Thank you for your delicious last post! First you challenge me to show you where you use ad hominem, then you provide me with several examples! Amazing. But, my dear conversational partner, I am not trolling. I am DISAGREEING, which you seem to have some difficulty with. You're too persnickety for my tastes.
I shall hereby banish you with Godwin's Incantation: "You know who ELSE doesn't like disagreement? The NAZIS, that's who! Yeah, boy, if you said a NAZI gaming industry sucked, they'da nailed yer thumbs to yer XBox controller..."
I believe that's killed the thread... Hmm... If you reply we could consider that a disproof by counterexample of Godwin's law. I wonder if Slashdot would implode if that were to happen?
How would you know whether I was mistaken unless you had read the other comments I was describing? I'm discussing a general conversational trend of which you are merely a tiny part. Please don't leap to conclusions with QUITE that much relish, it ruins a perfectly good argument.
He was fascinated by the fact that whenever the moslems get all bent out of shape over something, they destroy their own country first (including embassies, which cuts off diplomatic relations and etc). They may get around to figuring out how to do something in the other guy's country, but FIRST they destroy their OWN.
On the other hand, when first world countries get annoyed, they go blow up the OTHER guy's country. It never even occurs to them to do something to their own first.
He felt, and I tend to agree, that this implies a certain something about the relative levels of wisdom and civilization in the two cultures that invalidates all the "cultural relativism" hoopla being pushed in colleges nowadays.:)
Oh, blah blah blah. Mr. Ad Hominem himself now wants to complain that I saw his ad hominem and raised him an appeal to authority? Bullshit. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, kiddo.
And, yes, your unfounded assertions that the gaming industry sucks, that my choice in games sucks, etc, etc, are all ad hominem arguments. I was kind enough to have a sense of humor about yours.
Now, as far as your "arguments" go, you're not providing ANY as far as I can tell. At best, all you've done is make blanket, unsupported assertions and assume I'll play ball. But I don't, because I disagree with you on almost every point. I think you are ranting on about your unfounded opinions and therefore your point of view is entirely unsupported. EVERYTHING we've been discussing is entirely subjective, so you're lying to yourself if you think ANYTHING you've said is "provable".
But you keep going, I'm enjoying watching you spin your wheels.
It's not that I'm sensitive, I'm disagreeing with a point of view I've heard a number of times here on Slashdot and in various blogs. The protagonist is always a scripting language fanboy who is attacking Java, C#, or some other language.
Oh, man, you've got it bad. The mental image I'm forming of you is an angry, disappointed starbucks cashier who went to a community college to learn how to "write games for a living", was shot down in his first round of resume submissions, and now rants for 45 minutes about how "the gaming industry SUCKS" whenever anyone mentions anything even remotely computer related. Such bitterness! If you happen to have blue hair and piercings, that would really perfect the mental picture... Do you?
Heh heh heh... Let us continue our discussion.
First of all, I wasn't focusing on first-person shooters, I just used them as a useful and instructive example. The control scheme I mentioned works well for ANY sort of game in which you are inhabiting a human-like character in a world you can explore. For games in which you are piloting a human-type person, whether you're in first person or third person, the control scheme I described is nearly PERFECT. And it arrived at its form through a vicious type of darwinian selection -- first person shooters with klunky control schemes were rejected by gamers as "unplayable", and ultimately, the most easily playable, perfect control scheme arose from this. Note that this has been in progress since Doom 1, and I've been there as a gamer the whole way. So it's not just a matter of opinion, it's a matter of 12 years of experience playing almost every single shooter, adventure, or platforming game that's come out with a 3D, realistic environment.
I disagree with you VEHEMENTLY that all first person shooters are "the same, but with different maps". I think that's the point of view of a gamer who dislikes first person shooters, and can't be bothered to learn anything about them. What do you play, RPG's? I bet you play World of Warcraft as some kind of female elf. Ooh -- a "Dark Elf"? Yeah... It's always the RPG players who get angriest about first person shooters. You'd think we were stealing your women or something.
Anyway, modern first person shooters (and third person shooters, and adventure games like Prince of Persia) share very similar game dynamics and control schemes because that general paradigm has evolved to be the PERFECT paradigm for this kind of story. The game environment, really, is just a delivery mechanism. Not unlike a DVD player. You are using the game environment to experience an adventure. The innovation comes from the adventure ITSELF. It's about writing, and art, and level design. Over the past several years, games have become more and more cinematic and plot-driven, and this has been WONDERFUL for those of us who enjoy these games.
Some very interesting concepts have come about. But they're generally about narrative and story, NOT weird, freaky controls. It's rare game that doesn't conform to standards, control-wise, Thank GOD.
Finally, who cares whether people think flying cars around would be fun? They're barely competent driving the cars they've got NOW, nobody's going to let those goobers FLY! The whole idea is ridiculous. No government is EVER going to be dumb enough to let anyone fly a car hundreds of feet in the air over a populated area. It just isn't EVER going to happen. And I think that's a GOOD thing.
