T w e n t y S i d e d
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This seems to be the approach they took with the story in STALKER. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “STALKER: Fool’s Ending”
PC Hardware is “Toast”
Hey man, I need a new toaster. You know all about kitchen stuff. Have any suggestions?
The KitchenAid4000 series just came out.
Are those good?
I have a KA4510, and it’s really good.
Does it have 4 slots?
Oh you want 4 slots? Well, the KA4510 XN goes up to four slots, but it only toasts one side.
Let’s pretend I want to toast both sides.
Then you probably don’t want a KitchenAid. Their 4000 series 4-slicers aren’t very good. You could get one of the old KA3510 XN or XNS for cheap these days, but they take like, twenty minutes to toast the bread.
Er. What else is there?
The Cuisinart 7000 series is comparable to the KA 4000 series. The 7420, 7520, and the 7420 all do four slices. Just don’t get any of the SIP models because they can’t do bagels.
SIP?
“Slim Insertion Port”. The units are small, but only regular sliced bread will fit. KA has the same thing on many of their units. Actually, if you want to do bagels with a KA you’ll need the ASI units.
Which is?
“Adaptable Slot Interface”. It just means it can handle bread of varying widths.
So I should get a Cuisinart ASI?
No no no. That’s nonsense. In Cuisinart the units all handle wide bread unless they are SIP.
My head hurts. So I want a Cuisinart 7000 series, but not a SIP, right?
Pretty much. Now, the 7000 series is actually two generations. You don’t want anything before the 7400, because the pre-7400 units actually took up two wall plugs. The 7100 and 7200 four-slotters were actually two dual-slot units strapped together, so they had two cords. Plus, they didn’t have a timer so you had to stand over them yourself.
All I want is to toast bread! Four slices! Both sides!
Then the C7520 T series is for you. You can pick one up at Wall-Mart for about $400 these days.
FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS! I could buy an oven for that! I could just go out to eat every morning for that kind of money!
Ah, if you’re worried about price then the KitchenAid 4510 ES is a good pick. It’s only got three slots but it’s retailing for about $90.
I’m looking in the Wal-Mart flyer, but I don’t see that model.
Sure you do. Right here: The “Magitoast 7”. See how underneath it says “KA4510 Ex”? That means it’s the KitchenAid 4510 ES or the KitchenAid 4510 EP, just with a brand name slapped onto it.
…?
KitchenAid and Cuisinart don’t actually sell models directly. They make the insides parts of toasters, then other companies buy them, put the fancy shell on them, and give them a new brand name. But if you want to know what you’re getting, you have to look at which design the unit is based on.
Ah! I get it! Then why don’t I get this “TastyToast 2000”, which is like that 7520 you mentioned earlier. This one is only $50.
Er. That’s not the same thing. That’s a 7520 OS. The OS means “One Slice”. Total bargain unit for suckers. Some goes for the 6000 series and anything with a MRQ after it.
You know what? I’ve decided I don’t want toast anymore. I’m switching to breakfast cereal.
I’m shopping for a graphics card, and this is exactly what I’m going through, except I don’t have a know-it-all to help me out. I have never seen such rampant ineptitude at marketing products. I’m even savvy enough to know what I’m looking for, but the endless chipset numbers and sub-types and varying configurations makes it impossible to get any sort of handle on the thing. It’s actually worse than my example above, since higher numbers aren’t always better. I’ve searched around, and I have yet to find a breakdown as clear as the conversation above. What is the difference between these two generations of cards? What does this suffix mean? Why am I seeing this chipset in one place for $119.99 and elsewhere for $299.99? Is this the same product with a huge markup, or is this second unit different in some way I can’t discern?
Features get added in the middle of numeric series. Like, an NVIDIA 7800 supports 3.0 pixel shaders, and earlier 7000 models don’t. (Or don’t list it among their features.) So it’s impossible to do any real comparison shopping until you’ve memorized all the feature sets for all the chipset numbers for both NVIDIA and ATI. Yeah, let me get right on that.
