Emulators such as DosBox ensure that binary-only games will be runnable forever, on any platform someone cared enough to port the emulator to. Emulators currently won't help much for the games listed in that article, but that's really just a matter of time.
The inability to produce tenebrae-style variants is a shame, though.
For me, and I hope for most, a work doesn't need a high score in Concept, Content, and Execution to make for an enjoyable experience. Just one will suffice, if it's high enough.
I was afraid I'd have to buy an X-Box to play the game developed by two of my heroes, Tim Schafer (of LucasArts) and Erik Wolpaw (of Old Man Murray). Now? Now, I have hope.
I also have hope that Erik will be writing more updates for the DoubleFine news page.
Designers wanted to know: how did ICO become great? Perhaps there was a secret method or ingredient they could tap, to transform their rough creations into timeless masterpieces.
To the frustration of many, however, it seems that ICO was always great; from the beginning of its development process, to the end.
This is not the impression I got from 1up's coverage of the same lecture. The impression I got was that, from an aesthetic standpoint at least, Ico was a disaster narrowly averted.
For one, Ico used to be a PS1 game. Can you imagine Ico on the PS1, with its nasty 1994-era affine polygon rasterizer, and without the gorgeous lighting system that the PS2 enabled? Admittedly, "don't make PS1 games" isn't very helpful advice for today's designers, but considering the importance of aesthetics on Ico's impact, I would not have considered a PS1 version of Ico "great."
Also, consider the following elements, which 1up describes as having been part of Ico at some point in the past: Yorda with horns, pigtails, in a purple dress, and speaking a language you understand. Ico battling human soldiers, with a health-meter. Cut-scenes involving attack robots. (!?) Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido clearly made the right decision in removing these from the mix.
The original has been ported from MDL to C, so it's actually all over the place.
Lemme see if iFiction has a playable version... yep! Here it is.
The trilogy is better, though. Less coherent because they had to split it up, but there's more content, the puzzles are friendlier, and the connections between rooms are more sensible.
Foremost, the article only makes sense if you think that piracy somehow magically takes money out of the pockets of developers.
No, piracy takes money out of the pockets of developers through thoroughly non-magical means.
Inserting the word "magically" into an assertion doesn't automatically make it dumb.
Like, I download a copy of your game, and your bank account balance automatically decreases $20.00. Obviously, this is crap.
Yes, it is. Giving a ridiculous example based on your twisted interpretation of an assertion doesn't make the assertion dumb either.
If I choose to buy your game, then you get $20.00. If I choose to pirate your game, then from your perspective as a seller, it's like I never existed at all.
Software sales generally come from people who meet both of the following criteria: "want the software," and "don't already have the software." If you pirated a game, you obviously met the first criterion, but you've removed yourself from the second one. That's one potential sale down the drain. The company has lost value. Not $20, but some percentage of it.
If you don't see how a potential sale has value, consider the following scenario: you're given the opportunity to invest in a software company. If you do you'll get a return based on the company's sales. Market research shows that millions of people want to buy this company's product: these people are potential sales. You figure that a significant fraction of these people are going to buy the product, and you give the company your money based on this. The software developers have recieved money based on something that might happen in the future.
If piracy of this product is worse than you estimate when making your decision, you're probably going to lose your shirt, and you'll unlikely (or unable) to invest in software in the future. No more money for software developers from you.
I didn't follow most of the rest of your argument, so I won't reply to it, however:
[...] So if sales are increasing, then piracy or no piracy, developers should be better off now than they used to be.
Wow. So that explains why the hoi polloi enjoy games that attempt provide a sophisticated story line, whereas refined, cultured gamers like myself only like games that don't even try!
That sounded sarcastic, and I guess it sorta is... but it's true, when you try to provide a sophisticated story and fail miserably, I have to put work into ignoring the awful (and usually unskippable) cinematics in order to enjoy the gameplay. If you took that energy you put into creating rendered (awful, unskippable) cutscenes and instead put it into the actual gameplay, not only would I not have to put effort into ignoring, I'd probably be enjoying the gameplay more on its own merits.
Now, theoretically, an actually good, involving story probably would add depth to my enjoyment of the game... could someone please let me know when that happens? I'll be over here playing Super Mario 64 over and over again in the meantime.
