Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Bars of Black and White

Published on January 31, 2009 in Games. 0 Comments

Gregory Weir recently released a new Flash-based adventure game called Bars of Black and White. And here are some thoughts:

  • The game’s basic mechanic of using a scanner to read barcodes (found in all kinds of places and forms) is simple and original, and works excellently with the game’s Orwellian theme.
  • Speaking of the theme – I like it. Using the room as a symbol of mental and physical imprisonment is something that I have also done myself, and an image that appeals to me.
  • The only thing the game lacked for me was surprise, but that’s actually a compliment. How so? Well, that’s because large parts of the game are exactly the way I would’ve made them. It was almost… familiar.
  • The use of crudely drawn black and white graphics is excellent. It creates an appropriate atmosphere, and also strongly supports the game mechanics. If the game’s graphics weren’t so near abstraction, you couldn’t believably use the scanner on so many different objects.

All in all, an excellent little game. Gregory has promised to release a game per month for the whole year; I am looking forward to all of them.

Now go have a look.

The Incredible Arghness

Published on January 31, 2009 in News. 6 Comments

Recently another abyss of human behaviour has opened up in front of us, and it’s not pleasant to look at. I have only vaguely hinted at some problems we had about a year ago with certain people (which included the joyous event of someone putting a rootkit on my old computer and us getting the blame for what was done with that, which was more than a little shocking and absurd), but now it turns out that when that whole situation should’ve finally been put to rest, it in fact continued festering, and people have been spreading the most insane rumours about me and Verena. So, yeah, apparently we’re criminals who live in a three-way sex commune. (This is not a joke.)

Now, the sickening part of all this is not that people are saying these things. There’s a reason that I got so tired of the theatre group we were part of: the endless backstabbing and rumourmongering are nothing new, and we had to contend with that a great deal when doing our last show. What sickens me, what really sickens me, is that a number of people who should quite simply know better apparently do not. Not any close friends, thankfully – all of those think this is about as absurd as it gets – but nevertheless people that we have known for years, people that we have at times gone out of way to help or to support, both personally and in terms of the theatre. People who should know us well enough to know that this is all insane. (Though, frankly, these rumours have reached such a level of weirdness that I can’t help but think that anyone should see they’re insane.)

I’ve always believed that most people are essentially good, and more clever than they are given credit for. Sometimes I doubt the latter.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…

Published on January 29, 2009 in Thoughts. 0 Comments

From: Obama’s program of war

Gates told the senators: “There is little doubt that our greatest military challenge right now is Afghanistan. As you know, the United States has focused more on Central Asia in recent months. President Obama has made it clear that the Afghanistan theatre should be our top overseas military priority.”

The war in Afghanistan, he added, would be “long and difficult.” The short-term time frame he placed on the conflict was “five years”—at least until 2014. He said an increase in US casualties was “likely” as operations are stepped-up against the anti-occupation insurgency being waged by loyalists of the former Taliban regime and other Afghan Islamist movements.

Gates stressed that as the new administration escalates military action in Central Asia, it has no intention of withdrawing from Iraq. Warning that resistance could erupt again against US forces in Iraq, he said “there may be hard days ahead for our troops.” Even if units designated as “combat” are pulled out roughly according to the 16-month schedule promised by Obama during the election, Gates emphasized that a sizeable force would remain and “we should still expect to be involved in Iraq on some level for many years to come.”

And from what they’re saying, the situation they have created in Afghanistan should be cleaned up by others, while they go kill more people. Because bombing a country where most people don’t even have access to water is the true path to democracy. Oh, and of course killing people in Pakistan is the way to peace.

More choices

Published on January 28, 2009 in Games. 0 Comments

I just noticed a user review of Desert Bridge in TIGdb, and felt I needed to remark on a couple of points it makes. I hope my posts about reviews don’t feel like I’m constantly being defensive; I’m mainly writing this to illuminate game design choices I made, in the interest of furthering discussion/thought on these matters.

Navigation is awkward at best; it takes a while to get used to the idea that each room is 4 screens, one in each direction, and even then it’s easy to get turned around. There’s no map function, making navigation even more difficult.

I’m not sure what to say about the first point. I realize that the idea of each room having four views is not how most modern games do it (and why should they; they have a different graphical style). But it’s not like this is some weird idea that I dreamed up. In older games – which Desert Bridge is very much modelled after – this was pretty normal. I guess some of these old conventions are being forgotted, which is also normal, but a bit of a problem for an old-school game… not sure where this train of thought leads.