It is self serving pablum served up by people who love scripting languages, designed to pretend that users of scripting languages are somehow smarter or more gifted than those who use non-scripting languages. This is hogwash, of course. In fact, I suspect that in many cases, the people who self-select for scripting languages do so because scripting languages are easier, and these people are secretly intimidated by a language like Java. It's fine with me; it reduces the competition for us Java guys.
Besides, your argument is bogus: they're not interested in discussing relative strengths and weaknesses to decide which tool to use. They have already decided to use Python (usually) and are now justifying their decision and evangelizing.
Ok; on narrative, we'll have to agree to disagree. I find your "axiom" to be a matter of opinion (and wrong, but that's MY opinion, equally valid as yours). There's no point in us restating our sides over and over again.
On game engines being part of the benefit of games, I disagree. Like all software (I'm a software engineer) games should adhere to common industry UI conventions and test for usability. It's simply good practice. Most games actually do. Virtually all shooters use the standard in which the left thumbstick sidesteps and moves forward and back, and the right thumbstick orients the point of view. This is an excellent example of standardization of UI. Most shooters also make this configurable for the user, which is another good standard. But again, we'll probably have to agree to disagree, while noting that the industry seems to agree with ME on this one (katamari damarcy notwithstanding).
On flying cars, when it comes to your comment about how the same problems exist with normal cars, you MUST be insane. Normal cars have nowhere NEAR the kinetic energy a flying car would have, especially after it had fallen two to three hundred feet. The amount of damage a flying car crash would cause would be astronomically higher than that caused by an ordinary car. You aren't thinking the issue through.
But my reply was really only a gentle mocking of your flying car analogy. It was funny; laugh.;)
Your statement that Java and C# does "not scale well with the intelligence of their programmers" betrays an unsophisticated understanding of programming as an activity. Let's take three programmers, Dumb, Smart, and Brilliant.
Dumb has been told by his boss to write a little web page, nothing too sophisticated. He's using C# and Visual Studio, and because the tools are top notch he manages to create something useful without tripping all over himself. That's fine. Everybody's happy.
Smart is pretty bright, and has been told by his boss to create a website including sub-pages, middleware, and database, using Java and an open-source database. He manages to build out a nice framework and set up a class library for his office that all the other programmers can use. This too is fine, and everybody's happy.
Brilliant has been asked by his boss to implement an entire enterprise-level system for tracking the company's activities. He has a team of programmers under him and they all have to be able to collaborate on the code. He's using Java and Oracle tools, plus some source code management, some static analysis tools, memory analysis tools, etc. He builds a huge, new system that thousands of people use every day. And this is fine as well. Everybody's happy.
The more intelligent a developer is, the more power he'll get out of the language he uses and the larger the system he'll be able to build. Java and C# are able to grow as large and as complex as the programmer can handle. I consider this "scaling well with intelligence". The fact that they allow even POOR programmers to be useful is testament to their general solid design, NOT a sign of weakness.
Don't be a scripting language fanboy. It makes you look like what the English call "a prat".
Fair points, fair points... I'd like to offer these in return (things I didn't comment on, I agree with):
As far as games being too insular, I wasn't talking about storyline. I was talking about the controls, and the dynamics of gameplay (i.e. there's a button for crouching and for jumping, some sort of inventory system, at least some kind of boss battle here and there, some puzzles, etc -- user interface elements and gameplay elements). My point is that there is already a relatively "perfect" interface and general approach used in videogames. Since this is just a framework that lets the player have an adventure, why not stick to the standards and not gum up the works with some new and bizarre control scheme, or random, potentially boring game dynamics?
Within that framework, you can do ANYTHING. If you want to be innovative, do it in the writing and the art design, NOT the game mechanics. Of course, adding something interesting (like a new type of puzzle or something) is just fine. Adding a new ability that nobody's seen before (the psychokinesis of Psi-Ops and Second Sight, for example) is tremendously fun. But fit it into a standard framework, so gamers can get into the story without fighting the console, you know? You shouldn't even NOTICE the control scheme if it's designed well. Everything should just flow.
I suppose what I'm describing is an engineering principle: standardize your user interface and game dynamics and innovate in the game itself. Not all companies have the common sense to do this.
"Beginning, Middle, and End" -- What do you mean, "what does this mean"? It means the story should begin in a way that lures you in, EASES you in, and gets you interested and involved, while sort of sneaking up on you; it should provide you with some sort of conflict that requires tremendous efforts on your part, something appropriately heroic and challenging (the middle); and it should ultimately bring you to some sort of satisfying conclusion or closure. Just like any sort of narrative. I wasn't being cryptic. These are the three parts of just about ANY story. They're why plays generally have three acts, right?
