I agree with your first point. The book is about interfaces, so why does it matter whether it mentions Free software or not? That's like the mideval church insisting that every science text include a discussion of God and how He relates to the science (although with a lot less killing). I mean, I'm as much a Linux advocate as the next guy, but damn, give it a rest.
However, your point about Emacs is fairly short sighted, and i'll tell you why. What's more, I don't even use Emacs, I use vim, so it's not like you just hurt my feelings. The reason Emacs has a good interface is that it allows you to get the most done for the time you put in. This is because most people that use Emacs, use it a lot. Therefore, the time spent learning is nothing due to the time saved from its features. If we're talking about someone who uses computers occasionally, then Emacs is a terrible interface. The time saved will be MUCH less than the time spent learning it.
So, no, Emacs doesn't have a bad interface. It might have a bad interface for some people, but it's not bad across the board.
As for GNOME, I personally agree. It seems like far too little thought was put into long term usability, but then again, I haven't used GNOME or KDE in the past few months.
Umm, now, i've never tried to hit off a bong in 0g, but it seems to me that with no gravity, instead of getting the smoke to bubble up through the water and into your lungs, you'd just get a mouthfull of bong water.
Umm, okay, there was an ideological difference when GNOME started. Yeah, I can see why there might be some tension there, but...
Apparently TrollTech agreed with the GNOME developers, or at least made the concession to make Qt Free. I don't see how there can still be ill feelings between KDE and GNOME since the one difference that really seperated them was voluntarilly rectified. It seems that some of the outspoken KDE advocates are still angry at GNOME, but why not also be angry at TrollTech? Or did the people who started GNOME have a point (whether or not you think that it was worth starting another desktop enviroment is a different story)?
Oh well. I don't use either, anyway, as most of the stuff is fluff, in my oppinion, but to each his own.
Well, I'm not a Microsoft coder, nor do I know how much work you're willing to put into the solution versus cost of an out-of-the-box solution, but, here's what i'd do.
Whip up a nice limited frontend in Visual Basic that makes commits and checkouts easy. When any.doc or powerpoint presentation file is uploaded, extract the text into an ascii file, and "secretly" upload a related file with the plaintext. Then, make diffs actually diff between the two ascii files, not the docs. Maybe even add support for an "advanced doc diff" where you load both docs into Word and compare them (i'm pretty sure MS Word still has support for this).
Excel or whatever other files could have summery information written into their text file, as it'd be hard to make something meaningful out of the diff from a spreadsheet otherwise.
Maybe that's a bit more than you're looking to do, but that's what would seem the best long-term solution to me.
Well, along those lines of what I want on a system, for Windows, throw in VC++ (which i'm sure is huge), perl, python, VB (instead of tcl/tk, shell scrtipting, fortran, and all the other misc language support many of us have), MSSQL, and Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.
(what I'd REALLY want on a Windows system is an X server and Cygwin, but for the sake of arguement, I'll leave that stuff out)
I'm guessing we'd be approaching some huge numbers on both sides, and all I can really speculate is that I think Windows would have more overlapping functionality in its apps, but I can't say as for lines of code.
Anyway, lines of code is not directly a measure of bloat. In my mind, bloat is lines of code divided by (functionality times stability times performance), but I realize that not everyone shares my view on that.
It's really too bad that the EEF chose to stage a protest at the same time as the FTAA protests. They'll be greatly overshadowed, and they instantly depleted their source of politically-active geeks, like myself.
It's too late to change it now, but it really is bad timing.
This is one of the more amusing trolls i've seen in a while!
As I write this we can all be thankful that our servicemen are on their way home from China. But I have to admit that I felt a bit guilty booting into Linux, knowing that those innocent people were being held hostage, while at the same time I was using their captors' favorite OS without giving it a second thought. I know this is silly; "one thing has nothing to do with the other", as they say.. but still, there was some sort of primal guilt that I was powerless to overcome.