I can't really see an adult saying "I'll buy this one because it's for mature people!"
There are plenty of "adults" who've never gotten past the mental age of 13, and still feel the need to prove that they're not kids any more.
I don't have a cite for this, unfortunately, but I recall reading an interview with someone in the game industry who said that even though Shigeru Miyamoto's games are great, he doesn't play them because he's not a child.
I agree with this assessmanent, however, one of the biggest challenges is to get peoples legacy Windows games to work, which is quite the challenge, if possible at all, on a reliable basis.
Running legacy DOS games natively is a pain when it's not impossible, but the DosBox emulator does a really good job at it, and there are builds available for all major operating systems.
Maybe this is an improper or even crass question, but when exactly did it become popular for everyone to have a pet disorder? It's really quite pathetic. No one is a bit shy anymore, they have Asperger's syndrome, no one feels under the weather for a time, they have chronic fatigue syndrome, no one dreads going to work in a drab boring office tower, they suffer from sick building syndrome etc.
I'm really not sure what the problem is. Certain attributes are common to many people, and I don't see anything wrong with giving these attributes names.
It's not so surprising, really. People can get quite attached to the specific interfaces they're used to.
And there's really no harm in it; human interface hardware becomes obsolete much more slowly than CPUs or storage, because human interfaces are already limited by how fast a human can go. Keyboards and mice, e.g., haven't changed much since the 70s.
Easy. Take your instrumental track, invert it, and then mix it with the song. Now all you have is the vocals.
I don't know if you're an audio engineer, so I don't know if that's a joke:) Either way, some people might take it seriously, and that method won't actually work.
The center cut algorithm takes two streams, L and R, and gives a single stream L-R. Note that this is a single stream, and also that R is inverted -- inversion doesn't change how you hear a stream, just how it interacts with other streams. Subtracting L-R from L will give you R, from R gives you 2R-L. Neither one of these gives you just the center channel.
As far as I know, there's no way to get just the center channel using simple arithmetic.
Why couldn't Carmack just code the think in DirectX.
He could have, but he likes the OpenGL API more, as he documented in his plan file in 1996. This also addresses your question later in the thread as to how DirectX is a kludgey hack; in 1996 at least, the interface was really nasty. It has probably improved since.
There's also the portability issue. If he coded it using DirectX, that locks the code to Microsoft platforms. No easy Mac, Linux, or console ports aside from the xbox.
For Doom, sure, but in every other important genre, he's wrong. Too many games are like they are designed for teenagers who are flunking out of literature classes. The dialog, the characters, everything is just awful.
There's a huge difference between a bad story that's barely there and a bad story that's in-your-face. If you have a lot of dialogue-heavy cut-scenes, or especially a long cut-scene before the game even starts, then yes, the writing had better be good. If the story is a few lines of text before dumping you right back into the gameplay, it doesn't matter so much.
Now that people are calling for story in all games, this is fairly independent of genre. I've played action games with an up-front story that destroyed an otherwise-decent game for me. Moral of the story: if you can't write, don't write. Or at least make the cut-scenes skippable, for christ's sake.
I agree with the the overall sentiment described in the summary, but I didn't bother reading past the headline. "Quoting" the people you're arguing against using l33tspeak is an extremely weak-minded way of making them look dumb.
Considering that Final Fantasy 7's Cloud and Sephiroth, who have been in exactly one game (the same one, in fact), topped GameFAQs's "favorite character" contest last year, barely beating out Mario and Link, who each have an enormous legacy of beloved games, I think FF7 is pretty much a shoo-in.
(GameFAQs's user base is primarily RPG-oriented, which makes sense considering that RPGs are the games you usually go to FAQs for, and console-oriented, which is largely arbitrary.)
A virtual machine running on a virtual machine, I love it.
You can get yet another layer of indirection by running Andrew Plotkin's Lists and Lists, which features a Scheme interpreter, in the Java Z-machine interpreter. Anyone feel like writing a JVM in scheme?:)
Are there any such videos available on the net? I've seen the Ikaruga Appreciate DVD, but as much as I like Ikaruga, $50 is a little high for a few run-throughs.
Though that video is tremendously entertaining, in the interest of full disclosure, it should be pointed out that it is cheated. This was not a deliberate hoax perpetrated by the creator, as he stated this on his web site (in Japanese, which is probably why noone read it).
