDC Trailer, one word--and only one word--flashes in my mind, "appeasement". It's as though Nintendo is trying to appeal to the insecure "celda" whiners and the gritty Mario with hookers types all at once. It is a sad, sad state of affairs that this so-called "realistic" Link has become the expected Link. It is sad that the cel-shaded Link has been dismissed by a vocal group as being too childish, despite the fact his art style is more true to the spirit and charm of the original four Zelda adventures than all the N64 (and SSB and Soul Calibur 2 and Spaceworld demo) Links combined.

What gets me is that this new trailer was revealed during the same keynote in which Nintendo spoke of "the heart of the gamer" and about the importance of innovation and not technology, and how that creativity will bring new gamers into the fold. These are the exact same things that the Wind Waker did. The gameplay was rehashed, but it had a lot of artistic innovation. Its art direction -- the "interactive cartoon" nature of the game -- attracted many newcomers; people who wouldn't have been interested in a new Zelda game were drawn by its presentation. Many of those people were (almost ironically) mature adults.

Yes, it did alienate some gamers, but the fact is the established Nintendo fanbase would have purchased that game anyway and that very vocal "celda" group (I would bet) wouldn't have been a big purchasing power anyway. My bet would be that they are of the N64/PS1-as-first-console generation, not ever really knowing Zelda beyond the N64's reach. That is the stereotypical gamer dood crowd and the one that Nintendo is not focusing on (UBISoft and EA have that market covered). sigh. So why did Nintendo listen to that very same gamer to make its own game design decisions?

If you let your fans dictate your game design, then that to me shows a lack of faith in your own game designers. And if you are going to listen to the masses for direction, then be prepared: the lowest 10% of the crowd will contribute 90% of the stupidity. That lowest bunch is always the loudest bunch. As far as I know, there is no official "law" for this but it might as well could be listed as a corollary to Sturgeon's Law.

For proof of this law, please refer to Shadow The Hedgehog.

Coin Stacks

There's something noble about creating physical games. Games you can touch and feel and assemble out of random crap around your apartment. Half-Life 2 requires about a grand worth of computer equipment to play, this puzzle can be had at no more than $1.24* of your local coinage. And, best of all, you get to keep this coinage.

I've been thinking puzzle games, so here is one.

Take a piece of paper and draw a four by three grid on it. Make sure that the squares are big enough to hold a quarter. Now find four Pennies, four Nickels, and four Quarters and arrange them on the grid as such:

The rules for the puzzle are fairly simple. During a "turn" you can move a coin into an adjacent square on the grid (with or without a coin) so long as you meet the following requirements:

1. You must alternate turns in the order of "Penny", "Nickel", "Quarter". So, during your first turn, you can only move a penny. During your second turn, a nickel. Then a quarter. Then a penny again, and so on. If you can not make such a move, you lose. Start again.
2. You can only move to a square adjacent to the coin (left, right, up, down) so long as that square is empty or occupied with coins of a different value (ie. no two coins of equal value can occupy the same square). Multiple coins in a square is called a stack.
3. You can move a coin off of a stack as long as that coin has the lowest value in the stack. So you can move a penny off of a nickle or quarter and a nickel off of a quarter, but you can't move a nickel off of a penny and, well, you can't move a quarter off of a stack at all.
4. Lastly, if you do get three coins on a stack, the stack is locked and you can no longer move coins off of it.

The main goal is to end up with four stacks and no loose coins. This isn't too difficult to do. Once you do that, you can try the harder objectives:

1. get four stacks, but position them so that they are laid out one per column (unless I screwed up, this one is doable).
2. get four stacks of equal alignment (ie. all four would be "penny, quarter, nickle" or "dime, nickel, penny"). I don't know if it's possible to do this.
3. get four stacks of equal alignment positioned one per column. (Once again, I don't know if this is possible).

And there you go. A quick and easy puzzle. One that even frustrates me sometimes (I think that's a good sign.) I call it Coin Stacks.

* if you are feeling frugal, you can replace quarters with dimes -- but I like the size progression that comes with quarters. Even better, I suggest going with pennies, quarters, and loonies, but I guess this only applies to Canadians.

On Previously Mentioned Unfinished Games

The Shockwave FPS alpha demo Phosphor, which I linked in my linklog, has spread like wildfire without any context to it other than "damn, that's cool!" So I feel that some context might be in order. The link to the demo was originally posted in the dirGames mailing list (original post). The original post has more info on debugging it, if you run into problems.