Yeah, best watch out for that Kommie supported OS (even though the GPL doesn't apply to them, so they're not giving anything back to us that might infect us with their EVIL kommie disease.) What's that i see? You're breathing the same air they are! Holy crap, you're also using the same types of proteins in your cells! How can you call yourself a capitalist doing such things?
I keep telling myself that using Linux is not going to turn me into a leftist, but some irrational part of me (that part of the brain that invents monsters under the bed, no doubt) is working overtime to convince me otherwise.
Do you also thing homosexuality is contracted like a disease? "Gay men have bought this very same model of sofa before! RUN FOR YOUR HETROSEXUALITY AND ETERNAL SOUL!"
Tigers in that game are as dumb as dirt. Try a monkey if you don't have the patience to train your tiger. On the other hand, the tiger is pretty good in battle.
As for 1, the kiddie voices make it all the more fun when you throw them on the alter to gain the power to feed the other worshippers!;)
-ben.c
Re:I learned everything I know from slashdot!
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"Jon Katz is the smartest journalist & philosopher."
I have never heard this one on Slashdot...
Re:Dissappointed to hear it is biased.
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Actually, while i will agree that a lot of so-called leftists want to dictate what you can and cannot do, the actual meaning of being a leftist is to maximize personal freedoms while minimizing financial freedoms. So, yes, real socialists are leftist, but all communist counties that i know of lean more to the totalitarian corner of no financial OR personal freedoms.
Actually, i've heard varying stories of MS support. Anywhere from the equivelent of "fsck off", to sending real live developers on site, to many things in between. One developer I know even got help from them with glibc pthread compatibility (i believe. I don't know enough about Windows to know if that makes sense, but it surprized the crap out of me).
No, i'm not confused: they are one and the same. If you're not against it, you're for it, legal or not.
No, you do seem to be confused. Here's an example: I support the right of the KKK to hold meetings and rallies and such. Does that make me pro-KKK? No, not at all. I work for minority rights, but i believe in the right of EVERYONE's free speech.
In a similar manner, i don't support abortion, but i'm not about to tell you that you may not have an abortion. I feel the same way about marijuana legalization.
Agreed. As a developer of Free code, I cannot use any proprietary code either. I don't like the idea of the EULA forcing itself down my throat. I do not have the wherewithal to support myself so I can run around and buy proprietary software, nor do I have enough influence (nor want...) to make that decision for the company I work with.
The fact of the matter is that propriatary software is really only for those folks who are willing to subject themselves to this "ideal" of perfect propriatary software that never needs any modifications, while those of us who just want to make a living and can't or don't want to do the software equivalent of going to work in the 19th century coal mines of West Virginia where we become so indebted to the company that we lose all our rights just don't count for anything.
The more I consider propriatary softare, the more I see it as a tool for Bill Gates and Larry Ellison to force their products down everyone's throat. I personally think the BSD licence is reasonable (my understanding is that people can still distribute use the code in commercial products freely). I plan to release code under the BSD licence or possibly another Free license or even pitch it into the public domain. However, in order to maximize my code's usefullness to anyone who might want to use it, I will not deign to tell people who want to use my code that they can't use it in theirs. I think that's none of my business.
This sounds like a great idea to me. For older carts and roms, you could even have a dump of them on a computer with an emulator so the old carts don't get worn. AFAIK (and IANAL), it'd be legal as long as you weren't using both the original cart and the rom at the same time or distributing the rom (duh!).
If you do plan to make a living off of this, though, expect to live a fairly modest life, unless you have a nest-egg you weren't telling us about. It'll probably be expensive and not all that lucrative, but i could be wrong.
The only laws that legislate morality are the victimless crimes: sodomy, drugs, gambling, and some others. Laws against murder and theft don't legislate morality; they just keep people from being opressed.
Well, ok, in that sense laws do legislate morality. But the morality only goes as far as the consitution (rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, etc).
Not to mention, a large reason people buy singles, cassingles, and vinyl, not to mention imports, is that they contain one or two songs, B-sides, and covers that don't come on the usual CD release. With Napster, people will be less likely to spend (way too much) to get one or two rare songs when they can just get the mp3 for free.
