For Kivio, you can download and do whatever with the program itself (and source), but object templates (or stencils as they call them) and such can run you anywhere from $5 to $20 or so (USD). The basic Kivio download comes with two default stencil packages.
Just for the record, you can have any extension parsed as a PHP file. Same with perl. For instance, in apache's httpd.conf file (or any apache conf file), add:
AddType application/x-httpd-php.ext
Where.ext is any extension you want..xml,.html,.phtml, whatever. Perl is similar, I would think, if you're using mod_perl (which I don't, btw).
But then again, a header dump of jobs.osdn.com does show IIS 5...
Actually, I had a whole semester of COBOL. I hated it so much. I think it's the only time in my life I can think of where the Caps Lock key actually became useful.
But the truly l33t were all over Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of Putrid Debris (aka SPISPOD), which essentially "[was] to DOOM what DOOM was to Pong."
I think Windows itself is a virus. Consider:
- Viruses tend to replicate quickly. So do Windows releases.
- Viruses use up system resources, decreasing your computer's performance. So does Windows.
- Viruses often make the user suspect their system is getting slower (see above), making the user think it's a hardware problem. They eventually buy new hardware and upgrades to keep up. Every new Windows release requires new hardware and upgrades.
- Viruses trash your filesystems now and again. So does Windows. (Use the Start Menu to shut down next time!)
- Viruses are often spread by piggy-backing valuable programs. Windows? Check.
- Viruses sometimes send information to other people and places without you knowing it. Would it surprise anyone if Windows did this on a regular basis?
But then again, viruses often feature fast, efficient code and tend to become more advanced and sophisticated as they mature.
Therefore Windows isn't a virus, so much as a huge fucking annoyance.
Yes, this joke is a million years old, but it's still decently funny.
Have you not read about the meta tag you insert on a page to disable the smart tags? It's only been mentioned a thousand times throughout the comments attached to this article and in the article itself. I insert the tag, the smart tags are disabled. From one of the articles:
Microsoft has also created a function that will allow Web site operators to write a "meta-tag" that will disable Smart Tags on their sites, Sanford said.
That is how, precisely, I intend to stop them. Did you even bother to read the articles?
When I refer to "my" sites, I'm referring to the site I maintain. It's a company web site, a business. It's an educational site, and as such, we have to be very selective about our links. We can't have the browser linking to shit on it's own because even though we technically aren't responsible for posting those links, we're going to be the ones getting shit over the links, not Microsoft, because people are just that oblivious.
So maybe I'm not that important. But you really need to get over yourself, judging me when you obviously haven't read any of the articles.
Or how about non-html pages? Plain text stuff that you don't normally embed any tags, meta or otherwise? Will a smart tag pop up on, say, a plain text copy of the GPL or a BSD-style license redirecting the user to a Mundie tirade on the pitfalls of free software?
This smart tag thing is going to be a royal pain in the arse. I could care less about the client-side, really -- if people want to use smart tags, let them, that's not my choice. My choice is that they aren't going to be using them on any of my sites, period.
There are a million web sites out there that are unkept, billions of documents that aren't regularly updated and fixing all of them with a new meta tag would be absolutely horrendous.
What the hell does Microsoft expect? That only web sites from this point on will decide to insert their meta tag to disable these Smart Tags? Do they actually expect web masters and owners of Geocities sites that haven't updated their Area51/4234/main.htm page since '98 to go back and disable XP's content-bending features? The pages might not be updated regularly, but damn, they're still somebody else's content.
And what about things like archived mailing lists available online and such? Most of them have links in them and they're static pages that, once posted, are rarely if ever changed. There are hundreds of thousands of these static pages that are never updated. Now, all of a sudden, if we don't want other people's words, ideas and meaning to automatically be pushed aside by some links pointing to any of Microsoft's sites?