The lack of a map is, indeed, sometimes confusing, and I considered including one at some point. But that just didn’t feel right in terms of the concept. Besides, what’s wrong with making your own map? We’re used, these days, to being spoonfed everything – but I actually think that making maps and jotting down notes is fun – and enormously immersive. Games like Desert Bridge are an intellectual exercise, after all. It’s worth playing them a little differently.

Menus are a bit unreliable, you can only use actions on things that are puzzle-specific, and thus, you can’t take a closer look at any of the myriad possible red herrings and other potential easter egg spots… some people would consider this a good thing, but I still have fond memories of licking a building in the opening screens of Space Quest IV to find Roger Wilco responding with “MMM! Wild berry!”

I’m not sure what “menus are a bit unreliable” means. I hope it doesn’t mean that there are any bits where menus don’t respond – as far as I know, everything you can do in the game will get you a response. I made sure of that.

The simplicity of the interaction with the environment – well, obviously that was a conscious choice. Having multiple interaction icons/verbs/cursors/whatever would add an unnecessary amount of frustration, making the game’s internal logic much harder to understand. I also have very fond memories of some of the odder respones you could get in some games – Quest for Glory comes to mind – but the House at Desert Bridge is weird enough without making the interaction more complex.

Since every single response you can get in the game is specific (and there is a LOT of them), changing interaction in this way would also have meant having to write even more incredible amounts of text, or sacrificing the specificity of the responses. Neither was a reasonable option. Keeping interaction simple and content complex is a choice I am very happy with.

The main part of this game that I was frustrated with, navigation aside, was the download. 40 megs normally isn’t bad for me, but it took a dozen attempts – each time I tried, it crapped out around the 80% mark. Frustration, thy name is “no mirrors available”.

A couple of people reported problems with downloading the game at one point – I think the servers were being updated at one point, which is probably what caused the problem. But I would love more mirrors. Well, having any mirrors at all, actually. If anyone has any good suggestions…

More editing

Published on January 28, 2009 in Projects. 0 Comments

Yesterday we spent about an hour and a half editing one paragraph.

One. Paragraph.

Still, it’s absolutely worth it, and it’s bound to get quicker as we get to the parts with less exposition and more action. And I have to say, editing is a fascinating process. You can really take a whole paragraph apart into individual bits, and then reassemble it in a totally new way. The result has all the same highlights as the original, but works a thousand times better.

And then there’s cutting. I’ve been working in the university’s Writing Center for two years now, and I’ve always emphasised the importance of cutting what you don’t need. Applying this principle to fiction is sometimes painful, but often also a relief. Some sentences or sentence parts not only do not work, they ruin everything around them by screwing up the structure, rhythm, even the mental associations of the rest of the paragraph. You kick them out, and suddenly everything flows.

And when you’re tired, you play some Might & Magic VII.

Oooof

Published on January 25, 2009 in Projects. 0 Comments

Spent more than three hours editing the prologue to Verena’s novel. It was good work; we made the text clearer, removed things which didn’t work, and added several things which do. It still needs a bit more work to fill it out, but we’ve taken it from a rough draft to a funny narrative that will catch the reader’s interest.

But man, this is hard work. I knew that going in, of course, but still. I’m exhausted.

Froghead Is Real.

Published on January 22, 2009 in News. 3 Comments

This is the Official Froghead Video. Those of you who have played The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge already know the song, of course, but this deserves to be the most famous video on the internet, ever. Seriously.

Lyrics:

My name is Froghead and I live in a hole
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahaha
My name is Froghead and I eat lumps of coal
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahaha
My name is Froghead and I make sausages roll
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahaha

(And I can add that I am very proud to have played a part in its creation. It was my suggestion to take what was an in-joke between Helen and some of her friends and make it… REAL! Helen did all the work, of course, but I can take some small credit for its current manifestation. Muahahaha!)

Change? Sorry, we’re all out.

Published on January 22, 2009 in Thoughts. 5 Comments

It’s depressing to see so many people going wild over Obama. It’s nice, of course, to see that what people are expecting of him is all very progressive and left-wing (he was voted as the anti-war, anti-everything-Bush-stands-for candidate, after all, and mostly that’s left-wing sentiment, even if people don’t want to say it)… but the fact that very little of this is likely to actually happen is so painfully obvious. People listen to his inauguration speech and pick out the things that sound progressive, and disregard the things that will tell them a whole lot more about what’s coming.

Yes, Obama is likely to restore science to its proper place. He’s not going to be pushing Creationism (but that’s a pretty low standard). Yes, he is likely to be a lot less racist when it comes to people of other countries (which doesn’t mean he won’t persecute them for other reasons).