As far as playing around with narrative, that's fine, but if you pay attention you'll notice that THOSE stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end ALSO. What they're changing is the order in which things are revealed to you. So I have to disagree with this criticism.
Look, it's like this: a story is not good just because it has the proper structural elements. However, if it doesn't have them, it's VERY DIFFICULT for it to be good. They're a required element, but not a sufficient one.
Consider my "pancake analogy". You want to make some delicious pancakes for your new girlfriend, who is sleeping naked in the other room. It's very important for you to please her. So, you're in the kitchen. What do you do? You pull out the pancake mix, you prepare the batter, and you make the pancakes. Then you apply the syrup.
Now, you can make pancakes in a variety of ways. You can use milk and eggs, you can use butter, you can use something else... But you will ALWAYS use pancake batter and syrup, because otherwise, they're not pancakes and your naked girlfriend will put her clothes on and go to Denny's, which is not an optimal outcome. So you use the proper batter and the syrup, and maybe you spend Saturday with her in bed.
Now, pancake batter and syrup are NECESSARY, but not SUFFICIENT. Because maybe you're really bad at making pancakes, and even if you use the right stuff, you screw it up. There's no help for that. But if you start out without batter and syrup, you're already done for.
See what I mean?
ON FLYING CARS: Oh, HELL no! The day they let everyone drive a flying car is the day I build my house underground and telecommute to work. I believe this will never, ever happen for the following reasons (described as types of flying car mishap):
FLYING CAR MISHAPS:
* While yakking on his cell phone, an executive of some sort doesn't p
I see where you're coming from; you might have a point about the old games. Maybe, being so simple, they were easy to copy without doing anything innovative or interesting.
You see what I'm saying about modern games -- the graphics are so good that when you create a game, you're really writing something more akin to a movie, so when people produce similar games it's more like their "take" on the subject matter. This is where I was going when I said that the "ripoff" term was unfair... I see lots of people applying it to similar games, and I don't understand why they're getting all heated up over it, you know?
Anyway, I think I agree with you overall. And direct-copy ripoffs like the ones you describe are already illegal, I think the FTC investigates them, and Treasury? Although I'm thinking more about DVD bootlegs and knockoff Prada bags, here...:)
Ah. Well. Yeah, ok, that's pretty weird and original. Still, whoever wrote that bit of madness drew on his experiences in writing it, as odd as those must have been (makes you wonder, though, doesn't it?).
I like your drug trip theory; that WOULD explain it.:)
Yeah, but what's the difference, really? If two games are very similar, and one is technically a "ripoff" of the other, who cares, as long as they're both fun? A while back, I played though Psy-Ops, and then later, I played through Second Sight. Initially, people thought one was a ripoff of the other, but it turned out they were developed at the same time (And, how did THAT happen? Interesting).
It didn't matter, though. I didn't care if one was a ripoff of the other. I had a ball playing BOTH of them. I wish they'd made MORE of them. Hell, give me a ripoff of one of those games. Give me a dozen! As long as you don't screw it up and make a crappy game, I'll buy 'em. The trick, here, is to make your ripoff a GOOD GAME. If it's good, it's A-OK. If it's bad, well, we're not going to buy it just because it looks like game X. It has to be good.
A ripoff may be a ripoff, but if it's a GOOD ripoff, what's the big deal? As long as you're not trying to pass it off as the original you're not breaking any laws and you're not hurting anyone. In fact, you're making things more interesting by giving people options. Nothing wrong with that...
Everyone in the art and fashion world seems to run around with their hair on fire whenever someone's work resembles someone else's. The game world seems to work similarly. Here's my two cents:
First of all, EVERYTHING is based on EVERYTHING ELSE. Each of us creates new things by assimilating and processing all the old things that surround us. Our culture is a huge collaborative thing, and anyone who tries to tell you they've come up with something entirely new with no basis in anything that exists already is lying to you (or to themselves).
Second, THIS IS A GOOD THING. I don't want every new first person shooter that comes out to have some new and unusual control scheme. I don't want grenades to work totally differently in every game. I don't want to have to read a fucking book before I can start playing. I WANT and EXPECT my games to follow some sort of reasonable conventions. This goes for storyline elements, too. I want a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. I want a game that places me in the middle of some sort of interesting situation and allows me to be, for at least a little while, right in the middle of things. In other words, I want game companies to figure out what is fun, and what works well, and produce it dependably. This means studying what already works, which means duplicating to some extent the gameplay of other games. AND THIS IS GOOD.
Third, since when did everything have to be brand new and different to be valid? We don't suddenly decide that cars are "so last century" and begin driving 10 foot hamster wheels, do we? NO. We stick with the tried and true, with old reliable. Cars haven't been new and different for a hundred years; every car is totally derivative, a "ripoff" of the very first car. SO WHAT? It drives, it's nice, I like it.
Anyway, that's my piece. People who use the term "ripoff" as though it's some kind of sin need to get over themselves.