One of the reasons I was hired in my, uh, current place of employment was because of my experience with free and open source goods. Actually, this is my first job as a professional, out-of-university guy, but I've been messing around with open and free software for years.
I work for an unnamed company that is making the transition from a bricks/mortar biz to a clicks/mortar biz. I hate those buzzwordy terms, but that's the reality of it.
My job is to basically write the stuff that will power the web site, like a custom search engine and that sort of thing. I also build and maintain the databases behind the scenes. Nearly every aspect of the project I'm working on is rooted in open source/free software.
The three components of the package we're building are comprised of the following:
Web server -- apache with PHP.
Database servers -- PostgreSQL.
Media server -- the only closed, proprietary product we use -- Microsoft Windows Media Services.
Other behind the scenes stuff -- perl for some information indexing before it's stuck into the Postgres databases, gcc/g++ for adding some extensions to PHP, etc. My desktop, the one I'm posting from now, is a GNU/Linux box.
We've been developing using this stuff for months now and we haven't had any problems. We haven't needed tech support yet, but if we do, we've partnered with the right people who we can share info with -- they give us some help, we do the same for them.
We are a business and intend to make a profit, and open/free software has given us such an edge over our few competitors (we're in a niche right now).
We're very proud to say that we use and support open and free software, and display all of the logos of the software we use quite prominently on our site. (Which I'm afraid I can't show right now because I'd like to remain semi-anonymous, or at least keep the company somewhat anonymous.) Every time we give presentations on our project, we make sure to tell the suits and anyone in attendance that we use apache and not IIS, GNU/Linux and not Windows 2000, PHP and not ASP and PostgreSQL instead of Oracle or SQL Server.
We're planning on giving back to the community, too. For instance, the extensions I've written for PHP are going to be released in full source, either through the PHP group or something to that effect. (They're mostly general use things useful for building search engines and such, like a Porter stemmer I just wrote and those kinds of things.)
Free and open source software has given us an edge. We may be a small company, but we're going well with it.
This is all just from memory, but I think the original idea was that they were going to do it Japanese first and then translate & dub it into English later.
But then they kind of realized that this was going to be a Hollywood-style blockbuster thing, so they decided to do it the other way around -- English first, then Japanese.
I could be wrong, but I seem to remeber reading this on more than a few FF fansites.
The country does better financially while the people do worse. Which would you rather have? Or are you just ignoring the $15 billion that could go to feed starving and homeless Canadians in favor of paying off some faceless debt?
... I hope the government uses the $15 billion surplus they've hoarded from us poor Canandians last year. Talk about over-taxation -- at first, the Liberals thought it was only a $10 billion surplus, but then just happened to find another 5 frickin' billion.
I'm not sure how many people out there will remember, but many moons ago, back around post-Doom Year 1 or so, a non-id software company called crack-dot-com released a nifty side-scroller called Abuse. Not only did Abuse feature a cool mouse-keyboard combo for aiming/moving and some cool level designs, it also featured a complete set of game editing utilities and an honest-to-God LISP interpreter that let you completely reprogram the game.
I can't think of too many games that feature their own LISP interpreter, unless you think emacs is fun and difficult enough to qualify as a game.
J
Trust me, after this horror story, you'll all be wanting webcams for security.
Back in my university days (i.e. eight months ago), a friend and I were in the computer lab doing some work. Or something to that effect. My friend had just picked up a webcam and had it streaming to his website for a few days and decided to show me his awesome webcam/HTML hax0ring abilities.
At the time, he was living in a basement apartment. The family upstairs gave him all the privacy he needed, but on this day (and probably many others), the privacy was nil.
Upon firing up the webcam site and logining in, we see a picture of his desk and chair sitting peacefully from the glorious vantage point of a monitor-mounted webcam. A few minutes later, things took a turn for the worse.
Into my friend's room walks the landlord's 14 year old son. "He isn't supposed to be in there," my friend says, a little worried.
He sits at the computer.
