NEWER POSTS

Adequate Theft Auto

By Shamus Posted Thursday Apr 19, 2007

Filed under: Game Reviews 38 comments
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I’m still working on Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.

I have a very strong love / hate relationship with the GTA series. On one hand, I love exploring a huge, open-ended city with lots to do. I love the freedom, the size, the running day / night cycle, the varied vehicles and other modes of transport, and the (usually) great music. On the other hand, I hate the missions, I find the characters repulsive, and the stories are frequently wearisome. I love everything about the game except the game itself. I hate the mandatory central story, and I love some of the optional stuff.

I wonder how widespread my view is. I can’t be the only one.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Adequate Theft Auto”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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38 comments

 

GamezNFlix vs. Gamefly

By Shamus Posted Thursday Apr 19, 2007

Filed under: Random 21 comments
Does Not ComputePrevious Post
Next PostGamefly: They Actually Have Games

So I want to rent games. There are two major services I’ve found so far. GamezNFlix and Gamefly. I’ve signed up for both so that I can properly compare. I will cancel one (or maybe both) before the trial runs out.

When it comes to price, GamezNFlix wins. They offer 3 games at a time for $17, as opposed to Gamefly’s 2 at a time for $22. No contest.

When it comes to availability, GamezNFlix wins. Everything that caught my eye was available now, as opposed to GameFly, where nothing I wanted was available. GameFly is either an appaling joke, a scam, or managed by fantastic morons. You have to wait for days for most titles, weeks for others, and even ones which seem to be available can jump to unavailable without warning.

When it comes to movies, GamezNFlix wins. GameFly doesn’t have any movies. (Although, it seems like they don’t have any games either.)

So in this little contest, Gamefly isn’t even trying. They offer an overpriced service that offers to ship you fewer games never. That’s a tough sell, no matter how much you’re charging.

Except…

Gamefly offers Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance games, and GamezNFlix doesn’t. We own two Nintendo DS’s here, which can play both DS and GBA titles. This was a major selling point with us.

So what to choose? The service which doesn’t do everything I need, or the service which does everything I need, but has terrible service and costs too much?

Right now I’m leaning towards canceling both and giving up. Although, if you want to rent games and you don’t care about the DS, then without a doubt GamezNFlix is the way to go. I’ve only been a customer of Gamefly for twelve hours, and have yet to give them any money, and already they have managed to annoy me in numerous ways. It is the only task for which they have shown any enthusiasm or skill.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Does Not ComputePrevious Post
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21 comments

 

Gamefly: First Impressions

By Shamus Posted Thursday Apr 19, 2007

Filed under: Rants 29 comments
My Stupid Broken WebsitePrevious Post
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As I mentioned before, I recently picked up a Playstation 2. At the moment I only have one game, which has so far failed to impress me. I want to fill in my software library but I also don’t want to break the bank, which is highly breakable at the moment. I’ve seen a few ads for Gamefly, the service that lets you rent videogames through the mail and keep them as long as you like for a flat monthly fee. Like Netflix, only for games. It sounds like a good way to sample a lot of various titles in a short time, which is a good deal for me as I try to get a feel for what’s out there.

First impressions are everything, and Gamefly made a pretty abyssmal first impression on me. I ran through their list of PS2 titles, clicking on the various games I’ve seen go by over the last few years but never got a chance to play. Here is what my queue looks like:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Gamefly: First Impressions”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

My Stupid Broken WebsitePrevious Post
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29 comments

 

DM of the Rings LXXXIX:
Killing Time

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Apr 18, 2007

Filed under: DM of the Rings 143 comments
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An Unexpected ManeuverPrevious Post
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Don't Dream it's Over

Aragorn is bored with the battle.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

DM of the Rings LXXXVIII:
An Unexpected ManeuverPrevious Post
Next PostDM of the Rings XC:
Don't Dream it's Over

143 comments

 

Does Not Compute

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Apr 18, 2007

Filed under: Random 31 comments
The Creativity CyclePrevious Post
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A bit of code-blogging.