Game developers who keep cranking up the system specs are killing themselves. They’re making sure that their only customers are people who are willing to wade through this idiocy, fork over hundreds of bucks, and then muck about inside of their computers to do the upgrade. You shouldn’t need to be Seth Godin to realize most people would rather drop that same $400 on a console and have done with it. In fact, it’s pretty clear that this is exactly what people are doing by the millions.
The main advantage of the PC as a gaming platform was its sheer ubiquity. But while PCs are probably more common than televisions, PCs which are equipped with the latest hardware are pretty rare, and graphics card manufacturers seem to be doing their level best to keep it that way.
This is the second time this year I looked into upgrading, and both times it seemed like such a stupid, pointless hassle. Like our toaster-buying friend above, I know what I want, but its the sellers job to tell me what they got. Offering someone a Fargleblaster 9672 XTQ is stupid and meaningless.
It really is a shame to watch this aggregate stupidity suck all of the fun out of this hobby. Buying other electronics is fun, but buying graphics hardware is homework. ATI and NVIDIA need to adopt a policy of sensible naming of product lines, fewer products, greater differences between products, and (most importantly) clearly delineated graphics generations, so that consumers can look at a product and know what it is without needing to read the long list of specs. In an ideal world, they shouldn’t even need to understand the meaning of things like DirectX 9.0c and 3.0 pixel shaders. They should know that X is better than Y, and buy accordingly.
Speed Racer
I’m facinated by what lengths they’ve gone to to preserve the cartoon feel of the original. Even the acting seems to mimic the odd rhythm and ham-fisted dialog of the original – which was that way because it was an English dub. They’re really trying to make a cartoon with live characters. They’re trying to make it cheesy, because the original was cheesy. This is in contrast to something like the Transformers, where they tried hard to make the movie cool and edgy without bothering to smarten up the plot. Here it looks like they are embracing the nature of the original, goofyness and all. Note how they will show shots of still characters with a blur of lines in the background. Originally this was done to save money, because it was really easy to animate. Doing the same thing in live action actually costs more money, because it’s a special effect. So they’re going out of their way to replicate the aspects of the original that were the result of having a low animation budget, and spending more money to do it!
I predict the the appeal of the movie will be directly propotional to the viewer’s fondness for the original. I was never into Speed Racer that much, but I’ll watch it out of curiosity. This is very unconventional, and even if I don’t like the result it will be worth watching the attempt.
Happy New Year
A couple of New Year’s resolutions:
- I should probably take down this 2007 calender and get a 2008 one.
- Are we supposed to set the clocks forward or back? Oh, that’s spring and fall. Nevermind. Just the calender thing, then.
End of The Year Awards
Peer pressure has compelled me to compile one of those end-of-the-year lists that all the major gaming sites have. Everyone else is doing it, so it must be a good idea, right?
Best Use of DRM to Punish People for Buying a Game: Bioshock (PC)
Best Way to Ruin Christmas: The Wii shortage
Best Game Where You Die Like, Every Twelve Seconds: STALKER
Best Game Reviewer to be Fired for Doing His Damn Job: Jeff Gerstmann
Best Game for the PC You’ll Own Three Years from Now: Crysis (Note: It will probably still run like crap.)
Best RPG: Jade Empire from Bioware
Best Assimilation of a Great Developer Into a Monolithic Corporate Crapfactory: EA Buys Bioware
Best Pricetag: $3.74 for STALKER, can you believe it?
(Runner up: $20 for Portal.)
Best Atmosphere: Portal
Best Voice Acting: Portal
Best Music: Portal
Best Level Design: Portal
Game of the Year:
If we judged purely by hours I spent playing, then this award might end up going to X-Com. It’s sort of pointless having me choose a best game from this year, since I tend to shop for stuff two years old. Having said that, if I had to pick a favorite it I would probably agonize over the choice between between Jade Empire and Half-Life: Episode Two.
STALKER: From Russia, with Bugs
Several people have posed a perfectly reasonable question:
If you hate STALKER so much, why do you keep playing it?
My last two posts have indeed been pretty harsh, but I’ve been focusing on the shortcomings. There are things to like about this game. It has fun elements to it and some parts are done well. Some parts are admirable for their attempt to try something new, even if they didn’t work out. This game is not your standard march through rooms of bad guys, gunning them down on your way to the Big Bad Boss. This game defies conventional genre definitions, it tries new things, and it obviously aspired to be something great. That it fell short is regrettable, but I think there are still interesting ideas in here. I’m willing to slog my way through the frustration to see the whole thing.
