I think one of the things that tarnishes the "Homebrew" image is the percentage of games/content that are recycled from other games. I'm guilty of this to some extent myself in my own game dev projects: it's much easier to lift assets or ideas from completed, successful works than it is to develop everything from scratch. And this is not entirely bad - there's lots of great remakes and re-imaginings out there.
However, it seems like - especially for consoles - there's a real dearth of quality, finished original material. If we could point to a quantity of such material then there might be a more adequate defense for hardware and efforts to allow homebrew development. Right now, there's a lot of truth to the argument that items like NDS flash cards are pretty much just channels for illegal material.
I agree about BlueRay. I hear a lot of people trashing HD in general - saying it doesn't make much difference and you can't get content easily and it'll be replaced and what not.
All I know is I've watched BlueRay movies on a PS3 and a good projector and it's unreal-super-amazing time. The whole HD thing hasn't seemed to sell yet, but I think we're reaching a tipping point where there's enough content, enough people who've been impressed by it, and it's cheap enough that it goes crazy (like DVD did). And I agree this could be the big factor for the PS3. (And I wouldn't be terribly surprised if MS started bundling an HD-DVD player for the 360, even if it was at a big loss).
The XNA is designed more for fairly large developers to easily develop a game for the XBox and Windows simultaneously without going through the usual channels to get dev XBoxes.
I guess it might be "more" for somebody else - but XNA is certainly also targetted at hobbyists. For $99 a year, I can do XBox development. I can write a "real" game using most of the features of the console (minus networking for now). How I distribute that is currently up in the air, but I can get it running. And if I can never distribute it on the XBox, I can at least distribute it for Windows.
How do I get a 3d game running on the PS3? I pretty much just don't.
For the 360, if they solve the distribution problem then I'm happy with the situation. For the PS3, how do they fix things without allowing GPU dev? I don't see how small developers are going to make real PS3 games if those developers can't even really get their feet wet on the console.
I'm not saying PS3 Linux isn't cool. But if I'm going to write a PS3 game I'm going to be doing a fancy 3d game. It's not that fl0w isn't fun - but if I were writing it I'd do it in Flash so that many, many more people could play it.
To recap: neither situation is ideal - but with a little tweaking I could see how the 360 could have a "good deal" for small developers. I see how the PS3 offers something good, but not to people who want to write a "real" PS3 game. And if your homebrew project isn't a real PS3 game, why not target a platform that has a larger install base?
While it's great that Sony allows Linux to run, it does so without GPU support. This is a fairly major blow to anyone considering writing games for the thing - enough of a blow that I think PS3 Linux will end up being as exciting as PS2 Linux was (which is to say "not very exciting at all"). Sure there will be media players and what not, but without some tools (and GPU support) from Sony there's not going to be a lot of great games. And that's kind of a bad sign for a console.
In the other corner, I think MS is serious about getting developers producing actual games for the 360. I recognize it's not ideal at this point, but it's off to the right start. From the XNA FAQ: "We are actively working on other ways to allow you to more easily distribute your games and are very excited about the possibilities this will open up for independent game development." Looking at the thought that went into the XNA stuff I've tried, I think they're serious about this.
And that's the other part: the tools. XNA Game Studio is actually easy enough to use that I think people are really going to do something with it, something that could become big. If they solve the distribution problem, small developers could have access to a large audience with consistent, solid hardware in their living rooms. And they can do development without investing too much on tools/getting-started.
Meh - at least there's some "legitimate" way to do development. I've done hobby development for a bunch of platforms, but it's never really been fully above board (ie. to develop for the Nintendo DS I flashed my firmware and used a gray-market flash cartridge). With very few exceptions (Dreamcast) it's always been difficult to distribute homebrew console apps. At least with the 360 there's the intimation that eventually there'll be a workable distribution path. In the meantime, getting started with XNA is free and it works pretty well (from my very limited testing).
While the 360 isn't exactly "designed to be hackable", I think MS deserves some credit for giving developers anything. Any fiddling I do with XNA and the 360 is more than I'd be doing with a Wii.
(Also, it's worth noting that the built-in media player on the 360 works pretty good (though it means an extra step of transcoding via VLC). I watch TV shows off my computer using it all the time. This was a big factor in me purchasing the thing as now I have only one device hooked up to the projector and it plays DVD's, games, and content from the computer. My wife is much happier with this setup.)