People who want to use videogames to teach children chemistry are lazy. They don't want to TEACH, to actually make an effort and engage the kids in the topic. Instead, they want to pander to a certain demographic's desire to skate out on their studies, to make everything easy so they don't have to do any actual WORK.
The TRUTH is, this demographic isn't going to have the chops to learn chemistry ANYWAY. And you don't want to let them anywhere NEAR a freakin' lab. Matter of fact, you don't even want to give these people a TOY chemistry set! You'd be taking your life in your hands.
Some subjects are difficult. Chemistry, mathematics, physics, computer science... They are not meant for people too lazy to crack open a book and READ. Instead of trying to dumb these subjects down to meet the depressed interest level of the idiot masses, we should be identifying people who are interested in them and supporting them -- treating them as well as we treat athletes, for instance.
Of course, we won't do THAT. Heaven forbid. It's much easier to let Little Johnny pick his nose and noodle around with a toy molecule than it would be to inspire him and TEACH him.
Good point! And it IS fun to debate moot points. Ok, along those lines,
I see where you're going with the "jedi as religious/nonscientific types" concept... Ok, I'll buy that. But I liked the first three movies much better than their prequels, because in those, Lucas never tried to explain the force, and allowed it to be a supernatural thing. In doing so, he gave the first three movies a nice, mythical air which I found enjoyable (even if I felt the whole "laser sword" thing was bogus -- along with the blasters whose shots glowed red and seemed to travel slower than rifle shots).
In the prequels, he tried to get all scientific, without making an effort to make the science plausible, which was just irritating. And NOBODY liked Jar-Jar.
Say, while we're discussing moot points, let's talk about the voices: what's up with making all the bad Sith and Empire officers British (except Darth Vader, who had a Nazi helmet -- on that note, all the Empire uniforms were kind of nazi-ish), all the Army of the Republic stormtroopers Kiwis, all the 2nd generation stormtroopers American cops (did they get a new clone model???), all the rebels American midwesterners, all the bad aliens asian, and all the good Gungans Rastas??? There's something really bizarre going on in Lucasarts, I think.
Perhaps the force is stronger in my butt than in George's.:)
Your lightsaber explanation is closer to mine than the Star Wars one. The point we both have in common is that the sword is not a LASER SWORD, it's using something more believable like a plasma or charged particle effect, something that actually doesn't violate physics. Your idea and mine are relatively compatible. The point is that LASERS don't hiss and crackle, they don't bounce off each other, and they can't be focused so they only reach a finite length. They just can't. Period. The plasma, charged particle, or weird gravity effect explanations work a whole lot better.
Your defense of midichloreans seems to be "Well... It was just a theory that these jedi had, because even though they had starships, medical robots, advanced physics and the ability to travel faster than light, they couldn't figure out something like telekinesis so they had to guess." Isn't that about right? Your astonishing powers of debate have humbled me. Here is a delicious cookie.
Anyway, don't take my criticism of the goofy Star Wars universe so seriously. It's a goofy bunch of movies that didn't spend too much time on making the technology realistic. People didn't see Star Wars to watch 2001, they went to see goofy shit and explosions in space. Laugh at it, it's funny.
I think the idea is to make the hole big enough so that the air up by the snow wall isn't 40-50 degrees... There'll be a warm area in the middle, and as you move further out it'll get cooler (we're only talking about a candle, here, not a campfire). If you build it right, the air isn't going to be moving around that much, other than a little convection from the candle.
Wet snow implies that you're right around 32 degrees, not in the subzero cold I'm talking about. If you're in cold, WET conditions you're basically screwed right from the get-go. No solution is perfect, ha ha.
As far as windswept plains go, well, you'd probably not be stuck under those conditions, right? Cars travel fairly well when they're not buried. And people usually don't wander around windswept plains, anyway. Still, I suppose you could dig a foxhole and use your tent to trap air, and warm it with your candle. That'd probably work.
About the blankets and candles: if you're travelling in an area in which you might get stuck in a blizzard, wouldn't you have an emergency kit (shovel, blankets, candles, etc) of some kind in your car or backpack? We're not talking about expensive stuff, here. Most people who live in cold areas prepare for this sort of thing. I've got a ton of stuff in MY trunk.
By the way, a friend of mine who lives up by the Canadian border actually built a snow shelter with his daughter for fun, out in his yard. It was under 10 degrees outside, but she had it nice and comfortable in the shelter with a single candle. They piled up a big mound of snow, packed it nice and tight, and tunneled into it. Sort of a poor-man's igloo. He said he was totally comfortable in his shirtsleeves inside. Interesting stuff.
BORING! Why don't we do the first round of tests MY way:
HYPOTHETICAL SATIRICAL SITUATION:
Lab Technician: "Hello, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, are you ready to participate in the test?"
Bush: "I dunno. Guess so."