Another good reason to keep playing is because of the fans of the game. There are some people who really love this thing, warts and all. I’ll probably never enjoy it the way they do, but it’s interesting to see what parts of it worked for them. Just because I didn’t like something doesn’t mean it’s a failure or wrong. The wannabe game designer inside of me loves to study how people play games and what makes them fun. So, STALKER had elements that worked for Bob but not for me. Why is that? What core philosophy or goal differences do Bob and I have that gave us such different results? Are our goals at odds with each other? Could the game be designed in such a way as to work for both of us?
Someone else mentioned that I shouldn’t complain too much, since I only paid three dollars and seventy-four cents for the game. True, but most people paid about ten times that. The fact that I got lucky doesn’t change the fact that this game, bugs and all, is still sitting at retail for $30. I’ve been keeping that $30 in mind as I play the game. GSC (the developer, I think, although I can’t read Russian) and THQ (the publisher, I’m pretty sure) both deserve a good solid smack for putting this game out with so many bugs, but they also deserve some credit for breaking out of the FPS rut.
A final interesting note is that the game is from Russia Ukraine, and as such comes at storytelling with a very unexpected flavor. Every culture has their own way of storytelling. If you watch a lot of Hong Kong martial arts movies, you’ll see stuff that western writers would never do. Movies with serious grim torture and goofball slapstick characters and a sappy love story, all mixed together like ketchup, fruit loops, and mint ice cream. These movies feel strange when you’re used to Hollywood. Hey! What genre of movie is this supposed to be, anyway? Likewise, the Japanese have their own conventions and attitudes which seem odd to me, but the differences are also refreshing. So, I was curious how a Russian Ukrainian sci-fi story would play out.
UPDATE: RPharazon points out below that the game is from Ukraine, not Russia, thus spoiling my trying-too-hard-too-be-clever title to this post.
Tape Drives and Dummy Terminals
Rebecca talks about the “future” technology depicted in the 60’s and 70’s, which is filled with anachronistic (to us) devices like tape drives, blinky-light interfaces, and toggle-switch inputs. Hundreds of years in the future and they’re flying through space using technology leftover from the Apollo program.
She suggests that this should be a new form of “-punk”. Instead of Steampunk or Cyberpunk, we have some new kind of punk for 1970’s big iron mainframe-style computer tech. But what do you call this? Tape-punk makes it sound like MacGuyver, duct-taping alarm clocks to cans of cheese whiz to make cold fusion. What other name could we give to it? A name which sums up the stupid, clunky nature of the technology of the day.
Reelpunk
Mainframe punk
Solderpunk
DOS punk (I like this, but when mereged into a compound word it looks too much like “Do Spunk”. Doh!)
Digipunk (This would actually be more 80’s, whene everything was named “digital”.)
Craypunk
IBMpunk
You-are-all-dressed-like-idiots-and-your-technological-morality-play-is-obvious-and-stupid punk? YAADLIAYTMPIOASPunk! (Not very catchy.)
Maybe some of the old-timers have better jargon. I was born in ’71, so my mid-century computer lingo isn’t really cutting it. It would be easier to come up with a name for 90’s level early internet tech, because we had heaps of cool (now dorky) buzzwords to work with.
So how about it – what would you call the 60’s and 70’s future tech if it were an ongoing genre or style the way Steampunk is today?
From The Archives:
Joker's Last Laugh
Did you anticipate the big plot twist of Batman: Arkham City? Here's all the ways the game hid that secret from you while also rubbing your nose in it.
Object-Disoriented Programming
C++ is a wonderful language for making horrible code.
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
The Witch Watch
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
What is Vulkan?
What is this Vulkan stuff? A graphics engine? A game engine? A new flavor of breakfast cereal? And how is it supposed to make PC games better?
Stop Asking Me to Play Dark Souls!
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.
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.
What Does a Robot Want?
No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.
Bowlercoaster
Two minutes of fun at the expense of a badly-run theme park.
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.