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The Father of Civilization: Profile of Sid Meier
An anonymous reader writes with a link to Kotaku's recent profile of Civilization creator Sid Meier, and includes this snippet: "One year, as [coworker John] Stealey recalls, the two men went to an electronics trade conference. On the second night of the show, they stumbled upon a bunch of arcade games in a basement. One by one, Meier beat Stealey at each of them. Then they found Atari's Red Baron, a squiggly flight game in which you'd steer a biplane through abstract outlines of terrain and obstacles. Stealey, the Air Force man, knew he could win at this one. He sat down at the machine and shot his way to 75,000 points, ranking number three on the arcade's leaderboard. Not bad. Then Meier went up. He scored 150,000 points. 'I was really torqued,' Stealey says today. This guy outflew an Air Force pilot? He turned to the programmer. 'Sid, how did you do that?' 'Well,' Meier said. 'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.'"
'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.' The ACTUAL ALGORITHMS! Not the patterns resulting from them like a mortal man would.
I see three possibilities here:
1. Sid Meier, super genius.
2. Sid Meier, not knowing as much about computers as we though.
3. The person that say that he said 'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.' is an idiot.
Which one do you subscribe to?
the algorithm results in the pattern. if it's simple then yeah, he observed how the algorithms work. if you memorize how koopa troopers walk and by what rules, then you know where they will walk and then you know the algorithm(that the actual game might have more complex code than is actually necessary to complete the algorithms in the way they manifest to gameplay is of no issue to this).
if you just memorize how every enemy on the screen acts on the screen you're none the wiser in a new level. once you can guess how the pattern will go for a new level then yes, you have deduced the algorithm. this is when a game loses it's magic.
if it never deviates from it, then the quickly observed pattern is the algorithm.. look, it's not rocket science. if you notice that everytime you're in the direction D from the enemy sprite a thing X happens. they you know the algorithm.
many games even nowadays have algorithms you can guess (accurately, mind you) what they are for enemy "ai"(which is a fucking joke still). even in games like WOW - that's what instancing, pulling and all that depends on. you even have "street names" for the internal variables like aggro.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
4. The person whining about this on a Sunday morning is a virgin
In 1980, a 'pattern' was something your wallpaper had. The word had no computer connotations. You're judging the man on how well he used 21st century lingo back in the 1980's.
Railroad Tycoon
Still has never been outdone in the genre. Transport Tycoon, additional editions of RRT, not even the latest Rails, which I believe Sid lent his name to without really being involved.... none of them can hold a candle to the original Railroad Tycoon.
Most literature no older than 100 years looks now dated and plain boring (yes, even golden classics). Music from 2 decades ago is mostly stuff that nobody listens anymore
No. You have it backwards. Most recent literature is crap. Then again, most of the stuff that's ever been written is also crap. The difference between the works in the canon and the stuff that's getting published today is that over time it tends to be only the worthwhile material that endures. Mainly for this reason, if you pick up a book that's still in print after a long time then it's likely to be a lot better than a random contemporary book.
The idea that nobody listens to music over twenty years old is about a dumb as it's possible to get in a syntactically valid sentence.
He's still right, though. You and your friends listen to 3 decades old music because you've stagnated, but even you won't listen to just any 30 years old record. I mean, even though it was a #1 hit close to 30 years ago, "Never Gonna Give You Up" is mostly remembered due to Rickrolling. Most music, most literature, most films and most art has always been shit; contemporary shit is just more acceptable due to being part of the zeitgeist. Old crap is forgotten, and people forget that they forget, and thus you get the popular delusion that there used to be some golden age.
I wonder if the music executives pick the music that made superhits some 30 or 40 years ago, dress it up using modern arrangements, and disguise it well
Its all the same 4 chords.
"His name was James Damore."
From the childish notion that immense intellect would manifest as gaming skill to the baffling assumption that being a real-life fighter pilot would have any bearing whatsoever on playing a 2d side scroller. Sounds like the perfect kind of imbecile to be impressed with Sid Meier hype.
i could live a little longer in this prison
It's (1), Sid Meier, super genius. I've spoken to the man twice, the tech side of Baltimore where we both live is pretty small. Sid is exactly the sort of guy who will stare at a game, note the patterns, and then figure out what algorithms must be driving them, all while a regular person is just playing. There is not a hint of boasting from the guy in person, he's just that good at what he does.
Well, really my only Sid Meier encounter, if you don't count sitting in an audience.
So, I'm at . . . COMDEX? CES? One of those big-ass electronics trade shows. Might have been Chicago, might have been Las Vegas.
I got away from my booth for an hour, and I head for the area where computer games are being shown. I'm totally jazzed to see a dummy box and demo of Colonization. I look over the material about it, and to another totally jazzed gamer next to me say something like "Cool, it's like someone did a decent remake of Seven Cities of Gold!"
A voice at my shoulder says "Good, that's what I had in mind."
SQUEEE!
No, I despise Madonna too. Competitive with Let It Be? Competitive with Dark Side Of The Moon? Competitive with Born In The USA? Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? Elton John had the same gimmick-- dress outrageously, but he makes good music. Lady HaHa is nothing BUT an image. The music is only incidental, and it's all Autotuned.
OOOH I want to join the condescending display of knowledge. When did Pink Floyd ever write a modal melody that blossomed into florid counterpoint, or discovered a way to make the D triad follow the C# triad, through a harmonic intensification of a melodic element? (see Beethoven op 18 no 3, for example, first movement). Or when do you see anything even remotely close to the technique of taking a tune or theme and successively chipping it away to motivic nothings? Even a minor composer from 18th century Bohemia, Zdenek Fibich, showed more harmonic creativity than Bruce Springsteen. I mean, have you actually listened to "Born in the USA?" The monotonous repetitions are so tiring.
What's really tiring is people who are condescending about music, especially when the stuff they prefer is just as much trash. Lady Gaga is fun to listen to, that's why people listen to her.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I think a lot of it depends on your definition of "dated". Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare are dated in that the language and some of the situations are anachronistic, and yet either because they're ripping good stories (like many of Doyle's Holmes stories are) or deal with universal themes (as Shakespeare's greatest plays do), the anachronisms almost fade away.
At the same time, it's true that there are no lack of out and out dated works. I watched some old Spitting Image episodes from the 1980s, and while I had a good laugh at Margaret Thatcher and Jeffrey Archer being brutally mocked, I realized that my 20 year old daughter wouldn't find it very funny at all. The humor was firmly planted in that period, so that even 25 years later, at best it's funny in a manic and nostalgic way.
There is a lot of unreadable Victorian pulp, to be sure. It was the first great age of mass market consumer publishing, when literacy levels in Europe and the Americas reached the level that one could make a living publishing trash. At the same time, once I get over the jarring hump of 19th century idiosyncrasies, I can still enjoy Austen or Dickens, and even see in their marvelous and often excruciating characters people I know today. Thus they transcend the period in which they are written and set, and become universal works.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.