In response to the original poster, though, you're complaining about playing a CD on a 600W amp, well, mp3s are generally not much better. Fidelity isn't exactly their strong point.
* Every artist I know can barely afford ~$200 a month rent and eats a lot of rice.-- Unless you mean "to know personally," you must not watch many popular movies or listen to any popular music.
* A piece of software only does one thing.-- maybe, maybe not. Depends a lot on the software. Still, if a movie can be art (and if you don't consider film to be an artform, then ok, neither can code be), then it's only a hop-skip-and-a-jump to computer generated art. If a picture or animation generated by a computer can be art, then could not one think of the algorithm that perfectly and completely describes the picture or animation or sound also be a form of art?
You may say "no!" That's ok. I don't think art is something you can really quantify: something is only art if the observer considers it so. There is no right or wrong, really.
Quit posing. Quit fantasizing about how many demographics you can span.
Quit sighting cliche examples of supposed high-brow enlightenment: an elegant mathematical proof, a Beethoven symphony, fucking swan lake, or gotterdamurung. Gag.-- and to that i say, quit worrying about how other people think of themselves. Quit telling them what they are or what they are not. If you have proof present it. Otherwise, let people think this through themselves. There's no point in belittling them.
...at least you're missing the point of what i got out of the article.
The point is not that "henceforth, all Carnivorous Russian Robotic Orcs-Aliens are banned from videogames!" Rather, if i have a character type, a carnivorous alien for example, then i can not rely on what the player already knows about carnivorous aliens, in fact, i have some duty to contradict them, in a subtle manner, so as to let the player know that this isn't a cookie cutter carnivorous alien-- that i have something new to tell them about this character, and it is, in fact, a whole new character. The point is to explore new ground rather than resting on stock characters.
I think that the writer might have wanted people to stay out of genres already retread a thousand times, but i think that as long as you have something genuinely new and interesting to put in, go for it. You won't hear many complaints.
I just want to say that i agree with the "SNL sure was better in the 70's!" effect. It really exists, and you'll figure that out when you go back and download a random smattering of games from any year. Most of them will be playable, but nothing remarkable. Some will be complete crap, and a few will be really good. People just forget the bad stuff most of the time.
"I'd bet you'd see that 90% of the great games developed over time came along with great tech developments." Here i have to completely disagree. Granted, there are some examples of good games that come out as new technology is coming out, but for the most part, it's not until the game creators really got a feel for the console that really good stuff came out. Just look at the Gameboy. It's still around today BECAUSE the games got so much better because technology was stopped. It's come from Tetris to Donkey Kong Country. Look at Final Fantasy (US) 2 versus Final Fantasy (US) 3! There is such a difference in quality, it's amazing (i've not played the Japanese FF's, so i can't comment on any that may have come between). Or Phantasy Star 2 versus Phantasy Star 4. Both came out for the Genesis, but 4 was better all around.
Now, i know some people are arguing that there is an inverse relationship between FLOPS and game quality, but that's not my point. My point is that the technology jumps hinders gameplay in the short term, while people are still learning the consoles.. The same thing applies to PCs when a new fad pops up (the Doom clone fad, the FMV crazy when CDs became standard, the "everything is multiplayer" fad that happened fairly recently). The requirement to fulfil an arbitrary marketing need supercedes the requirements of a fun game. It's not a universal law, it just happens.
Characters in the game cannot do anything impossible in the real world. I'd modify this with a "if the characters represent actual people." Ok, so this is a very vague distinction, but when making rules on game design, you must put your rules through a battery of tests i call "old games". Mario wouldn't pass your definition, though i think it was an inovative and original game (at least Super Marios one and two were). For the most part, though, if you're supposed to think of the characters as real people, give them real abilities.