Unfortunately, there is no "stupid" moderation option.
However, I would argue that "redundant" doesn't only apply to comments within the same topic, that it can also apply to general ideas. If something's obvious, wouldn't you say that it's "redundant" to point it out?
... considering that they lied about there being no push-button cheat codes in Goldeneye (and get mad when you don't believe them when they tell you there are no push-button cheat codes in Perfect Dark).
bengoodger: "While it gets a lot of benefit from testing, ideas, patches, etc, the prerogative for deciding what will and will not go into the product has always been held by the development group. This is not a new thing, this was in fact the reason this project was created."
I read bengoodger's statement as saying he doesn't want the community to take over development of Firefox; he wants to retain control. Firefox is his personal project. It's the community's fault for placing the responsibility on Firefox to vanquish Microsoft.
I'm most looking forward to Mario 128... but I don't know if it's coming out this year! I understand if he doesn't want to give up gameplay details, but I would like to have a sense of at least the order of magnitude regarding the release date.
Slashdot Mirror
The inability to produce tenebrae-style variants is a shame, though.
For me, and I hope for most, a work doesn't need a high score in Concept, Content, and Execution to make for an enjoyable experience. Just one will suffice, if it's high enough.
I also have hope that Erik will be writing more updates for the DoubleFine news page.
Designers wanted to know: how did ICO become great? Perhaps there was a secret method or ingredient they could tap, to transform their rough creations into timeless masterpieces.
To the frustration of many, however, it seems that ICO was always great; from the beginning of its development process, to the end.
This is not the impression I got from 1up's coverage of the same lecture. The impression I got was that, from an aesthetic standpoint at least, Ico was a disaster narrowly averted.
For one, Ico used to be a PS1 game. Can you imagine Ico on the PS1, with its nasty 1994-era affine polygon rasterizer, and without the gorgeous lighting system that the PS2 enabled? Admittedly, "don't make PS1 games" isn't very helpful advice for today's designers, but considering the importance of aesthetics on Ico's impact, I would not have considered a PS1 version of Ico "great."
Also, consider the following elements, which 1up describes as having been part of Ico at some point in the past: Yorda with horns, pigtails, in a purple dress, and speaking a language you understand. Ico battling human soldiers, with a health-meter. Cut-scenes involving attack robots. (!?) Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido clearly made the right decision in removing these from the mix.
Lemme see if iFiction has a playable version... yep! Here it is.
The trilogy is better, though. Less coherent because they had to split it up, but there's more content, the puzzles are friendlier, and the connections between rooms are more sensible.
> LOOK UNDER MAT
No, piracy takes money out of the pockets of developers through thoroughly non-magical means. Inserting the word "magically" into an assertion doesn't automatically make it dumb.
Like, I download a copy of your game, and your bank account balance automatically decreases $20.00. Obviously, this is crap.
Yes, it is. Giving a ridiculous example based on your twisted interpretation of an assertion doesn't make the assertion dumb either.
If I choose to buy your game, then you get $20.00. If I choose to pirate your game, then from your perspective as a seller, it's like I never existed at all.
Software sales generally come from people who meet both of the following criteria: "want the software," and "don't already have the software." If you pirated a game, you obviously met the first criterion, but you've removed yourself from the second one. That's one potential sale down the drain. The company has lost value. Not $20, but some percentage of it.
If you don't see how a potential sale has value, consider the following scenario: you're given the opportunity to invest in a software company. If you do you'll get a return based on the company's sales. Market research shows that millions of people want to buy this company's product: these people are potential sales. You figure that a significant fraction of these people are going to buy the product, and you give the company your money based on this. The software developers have recieved money based on something that might happen in the future.
If piracy of this product is worse than you estimate when making your decision, you're probably going to lose your shirt, and you'll unlikely (or unable) to invest in software in the future. No more money for software developers from you.
I didn't follow most of the rest of your argument, so I won't reply to it, however:
[...] So if sales are increasing, then piracy or no piracy, developers should be better off now than they used to be.
Not if production costs are increasing faster.