"He isn't supposed to be in here," my friend repeats.
The kid types something and fiddles with the mouse.
"He isn't supp... holy fuck!" The kid had dropped his pants and started flogging the dolphin right there in front of my friend's computer, most likely to Britney Spears or some pr0n site, and in plain view of anyone who happened to be checking out the webcam.
Needless to say, the bedroom door suddenly acquired a padlock for the short time my friend remained at the place.
The webcam may not have prevented that spunkfest, but at the very least, further spunkfests were avoided. Now that's security.
As of the latest standard, I believe there are 37 keywords with the addition of inline, _Bool, _Complex, _Imaginary, and restrict. K&R C had 31 keywords vs. ANSI's 32 -- ANSI added volatile, signed and const and dropped asm and fortran.
At least, I think that's how it went... it's somewhat blurry now, I haven't used C in a long time...
I have been working on some demos and stuff, although they kind of hit the back burner the past few months as I've been wrapping up my degree. I got ahold of a translated copy of ASCII RPG Maker 2000, which basically lets you make RPGs similar to the SNES FF games, and while it doesn't involve any direct programming or whatever, it is fairly complex and lets you do some cool event scripting. Besides, the storyboarding and character development is more important in those games than fancy graphics tricks.
I've also spent some time designing Doom and Abuse levels back in the day, and gave Half Life and Quake level editors a shot. And I've been known to write some short stories and such for the hell of it, and stories are really the most important part of the games I enjoy the most (RPGs, non-Quake like games where story is actually important, etc.). I've been reading some books lately and hopefully, once I get myself situated with my new job, I'll have some time to really start focusing on learning the trade.
It has been my dream for nearly 15 years now to get into the industry, so hopefully within a few years... The job I have now is really just a stepping stone to something grander.
To a certain extent, you are partially right. There are only so many types of games that can be created based on so many play mechanics. Even the most recent and popular games still rely on time-honoured play mechanics that have been around since the 2600 days.
Take Metal Gear Solid, for instance. Yes, it is an incredible game (probably my favorite, despite the ease at which I can beat it these days). It's presentation is practically flawless, it's story solid (no pun intended) and it's play mechanics sound.
But, as I believe Hideo Kojima once said, it's still using some of the most basic, fundamental game play techniques as games 10 or 15 years old -- you're still in a maze with a top-down view (Pac Man) with lots of weapons and espionage tactics (the original Metal Gear for the MSX).
The reason MGS is so damn awesome is that it is so simple yet elegant -- it combines simple, easy to master play control with a good story and a great graphics and sound engine. It wasn't particularly innovative outside of the numerous camera angles, but it was such a fine example perfect video game production that it didn't matter.
It seems that all of the best games (IMHO) have that trait -- they take time honored video game play control and mechanics and kick them up a notch with more features and perhaps better graphics and sound. Castlevania: SOTN on the PSX is a good example -- it isn't that much different than the first Castlevania, but it adds more play control options, an RPG element and prettier graphics to produce one of the more memorable PSX games. The Final Fantasy series is the same -- the new PSX games in the series aren't that much different than the SNES or NES games in the series, but they are able to convey the story of the game through better graphics and sound. The fundamental play mechanics are still basically the same. (The FF series is, btw, my person favorite line of games. I'm an RPG freak.)
It's kind of like movies. Directors have been using the same classic editing techniques since DW Griffith and the Lonedale Operator. The special effects have gotten nicer, the sets have become bigger and the photography is improved, but some of the basic film editing and shooting techniques used today are as old as the medium itself. Some innovation still occurs, though (such as the Matrix special f/x), but the fundamentals are always there. And yet we still love movies.
Enough rambling from me. Have I made any sense?
BTW, on an off-topic note, I just graduated from university this week and hope to eventually get into the video game biz, designer or developer, hell, even programmer. I'm thinking of taking a summer-long course at DigiPen in Vancouver or Seattle. Anybody been? I was accepted for their 2-year BSc. course in 1997, but I ended up getting a scholarship elsewhere so I put that on the backburner. Any thoughts from anybody who's heard of or been to that school?
