This is pretty sweet. Now I can email to my blog and it automagically posts it for me. I don't know how useful it really is, but it's neat. I guess I can now blog more covertly and without my eyes being abused by big orange "B"s and things.
Anyway, this post doesn't really have one general topic. I did want to bitch about sport, or more accurately the state of umipring/refereeing in sport these days, though. So I think I'll do that now...
Umpiring these days is horrible. Perhaps it's just because we now have all this fantastic technology that allows us to see all the faults of the umpires with so much more ease. Sometimes that is an excuse, but a lot of the time it isn't. For example, the A-League grand final was ruined by terrible refereeing. The referee missed a blatant hand ball right in front of goal, which should have been a penalty and thus tied the game. The losing team was justifiably upset, and one even "struck" (very mildly) the referee out of frustration. But the worst thing is that the grand final was completely useless, and the whole season was a waste of time because an undeserving team won. They may have gone on to win had the game gone into extra time/penalty shoot outs, but we'll never know. The winners can't be satisfied with their victory, and the losers will forever have that "yeah well, the result wasn't fair" argument.
The entire point of a sporting season is to determine the best team/player. If we're failing to do that, and brushing off poor umpiring decisions with rubbish comments like "that's just part of the game," what's the point? Either we hand umpiring over to technology completely and accept some of the negative implications this would have, or we remove it completely and let viewers at home see only what the umpire sees. No slow motion replays, no hot spot, no hawk eye, none of it, unless we're going to rely on it entirely. It promotes armchair umpiring, applies more pressure on the umpires and leaves supporters a lot less satisfied.
Just as a little disclaimer, I don't care about A-League soccer and am a completely unbiased observer.
On a more humorous note, I was informed of the existence of a pretty hilarious bumper sticker, which reads: "Single women don't fart... they don't get assholes until they marry."
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Driver: Parallel Lines Review
After a hard (Sunday!) afternoon's work I managed to sit down and finish Driver: Parallel Lines on the Wii. I have both some criticisms and some compliments, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed the game. It provides us Wii gamers with the "driving around, blowing shit up and wasting the good guys" title that every platform needs. I'm glad it came out on the Wii, rather than the overshadowing Grand Theft Auto, so I had a chance to play it. Its similarities to GTA are undeniable, but people often glaze over the subtle differences that keep Driver in the picture.
The first thing I noticed about Driver was its atmosphere. The opening cuts build a fantastic 70s vibe, and while the in game graphics aren't quite so pretty, they still managed to keep me immersed and in the 70s mood. Of particular note is the awesome facial hair and the the swagger of the characters. Personally I think Driver has it all over GTA in this respect; I never got much of a sense of immersion whilst playing GTA.
The characters in Driver were a bit cliché, and a bit thin, but they kept the story moving nicely. They bad guys pissed me off adequately enough to get quite a lot of satisfaction out of killing them, and the good guys were all friendly enough for me to not want to kill them. And while the storyline was quite short, I much prefer that to finding myself doing repetitive or irritatingly boring missions.
My only real criticism, however, does concern the story. I'm a fan of games that give you some choice in how you play through the game. While I was pleased to see that if not everything went quite right in a mission I was sometimes told to just hack my way through it however I could, the same can not be said for the resolution of the entire game. It is very linear, and sometimes while watching the cut scenes I found myself thinking "hang on, screw that, I wouldn't have done that, I would have killed them all!" It was, at times, quite exasperating.
Overall it was very entertaining. I love some of the innovations of the game that stand it apart from the GTA series: the whole idea of having separate "heat" metres for the player and his car is very cool (but mind you I was never spotted in a car with no heat whilst having full heat on myself, even though the manual says it will happen from time to time); I found the missions to be a lot more entertaining and creative than those in GTA; the guns are a lot of fun, as are the cars and bikes (especially the bikes); being able to store cars and do them up is sweet; and this isn't really a feature it has over GTA, but it makes fantastic use of the Wii remote - the controls are intuitive and responsive.
Don't listen to any of the reviews complaining about poor graphics, lack of police, boring missions, and just general GTA rip off claims. It's unfortunate that Driver came out in the shadow of GTA, as it definitely is a game with a lot to offer. It's definitely worth checking out.
The first thing I noticed about Driver was its atmosphere. The opening cuts build a fantastic 70s vibe, and while the in game graphics aren't quite so pretty, they still managed to keep me immersed and in the 70s mood. Of particular note is the awesome facial hair and the the swagger of the characters. Personally I think Driver has it all over GTA in this respect; I never got much of a sense of immersion whilst playing GTA.