Cheney: "Get on with it!"
Lab Tech: Yessss.... Allllrighty, then. Here are your implements, gentlemen..." (Hands each of the men a plastic serrated butterknife and a spork).
Bush: "What're these for? Is it lunchtime? I like lunchtime."
Lab Tech: "NOT exactly, although it COULD be. It depends. We'll see how it goes. Ok, gentlemen, in your hands are a plastic picnic knife and spork. Once I leave the room, we'll dial the temperature down to around 50 below, and you'll use your implements to cut open and prepare a large, hairy animal to use as an emergency sleeping bag. We'll open the doors in the morning. Good luck!" (dashes out of the room and slams a door).
Cheney: "Hey, FUCK YOU! What the hell's going on around here? This was supposed to be a meeting with lobbyists!"
Bush: "I'm ascared, Mr. Cheney. Somethin's not right around here..."
Cheney: "Oh, for God's sake, grow a spine already. HEY! LAB NERD! WHAT ARE YOU UP TO UP THERE??"
Lab Tech (in a glass enclosed observation deck): "Ah! You noticed me! Well, I'm preparing your sleeping bag."
Cheney: "What the hell are you babbling about?"
Lab Tech: "Look to your left, gentlemen, I'd like you to meet Mama Jones. She's a 1,000 pound polar bear who has been chased out of her environment by your energy policy. She hasn't been fed in several weeks and we've put her cubs in a room a few hundred yards from here. We took the liberty of spraying you with some of their scent, just to make things more interesting."
Bush: "Wait; you what?"
Cheney: "Bullshit! This is nuts. Open the door or I'm going to rip your nuts off and feed them to you!"
Lab Tech: "That's the spirit! Well, good luck, gentlemen. Ah, here's Mama Jones now."
Mama Jones: "ROOOOOAOR!"
Lab Tech (to fellow grad students): "Ok, I've got twenty to one that Cheney shoves Bush at the bear within the first five minutes, do i have any takers? Yes! Apu, for fifty! I can cover that...
Slashdot Mirror
...Which of course speaks to the relative levels of civilisation in the two places. But, tomato, tomAHto.
Thank you for your delicious last post! First you challenge me to show you where you use ad hominem, then you provide me with several examples! Amazing. But, my dear conversational partner, I am not trolling. I am DISAGREEING, which you seem to have some difficulty with. You're too persnickety for my tastes.
I shall hereby banish you with Godwin's Incantation: "You know who ELSE doesn't like disagreement? The NAZIS, that's who! Yeah, boy, if you said a NAZI gaming industry sucked, they'da nailed yer thumbs to yer XBox controller..."
I believe that's killed the thread... Hmm... If you reply we could consider that a disproof by counterexample of Godwin's law. I wonder if Slashdot would implode if that were to happen?
How would you know whether I was mistaken unless you had read the other comments I was describing? I'm discussing a general conversational trend of which you are merely a tiny part. Please don't leap to conclusions with QUITE that much relish, it ruins a perfectly good argument.
Interesting point a friend of mine once raised:
:)
He was fascinated by the fact that whenever the moslems get all bent out of shape over something, they destroy their own country first (including embassies, which cuts off diplomatic relations and etc). They may get around to figuring out how to do something in the other guy's country, but FIRST they destroy their OWN.
On the other hand, when first world countries get annoyed, they go blow up the OTHER guy's country. It never even occurs to them to do something to their own first.
He felt, and I tend to agree, that this implies a certain something about the relative levels of wisdom and civilization in the two cultures that invalidates all the "cultural relativism" hoopla being pushed in colleges nowadays.
Oh, blah blah blah. Mr. Ad Hominem himself now wants to complain that I saw his ad hominem and raised him an appeal to authority? Bullshit. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, kiddo.
And, yes, your unfounded assertions that the gaming industry sucks, that my choice in games sucks, etc, etc, are all ad hominem arguments. I was kind enough to have a sense of humor about yours.
Now, as far as your "arguments" go, you're not providing ANY as far as I can tell. At best, all you've done is make blanket, unsupported assertions and assume I'll play ball. But I don't, because I disagree with you on almost every point. I think you are ranting on about your unfounded opinions and therefore your point of view is entirely unsupported. EVERYTHING we've been discussing is entirely subjective, so you're lying to yourself if you think ANYTHING you've said is "provable".
But you keep going, I'm enjoying watching you spin your wheels.
It's not that I'm sensitive, I'm disagreeing with a point of view I've heard a number of times here on Slashdot and in various blogs. The protagonist is always a scripting language fanboy who is attacking Java, C#, or some other language.
It's all very ridiculous and I find it tiresome.
Oh, man, you've got it bad. The mental image I'm forming of you is an angry, disappointed starbucks cashier who went to a community college to learn how to "write games for a living", was shot down in his first round of resume submissions, and now rants for 45 minutes about how "the gaming industry SUCKS" whenever anyone mentions anything even remotely computer related. Such bitterness! If you happen to have blue hair and piercings, that would really perfect the mental picture... Do you?