Actually, Zero Wing was designed by Toaplan. It was originally released in the arcades in 1989 and was later ported to the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and the NEC PC Engine/TurboGrapx.
There is no such thing as a Sega PC Engine.
And you're so right -- the joke is losing it's charm. It was funny 12 years ago, it was even funny 2 years ago, and it's mildy funny now, but in about a week, when 1/3 of/.'s posts contain a Zero Wing reference, it's really going to suck.
Since I've sparked so many mini-flames in my direction for my obvious lack of appreciation for music and art, let me at least try to defend myself a little. I guess I did make some sweeping generalizations, but I'll try to clean up my own barf.
No, music isn't simply mathematical. Nothing is as simple as the sum of its parts, and music is one of the most emotional forms of art I can think of. I listen to music for most of my waking hours and am an avid collector of rock albums. (Especially -- please don't knock me for this -- Pearl Jam, a band I've been collecting bootlegs for for years.)
But at the most fundamental level, beyond the emotion, beyond everything to distil it to its most minute, infintesimal level, it is a form of mathematics. Can we agree on that at least? I'm not saying that music is "simply math," 'cause it isn't, and it would be quite condescending to simply cast it as such. (Which I pretty much did, I'll admit.) And at least on this level, you can compare the two.
I picked Beethoven in my original post because I had read somewhere that his genius was based on a form of mathematical genius. Apparently, mathematical genius is one of only two or three types of genius, and it has been theorized that one of the reasons Beethoven was so kick ass is that he had that ability. Of course, again, it can't simply just be the math, it must be more than the sum of its parts. The music is created out of experience and emotion and a million other factors, but perhaps, even at a miniscule level, the mathematical genius may have played a role.
The only reason I picked sonnets in my original post is the mechanical nature that can be found beyond the words and the beauty. Imabic pentameter is quite strict when it comes to the number of syllables you write into each line of a sonnet. A sonnet's structure itself -- 10 syllables per line, 14 lines and the rhyming structure -- is pretty pretty specific, too.
But again, sonnets aren't merely the sum of those parts. The emotion and beauty of a sonnet can't be expressed in numbers (ever watch Dead Poets Society?).
At the same time, I don't think that source code or programming itself should simply be cast as anything different than either music or a sonnet. It is more than the sum of its parts, because it took time for someone to develop, write and toy with. It didn't just come into existence on its own, and neither does art. So why make the distinction?
I'm sure a lot of people are saying, "This guy hates art, or music or something, and loves math. Geek." Of course I don't. I love music. I love art. I kind of like mathematics, but would I rather stare at an interesting calculus problem over listening to a Pearl Jam bootleg? Of course not.
To summerize, no, math isn't the root of art. Sometimes (often times) it has nothing to do with it. But there can be a mathematical component that is likely accidental. I think gribbly put it best: I think when people say things like "musical composition is basically just mathematics" they actually _mean_ "musical composition can be analysed in terms of mathematics". That was probably my biggest misstep here.
As a programmer, I think that at least some of what I do is artful. I am creating something.
I don't even know if I'm making sense anymore. I'll just shut up now. It all made sense to me the other day.
But at the most basic, fundamental level, it is mathematics, and so is programming. But so much more can be made of both, and they are both much more than the sum of their parts.
And where is the mathematical proof that a program is well-designed, useful and easy to use? Or "elegant"? Is there a formula that describes the degree of elegancy a snippet of code may represent?
Slashdot Mirror
For Kivio, you can download and do whatever with the program itself (and source), but object templates (or stencils as they call them) and such can run you anywhere from $5 to $20 or so (USD). The basic Kivio download comes with two default stencil packages.