The characters in Driver were a bit cliché, and a bit thin, but they kept the story moving nicely. They bad guys pissed me off adequately enough to get quite a lot of satisfaction out of killing them, and the good guys were all friendly enough for me to not want to kill them. And while the storyline was quite short, I much prefer that to finding myself doing repetitive or irritatingly boring missions.
My only real criticism, however, does concern the story. I'm a fan of games that give you some choice in how you play through the game. While I was pleased to see that if not everything went quite right in a mission I was sometimes told to just hack my way through it however I could, the same can not be said for the resolution of the entire game. It is very linear, and sometimes while watching the cut scenes I found myself thinking "hang on, screw that, I wouldn't have done that, I would have killed them all!" It was, at times, quite exasperating.
Overall it was very entertaining. I love some of the innovations of the game that stand it apart from the GTA series: the whole idea of having separate "heat" metres for the player and his car is very cool (but mind you I was never spotted in a car with no heat whilst having full heat on myself, even though the manual says it will happen from time to time); I found the missions to be a lot more entertaining and creative than those in GTA; the guns are a lot of fun, as are the cars and bikes (especially the bikes); being able to store cars and do them up is sweet; and this isn't really a feature it has over GTA, but it makes fantastic use of the Wii remote - the controls are intuitive and responsive.
Don't listen to any of the reviews complaining about poor graphics, lack of police, boring missions, and just general GTA rip off claims. It's unfortunate that Driver came out in the shadow of GTA, as it definitely is a game with a lot to offer. It's definitely worth checking out.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Do I have a Bee in my Bonnet?
It Rather amused me to hear this man, who I knew to be gentle and tender-hearted, actually insisting that about one-half of the population of the globe ought to be murdered; but I thought little of it at the time. I knew how fond some men are of propounding bold and startling theories, which they themselves would be the very last to dream of carrying into action. Here was a man, whose business in life had been to heal the sick, and so to prolong the existence of the weakest specimens of the human race. And now he was saying that the extermination of millions of healthy, vigorous men was the one thing that the world needed! It was another illustration of the inevitable bee which, sooner or later gets into the bonnet of every scientific man.
From The Purple Death, by W. L. Alden.
From The Purple Death, by W. L. Alden.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
It's a Small World
Or it would be, if I were designing it.
Game design is weighing heavily upon my mind at the moment, given that work on our Super Secret Game is supposedly under way now. What I've noticed with the RPG genre lately is that a great amount of emphasis is placed on the size of the game "world." A bigger world means more quests, more places to explore, more things to find, and in general just more entertainment value. "Will the world be as big as Oblivion's?" is a common inquiry the developers of Fallout 3 are peppered with.
But at what point do we decide that worlds are becoming too big? and perhaps some more time and effort on a smaller world would be more efficient? I'm intrigued by the idea of a very small yet very rich world, just a handful of small locations, that continuously evolve and create gameplay as the user interacts with them. NPCs that interact with each other, as well as the player, in real time, rather than at certain static points in the game, would create an awesome environment. They would also cut down on the sheer volume of content that goes into making these massive worlds, which is something a small development team just can't really do.
Better immersion is another of the main advantages here. There is only so far that shinier graphics and audio can take the player's sense of immersion. With every RPG I have ever played there is always a distinct lack of a "real time" feeling. A sequence of events that should take a certain amount of time, but instead happens either instantly or is triggered at some predictable moment. For example, lets say I'm an evil character and I've just killed some poor helpless man in front of his wife. Instantly the wife would form a negative opinion of me (depends on the husband I guess), which is fine, but the entire town/city/game world(!) would also know about my evil acts without delay. It's little things like this that break immersion, but that are pretty much required in such large worlds because so little attention can be paid to every single NPC and how they interact with each other.
With a small, real time game world, I would kill the man, the woman would run out the door screaming and alert the nearest neighbours, the local law enforcement might then be informed and there would be a man hunt. The important point is the amount of time, real time, I would have to react to the situation. This is a pretty trivial example, but the premise would apply to larger scale decisions the player makes as well. There must be a feeling that things are happening in real time for immersion to be complete.