I spent some of yesterday afternoon debugging a very mundane bit of code. Nothing special. A bunch of memory space was getting trashed, as poorly managed memory is wont to do. I picked through the code and found some appaling bugs. (Which I had written.) The full code was a couple of pages long, but the thing boiled down to this:

void DoSomething (void *thing_in)
{

    void       *thing1;
    void       *thing2;

    thing1 = malloc (sizeof (*thing_in));
    //Do some stuff with thing_in and thing1.
    thing2 = malloc (thing1, some_new_size);
    free (thing1);
    //Do some other, unrelated stuff. Then...
    memcpy (thing2, thing1, sizeof (*thing1));
    //now that i just got done copying a free'd block of memory to thing2,
    //I'll do some more stuff with thing2.
    free (thing1);
    free (thing2);

}

Now, the actual code had all sorts of crazy stuff going on between these steps that obfuscated the mistake, but at the heart of it this is what I was doing: I was free()ing blocks of memory more than once, and copying stuff from recently unallocated blocks of memory. Now, this in and of itself is not very remarkable. If you lose your head you can easily make a blunder like this. The thing is, it should result in a crash. What I’m doing above is programatic sepuku.

But in this case the program did not crash. At least, not every time and certainly not right away. Not only did it not instantly die when it executed this code, but it more or less did what it was supposed to, or failed in innocuous ways that weren’t readily apparent. It called this function several dozen times a day, and yet the program ran on like this for a span of nine months without anyone noticing something was seriously amiss.

There was another program that would restart this one in the event that it crashed. I don’t know how often that happened. I’m afraid to look. I’m terrified that I’ll discover my program ran like this for all that time, like a man going on and living his life without noticing that a couple of his major internal organs have been removed. This is not supposed to be possible.

The whole thing gave me the willies, really.

LATER: Edited the example to better show what the problem was.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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31 comments

 

Games Are Art

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Apr 17, 2007

Filed under: Video Games 45 comments
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Roger Ebert made the assertion that videogames aren’t art. Demosthenes offers a rebuttal, which is so comprehensive that there is little for me to add. Jaquandor takes on the role of a cunning provocateur by soliciting my opinion on the matter.

But for people making the games-cannot-be-art assertion, I would issue the following assignment: Give me your definition of art. This is a difficult task, to come up with a description which would include all of the established and accepted forms of creative expression and yet somehow exclude videogames. It will require some degree of verbal contortions or qualifiers which have no other purpose than to define around games.

It is strange to see Ebert (who I enjoy reading) dismiss games like this, although it doesn’t get me too riled up. For a while there were people who assured the rest of us deluded fools that Rock and Roll wasn’t music. Without exception this claim came from people who hated Rock music. The games-aren’t-art position is the same thing in another form. It’s coming from people who don’t play games and don’t care to. That’s fine. His position will go the way of the Rock-and-Roll haters in another generation. The only time I get heated up about this issue is when I see it in this context:

“[There is] no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech. The court finds that video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures.”

— U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. (2002)

And here Limbaugh demonstrates his own art, which is the weaving of ignorance and apathy into the very fabric of our laws. I don’t care for the performance myself, but I have to hand it to him: The guy is good.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Games Are Art”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Next PostBioShock: Upgrade Fatigue

45 comments

 

The Creativity Cycle

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Apr 17, 2007

Filed under: Random 15 comments
Videogame WeekPrevious Post
Next PostDoes Not Compute

My work recently has brought the following into sharp relief. Whenever I’m working on a challenging project, I follow a very predictable pattern.

  1. Enthusiasm: This is going to be my best project ever!
  2. Unease: Hm. This is getting tough.
  3. Dismay: This is impossible! It’ll never get it!
  4. Defeat: What a waste of time. I must destroy this project and erase all traces of it so that my lack of talent is never exposed to the world.
  5. Grim resolution: I’ve come this far. I might as well finish it, even if it sucks.
  6. Hope: You know, I’m starting to get it. I might pull this off after all.
  7. Elation: I did it!
  8. Hubris: That was easy! Next time I’ll do something twice as difficult!
 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Videogame WeekPrevious Post
Next PostDoes Not Compute

15 comments

 
OLDER POSTS
From The Archives:

What Does a Robot Want?

No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.

 

Silver Sable Sucks

This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.

 

Was it a Hack?

A big chunk of the internet went down in October of 2016. What happened? Was it a hack?

 

The Plot-Driven Door

You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.

 

Shamus Plays LOTRO

As someone who loves Tolkein lore and despises silly MMO quests, this game left me deeply conflicted.

 

Top 64 Videogames

Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.

 

The Best of 2012

My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2012.

 

Project Frontier

A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.

 

Batman: Arkham Origins

A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.

 

Self-Balancing Gameplay

There's a wonderful way to balance difficulty in RPGs, and designers try to prevent it. For some reason.