Heh heh heh... Let us continue our discussion.
First of all, I wasn't focusing on first-person shooters, I just used them as a useful and instructive example. The control scheme I mentioned works well for ANY sort of game in which you are inhabiting a human-like character in a world you can explore. For games in which you are piloting a human-type person, whether you're in first person or third person, the control scheme I described is nearly PERFECT. And it arrived at its form through a vicious type of darwinian selection -- first person shooters with klunky control schemes were rejected by gamers as "unplayable", and ultimately, the most easily playable, perfect control scheme arose from this. Note that this has been in progress since Doom 1, and I've been there as a gamer the whole way. So it's not just a matter of opinion, it's a matter of 12 years of experience playing almost every single shooter, adventure, or platforming game that's come out with a 3D, realistic environment.
I disagree with you VEHEMENTLY that all first person shooters are "the same, but with different maps". I think that's the point of view of a gamer who dislikes first person shooters, and can't be bothered to learn anything about them. What do you play, RPG's? I bet you play World of Warcraft as some kind of female elf. Ooh -- a "Dark Elf"? Yeah... It's always the RPG players who get angriest about first person shooters. You'd think we were stealing your women or something.
Anyway, modern first person shooters (and third person shooters, and adventure games like Prince of Persia) share very similar game dynamics and control schemes because that general paradigm has evolved to be the PERFECT paradigm for this kind of story. The game environment, really, is just a delivery mechanism. Not unlike a DVD player. You are using the game environment to experience an adventure. The innovation comes from the adventure ITSELF. It's about writing, and art, and level design. Over the past several years, games have become more and more cinematic and plot-driven, and this has been WONDERFUL for those of us who enjoy these games.
Some very interesting concepts have come about. But they're generally about narrative and story, NOT weird, freaky controls. It's rare game that doesn't conform to standards, control-wise, Thank GOD.
Finally, who cares whether people think flying cars around would be fun? They're barely competent driving the cars they've got NOW, nobody's going to let those goobers FLY! The whole idea is ridiculous. No government is EVER going to be dumb enough to let anyone fly a car hundreds of feet in the air over a populated area. It just isn't EVER going to happen. And I think that's a GOOD thing.
It is self serving pablum served up by people who love scripting languages, designed to pretend that users of scripting languages are somehow smarter or more gifted than those who use non-scripting languages. This is hogwash, of course. In fact, I suspect that in many cases, the people who self-select for scripting languages do so because scripting languages are easier, and these people are secretly intimidated by a language like Java. It's fine with me; it reduces the competition for us Java guys.
Besides, your argument is bogus: they're not interested in discussing relative strengths and weaknesses to decide which tool to use. They have already decided to use Python (usually) and are now justifying their decision and evangelizing.
Call it what it is. self-serving tripe.
Ok; on narrative, we'll have to agree to disagree. I find your "axiom" to be a matter of opinion (and wrong, but that's MY opinion, equally valid as yours). There's no point in us restating our sides over and over again.
;)
On game engines being part of the benefit of games, I disagree. Like all software (I'm a software engineer) games should adhere to common industry UI conventions and test for usability. It's simply good practice. Most games actually do. Virtually all shooters use the standard in which the left thumbstick sidesteps and moves forward and back, and the right thumbstick orients the point of view. This is an excellent example of standardization of UI. Most shooters also make this configurable for the user, which is another good standard. But again, we'll probably have to agree to disagree, while noting that the industry seems to agree with ME on this one (katamari damarcy notwithstanding).
On flying cars, when it comes to your comment about how the same problems exist with normal cars, you MUST be insane. Normal cars have nowhere NEAR the kinetic energy a flying car would have, especially after it had fallen two to three hundred feet. The amount of damage a flying car crash would cause would be astronomically higher than that caused by an ordinary car. You aren't thinking the issue through.
But my reply was really only a gentle mocking of your flying car analogy. It was funny; laugh.
Your statement that Java and C# does "not scale well with the intelligence of their programmers" betrays an unsophisticated understanding of programming as an activity. Let's take three programmers, Dumb, Smart, and Brilliant.
Dumb has been told by his boss to write a little web page, nothing too sophisticated. He's using C# and Visual Studio, and because the tools are top notch he manages to create something useful without tripping all over himself. That's fine. Everybody's happy.
Smart is pretty bright, and has been told by his boss to create a website including sub-pages, middleware, and database, using Java and an open-source database. He manages to build out a nice framework and set up a class library for his office that all the other programmers can use. This too is fine, and everybody's happy.
Brilliant has been asked by his boss to implement an entire enterprise-level system for tracking the company's activities. He has a team of programmers under him and they all have to be able to collaborate on the code. He's using Java and Oracle tools, plus some source code management, some static analysis tools, memory analysis tools, etc. He builds a huge, new system that thousands of people use every day. And this is fine as well. Everybody's happy.