All cinematics, cut-scenes, and other non-interactive movies are forbidden. I'll go for that one, though i've seen some innovative games making good use of cutscenes. Giants: Citizen Kabuto comes to mind. I might even say that the term "interactive movie" should NOT apply to your game. (Yes, i'm looking at you, Squaresoft.) How about a restriction that, "the player should always have control over the game except when loading data (though stopping to load data should be discouraged and worked around). The type of input may be changable, but the player should always have some means of input. Exceptions can be granted when waiting for another human player to input (ie Chess, round-robbin games).
There shall be no blood, explosions, or injury or death animations. I don't know about this one. Death happens, and it might make the game MORE contrived to make designers avoid it, however, i'd say that, "only major characters or plot points may have specific death animations or blood. If a character has no baring on the story, if s/he is randomly generated, or if blood or death are not the most logical conclusion, then death, blood, and injury animations are forbidden.
Lighting should be used for clarity, not effect. Damn right. I'd even go so far as to say that, "black uniforms may not be standard issue on any side of a conflict and may only be used when any other color would not make sense.
The game must use an existing game engine. A big fat "no" to this one. Games may be about content, but if we want genre-busters, how are we going to get those when you have to use a pre-existing engine? I might even say that the opposite is required-- that for a new game, you MUST use a new engine so as not to slide into repeditive gameplay due to technical limitations. Furthermore, the architecture of your engine should not be based on the architecture of any produced game (if the game was a game, and not just a technical experiment, then you can't base your engine on it). Algorithm and library reuse is encouraged, though.
Irrelevant audio is prohibited. Music only when it makes sense within the game, in the case of representational games. Sound should be there to aid gameplay (audio cues) and add realism where realism is desired. Audio should NOT be used as a challenge in and of itself (hit the A button when you hear a click), and should not be used to increase the diffeculty of the game (in the Genesis version of Columns, the music sped up as the room decreased to make the player play worse, and it really worked).
The game must be playable on a PC selling for under $1000 or on a game console. This is much better than the no 3D acceleration rule, which would just hinder people. Plus, many games are so much less fun because the multiplayer is unusable due to the insane requirements (Quake3, UT, Giants, any other FPS, really).
Now i have a few bones to pick with the original author...
There shall be no kights, elves, dwarves or dragons.... humanoid robots... I take issue with this one. All the other things on the list, i'm okay with, but i think that ever sinse the idea was introduced, humanoid robots have had a certain place in the human mind, especially in the genre of sci-fi. However, it is a rather overused prop, so i'll say that, "no humanoid robots who have turned against their creators," as well as, "you may not use Asimov's Rules of Robotics." Still, this is one to be used with extreme caution as it's somewhat cliche. If you're gonna use them, use them for a purpose, and have something new to say, for god's sake.
Only the following input devices are allowed:... 2-button mouse i'd say that games should support 3-button mice, but the default setup should not rely on the existence of one.
No game shall be able to be described acurately as the cross between less than four other games. Ok, this one seems a little bit obvious, but it had to be said.
I wish i had less nebulous terms for some of these, but oh well. I'll be more lucid later.-ben.c
If by access, you mean illegally, then yes, a large number of people can get into your dorm room.
If you mean legally, it's actually a very small number of people that have access to your room (like, you and your roommate, if you have one) except at certain announced times, usually while you're not living there. Plus warrents, plus probable cause (which at UMass means seeing a bong, which are illegal in Mass, or other illegal objects which is in CLEAR SIGHT ie if it's under a sheet, it can't be touched. This is all assuming you open the door, which you have no obligation to do). At least that's the way it is at my college.
I haven't looked into the mail yet, but i know i never signed anything telling them they were allowed to read my mail, and i'd be very surprized if i found something to that effect.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with your first point. The book is about interfaces, so why does it matter whether it mentions Free software or not? That's like the mideval church insisting that every science text include a discussion of God and how He relates to the science (although with a lot less killing). I mean, I'm as much a Linux advocate as the next guy, but damn, give it a rest.