J
Just for the record, you can have any extension parsed as a PHP file. Same with perl. For instance, in apache's httpd.conf file (or any apache conf file), add:
.ext
.ext is any extension you want. .xml, .html, .phtml, whatever. Perl is similar, I would think, if you're using mod_perl (which I don't, btw).
AddType application/x-httpd-php
Where
But then again, a header dump of jobs.osdn.com does show IIS 5...
J
Actually, I had a whole semester of COBOL. I hated it so much. I think it's the only time in my life I can think of where the Caps Lock key actually became useful.
J
The PostgreSQL Group has an mp3 and a wav on their site, has for quite a while now:
postgresql.mp3.
J
I wasn't referring to the cheat, but the ficticious game behind the name of the cheat.
But you're right, I missed the last P, but at the same time, the actual cheat was idspispopd, not spispopd.
J
But the truly l33t were all over Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of Putrid Debris (aka SPISPOD), which essentially "[was] to DOOM what DOOM was to Pong."
J
I think Windows itself is a virus. Consider: - Viruses tend to replicate quickly. So do Windows releases.
- Viruses use up system resources, decreasing your computer's performance. So does Windows.
- Viruses often make the user suspect their system is getting slower (see above), making the user think it's a hardware problem. They eventually buy new hardware and upgrades to keep up. Every new Windows release requires new hardware and upgrades.
- Viruses trash your filesystems now and again. So does Windows. (Use the Start Menu to shut down next time!)
- Viruses are often spread by piggy-backing valuable programs. Windows? Check.
- Viruses sometimes send information to other people and places without you knowing it. Would it surprise anyone if Windows did this on a regular basis?
But then again, viruses often feature fast, efficient code and tend to become more advanced and sophisticated as they mature.
Therefore Windows isn't a virus, so much as a huge fucking annoyance.
Yes, this joke is a million years old, but it's still decently funny.
J
Have you not read about the meta tag you insert on a page to disable the smart tags? It's only been mentioned a thousand times throughout the comments attached to this article and in the article itself. I insert the tag, the smart tags are disabled. From one of the articles:
Microsoft has also created a function that will allow Web site operators to write a "meta-tag" that will disable Smart Tags on their sites, Sanford said.
That is how, precisely, I intend to stop them. Did you even bother to read the articles?
When I refer to "my" sites, I'm referring to the site I maintain. It's a company web site, a business. It's an educational site, and as such, we have to be very selective about our links. We can't have the browser linking to shit on it's own because even though we technically aren't responsible for posting those links, we're going to be the ones getting shit over the links, not Microsoft, because people are just that oblivious.
So maybe I'm not that important. But you really need to get over yourself, judging me when you obviously haven't read any of the articles.
J
Or how about non-html pages? Plain text stuff that you don't normally embed any tags, meta or otherwise? Will a smart tag pop up on, say, a plain text copy of the GPL or a BSD-style license redirecting the user to a Mundie tirade on the pitfalls of free software?
This smart tag thing is going to be a royal pain in the arse. I could care less about the client-side, really -- if people want to use smart tags, let them, that's not my choice. My choice is that they aren't going to be using them on any of my sites, period.
J
There are a million web sites out there that are unkept, billions of documents that aren't regularly updated and fixing all of them with a new meta tag would be absolutely horrendous.
What the hell does Microsoft expect? That only web sites from this point on will decide to insert their meta tag to disable these Smart Tags? Do they actually expect web masters and owners of Geocities sites that haven't updated their Area51/4234/main.htm page since '98 to go back and disable XP's content-bending features? The pages might not be updated regularly, but damn, they're still somebody else's content.
And what about things like archived mailing lists available online and such? Most of them have links in them and they're static pages that, once posted, are rarely if ever changed. There are hundreds of thousands of these static pages that are never updated. Now, all of a sudden, if we don't want other people's words, ideas and meaning to automatically be pushed aside by some links pointing to any of Microsoft's sites?
