T w e n t y S i d e d
This makes me very happy. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of developers.
LATER: (March 31 2007) The article is gone. The gist was that GalCiv 2 was one of the top-selling games that week. There were other details, but they elude me now.
More on Porco Rosso
I just re-read my post on Porco Rosso from a few days ago and realized that I made the movie sound like a serious drama with no action whatsoever. This is not the case. My point was that there isn’t more action than there needs to be, and that the movie isn’t afraid of taking its time when it needs to. Indeed, there are some fun and exciting moments in it:
 A low-altitude aerial dogfight. |
 Porco flies the red plane. (Porco Rosso means “crimson pig”) |
 There is even a car chase (truck chase, really) through the streets of Italy. |
In the original post I mentioned that I didn’t think my kids would like it. I stand corrected. They love it. I’m sure their favorite moments (the comedy and airfights) are different from mine (Porco’s quiet moments of reflection on his past) but there is plenty in there for all of us to like.
A side note about this goofy PowerDVD software I’m using: It’s odd. It has a million obscure options for fiddling with the color and aspect ratio, adjusting the de-interlacing (whatever) and altering the behvior of any number of inscrutable acronyms, but the obvious stuff doesn’t seem to work right. To wit:
- The “capture” button doesn’t always work. It seems I have to re-select “capture to clipboard” each time, even though it’s already checked.
- I have “keep original video size” checked under screen capture, and I can see it is clearly reducing the images and re-sizing them.
- The black border on the images above? The first time I played the movie they weren’t there. Now they are, and I can’t find an option to make them go away.
- Every time I take a screen capture it advances a couple of frames. Annoying.
It’s not like this is new technology. I’m using version 5 of PowerDVD. You’d think interface annoyances and bugs like these would have been fixed by now.
Annoying.
A Very Random Picture
A Very Random Picture
The green set on top is mine. The frosted blue (bottom row, third from the left) belongs to my wife. The others belong to the rest of my D&D group.
What a silly hobby. But I love it.
Some GalCiv II nitpicks
A few interesting notes on Galactic Civilizations 2:
Mark has posted an account of one of his games, and it gives a good idea of what the game is all about and how it works. Read part 1 and then part 2. Also, a while back he mentioned an instance where he lost because of some confusion in the diplomacy screen. He was attempting to pursuade his enemy to surrender, but ended up accidently surrendering TO his enemy instead. My brother has been playing through the game, and he did the same thing.
I think being able to OFFER surrender is an odd thing to have on the diplomacy screen. Why would the player ever do this? It means you lose the game. I can’t think of a situation where this would make sense.
Some other diplomancy-screen nitpicks: I can’t really threaten someone. Or I can’t ask nicely. If I demand something, there is no way to differentiate between, “I would like this as a favor” or “do this or I will invade you”. Requests and threats are the same thing, as far as the AI is concerned.
Also, there is a screen here where I can get a summary of what their civilization thinks of me. This judges how sophisticated they think my civilization is. If I have massive fleets and fantastic technology, and they don’t, they are going to hold me in awe. If they have battlecruisers and death rays and I have dirigibles in space with zap guns, they are going to think of my people as a bunch of savages. So, their attitude towards me is a product of my diplomacy skill and my relative military might. Here is what the screen looks like.
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However, the top item on the list always says that. It doesn’t matter if I’ve just given them eleventy billion credits or if I’ve just bombed and invaded their worlds, their people never have any opinion of me.
And finally, the bombing of enemy worlds doesn’t really work in a way that makes sense to me. You can only bomb a world as part of an invasion attempt. In order to bomb, you must have the right technology (which makes sense) and you must also send ground troops, which will attempt to sieze control of the planet once the bombing is complete. Bombing softens the world up, making the invasion easier at the expense of destroying some of the infrastructure.
But what if I don’t want the planet? There are times when I just want to cripple the enemy production and cull their population a bit, and I don’t care to send troops. Maybe their homeworld is small and useless to me, and I’d rather not be bothered with it. Maybe I’m using their worlds as a buffer against a stronger enemy. Maybe I’m just toying with them because I don’t want to end the game just yet. In any case, there are many times when I want to cripple a planet without invading, but it deosn’t seem to be possible. I COULD simply send such a tiny number of troops that they are doomed to failure. If they are outnumbered 10,000 to 1, they are going to lose no matter how much technology I have. But still, the invasion craft is wasted (I guess it gets used in the invasion) so I can’t continue to bomb them without making more crafts. This bugs me.