However, your point about Emacs is fairly short sighted, and i'll tell you why. What's more, I don't even use Emacs, I use vim, so it's not like you just hurt my feelings. The reason Emacs has a good interface is that it allows you to get the most done for the time you put in. This is because most people that use Emacs, use it a lot. Therefore, the time spent learning is nothing due to the time saved from its features. If we're talking about someone who uses computers occasionally, then Emacs is a terrible interface. The time saved will be MUCH less than the time spent learning it.
So, no, Emacs doesn't have a bad interface. It might have a bad interface for some people, but it's not bad across the board.
As for GNOME, I personally agree. It seems like far too little thought was put into long term usability, but then again, I haven't used GNOME or KDE in the past few months.
-ben.c
Umm, now, i've never tried to hit off a bong in 0g, but it seems to me that with no gravity, instead of getting the smoke to bubble up through the water and into your lungs, you'd just get a mouthfull of bong water.
And nobody likes bong water.
-ben.c
Umm, okay, there was an ideological difference when GNOME started. Yeah, I can see why there might be some tension there, but...
Apparently TrollTech agreed with the GNOME developers, or at least made the concession to make Qt Free. I don't see how there can still be ill feelings between KDE and GNOME since the one difference that really seperated them was voluntarilly rectified. It seems that some of the outspoken KDE advocates are still angry at GNOME, but why not also be angry at TrollTech? Or did the people who started GNOME have a point (whether or not you think that it was worth starting another desktop enviroment is a different story)?
Oh well. I don't use either, anyway, as most of the stuff is fluff, in my oppinion, but to each his own.
-ben.c
Well, I'm not a Microsoft coder, nor do I know how much work you're willing to put into the solution versus cost of an out-of-the-box solution, but, here's what i'd do.
.doc or powerpoint presentation file is uploaded, extract the text into an ascii file, and "secretly" upload a related file with the plaintext. Then, make diffs actually diff between the two ascii files, not the docs. Maybe even add support for an "advanced doc diff" where you load both docs into Word and compare them (i'm pretty sure MS Word still has support for this).
Whip up a nice limited frontend in Visual Basic that makes commits and checkouts easy. When any
Excel or whatever other files could have summery information written into their text file, as it'd be hard to make something meaningful out of the diff from a spreadsheet otherwise.
Maybe that's a bit more than you're looking to do, but that's what would seem the best long-term solution to me.
-ben.c
Well, along those lines of what I want on a system, for Windows, throw in VC++ (which i'm sure is huge), perl, python, VB (instead of tcl/tk, shell scrtipting, fortran, and all the other misc language support many of us have), MSSQL, and Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.
(what I'd REALLY want on a Windows system is an X server and Cygwin, but for the sake of arguement, I'll leave that stuff out)
I'm guessing we'd be approaching some huge numbers on both sides, and all I can really speculate is that I think Windows would have more overlapping functionality in its apps, but I can't say as for lines of code.
Anyway, lines of code is not directly a measure of bloat. In my mind, bloat is lines of code divided by (functionality times stability times performance), but I realize that not everyone shares my view on that.
Yeah.
-ben.c
It's really too bad that the EEF chose to stage a protest at the same time as the FTAA protests. They'll be greatly overshadowed, and they instantly depleted their source of politically-active geeks, like myself.
It's too late to change it now, but it really is bad timing.
-ben.c
Nipple Mouse? I can't believe the kind of low-brow humor we see on Slashdot these days! The proper term is "titmouse"
/me ducks.
-ben.c
This is one of the more amusing trolls i've seen in a while!
.. but still, there was some sort of primal guilt that I was powerless to overcome.
As I write this we can all be thankful that our servicemen are on their way home from China. But I have to admit that I felt a bit guilty booting into Linux, knowing that those innocent people were being held hostage, while at the same time I was using their captors' favorite OS without giving it a second thought. I know this is silly; "one thing has nothing to do with the other", as they say
Yeah, best watch out for that Kommie supported OS (even though the GPL doesn't apply to them, so they're not giving anything back to us that might infect us with their EVIL kommie disease.) What's that i see? You're breathing the same air they are! Holy crap, you're also using the same types of proteins in your cells! How can you call yourself a capitalist doing such things?
