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In the book, Gandalf acted much as he always did in this meeting: Annoyingly Mysterious. You can’t really fault him, that’s his style. In the movie, it seemed like he was just being a jerk. I can’t fault him there either. If I came back from the dead as a nigh-invincible super-wizard, I’d probably run around doing this sort of thing to everyone.
Upgrading to WordPress 2.1 right now. Pardon if the place blows up or stops working for a bit.
LATER: Done. That was a little hairy. I didn’t realize what a big leap that was going to be. Lots of new files all over the place, a database upgrade, different admin pages. I guess I should have read the readme first. (Although I DID do a backup. I may be reckless but I’m not a fool.) Still, it was pretty painless as far as these things go.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to poke around in the upgraded admin pages and push all of the new buttons. Whee.
Yeah. I’m writing documentation at work today. After eight hours of writing, I’m kind of not in the mood for… more writing. So…
Lots of new people coming to the site these days. I just realized that a lot of people have never even seen the Rollercoaster movie, much less some of the stuff deeper in my archives. Rather than coming up with something clever today, I’m just going to point to some of my older posts that might be of interest to new readers.
Seven Springs
A true story of a couple of strange days in 1990, my senior year in high school.
Part One: Naked Girls and A Hotel-Sized Prank.
Part Two: The Terrors of Room 102, and Lessons Learned.
This is a project where I detailed the writing of a terrain engine, more or less from scratch. The posts are written in plain language and are readable by non-coders who might be curious how 3d graphics work and what challenges a game designer might face.
I know Kung-Fu (Part 1) (Part 2)
The depth and complexity of the common First-Person Shooter.
More “best of” posts here.
Eloj had this to say in the Neverwinter Nights Nitpick post:
The only “problem” is the enormous inertia built into the industry when it comes to knowledge and technology (do you think nVidia and AMD/ATI would like to see their precious IP and know-how going down the drain?) about polygonial engines. All this stuff with shadows and “dumb” lightning models is because of the polygon based (or maybe rather “raster based”) roots of current 3D tech, that all goes away if you change the basics. Raytracing gives perfect shadows, and as good lighting as you can spend cycles on, every time.
I thought I’d mention a game where this did happen – where a developer just ignored all current 3d trends and struck out on their own. Outcast came out in 1999, so the game is about eight years old now. Keep that in mind when looking at the screenshots below.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Outcast: Something Different”
Here is a nice surprise:
Arthur Humphrey, author of Virtual Villagers, stopped by and left a comment here. I wrote about the game here, here and here way back in early November.
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It was neat to know that my comments made it back to the author, and even better to get comments in return. It’s nice to know when game authors and designers read and respond to feedback. I know it isn’t always possible, but it is always appreciated.
One more thing to note is that Virtual Villagers is up for ‘Best Casual Sim' at Gamezebo. Cute Knight is also up for Best Strategy Game”, which is cool. Virtual Villagers and Cute Knight are both indie games, and it was nice to see them in the list. I’m going to reveal my elitist nature here and say that the other games have a certain… assembly-line feel to them. Many of them are clones of existing game types, or of each other. Some of them are sequels of clones of each other. This is not a bad thing, and many people play and love those games, but I really admire games like Virtual Villagers and Cute Knight, because they attempt to do something totally different. Those games are both more work and higher risk, so it’s good to see them doing well. I hope both of them grab some awards.
Side note: This is yet another poll that will allow games from different platforms to compete against one another. This still makes no sense to me, because the audience size is going to be different. I think Lumines is a fine game, but to my knowledge it’s a PSP-only title. This means it is at a great disadvantage in this poll and on this site, which looks to be aimed firmly at casual PC gamers.
Another note on the goofy poll: You must vote in each category? Hello? What if I didn’t play any of the listed games? Man, I’m beginning to suspect that these polls of fixed options which are voted on by random strangers on the internet might not be accurate or fair! I must be getting cynical.
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I could not figure out a way to put Liv Tyler into episode LIV. Pity. But I did manage to work Danny DeVito in there, which was kind of unexpected.
Here is a list of flaws, great and small. A lot of this stuff is the kind of thing that never gets mentioned in reviews, but I think it matters. I wouldn’t want developers to get the idea that we don’t care about things like CD key length or a predictable autosave.
The flaws, in increasing order of seriousness, from the minor to egregious:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Neverwinter Nights 2: Nitpicks”
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2012.
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.
It's not a legend. It was real. There was a time before DLC. Before DRM. Before crappy ports. It was glorious.
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
This series began as a cheap little 2D overhead game and grew into the most profitable entertainment product ever made. I have a love / hate relationship with the series.
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.
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
Sometimes in-game secrets are fun and sometimes they're lame. Here's why.
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