The more intelligent a developer is, the more power he'll get out of the language he uses and the larger the system he'll be able to build. Java and C# are able to grow as large and as complex as the programmer can handle. I consider this "scaling well with intelligence". The fact that they allow even POOR programmers to be useful is testament to their general solid design, NOT a sign of weakness.
Don't be a scripting language fanboy. It makes you look like what the English call "a prat".
What a load of self-serving crap.
Fair points, fair points... I'd like to offer these in return (things I didn't comment on, I agree with):
As far as games being too insular, I wasn't talking about storyline. I was talking about the controls, and the dynamics of gameplay (i.e. there's a button for crouching and for jumping, some sort of inventory system, at least some kind of boss battle here and there, some puzzles, etc -- user interface elements and gameplay elements). My point is that there is already a relatively "perfect" interface and general approach used in videogames. Since this is just a framework that lets the player have an adventure, why not stick to the standards and not gum up the works with some new and bizarre control scheme, or random, potentially boring game dynamics?
Within that framework, you can do ANYTHING. If you want to be innovative, do it in the writing and the art design, NOT the game mechanics. Of course, adding something interesting (like a new type of puzzle or something) is just fine. Adding a new ability that nobody's seen before (the psychokinesis of Psi-Ops and Second Sight, for example) is tremendously fun. But fit it into a standard framework, so gamers can get into the story without fighting the console, you know? You shouldn't even NOTICE the control scheme if it's designed well. Everything should just flow.
I suppose what I'm describing is an engineering principle: standardize your user interface and game dynamics and innovate in the game itself. Not all companies have the common sense to do this.
"Beginning, Middle, and End" -- What do you mean, "what does this mean"? It means the story should begin in a way that lures you in, EASES you in, and gets you interested and involved, while sort of sneaking up on you; it should provide you with some sort of conflict that requires tremendous efforts on your part, something appropriately heroic and challenging (the middle); and it should ultimately bring you to some sort of satisfying conclusion or closure. Just like any sort of narrative. I wasn't being cryptic. These are the three parts of just about ANY story. They're why plays generally have three acts, right?
As far as playing around with narrative, that's fine, but if you pay attention you'll notice that THOSE stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end ALSO. What they're changing is the order in which things are revealed to you. So I have to disagree with this criticism.
Look, it's like this: a story is not good just because it has the proper structural elements. However, if it doesn't have them, it's VERY DIFFICULT for it to be good. They're a required element, but not a sufficient one.
Consider my "pancake analogy". You want to make some delicious pancakes for your new girlfriend, who is sleeping naked in the other room. It's very important for you to please her. So, you're in the kitchen. What do you do? You pull out the pancake mix, you prepare the batter, and you make the pancakes. Then you apply the syrup.
Now, you can make pancakes in a variety of ways. You can use milk and eggs, you can use butter, you can use something else... But you will ALWAYS use pancake batter and syrup, because otherwise, they're not pancakes and your naked girlfriend will put her clothes on and go to Denny's, which is not an optimal outcome. So you use the proper batter and the syrup, and maybe you spend Saturday with her in bed.
Now, pancake batter and syrup are NECESSARY, but not SUFFICIENT. Because maybe you're really bad at making pancakes, and even if you use the right stuff, you screw it up. There's no help for that. But if you start out without batter and syrup, you're already done for.
See what I mean?
ON FLYING CARS: Oh, HELL no! The day they let everyone drive a flying car is the day I build my house underground and telecommute to work. I believe this will never, ever happen for the following reasons (described as types of flying car mishap):
FLYING CAR MISHAPS:
* While yakking on his cell phone, an executive of some sort doesn't p
I see where you're coming from; you might have a point about the old games. Maybe, being so simple, they were easy to copy without doing anything innovative or interesting.
:)
You see what I'm saying about modern games -- the graphics are so good that when you create a game, you're really writing something more akin to a movie, so when people produce similar games it's more like their "take" on the subject matter. This is where I was going when I said that the "ripoff" term was unfair... I see lots of people applying it to similar games, and I don't understand why they're getting all heated up over it, you know?
Anyway, I think I agree with you overall. And direct-copy ripoffs like the ones you describe are already illegal, I think the FTC investigates them, and Treasury? Although I'm thinking more about DVD bootlegs and knockoff Prada bags, here...
Ah. Well. Yeah, ok, that's pretty weird and original. Still, whoever wrote that bit of madness drew on his experiences in writing it, as odd as those must have been (makes you wonder, though, doesn't it?).
:)
I like your drug trip theory; that WOULD explain it.
Ha! Good one! Well done. And very funny.