I keep telling myself that using Linux is not going to turn me into a leftist, but some irrational part of me (that part of the brain that invents monsters under the bed, no doubt) is working overtime to convince me otherwise.
Do you also thing homosexuality is contracted like a disease? "Gay men have bought this very same model of sofa before! RUN FOR YOUR HETROSEXUALITY AND ETERNAL SOUL!"
Anyway, i'll see you in Quebec!
-ben.c
In response to 3:
;)
Tigers in that game are as dumb as dirt. Try a monkey if you don't have the patience to train your tiger. On the other hand, the tiger is pretty good in battle.
As for 1, the kiddie voices make it all the more fun when you throw them on the alter to gain the power to feed the other worshippers!
-ben.c
"Jon Katz is the smartest journalist & philosopher."
I have never heard this one on Slashdot...
Actually, while i will agree that a lot of so-called leftists want to dictate what you can and cannot do, the actual meaning of being a leftist is to maximize personal freedoms while minimizing financial freedoms. So, yes, real socialists are leftist, but all communist counties that i know of lean more to the totalitarian corner of no financial OR personal freedoms.
-ben.c
I know someone was doing a Ruby "port" of the library, although largely based off of pygame.
Actually, i've heard varying stories of MS support. Anywhere from the equivelent of "fsck off", to sending real live developers on site, to many things in between. One developer I know even got help from them with glibc pthread compatibility (i believe. I don't know enough about Windows to know if that makes sense, but it surprized the crap out of me).
-ben.c
No, i'm not confused: they are one and the same. If you're not against it, you're for it, legal or not.
No, you do seem to be confused. Here's an example: I support the right of the KKK to hold meetings and rallies and such. Does that make me pro-KKK? No, not at all. I work for minority rights, but i believe in the right of EVERYONE's free speech.
In a similar manner, i don't support abortion, but i'm not about to tell you that you may not have an abortion. I feel the same way about marijuana legalization.
-ben.c
People buy consoles for the games, not for the hardware. The CEO of Nintendo has all but made this his religion, and I tend to agree.
-ben.c
Agreed. As a developer of Free code, I cannot use any proprietary code either. I don't like the idea of the EULA forcing itself down my throat. I do not have the wherewithal to support myself so I can run around and buy proprietary software, nor do I have enough influence (nor want...) to make that decision for the company I work with.
The fact of the matter is that propriatary software is really only for those folks who are willing to subject themselves to this "ideal" of perfect propriatary software that never needs any modifications, while those of us who just want to make a living and can't or don't want to do the software equivalent of going to work in the 19th century coal mines of West Virginia where we become so indebted to the company that we lose all our rights just don't count for anything.
The more I consider propriatary softare, the more I see it as a tool for Bill Gates and Larry Ellison to force their products down everyone's throat. I personally think the BSD licence is reasonable (my understanding is that people can still distribute use the code in commercial products freely). I plan to release code under the BSD licence or possibly another Free license or even pitch it into the public domain. However, in order to maximize my code's usefullness to anyone who might want to use it, I will not deign to tell people who want to use my code that they can't use it in theirs. I think that's none of my business.
-ben.c
This sounds like a great idea to me. For older carts and roms, you could even have a dump of them on a computer with an emulator so the old carts don't get worn. AFAIK (and IANAL), it'd be legal as long as you weren't using both the original cart and the rom at the same time or distributing the rom (duh!).
If you do plan to make a living off of this, though, expect to live a fairly modest life, unless you have a nest-egg you weren't telling us about. It'll probably be expensive and not all that lucrative, but i could be wrong.
-ben.c
No, that's wrong.
The only laws that legislate morality are the victimless crimes: sodomy, drugs, gambling, and some others. Laws against murder and theft don't legislate morality; they just keep people from being opressed.
Well, ok, in that sense laws do legislate morality. But the morality only goes as far as the consitution (rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, etc).
-ben.c
I was thinking the same thing.