One of the main themes of Obama’s speech was the collective blame all Americans share for the current economic situation, and how sacrifices will have to be made. Well, who do you think will have to make these sacrifices? The majority of the population that does all the work and whose living standards are falling at extreme speeds, or the 1% that does nothing and lives off of an absurd and outdated economic system that is falling apart in front of everyone’s eyes? Obama talks about cutting government services. Is he talking about investing less in the army or in developing more destructive weapons? Is he talking about throwing fewer billions to the banks? No, he’s talking about the few programs that are left that allow people to survive in this dysfunctional economy. He’s talking austerity.

And what about his cabinet? How is a combination of people who worked for Clinton (who also bombed Iraq, whose embargo killed children in the hundreds of thousands, who bombed Serbia and did all sorts of other nasty things in Somalia and Haiti, who introduced the concept of “rogue states” and who also continued cutting social programs) and people who worked for Bush (you remember him, right?) change? It’s not change. It’s the same damn thing wrapped in different paper.

Obama isn’t anti-war. He’s just for different wars, equally destructive and unjustified, but more successfully waged, and explained away as humanitarian intervention (with bombs). He wants to attack Pakistan. He wants to expand the war in Afghanistan. He doesn’t want to take the option of bombing Iran off the table. He wants to recruit nearly 100,000 more soldiers.

Obama isn’t for social equality. He’s not even for social or economic justice. Hell, he’s not even for legal justice – the war crimes of the previous administration aren’t interesting to him. Because he’s not unlikely to repeat many of them himself. Clinton sure did. (The war crimes in Gaza, meanwhile, don’t seem to be very interesting either.)

Obama isn’t even remotely questioning this whole idea of “the war on terror” that the Bush administration used to justify its imperialist actions. The point isn’t to fight the war with different weapons, it’s to realize that there is no damn war. This “war” is a construct that serves those in power – on both “sides” of it. It’s a fantastic excuse to do all sorts of horrible things, and to have people do anything you ask of them, whether your name is George Bush or Osama bin Laden. But of course Obama knows that. That’s why he could appeal to the huge anti-war sentiment in the US to win against Hillary Clinton, and then go on to drop all of that to make his corporate sponors feel at ease.

Changing the face up there is not real change. Change is only real when it affects the structures that define politics. With the Obama administration, all of these structures will remain the same, and so will the ultimate result of the government’s actions.

Recommended reading:

Jumper

Published on January 22, 2009 in Film. 0 Comments

A very short review, as they tend to be.

So, Jumper. It had a trailer that looked somewhere between interesting and silly. As it turns out, it’s more on the interesting side than on the silly. Actually, most of it is pretty good – there just isn’t enough of it. The idea of people with teleporting powers being hunted by religious fanatics is a good setup, and all of the actors are excellent at making it believable (only Rachel Bilson seems a bit too “Hollywood pretty”). As are the special effects and locations, which are all well-done and believable. I didn’t groan once.

I did laugh out loud several times. This is actually a well-written movie. Except, as I said, for the fact that there’s just not enough of it. A major plot thread goes missing and is never resolved, even though it looks like they might have shot scenes about it and cut them out. And the whole story has no proper resolution. It feels more like a pilot to a potentially cool series than like a complete movie.

Still, it’s imaginative and it’s fun, and as such I would recommend it as an enjoyable adventure movie.

Museum Update, and a possible goodbye

Published on January 19, 2009 in Games. 10 Comments

Since someone asked – yes, I am still going to do that update for Museum that will get it to run on Vista. Soon. I haven’t had much time lately, and what little time I’ve had I’ve spent working on my film and my novel.

And I must say that, quite frankly, I am seriously considering giving up game design, at least for the next few years. I dearly love making games, and it’s a very strong impulse for me, but after eight years of doing it and next to no response, I am starting to think my time could be better spent on other projects. No matter how hard I work, no matter how many emails I send to various sites, all my work is ignored; I’m tired of feeling like a second-rate William Blake. If at least I had the visions, you know, that might make up for it. But I don’t. And while I don’t need praise for myself, I am proud of some of my work, and I do think the games themselves deserve more – especially Museum and Desert Bridge. But nowadays it seems you have to be selling your games for anyone to take interest – art can only be art if it’s commercial, apparently. So if you sell people a game about an old lady walking around a graveyard, that’s interactive poetry (buying the game adds the possibility of random death! yay!) but if you try to explore the medium and create a unique central metaphor that is impossible in any other form, well… maybe I should’ve charged people 15$ so that Urizen can appear at random and bite off their heads.

Now I’m just sounding bitter. And I have to go to work. But the Museum patch will be done. Soon. I promise.