2 years ago, my brother's $12,000 Videkron 720p projector and similarily overspeced DVD player looked frickin' amazing. We just couldn't conceive how something could look better. Perfect clarity, great colors, bright, etc... I've also never been terribly impressed by the shop demo units for HD players. Perhaps 46" just isn't enough.
Anyways, he's now using a $2,600 Panasonic projector and a PS3. It looks enough better than his old setup that, yes, it is actually kind of painful to watch DVDs now (similar to how you probably feel when you end up watching a VHS tape on your setup). I wouldn't have believed it made as much difference as it does.
Yes Blueray/HDDVD disks are expensive now, but give it a few years and there will be multi-format discs available for rent and cheap for sale (and players will be $120). Downloaded content is indeed the future, but I don't think bandwidth is going to catch up with demand for a few more years at least. I think there's going to be a reasonable time period when the HD disc is king. And right now, they sure look good.
It's a little frustrating to live in Canada sometimes. I understand that 360 owners in the US can already download movies and TV shows. Whether or not that service is great (or about to be replaced by this new thing or something) I'd like to try it. Canada is full of "early adopters" - I wish we merited a little more attention in terms of new features. I'm sure those in Europe/elsewhere have it worse. At very least, they could make this stuff a little clearer. Looking over the official sites (for the 360) it's hard to tell which features are actually available in your area.
(MS is hardly the only offender here - when will I be able to get TV shows off iTunes?)
This naturally wouldn't be a universal solution - but I see where it would be useful. For example, say a blog like BoingBoing. They sometimes post NSFW or vaguely NSFW stuff. I'd appreciate it if they had some way of flagging this so I could filter these posts out at work.
Naturally it wouldn't protect everyone from everything, but it would be a great tool in situations like this where there's a reasonable consensus on what's going to be tagged and why. It's a way for an author to share a greater variety of things while allowing the user to pick which things they want to see now. I think it'd be a great little "mini-standard".
Meh? The guys are as blank and unpersonal as you make them. From what I've seen, kids thoroughly enjoy making little versions of themselves and using them to play games. Or if you're Steve Colbert, you can practice boxing Pelosi.
In other news, Sony sure employs a lot of idiots to make its BlueRay drives. They have to use blue lasers, a special medium, and lots of expensive parts to get the same storage density they could have got by having a spinning disc made out of paper and a cheap CCD.
A great deal of "real" journalism is done in pretty much the same way. These kids have just re-appropriated standard "Channel 7 Consumer Protection Patrol" (or even 60 Minutes) tactics.
What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?
It's appropriate that you, theStorminMormon, should respond to this. The first people I thought of when I read the above quote was Mormon missionaries.
I'm not saying the Master System was entirely turd - but it didn't have many titles that stirred my 10 year old mind. Even Golden Axe was a little lame on the SMS (no multiplayer, etc..), and I think many better games (eg. Gunstar Heroes) were just never sold or promoted where I lived. I think the SMS generally flopped too hard in Canada for it to get much attention.
Also, as before, the SMS didn't have Super Mario 3. None of my games had movies promoting them.
I don't care too much about this "war" either - but that's because I don't spend as much time (or percentage of income) on gaming as I did when I was young.
Sure I didn't own "stock" in Sega when I was 10 - but I had a Master System. To a 10 year old, that's the equivalent of owning a lot of stock, because it's not like you're going to get two consoles. And the value of that stock is very apparent to you when your friends are playing Mario 3 and you're playing some incomprehensible turd (though Shinobi was good..).
People arguing about consoles do have a stake in this. Making it worse, the value of their investment will come down to the number of people who agree and disagree with them (even on a local level, as if your friends have the same system you can trade games). Nobody wants to end up the odd man out with the "loser" console.
I don't care who "wins". I just want a machine I can play fun games on.
Well, you theoretically could play fun games on a 3D0 or Jaguar - but you probably didn't. Consoles that don't "win" sometimes "lose", and don't get any fun games. So if you want to play a console with fun games, then it is relevant to figure out which console is going to win. I don't expect the winners and losers to be so cleanly distinguished that one console will get no support (as has happened before) - but for people who play a lot of games (and spend a lot of money), there's still stakes involved, and thus concern over who wins.