Not to mention, a large reason people buy singles, cassingles, and vinyl, not to mention imports, is that they contain one or two songs, B-sides, and covers that don't come on the usual CD release. With Napster, people will be less likely to spend (way too much) to get one or two rare songs when they can just get the mp3 for free.
In response to the original poster, though, you're complaining about playing a CD on a 600W amp, well, mp3s are generally not much better. Fidelity isn't exactly their strong point.
-ben.c
* Every artist I know can barely afford ~$200 a month rent and eats a lot of rice.-- Unless you mean "to know personally," you must not watch many popular movies or listen to any popular music.
* A piece of software only does one thing.-- maybe, maybe not. Depends a lot on the software. Still, if a movie can be art (and if you don't consider film to be an artform, then ok, neither can code be), then it's only a hop-skip-and-a-jump to computer generated art. If a picture or animation generated by a computer can be art, then could not one think of the algorithm that perfectly and completely describes the picture or animation or sound also be a form of art?
You may say "no!" That's ok. I don't think art is something you can really quantify: something is only art if the observer considers it so. There is no right or wrong, really.
Quit posing. Quit fantasizing about how many demographics you can span.
Quit sighting cliche examples of supposed high-brow enlightenment: an elegant mathematical proof, a Beethoven symphony, fucking swan lake, or gotterdamurung. Gag.-- and to that i say, quit worrying about how other people think of themselves. Quit telling them what they are or what they are not. If you have proof present it. Otherwise, let people think this through themselves. There's no point in belittling them.
-ben.c
Wow. Very well put.
And to think, i was about to respond to that comment with a "bullshit!"
I agree whole heartedly.
-ben.c
...at least you're missing the point of what i got out of the article.
The point is not that "henceforth, all Carnivorous Russian Robotic Orcs-Aliens are banned from videogames!" Rather, if i have a character type, a carnivorous alien for example, then i can not rely on what the player already knows about carnivorous aliens, in fact, i have some duty to contradict them, in a subtle manner, so as to let the player know that this isn't a cookie cutter carnivorous alien-- that i have something new to tell them about this character, and it is, in fact, a whole new character. The point is to explore new ground rather than resting on stock characters.
I think that the writer might have wanted people to stay out of genres already retread a thousand times, but i think that as long as you have something genuinely new and interesting to put in, go for it. You won't hear many complaints.
-ben.c
I just want to say that i agree with the "SNL sure was better in the 70's!" effect. It really exists, and you'll figure that out when you go back and download a random smattering of games from any year. Most of them will be playable, but nothing remarkable. Some will be complete crap, and a few will be really good. People just forget the bad stuff most of the time.
"I'd bet you'd see that 90% of the great games developed over time came along with great tech developments." Here i have to completely disagree. Granted, there are some examples of good games that come out as new technology is coming out, but for the most part, it's not until the game creators really got a feel for the console that really good stuff came out. Just look at the Gameboy. It's still around today BECAUSE the games got so much better because technology was stopped. It's come from Tetris to Donkey Kong Country. Look at Final Fantasy (US) 2 versus Final Fantasy (US) 3! There is such a difference in quality, it's amazing (i've not played the Japanese FF's, so i can't comment on any that may have come between). Or Phantasy Star 2 versus Phantasy Star 4. Both came out for the Genesis, but 4 was better all around.
Now, i know some people are arguing that there is an inverse relationship between FLOPS and game quality, but that's not my point. My point is that the technology jumps hinders gameplay in the short term, while people are still learning the consoles.. The same thing applies to PCs when a new fad pops up (the Doom clone fad, the FMV crazy when CDs became standard, the "everything is multiplayer" fad that happened fairly recently). The requirement to fulfil an arbitrary marketing need supercedes the requirements of a fun game. It's not a universal law, it just happens.