Another important point is that this must all be going on for NPCs interacting with each other, independent of and simultaneously with the player's own actions. If Bob the blacksmith doesn't like the price Joe the alchemist charged for his fake gold he should go and kill him, and the same process described above would ensue. This is where quest generation from random NPC encounters could happen. Lets say Joe's apprentice wants some revenge for his master's death, knows of the player's reputation and asks him/her to deal with Bob. That's a simple quest, and repeated a number of times would be very boring, so finding methods of generating more interesting plot lines from these random encounters is the key.
I suppose it becomes a bit of a "why bother, just play MMOs with real human interaction" kind of situation. But where's the fun in that? Making the AI to run a game world like this would be the fun part. Granted, creating a game world like this has obvious technical problems, but some initial steps could at least be made. The world being small is important, as is an emphasis on AI rather than shiny graphics.
Game design is weighing heavily upon my mind at the moment, given that work on our Super Secret Game is supposedly under way now. What I've noticed with the RPG genre lately is that a great amount of emphasis is placed on the size of the game "world." A bigger world means more quests, more places to explore, more things to find, and in general just more entertainment value. "Will the world be as big as Oblivion's?" is a common inquiry the developers of Fallout 3 are peppered with.
But at what point do we decide that worlds are becoming too big? and perhaps some more time and effort on a smaller world would be more efficient? I'm intrigued by the idea of a very small yet very rich world, just a handful of small locations, that continuously evolve and create gameplay as the user interacts with them. NPCs that interact with each other, as well as the player, in real time, rather than at certain static points in the game, would create an awesome environment. They would also cut down on the sheer volume of content that goes into making these massive worlds, which is something a small development team just can't really do.
Better immersion is another of the main advantages here. There is only so far that shinier graphics and audio can take the player's sense of immersion. With every RPG I have ever played there is always a distinct lack of a "real time" feeling. A sequence of events that should take a certain amount of time, but instead happens either instantly or is triggered at some predictable moment. For example, lets say I'm an evil character and I've just killed some poor helpless man in front of his wife. Instantly the wife would form a negative opinion of me (depends on the husband I guess), which is fine, but the entire town/city/game world(!) would also know about my evil acts without delay. It's little things like this that break immersion, but that are pretty much required in such large worlds because so little attention can be paid to every single NPC and how they interact with each other.
With a small, real time game world, I would kill the man, the woman would run out the door screaming and alert the nearest neighbours, the local law enforcement might then be informed and there would be a man hunt. The important point is the amount of time, real time, I would have to react to the situation. This is a pretty trivial example, but the premise would apply to larger scale decisions the player makes as well. There must be a feeling that things are happening in real time for immersion to be complete.
Another important point is that this must all be going on for NPCs interacting with each other, independent of and simultaneously with the player's own actions. If Bob the blacksmith doesn't like the price Joe the alchemist charged for his fake gold he should go and kill him, and the same process described above would ensue. This is where quest generation from random NPC encounters could happen. Lets say Joe's apprentice wants some revenge for his master's death, knows of the player's reputation and asks him/her to deal with Bob. That's a simple quest, and repeated a number of times would be very boring, so finding methods of generating more interesting plot lines from these random encounters is the key.
I suppose it becomes a bit of a "why bother, just play MMOs with real human interaction" kind of situation. But where's the fun in that? Making the AI to run a game world like this would be the fun part. Granted, creating a game world like this has obvious technical problems, but some initial steps could at least be made. The world being small is important, as is an emphasis on AI rather than shiny graphics.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
It'll Totally Last...
Hopefully this is a blog that lasts.
2008 should be a pretty busy year, so perhaps I will be doing things interesting enough for me to bother writing about. I guess content I would like to post up here will include: comments on things learnt during my university courses (now that I'm actually doing some interesting ones); reviews of fabulous (and not so fabulous) Wii games; and some insight into my own game development experiences, which will hopefully become more plentiful this year.
I must say it's so much easier to use one of these Blogger accounts than manage my own. Perhaps the mere fact that I don't have to deal with any of the hassles of making and hosting my own blogging software will spur me on. We can only hope! (And by 'we' I mean me.)
2008 should be a pretty busy year, so perhaps I will be doing things interesting enough for me to bother writing about. I guess content I would like to post up here will include: comments on things learnt during my university courses (now that I'm actually doing some interesting ones); reviews of fabulous (and not so fabulous) Wii games; and some insight into my own game development experiences, which will hopefully become more plentiful this year.
I must say it's so much easier to use one of these Blogger accounts than manage my own. Perhaps the mere fact that I don't have to deal with any of the hassles of making and hosting my own blogging software will spur me on. We can only hope! (And by 'we' I mean me.)
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