I agree to the extent that I'd put Morrowind on the "quantum leap" list before Oblivion. Oblivion feels like "pretty Morrowind" more than any kind of new thing.
But to Oblivion's credit, I made it through the game without a single hitch or crash (that I remember). I'm not running an amazing machine, but it looked great and played smooth throughout (except a little choppy during one of the last battles). I remember having a storyline order problem or two in Morrowind - but none with Oblivion.
I don't know whether you were unlucky or I was lucky but I thought Oblivion was a great, well-executed game - with very few glitches for such a complicated setup.
DS development is quite pleasant and easy to get into. It's about $80 in hardware (for a flash GBA card - $40 more if you can't find a proper Wifi card to run WifiMe) - or free if you're satisfied with emulation (which you probably shouldn't be). The hardware has a few tricks, but so does every platform. The information on development is extremely easy to find (try "Google") - there's plenty of tutorials, samples, and what not to get you started.
The game itself looks ambitious and was probably a fair bit of work - but claiming he can't do it on the DS without help is decidedly unambitious if you ask me. Of consoles for homebrew, the DS has to be one of the most well documented/easiest platforms you'll find.
I'd leave Quake on there too. All I'm saying is that Doom was more important.
Quake: introduced solid multiplayer over unreliable networks Doom: introduced multiplayer
Quake: introduced quality lit/textured graphics, pushed development of 3d accelerated graphic cards Doom: introduced graphics
I realize that's overstating the case a bit. But not much. Doom was an absolute revelation from on high - and it made waves far outside the gaming community. When Wolf3d came out, I started work on my own raycasting 3d engine. It was pretty good. When Doom came out, I started playing Doom. When Quake finally came out, I was fairly disappointed - it was nothing like the hype that preceded it. That said, Quake should clearly be on the top 5 list. But not before Doom.
I'd put Doom on the list before System Shock 2. Or Goldeneye. Or HL. Or Quake. Or Wolf3d.
Or System Shock 2. I mean, wtf?
I realize they didn't want to weigh down the list with Id games, but if you were going to drop one it would have to be Quake. Or Wolf3d. The BBS's were pretty excited about Wolf - but it was Doom that defined the genre and made it what it is.
The consoles that are most successful GET the most diverse offerings - because if you're going to develop a gimmick/niche product and can't afford to launch it for all platforms then you release it for the one that's got the widest base.
Do you think the GBA was successful because of all the add-on thingees? Or do you think there's 4000 screen protectors because there's 40 million GBAs?
That doesn't mean a first party can't help console sales by creating add-ons (like the eye-toy or some goofy game), but the causation is generally the other way around.
It looks likes it's only 50,000 - but that's understandable given the somewhat smaller player base/television exposure/connections to real-money-gambling/etc...
In either case, insurance is there to reduce risk and potential losses . . . and to keep you out of court
Well... that's a lot better - but the end part (which is all that was in the original definition) still feels a bit tacked on. Insurance and litigation are only tangentially related. There's plenty of other sides of insurance where there's no party at fault. If a meteor falls on your car, who are you keeping out of court? You and God?
Like you say at the beginning, insurance is about distributing the burden of risk.
The whole point of having an insurance company is to provide you with compensation for a covered loss without having to go through the hassle of suing the responsible party.
In the case of theft, I guess that's kind of the point - but that's hardly the point of an insurance company in general. Anyways...
Now obviously it's better for everyone if a settlement can be reached out of court - but it's inevitable that sometimes court will be required. Understand, though, that that's an outcome everyone wants to avoid. Insurance companies have a strong financial incentive in avoiding court as well, so it's not like denying claims on invalid grounds is a lucrative long-term strategy.
I think this is a mistake here - but it's a small one in the grand scheme of things. Buddy will almost certainly end up getting his money (though with some hassle) and the investigation will shed light on how to handle claims involving this technology (which will guide adjusters in the future to make better decisions).
Slashdot Mirror
I think one of the things that tarnishes the "Homebrew" image is the percentage of games/content that are recycled from other games. I'm guilty of this to some extent myself in my own game dev projects: it's much easier to lift assets or ideas from completed, successful works than it is to develop everything from scratch. And this is not entirely bad - there's lots of great remakes and re-imaginings out there.