-ben.c
- Characters in the game cannot do anything impossible in the real world. I'd modify this with a "if the characters represent actual people." Ok, so this is a very vague distinction, but when making rules on game design, you must put your rules through a battery of tests i call "old games". Mario wouldn't pass your definition, though i think it was an inovative and original game (at least Super Marios one and two were). For the most part, though, if you're supposed to think of the characters as real people, give them real abilities.
- All cinematics, cut-scenes, and other non-interactive movies are forbidden. I'll go for that one, though i've seen some innovative games making good use of cutscenes. Giants: Citizen Kabuto comes to mind. I might even say that the term "interactive movie" should NOT apply to your game. (Yes, i'm looking at you, Squaresoft.) How about a restriction that, "the player should always have control over the game except when loading data (though stopping to load data should be discouraged and worked around). The type of input may be changable, but the player should always have some means of input. Exceptions can be granted when waiting for another human player to input (ie Chess, round-robbin games).
- There shall be no blood, explosions, or injury or death animations. I don't know about this one. Death happens, and it might make the game MORE contrived to make designers avoid it, however, i'd say that, "only major characters or plot points may have specific death animations or blood. If a character has no baring on the story, if s/he is randomly generated, or if blood or death are not the most logical conclusion, then death, blood, and injury animations are forbidden.
- Lighting should be used for clarity, not effect. Damn right. I'd even go so far as to say that, "black uniforms may not be standard issue on any side of a conflict and may only be used when any other color would not make sense.
- The game must use an existing game engine. A big fat "no" to this one. Games may be about content, but if we want genre-busters, how are we going to get those when you have to use a pre-existing engine? I might even say that the opposite is required-- that for a new game, you MUST use a new engine so as not to slide into repeditive gameplay due to technical limitations. Furthermore, the architecture of your engine should not be based on the architecture of any produced game (if the game was a game, and not just a technical experiment, then you can't base your engine on it). Algorithm and library reuse is encouraged, though.
- Irrelevant audio is prohibited. Music only when it makes sense within the game, in the case of representational games. Sound should be there to aid gameplay (audio cues) and add realism where realism is desired. Audio should NOT be used as a challenge in and of itself (hit the A button when you hear a click), and should not be used to increase the diffeculty of the game (in the Genesis version of Columns, the music sped up as the room decreased to make the player play worse, and it really worked).
- The game must be playable on a PC selling for under $1000 or on a game console. This is much better than the no 3D acceleration rule, which would just hinder people. Plus, many games are so much less fun because the multiplayer is unusable due to the insane requirements (Quake3, UT, Giants, any other FPS, really).
Now i have a few bones to pick with the original author...- There shall be no kights, elves, dwarves or dragons.... humanoid robots... I take issue with this one. All the other things on the list, i'm okay with, but i think that ever sinse the idea was introduced, humanoid robots have had a certain place in the human mind, especially in the genre of sci-fi. However, it is a rather overused prop, so i'll say that, "no humanoid robots who have turned against their creators," as well as, "you may not use Asimov's Rules of Robotics." Still, this is one to be used with extreme caution as it's somewhat cliche. If you're gonna use them, use them for a purpose, and have something new to say, for god's sake.
- Only the following input devices are allowed:... 2-button mouse i'd say that games should support 3-button mice, but the default setup should not rely on the existence of one.
- No game shall be able to be described acurately as the cross between less than four other games. Ok, this one seems a little bit obvious, but it had to be said.
I wish i had less nebulous terms for some of these, but oh well. I'll be more lucid later.-ben.cIf by access, you mean illegally, then yes, a large number of people can get into your dorm room.
If you mean legally, it's actually a very small number of people that have access to your room (like, you and your roommate, if you have one) except at certain announced times, usually while you're not living there. Plus warrents, plus probable cause (which at UMass means seeing a bong, which are illegal in Mass, or other illegal objects which is in CLEAR SIGHT ie if it's under a sheet, it can't be touched. This is all assuming you open the door, which you have no obligation to do). At least that's the way it is at my college.
I haven't looked into the mail yet, but i know i never signed anything telling them they were allowed to read my mail, and i'd be very surprized if i found something to that effect.
-ben.c