What do you do if you have a hundred or so friends with nothing to do, an auditorium, a video camera, and lots of free time on your hands? Well, I suppose you could always do this…
(Yes, yes, I know: Old news. You saw this ages ago. Your mom forwarded you the link last summer and it was old then, etc. Look, it’s new it to me, so there.)
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The game looked great on my videocard, which I believe was forged by NVIDIA sometime during the latter part of the Bronze Age. It was choppy and the special effects were all turned off, but I still found the game to be wonderfully atmospheric and visually engaging. I can only pity the reviewer who will look at this game running in all of its high-detail glory and say, “Meh. Looks dated.”
The load times were a little long when compared to more traditional titles, but the environments were truly immense. Each region of the game is a huge, sprawling area of indoor and outdoor areas to run around in. The load times were easily worth it when compared to how much time was spent exploring each area.
There is an old saying in software development, “The first 90% of the features take up the first 90% of development time, and the last 10% of the features take up the other 90% of development time.” This is a common pitfall – particularly in young, unexperienced companies – to greatly underestimate how long a project is going to take. Development houses with clout and cash can afford to keep working until they feel a game is done, but a team of newbies being bankrolled by a publisher don’t have that luxury. Sooner or later the investors are going to tire of paying all of those salaries without getting the promised game in return, and that’s when things turn ugly. When this happens, the publisher only has three choices: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “STALKER: Final Thoughts”
Shawn, my partner in Chainmail Bikini, has just bought his first house. Congratulations Shawn! While you were moving into your new house, I was having the following adventure…
It’s Friday night. Ahhhh. I decide to spend the evening playing computer games and eating junk food. This isn’t really any different than any other night of the week, but because it’s Friday the reward feels sweeter.
The snacks are on a little shelf at the top of the basement steps. As I open the door to the basement I hear running water. At first I think it’s the washing machine, but no – this sounds like a little too much water. I start poking around and find the old coal room has water flowing in. This is an old house, and in the middle of the driveway there used to be a coal chute that led directly into this room. Decades ago the coal furnace was (sensibly) replaced, and the chute was welded shut. There are tiny gaps where water can get in, and in really heavy rains sometimes I’ll see a trickle. A minor trickle.
But this is something else entirely. This is water, flowing freely down the chute at a tremendous rate. How could this happen? There aren’t any water sources anywhere near the top of the chute, and besides, it’s way below freezing out. The nearest source of running water would have to be…
Oh crap! The garage! Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Homeowners”
Today I posted a bonus feature on Chainmail Bikini describing the writing process. In there, I talk about how hard it is to find good gaming stories of bad gaming. I’ve exhausted a lot of the stories relating to my own experience playing tabletop games, and now I rely on the misfortune of others to provide the fodder my our gaming comic.
I just realized that I could pull a Scott Adams and solicit anecdotes from readers. That might be fun, and if nothing else it might be therapeutic for the victims to share their experinces with everyone else. (So we can point and laugh.)
So how about it? What’s the worst single event you’ve ever endured / witnessed at the gaming table?
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This seems to be the approach they took with the story in STALKER. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “STALKER: Fool’s Ending”
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.
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.
I'm not surprised a fighting game has an absurd story. I just can't figure out why they bothered with the story at all.
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
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