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Where are the 'Construction Set' Games?
"I know that most PC games today have editors where a player can create their own levels and share them but users still need the original software. Even worse, consoles, which have the larger market, don't have enough storage (except maybe for the XBox) and aren't open enough to encourage players to create their own games and share them."
C :I think I see mbishop's point. Legos are still alive and well, but I don't see as much evidence on these types of toys in today's TV commercials. It seems those commercials are more interested in pushing the latest licensed crap instead of pushing toys designed to stimulate your child's own imagination. Of course, a simple Google search may yield a result or two, but that still doesn't answer the real question. Computer-based sets, would be a nice alternative, but nothing beats the real thing where children can use their own hands to create something they can show their paernts. Where have all of the Heathkit's, the chemical experiment toys and the other types of "builder" sets gone, and are they due for a revival, soon?
Yes, this article is without merit. There are plenty of construction sets, they exist within games. Neverwinter Nights and Morrowinds are AWESOME in their capabilities to make adventures. Quake III also comes to mind-- yes, modmaking requires programming, but map making doesn't.
The reason they don't make any "stand alone construction sets" anymore? Well, for one, the name "___ Construction Set" just isn't cool enough for mainstream consumer. But the biggest reason is money. If you can make a standalone NWN game, the people you distribute it to don't have to buy the original game. Game companies don't want that. They're in business to make money.
I am happy to say that my little sister is four and she plays with legos. She is mostly into building cars so they roll the fastest across the floor in my dad's kitchen, but like I said, she's four. I think that proof that this has stimulated her creatively because the other day she was telling me that she had designed and then her mom had helped her cut out all of these pieces to put together to make a 3D basket. It's just a basket, I know. But it seemed amazing to me that a kid so young was designing things in 2D to be put together in 3D.
I can only hope that there are still toys like that available when I have my own kids. I don't have my legos anymore (my mom sold them when I was away for a summer), but maybe I can convince her to keep hers so that the next generation has all of those neat little pieces that always seem so scarce when you really need them... like the ones that transfer the block stack from up/down to right/left. And the pulleys. Must have pulleys.
Liora
You could wire flippers, bumpers, everything with your own point system. PBCS would also let you 'paint' your selected parts any of 5± colors including 'erasing' the part. Using 'invisible' bumpers was quite entertaining.
It was also possible to adjust gravity, bounce, and friction of the ball, IIRC.
The coolest feature of all is that you could take your finished game and 'compile' it to run stand-alone! Trading pinball games was great...ah, Apple 2 memories....I also had a program for the Apple 2 called Gamemaker. It let you create simple games like 2600 Pitfall clones and the like. Never got the hang of it....
The best 'Constructon Set' in recent memory was the level editor in Crack Dot Com's sidescroller, 'Abuse'. It used a lisp driven engine to allow you to make levels easier than anything I recall at the time. Just like wiring a simple circuit. (Much like PBCS!)
What's Bill Budge doing these days?
This is the goddamn stupidest thing I have heard in weeks.
The first machines I used in school were Commodores and all of the software was set up to boot from floppy. There was a "command line," but we only used three of those commands:
LOAD *,8,1
LIST
RUN SUMMERGAMES
I have a more detailed OS experience at a cash machine.
My house had macintoshes since I was very young. I learned how to program using Pascal to program "Core Wars" bots on my Classic SE. I used to write reports in AppleWorks and my earliest online experience was a graphical CompuServe.
I didn't learn DOS until midway through high school...and didn't learn un*x until college. For years, the only commands i knew, the only commands I needed, were cd, ls, cat, pico, man and pine. Did I learn how to actually think, with all these GUIs doing shit for me and such a limited shell vocabulary? Well, I've an MA in Rhetorical Theory and a BS in Software Engineering, and they certainly didn't come in a bag of Doritos.
Any idiot can be taught to bang away commands at a shell, same as any idiot can be taught to click away at a screen. Intelligence comes from the ability to combine your banging or clicking into a useful string of actions that produces results. A shell command line may feel more elite and productive because it doesn't have any pretty picutres, but it's certainly not proof of intellect...CAD programs have been using GUIs forever and nobody claims that architects can't think.
However, to look at some of the perl code I've seen, I would make that assertation of certain sysadmins. One line simplicity, indeed. Until you try and debug it!
Hey freaks: now you're ju
The game let's you build not only personal levels for yourself and to share with friends, but also allows you to post your favorite personal levels into a TQ Universe where other members can play your games as well.
Additionally, TQworld has begun to open up the internal language (the forum on the TQworld site has this information beginning to appear). Since the games are stored on your hard drive in clear-text format, you can tweak them (or completely rewrite/design new ones) in your favorite editor.
We have a cabin with a small deck - without any railings. The fall woulden't kill anybody, but insturance company woulden't insure the cabin without the railing. We decided we diden't need insurance, and if anybody tries to sue us, we'll probably just run them over with a rental SUV. A dead litigant is a good litigant.
If someone were to try and use the court system to steal all of my money without a good reason, I starting to think that it should be treated in the same manor as a bank robber with a gun - It's ok to defend yourself any way possible.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Here's a bunch of recalled toys
Some of the cool ones I saw before I got bored:
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
I've never worked on or tweaked a mod so my impressions may be far from the truth. However, I was under the impression that creating a mod took a certain degree of coding talent (without getting in to exactly what degree of talent was displayed by your favorite / most despised mod). If creating a mod is much easier than basic (or not-so-basic) coding, then I would find it easier to accept the argument that the mod scene sits in the same category as the old Construction Set series.