This is seriously fucked up.
J
I work for an unnamed company that is making the transition from a bricks/mortar biz to a clicks/mortar biz. I hate those buzzwordy terms, but that's the reality of it.
My job is to basically write the stuff that will power the web site, like a custom search engine and that sort of thing. I also build and maintain the databases behind the scenes. Nearly every aspect of the project I'm working on is rooted in open source/free software.
The three components of the package we're building are comprised of the following:
- Web server -- apache with PHP.
- Database servers -- PostgreSQL.
- Media server -- the only closed, proprietary product we use -- Microsoft Windows Media Services.
- Other behind the scenes stuff -- perl for some information indexing before it's stuck into the Postgres databases, gcc/g++ for adding some extensions to PHP, etc. My desktop, the one I'm posting from now, is a GNU/Linux box.
We've been developing using this stuff for months now and we haven't had any problems. We haven't needed tech support yet, but if we do, we've partnered with the right people who we can share info with -- they give us some help, we do the same for them.We are a business and intend to make a profit, and open/free software has given us such an edge over our few competitors (we're in a niche right now).
We're very proud to say that we use and support open and free software, and display all of the logos of the software we use quite prominently on our site. (Which I'm afraid I can't show right now because I'd like to remain semi-anonymous, or at least keep the company somewhat anonymous.) Every time we give presentations on our project, we make sure to tell the suits and anyone in attendance that we use apache and not IIS, GNU/Linux and not Windows 2000, PHP and not ASP and PostgreSQL instead of Oracle or SQL Server.
We're planning on giving back to the community, too. For instance, the extensions I've written for PHP are going to be released in full source, either through the PHP group or something to that effect. (They're mostly general use things useful for building search engines and such, like a Porter stemmer I just wrote and those kinds of things.)
Free and open source software has given us an edge. We may be a small company, but we're going well with it.
At least, that's been my experience.
J
HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN?
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
I can definitely see the coolness factor.
J
This is all just from memory, but I think the original idea was that they were going to do it Japanese first and then translate & dub it into English later.
But then they kind of realized that this was going to be a Hollywood-style blockbuster thing, so they decided to do it the other way around -- English first, then Japanese.
I could be wrong, but I seem to remeber reading this on more than a few FF fansites.
J
The country does better financially while the people do worse. Which would you rather have? Or are you just ignoring the $15 billion that could go to feed starving and homeless Canadians in favor of paying off some faceless debt?
J
... I hope the government uses the $15 billion surplus they've hoarded from us poor Canandians last year. Talk about over-taxation -- at first, the Liberals thought it was only a $10 billion surplus, but then just happened to find another 5 frickin' billion.
J
I'm not sure how many people out there will remember, but many moons ago, back around post-Doom Year 1 or so, a non-id software company called crack-dot-com released a nifty side-scroller called Abuse. Not only did Abuse feature a cool mouse-keyboard combo for aiming/moving and some cool level designs, it also featured a complete set of game editing utilities and an honest-to-God LISP interpreter that let you completely reprogram the game. I can't think of too many games that feature their own LISP interpreter, unless you think emacs is fun and difficult enough to qualify as a game. J
Hard to be serious about it since the PS2 isn't even two years old.
J
Trust me, after this horror story, you'll all be wanting webcams for security.
Back in my university days (i.e. eight months ago), a friend and I were in the computer lab doing some work. Or something to that effect. My friend had just picked up a webcam and had it streaming to his website for a few days and decided to show me his awesome webcam/HTML hax0ring abilities.
At the time, he was living in a basement apartment. The family upstairs gave him all the privacy he needed, but on this day (and probably many others), the privacy was nil.
Upon firing up the webcam site and logining in, we see a picture of his desk and chair sitting peacefully from the glorious vantage point of a monitor-mounted webcam. A few minutes later, things took a turn for the worse.