However, it seems like - especially for consoles - there's a real dearth of quality, finished original material. If we could point to a quantity of such material then there might be a more adequate defense for hardware and efforts to allow homebrew development. Right now, there's a lot of truth to the argument that items like NDS flash cards are pretty much just channels for illegal material.
I agree about BlueRay. I hear a lot of people trashing HD in general - saying it doesn't make much difference and you can't get content easily and it'll be replaced and what not.
All I know is I've watched BlueRay movies on a PS3 and a good projector and it's unreal-super-amazing time. The whole HD thing hasn't seemed to sell yet, but I think we're reaching a tipping point where there's enough content, enough people who've been impressed by it, and it's cheap enough that it goes crazy (like DVD did). And I agree this could be the big factor for the PS3. (And I wouldn't be terribly surprised if MS started bundling an HD-DVD player for the 360, even if it was at a big loss).
I guess it might be "more" for somebody else - but XNA is certainly also targetted at hobbyists. For $99 a year, I can do XBox development. I can write a "real" game using most of the features of the console (minus networking for now). How I distribute that is currently up in the air, but I can get it running. And if I can never distribute it on the XBox, I can at least distribute it for Windows.
How do I get a 3d game running on the PS3? I pretty much just don't.
For the 360, if they solve the distribution problem then I'm happy with the situation. For the PS3, how do they fix things without allowing GPU dev? I don't see how small developers are going to make real PS3 games if those developers can't even really get their feet wet on the console.
I'm not saying PS3 Linux isn't cool. But if I'm going to write a PS3 game I'm going to be doing a fancy 3d game. It's not that fl0w isn't fun - but if I were writing it I'd do it in Flash so that many, many more people could play it.
To recap: neither situation is ideal - but with a little tweaking I could see how the 360 could have a "good deal" for small developers. I see how the PS3 offers something good, but not to people who want to write a "real" PS3 game. And if your homebrew project isn't a real PS3 game, why not target a platform that has a larger install base?
While it's great that Sony allows Linux to run, it does so without GPU support. This is a fairly major blow to anyone considering writing games for the thing - enough of a blow that I think PS3 Linux will end up being as exciting as PS2 Linux was (which is to say "not very exciting at all"). Sure there will be media players and what not, but without some tools (and GPU support) from Sony there's not going to be a lot of great games. And that's kind of a bad sign for a console.
In the other corner, I think MS is serious about getting developers producing actual games for the 360. I recognize it's not ideal at this point, but it's off to the right start. From the XNA FAQ: "We are actively working on other ways to allow you to more easily distribute your games and are very excited about the possibilities this will open up for independent game development." Looking at the thought that went into the XNA stuff I've tried, I think they're serious about this.
And that's the other part: the tools. XNA Game Studio is actually easy enough to use that I think people are really going to do something with it, something that could become big. If they solve the distribution problem, small developers could have access to a large audience with consistent, solid hardware in their living rooms. And they can do development without investing too much on tools/getting-started.
Meh - at least there's some "legitimate" way to do development. I've done hobby development for a bunch of platforms, but it's never really been fully above board (ie. to develop for the Nintendo DS I flashed my firmware and used a gray-market flash cartridge). With very few exceptions (Dreamcast) it's always been difficult to distribute homebrew console apps. At least with the 360 there's the intimation that eventually there'll be a workable distribution path. In the meantime, getting started with XNA is free and it works pretty well (from my very limited testing).
While the 360 isn't exactly "designed to be hackable", I think MS deserves some credit for giving developers anything. Any fiddling I do with XNA and the 360 is more than I'd be doing with a Wii.
(Also, it's worth noting that the built-in media player on the 360 works pretty good (though it means an extra step of transcoding via VLC). I watch TV shows off my computer using it all the time. This was a big factor in me purchasing the thing as now I have only one device hooked up to the projector and it plays DVD's, games, and content from the computer. My wife is much happier with this setup.)
2 years ago, my brother's $12,000 Videkron 720p projector and similarily overspeced DVD player looked frickin' amazing. We just couldn't conceive how something could look better. Perfect clarity, great colors, bright, etc... I've also never been terribly impressed by the shop demo units for HD players. Perhaps 46" just isn't enough.