After posting that, the author, Nick Kang, further elaborated on his plans and decisions:

Time:
This so far has taken almost 3 months full-time, 3 months part-time, spread over a year. I spent a lot of time learning to texture, rig, and crudely animate in 3dsmax, so probably 4 months of coding total.

[...]

Originality (lack of):
At this stage, replicating a 5 year-old game is the whole point, so I'll take that as a positive comment ;-). If all goes well, I hope to get a little mileage out of this framework, so maybe the first game will be a small-arena-deathmatch, but hopefully I'll have a chance to build other games on top of it afterwards, before it becomes obsolete. The way I look at it, the success of Quake and Unreal wasn't just the games, but the amount of other games that was built with the tech. For an independent developer, I agree it's pointless to compete with the commercial giants on production level, so my entire selling point is "deathmatch-in-a-browser", and I'm hoping there's an audience for just that. But you bring up an interesting point, about not exercising the creative freedoms accorded to indie developers. I'm just trying to make the kind of game I would like to play myself. But good point, something to think about.

[..]

Multiplayer:
I'm hoping to use the MultiUser xtra in a peer-to-peer arrangement, I'm planning on not using the MU server application. One instance of the Shockwave app will act as the server, listening for connections, and be playable locally, or at least running as a spectator. Once that's working, then a centralized server might be set up so that game servers can publish their IPs for internet connections. Basically, the same way most PC shooters do it.

So there you go. Multiplayer is planned.

I also have more clarification about the other game that I mentioned last week, Zam Beezee. If you thought that the game was unfinished and possibly still in beta, as I did, then you'd be correct!

They are currently debugging it and the version that I, and possibly you, downloaded will time out after a couple of weeks. Why this isn't advertised, I don't know, but there you have it. It's a public beta (alpha?), so that explains the bugs. It will go for-pay later.

Edit. Got more clarification. This version will time out on March 15th. They will probably post another free timed version after that, before going to market.

Dan! Da! Dan!

I linked this on my side/del.icio.us feed, but I feel it's worth mentioning here too. Free game alert part deux: Dan! Da! Dan!

The game is from "Omega", who made my long time favourite, Every Extend. Dan! Da! Dan! isn't as polished and focused, but it does do a few interesting (and original) things.

If not obvious, the controls are as such. "Z" fires. Hold "Z" to charge up, and release to fire a charged shot. This has a large radius and goes through "walls", so you can destroy blocks you can't normally get at. It also slows down any incoming bullets if they come in contact with it. As you break things, little triangles are released. Collect them to charge your "Hyper". When the hyper is ready, press "X" to activate it. Activating it removes all bullets on screen (they turn into triangles and give you a point bonus, so use it when there's a lot of bullets on screen). Hyper also gives you a limited ammo spread shot that does a lot more damage.

If you shoot a block enough, it breaks, along with any adjacent blocks of the same colour. Some blocks, when they explode, release a barrage of bullets (the type of which is determined by the symbol on the block). Some blocks have turrets that automatically fire at you. The orb blocks, when destroyed, remove all blocks on screen of that colour. The Mario-esque "?" blocks release a Time Bonus. In the end, you get bonuses for Time Left, Stock (lives), your Level (which increases as you use hypers), and your Distance travelled (how far you progressed in the game).

It sounds complicated and it's hard to explain the nuances of the game, but after a couple of plays it should be quite obvious.

Once you finally figure it out, then you'll be hit with an additional confusion -- the final score tallies. Sometimes it might seem as though you play worse but score higher. Other times, you play to the end but score weak. It can feel arbitrary at times -- as if you aren't being directly rewarded for your actions -- but that too will become clear after a few plays. It all has to d with getting a sense to how the reward bonuses are structured and what you need to do to maximize them. When that clarity hit me, I was impressed by it.

The reason for that is that there is a very subtle balance in the gameplay. The rules of the game universe are simple and strictly defined, so nothing ever changes in response to your play style. However, a certain emergent complexity arises because of your play style. For example, to get a higher "time" bonus, you need to destroy blocks as quickly as possible (the more blocks you remove from the screen, the faster you move up). However, destroying blocks non-stop means that you are more likely to fill the screen with non-stop barrages of bullets. It's not the game making itself more difficult, it is the player making it harder. There is a similar balance with the "hyper" mode.

This kind of attention to detail is what separates an action shooter from a mindless action shooter. It's the kind of subtlety that Popcap doesn't get, as is evidenced by their recent dreck of a shooter, Heavy Weapon. Whoo boy, compare and contrast those two titles.

Current best Dan! Da! Dan! score: 312,840.