Into my friend's room walks the landlord's 14 year old son. "He isn't supposed to be in there," my friend says, a little worried.
He sits at the computer.
"He isn't supposed to be in here," my friend repeats.
The kid types something and fiddles with the mouse.
"He isn't supp... holy fuck!" The kid had dropped his pants and started flogging the dolphin right there in front of my friend's computer, most likely to Britney Spears or some pr0n site, and in plain view of anyone who happened to be checking out the webcam.
Needless to say, the bedroom door suddenly acquired a padlock for the short time my friend remained at the place.
The webcam may not have prevented that spunkfest, but at the very least, further spunkfests were avoided. Now that's security.
(Yes, it was a Windows box. Shut up.)
J
As of the latest standard, I believe there are 37 keywords with the addition of inline, _Bool, _Complex, _Imaginary, and restrict. K&R C had 31 keywords vs. ANSI's 32 -- ANSI added volatile, signed and const and dropped asm and fortran.
At least, I think that's how it went... it's somewhat blurry now, I haven't used C in a long time...
J
I have been working on some demos and stuff, although they kind of hit the back burner the past few months as I've been wrapping up my degree. I got ahold of a translated copy of ASCII RPG Maker 2000, which basically lets you make RPGs similar to the SNES FF games, and while it doesn't involve any direct programming or whatever, it is fairly complex and lets you do some cool event scripting. Besides, the storyboarding and character development is more important in those games than fancy graphics tricks.
I've also spent some time designing Doom and Abuse levels back in the day, and gave Half Life and Quake level editors a shot. And I've been known to write some short stories and such for the hell of it, and stories are really the most important part of the games I enjoy the most (RPGs, non-Quake like games where story is actually important, etc.). I've been reading some books lately and hopefully, once I get myself situated with my new job, I'll have some time to really start focusing on learning the trade.
It has been my dream for nearly 15 years now to get into the industry, so hopefully within a few years... The job I have now is really just a stepping stone to something grander.
J
To a certain extent, you are partially right. There are only so many types of games that can be created based on so many play mechanics. Even the most recent and popular games still rely on time-honoured play mechanics that have been around since the 2600 days.
Take Metal Gear Solid, for instance. Yes, it is an incredible game (probably my favorite, despite the ease at which I can beat it these days). It's presentation is practically flawless, it's story solid (no pun intended) and it's play mechanics sound.
But, as I believe Hideo Kojima once said, it's still using some of the most basic, fundamental game play techniques as games 10 or 15 years old -- you're still in a maze with a top-down view (Pac Man) with lots of weapons and espionage tactics (the original Metal Gear for the MSX). The reason MGS is so damn awesome is that it is so simple yet elegant -- it combines simple, easy to master play control with a good story and a great graphics and sound engine. It wasn't particularly innovative outside of the numerous camera angles, but it was such a fine example perfect video game production that it didn't matter.
It seems that all of the best games (IMHO) have that trait -- they take time honored video game play control and mechanics and kick them up a notch with more features and perhaps better graphics and sound. Castlevania: SOTN on the PSX is a good example -- it isn't that much different than the first Castlevania, but it adds more play control options, an RPG element and prettier graphics to produce one of the more memorable PSX games. The Final Fantasy series is the same -- the new PSX games in the series aren't that much different than the SNES or NES games in the series, but they are able to convey the story of the game through better graphics and sound. The fundamental play mechanics are still basically the same. (The FF series is, btw, my person favorite line of games. I'm an RPG freak.)
It's kind of like movies. Directors have been using the same classic editing techniques since DW Griffith and the Lonedale Operator. The special effects have gotten nicer, the sets have become bigger and the photography is improved, but some of the basic film editing and shooting techniques used today are as old as the medium itself. Some innovation still occurs, though (such as the Matrix special f/x), but the fundamentals are always there. And yet we still love movies.
Enough rambling from me. Have I made any sense?