Anyways, he's now using a $2,600 Panasonic projector and a PS3. It looks enough better than his old setup that, yes, it is actually kind of painful to watch DVDs now (similar to how you probably feel when you end up watching a VHS tape on your setup). I wouldn't have believed it made as much difference as it does.
Yes Blueray/HDDVD disks are expensive now, but give it a few years and there will be multi-format discs available for rent and cheap for sale (and players will be $120). Downloaded content is indeed the future, but I don't think bandwidth is going to catch up with demand for a few more years at least. I think there's going to be a reasonable time period when the HD disc is king. And right now, they sure look good.
It's a little frustrating to live in Canada sometimes. I understand that 360 owners in the US can already download movies and TV shows. Whether or not that service is great (or about to be replaced by this new thing or something) I'd like to try it. Canada is full of "early adopters" - I wish we merited a little more attention in terms of new features. I'm sure those in Europe/elsewhere have it worse. At very least, they could make this stuff a little clearer. Looking over the official sites (for the 360) it's hard to tell which features are actually available in your area.
(MS is hardly the only offender here - when will I be able to get TV shows off iTunes?)
This naturally wouldn't be a universal solution - but I see where it would be useful. For example, say a blog like BoingBoing. They sometimes post NSFW or vaguely NSFW stuff. I'd appreciate it if they had some way of flagging this so I could filter these posts out at work.
Naturally it wouldn't protect everyone from everything, but it would be a great tool in situations like this where there's a reasonable consensus on what's going to be tagged and why. It's a way for an author to share a greater variety of things while allowing the user to pick which things they want to see now. I think it'd be a great little "mini-standard".
Meh? The guys are as blank and unpersonal as you make them. From what I've seen, kids thoroughly enjoy making little versions of themselves and using them to play games. Or if you're Steve Colbert, you can practice boxing Pelosi.
If you want to play new 2d Castlevania games, pick up a Nintendo DS. Portal of Ruin is great. It even has a cool co-op over internet mode.
Dawn of Sorrow was good too. You'll also be able to play the GBA Castlevania games (I think there was 3, with Aria of Sorrow being my favorite).
There's also Zelda games available like Minish Cap and 4 swords - as well as a port of Link to the Past. 2d gaming is alive and well on handhelds.
In other news, Sony sure employs a lot of idiots to make its BlueRay drives. They have to use blue lasers, a special medium, and lots of expensive parts to get the same storage density they could have got by having a spinning disc made out of paper and a cheap CCD.
A great deal of "real" journalism is done in pretty much the same way. These kids have just re-appropriated standard "Channel 7 Consumer Protection Patrol" (or even 60 Minutes) tactics.
What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?
It's appropriate that you, theStorminMormon, should respond to this. The first people I thought of when I read the above quote was Mormon missionaries.
I'm not saying the Master System was entirely turd - but it didn't have many titles that stirred my 10 year old mind. Even Golden Axe was a little lame on the SMS (no multiplayer, etc..), and I think many better games (eg. Gunstar Heroes) were just never sold or promoted where I lived. I think the SMS generally flopped too hard in Canada for it to get much attention.
Also, as before, the SMS didn't have Super Mario 3. None of my games had movies promoting them.
I don't care too much about this "war" either - but that's because I don't spend as much time (or percentage of income) on gaming as I did when I was young.
Sure I didn't own "stock" in Sega when I was 10 - but I had a Master System. To a 10 year old, that's the equivalent of owning a lot of stock, because it's not like you're going to get two consoles. And the value of that stock is very apparent to you when your friends are playing Mario 3 and you're playing some incomprehensible turd (though Shinobi was good..).
People arguing about consoles do have a stake in this. Making it worse, the value of their investment will come down to the number of people who agree and disagree with them (even on a local level, as if your friends have the same system you can trade games). Nobody wants to end up the odd man out with the "loser" console.
I don't care who "wins". I just want a machine I can play fun games on.
Well, you theoretically could play fun games on a 3D0 or Jaguar - but you probably didn't. Consoles that don't "win" sometimes "lose", and don't get any fun games. So if you want to play a console with fun games, then it is relevant to figure out which console is going to win. I don't expect the winners and losers to be so cleanly distinguished that one console will get no support (as has happened before) - but for people who play a lot of games (and spend a lot of money), there's still stakes involved, and thus concern over who wins.