That sounded sarcastic, and I guess it sorta is... but it's true, when you try to provide a sophisticated story and fail miserably, I have to put work into ignoring the awful (and usually unskippable) cinematics in order to enjoy the gameplay. If you took that energy you put into creating rendered (awful, unskippable) cutscenes and instead put it into the actual gameplay, not only would I not have to put effort into ignoring, I'd probably be enjoying the gameplay more on its own merits.
Now, theoretically, an actually good, involving story probably would add depth to my enjoyment of the game ... could someone please let me know when that happens? I'll be over here playing Super Mario 64 over and over again in the meantime.
There are plenty of "adults" who've never gotten past the mental age of 13, and still feel the need to prove that they're not kids any more.
I don't have a cite for this, unfortunately, but I recall reading an interview with someone in the game industry who said that even though Shigeru Miyamoto's games are great, he doesn't play them because he's not a child.
Running legacy DOS games natively is a pain when it's not impossible, but the DosBox emulator does a really good job at it, and there are builds available for all major operating systems.
Er, yes it does :)
I'm really not sure what the problem is. Certain attributes are common to many people, and I don't see anything wrong with giving these attributes names.
And there's really no harm in it; human interface hardware becomes obsolete much more slowly than CPUs or storage, because human interfaces are already limited by how fast a human can go. Keyboards and mice, e.g., haven't changed much since the 70s.
I don't know if you're an audio engineer, so I don't know if that's a joke :) Either way, some people might take it seriously, and that method won't actually work.
The center cut algorithm takes two streams, L and R, and gives a single stream L-R. Note that this is a single stream, and also that R is inverted -- inversion doesn't change how you hear a stream, just how it interacts with other streams. Subtracting L-R from L will give you R, from R gives you 2R-L. Neither one of these gives you just the center channel.
As far as I know, there's no way to get just the center channel using simple arithmetic.
He could have, but he likes the OpenGL API more, as he documented in his plan file in 1996. This also addresses your question later in the thread as to how DirectX is a kludgey hack; in 1996 at least, the interface was really nasty. It has probably improved since.
There's also the portability issue. If he coded it using DirectX, that locks the code to Microsoft platforms. No easy Mac, Linux, or console ports aside from the xbox.
There's a huge difference between a bad story that's barely there and a bad story that's in-your-face. If you have a lot of dialogue-heavy cut-scenes, or especially a long cut-scene before the game even starts, then yes, the writing had better be good. If the story is a few lines of text before dumping you right back into the gameplay, it doesn't matter so much.
Now that people are calling for story in all games, this is fairly independent of genre. I've played action games with an up-front story that destroyed an otherwise-decent game for me. Moral of the story: if you can't write, don't write. Or at least make the cut-scenes skippable, for christ's sake.
I agree with the the overall sentiment described in the summary, but I didn't bother reading past the headline. "Quoting" the people you're arguing against using l33tspeak is an extremely weak-minded way of making them look dumb.
(GameFAQs's user base is primarily RPG-oriented, which makes sense considering that RPGs are the games you usually go to FAQs for, and console-oriented, which is largely arbitrary.)
You can get yet another layer of indirection by running Andrew Plotkin's Lists and Lists, which features a Scheme interpreter, in the Java Z-machine interpreter. Anyone feel like writing a JVM in scheme? :)
Are there any such videos available on the net? I've seen the Ikaruga Appreciate DVD, but as much as I like Ikaruga, $50 is a little high for a few run-throughs.
Though that video is tremendously entertaining, in the interest of full disclosure, it should be pointed out that it is cheated. This was not a deliberate hoax perpetrated by the creator, as he stated this on his web site (in Japanese, which is probably why noone read it).
However, I would argue that "redundant" doesn't only apply to comments within the same topic, that it can also apply to general ideas. If something's obvious, wouldn't you say that it's "redundant" to point it out?
... considering that they lied about there being no push-button cheat codes in Goldeneye (and get mad when you don't believe them when they tell you there are no push-button cheat codes in Perfect Dark).
I read bengoodger's statement as saying he doesn't want the community to take over development of Firefox; he wants to retain control. Firefox is his personal project. It's the community's fault for placing the responsibility on Firefox to vanquish Microsoft.
I'm most looking forward to Mario 128... but I don't know if it's coming out this year! I understand if he doesn't want to give up gameplay details, but I would like to have a sense of at least the order of magnitude regarding the release date.