BTW, on an off-topic note, I just graduated from university this week and hope to eventually get into the video game biz, designer or developer, hell, even programmer. I'm thinking of taking a summer-long course at DigiPen in Vancouver or Seattle. Anybody been? I was accepted for their 2-year BSc. course in 1997, but I ended up getting a scholarship elsewhere so I put that on the backburner. Any thoughts from anybody who's heard of or been to that school?
J
Actually, Zero Wing was designed by Toaplan. It was originally released in the arcades in 1989 and was later ported to the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and the NEC PC Engine/TurboGrapx.
/.'s posts contain a Zero Wing reference, it's really going to suck.
There is no such thing as a Sega PC Engine.
And you're so right -- the joke is losing it's charm. It was funny 12 years ago, it was even funny 2 years ago, and it's mildy funny now, but in about a week, when 1/3 of
J J
Since I've sparked so many mini-flames in my direction for my obvious lack of appreciation for music and art, let me at least try to defend myself a little. I guess I did make some sweeping generalizations, but I'll try to clean up my own barf.
No, music isn't simply mathematical. Nothing is as simple as the sum of its parts, and music is one of the most emotional forms of art I can think of. I listen to music for most of my waking hours and am an avid collector of rock albums. (Especially -- please don't knock me for this -- Pearl Jam, a band I've been collecting bootlegs for for years.)
But at the most fundamental level, beyond the emotion, beyond everything to distil it to its most minute, infintesimal level, it is a form of mathematics. Can we agree on that at least? I'm not saying that music is "simply math," 'cause it isn't, and it would be quite condescending to simply cast it as such. (Which I pretty much did, I'll admit.) And at least on this level, you can compare the two.
I picked Beethoven in my original post because I had read somewhere that his genius was based on a form of mathematical genius. Apparently, mathematical genius is one of only two or three types of genius, and it has been theorized that one of the reasons Beethoven was so kick ass is that he had that ability. Of course, again, it can't simply just be the math, it must be more than the sum of its parts. The music is created out of experience and emotion and a million other factors, but perhaps, even at a miniscule level, the mathematical genius may have played a role.
The only reason I picked sonnets in my original post is the mechanical nature that can be found beyond the words and the beauty. Imabic pentameter is quite strict when it comes to the number of syllables you write into each line of a sonnet. A sonnet's structure itself -- 10 syllables per line, 14 lines and the rhyming structure -- is pretty pretty specific, too.
But again, sonnets aren't merely the sum of those parts. The emotion and beauty of a sonnet can't be expressed in numbers (ever watch Dead Poets Society?).
At the same time, I don't think that source code or programming itself should simply be cast as anything different than either music or a sonnet. It is more than the sum of its parts, because it took time for someone to develop, write and toy with. It didn't just come into existence on its own, and neither does art. So why make the distinction?
I'm sure a lot of people are saying, "This guy hates art, or music or something, and loves math. Geek." Of course I don't. I love music. I love art. I kind of like mathematics, but would I rather stare at an interesting calculus problem over listening to a Pearl Jam bootleg? Of course not.
To summerize, no, math isn't the root of art. Sometimes (often times) it has nothing to do with it. But there can be a mathematical component that is likely accidental. I think gribbly put it best: I think when people say things like "musical composition is basically just mathematics" they actually _mean_ "musical composition can be analysed in terms of mathematics". That was probably my biggest misstep here.
As a programmer, I think that at least some of what I do is artful. I am creating something.
I don't even know if I'm making sense anymore. I'll just shut up now. It all made sense to me the other day.
J
As a matter of fact, I play piano. I love music.
But at the most basic, fundamental level, it is mathematics, and so is programming. But so much more can be made of both, and they are both much more than the sum of their parts.
At least in my opinion.
J
And where is the mathematical proof that a program is well-designed, useful and easy to use? Or "elegant"? Is there a formula that describes the degree of elegancy a snippet of code may represent?
J