But make no mistake: This game is outstanding. The games blog links to this 1up article, which calls the game “Best space strategy game in a decade”. I would say that is not an exaggeration.
Porco Rosso
Last night I watched Porco Rosso. It’s easily my favorite of all of Hayao Miyazaki‘s films. I don’t usually blog about movies but I’m using this as an excuse to test out the frame grab feature of Power DVD, which came with my new computer.
 In the American dub Porco (left) is voiced by Michael Keaton and Curtis (right) is voiced by Carey Elwes, who does a convincing American accent. |
It’s aimed more at adults than some of Miyazaki’s other films. I think we’ll pass on letting our kids them see this one. It’s a Disney film (well, the english version was produced and released by Disney) so it’s safe for kids content-wise, but the subject matter might bore them, or simply go over their heads.
Animated Japanese films are so different from animated American films. This movie is mostly a drama. Characters talk. We see them pausing and giving thoughtful expressions. They use body language. All of this is normal and expected in a live-action drama, but not an animated one. In fact, animated American dramas are pretty rare. I can’t even think of one at the moment.
The picture above is from a moment early in the film when Porco meets a new rival at the bar. The place is packed with various Sky Pirates who hold a nasty grudge against Porco for all the trouble he’s given them over the years. If this movie had been made in America, a brawl would have been inevitable. There would have been overturned tables. Men would swing bottles, only to have their target duck so they end up hitting an ally. Someone would be shoved onto the bar and slid from one end to the other. Someone else would go through a big window. A woman would dart into the fight to break a bottle over the head of a villian just as he gets the upper hand. There would have been jokes and sight gags and one-liners and witty banter as the fight unfolded. Afterward, none of the characters would be seriously injured. The main character would reveal a bit about himself to a friend while either holding ice to his face or fleeing the aftermath of the brawl.
But this wasn’t an American movie and the obvious cliché fight was easily averted. Porco didn’t reveal much about himself through words. He was quiet for most of the scene. He smoked (yet another strange thing to see in a Disney film!) and had a drink, and then he left. There were many things he did not say that told us a great deal about what sort of man (pig) we are dealing with. There are many quiet moments like this in the movie, where we are allowed to simply observe Porco. He’s a facinating guy, and I really enjoyed his story.
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But throughout the movie I couldn’t help thinking of Pey’j from Beyond Good and Evil:
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Pey’j and Porco are very different characters, but pig-men are somewhat uncommon and so it was hard not to think of Pey’j when seeing Porco.
Everything new is old again
James Lileks has a new bit up on late 60’s / early 70’s computers. It’s a series of photographs of computers from that period, along with Lilek’s own brilliant comments. It’s pretty funny, and offers a nice look at the world of computers around the time I was born.
Still, I find these pictures depressing somehow. Look at those miniscule monochrome screens. I can imagine the noise and heat and unbearable slowness of the thing. The reel-to-reel tape storage gives me the willies as well: How much would one of those fat, heavy spools of magnetic tape hold, anyway? Is it even a full megabyte? I doubt it, I really do. Despite my love for computers, I think that working with one of these beasts would be like doing a stretch in purgatory. It’s like in the early days of the automobile, when you had to turn the crank to start it, and the thing was loud, slow and uncomfortable to use. Honestly, this is so much trouble. Can’t we just ride a horse?
MagNeato!
MagNeato!
A Tower of metal blocks on a magnetic base. Whee.
I collect stainless steel magnetic desk toys like this one. I also sometimes have a lava lamp and one of those static balls. So let’s see: Liquids, strong magnets, and static electricity. Yes. These are great things to keep on my desk near my computers. All I need to complete the collection is an EM pulse disco ball or a little Koi Pond for my motherboard to float around in. Brilliant.
If the machines ever rise up and try to enslave humanity, I’m pretty sure I could fend them off by myself using just the toys on my desk.
From The Archives:
Stolen Pixels
A screencap comic that poked fun at videogames and the industry. The comic has ended, but there's plenty of archives for you to binge on.
Punishing The Internet for Sharing
Why make millions on your video game when you could be making HUNDREDS on frivolous copyright claims?
The Strange Evolution of OpenGL
Sometimes software is engineered. Sometimes it grows organically. And sometimes it's thrown together seemingly at random over two decades.
This Game is Too Videogame-y
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
Could Have Been Great
Here are four games that could have been much better with just a little more work.
Rage 2
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
Are Lootboxes Gambling?
Obviously they are. Right? Actually, is this another one of those sneaky hard-to-define things?
DM of the Rings
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
Seven Springs
The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.
Gamers Aren’t Toxic
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.