Yes, they probably would be able to find some spam chunks there. But what exactly would that prove?
And if they found nothing, what would that prove?
I agree to the extent that I'd put Morrowind on the "quantum leap" list before Oblivion. Oblivion feels like "pretty Morrowind" more than any kind of new thing.
But to Oblivion's credit, I made it through the game without a single hitch or crash (that I remember). I'm not running an amazing machine, but it looked great and played smooth throughout (except a little choppy during one of the last battles). I remember having a storyline order problem or two in Morrowind - but none with Oblivion.
I don't know whether you were unlucky or I was lucky but I thought Oblivion was a great, well-executed game - with very few glitches for such a complicated setup.
DS development is quite pleasant and easy to get into. It's about $80 in hardware (for a flash GBA card - $40 more if you can't find a proper Wifi card to run WifiMe) - or free if you're satisfied with emulation (which you probably shouldn't be). The hardware has a few tricks, but so does every platform. The information on development is extremely easy to find (try "Google") - there's plenty of tutorials, samples, and what not to get you started.
The game itself looks ambitious and was probably a fair bit of work - but claiming he can't do it on the DS without help is decidedly unambitious if you ask me. Of consoles for homebrew, the DS has to be one of the most well documented/easiest platforms you'll find.
I'd leave Quake on there too. All I'm saying is that Doom was more important.
Quake: introduced solid multiplayer over unreliable networks
Doom: introduced multiplayer
Quake: introduced quality lit/textured graphics, pushed development of 3d accelerated graphic cards
Doom: introduced graphics
I realize that's overstating the case a bit. But not much. Doom was an absolute revelation from on high - and it made waves far outside the gaming community. When Wolf3d came out, I started work on my own raycasting 3d engine. It was pretty good. When Doom came out, I started playing Doom. When Quake finally came out, I was fairly disappointed - it was nothing like the hype that preceded it. That said, Quake should clearly be on the top 5 list. But not before Doom.
I'd put Doom on the list before System Shock 2. Or Goldeneye. Or HL. Or Quake. Or Wolf3d.
Or System Shock 2. I mean, wtf?
I realize they didn't want to weigh down the list with Id games, but if you were going to drop one it would have to be Quake. Or Wolf3d. The BBS's were pretty excited about Wolf - but it was Doom that defined the genre and made it what it is.
I still use ctrl-insert and shift-insert for copy and paste. Hard habit to break.
The consoles that are most successful GET the most diverse offerings - because if you're going to develop a gimmick/niche product and can't afford to launch it for all platforms then you release it for the one that's got the widest base.
Do you think the GBA was successful because of all the add-on thingees? Or do you think there's 4000 screen protectors because there's 40 million GBAs?
That doesn't mean a first party can't help console sales by creating add-ons (like the eye-toy or some goofy game), but the causation is generally the other way around.
Magic world championship
It looks likes it's only 50,000 - but that's understandable given the somewhat smaller player base/television exposure/connections to real-money-gambling/etc...
Well... that's a lot better - but the end part (which is all that was in the original definition) still feels a bit tacked on. Insurance and litigation are only tangentially related. There's plenty of other sides of insurance where there's no party at fault. If a meteor falls on your car, who are you keeping out of court? You and God?
Like you say at the beginning, insurance is about distributing the burden of risk.
The whole point of having an insurance company is to provide you with compensation for a covered loss without having to go through the hassle of suing the responsible party.
In the case of theft, I guess that's kind of the point - but that's hardly the point of an insurance company in general. Anyways...
Now obviously it's better for everyone if a settlement can be reached out of court - but it's inevitable that sometimes court will be required. Understand, though, that that's an outcome everyone wants to avoid. Insurance companies have a strong financial incentive in avoiding court as well, so it's not like denying claims on invalid grounds is a lucrative long-term strategy.
I think this is a mistake here - but it's a small one in the grand scheme of things. Buddy will almost certainly end up getting his money (though with some hassle) and the investigation will shed light on how to handle claims involving this technology (which will guide adjusters in the future to make better decisions).