Yeah, but what's the difference, really? If two games are very similar, and one is technically a "ripoff" of the other, who cares, as long as they're both fun? A while back, I played though Psy-Ops, and then later, I played through Second Sight. Initially, people thought one was a ripoff of the other, but it turned out they were developed at the same time (And, how did THAT happen? Interesting).
It didn't matter, though. I didn't care if one was a ripoff of the other. I had a ball playing BOTH of them. I wish they'd made MORE of them. Hell, give me a ripoff of one of those games. Give me a dozen! As long as you don't screw it up and make a crappy game, I'll buy 'em. The trick, here, is to make your ripoff a GOOD GAME. If it's good, it's A-OK. If it's bad, well, we're not going to buy it just because it looks like game X. It has to be good.
A ripoff may be a ripoff, but if it's a GOOD ripoff, what's the big deal? As long as you're not trying to pass it off as the original you're not breaking any laws and you're not hurting anyone. In fact, you're making things more interesting by giving people options. Nothing wrong with that...
Everyone in the art and fashion world seems to run around with their hair on fire whenever someone's work resembles someone else's. The game world seems to work similarly. Here's my two cents:
First of all, EVERYTHING is based on EVERYTHING ELSE. Each of us creates new things by assimilating and processing all the old things that surround us. Our culture is a huge collaborative thing, and anyone who tries to tell you they've come up with something entirely new with no basis in anything that exists already is lying to you (or to themselves).
Second, THIS IS A GOOD THING. I don't want every new first person shooter that comes out to have some new and unusual control scheme. I don't want grenades to work totally differently in every game. I don't want to have to read a fucking book before I can start playing. I WANT and EXPECT my games to follow some sort of reasonable conventions. This goes for storyline elements, too. I want a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. I want a game that places me in the middle of some sort of interesting situation and allows me to be, for at least a little while, right in the middle of things. In other words, I want game companies to figure out what is fun, and what works well, and produce it dependably. This means studying what already works, which means duplicating to some extent the gameplay of other games. AND THIS IS GOOD.
Third, since when did everything have to be brand new and different to be valid? We don't suddenly decide that cars are "so last century" and begin driving 10 foot hamster wheels, do we? NO. We stick with the tried and true, with old reliable. Cars haven't been new and different for a hundred years; every car is totally derivative, a "ripoff" of the very first car. SO WHAT? It drives, it's nice, I like it.
Anyway, that's my piece. People who use the term "ripoff" as though it's some kind of sin need to get over themselves.
Ok, ok, the aliens you mentioned that weren't asian were all from the original three movies. I liked those more than the more recent set.
:)
Good points on the stormtroopers...
Ok, I yield.
Let's do a reality check.
People who want to use videogames to teach children chemistry are lazy. They don't want to TEACH, to actually make an effort and engage the kids in the topic. Instead, they want to pander to a certain demographic's desire to skate out on their studies, to make everything easy so they don't have to do any actual WORK.
The TRUTH is, this demographic isn't going to have the chops to learn chemistry ANYWAY. And you don't want to let them anywhere NEAR a freakin' lab. Matter of fact, you don't even want to give these people a TOY chemistry set! You'd be taking your life in your hands.
Some subjects are difficult. Chemistry, mathematics, physics, computer science... They are not meant for people too lazy to crack open a book and READ. Instead of trying to dumb these subjects down to meet the depressed interest level of the idiot masses, we should be identifying people who are interested in them and supporting them -- treating them as well as we treat athletes, for instance.
Of course, we won't do THAT. Heaven forbid. It's much easier to let Little Johnny pick his nose and noodle around with a toy molecule than it would be to inspire him and TEACH him.
Sheesh...
Good point! And it IS fun to debate moot points. Ok, along those lines,
I see where you're going with the "jedi as religious/nonscientific types" concept... Ok, I'll buy that. But I liked the first three movies much better than their prequels, because in those, Lucas never tried to explain the force, and allowed it to be a supernatural thing. In doing so, he gave the first three movies a nice, mythical air which I found enjoyable (even if I felt the whole "laser sword" thing was bogus -- along with the blasters whose shots glowed red and seemed to travel slower than rifle shots).
In the prequels, he tried to get all scientific, without making an effort to make the science plausible, which was just irritating. And NOBODY liked Jar-Jar.
Say, while we're discussing moot points, let's talk about the voices: what's up with making all the bad Sith and Empire officers British (except Darth Vader, who had a Nazi helmet -- on that note, all the Empire uniforms were kind of nazi-ish), all the Army of the Republic stormtroopers Kiwis, all the 2nd generation stormtroopers American cops (did they get a new clone model???), all the rebels American midwesterners, all the bad aliens asian, and all the good Gungans Rastas??? There's something really bizarre going on in Lucasarts, I think.
No, no, no... He's actually saying "Well, OURS goes up to ELEVEN!"
Perhaps the force is stronger in my butt than in George's. :)
Your lightsaber explanation is closer to mine than the Star Wars one. The point we both have in common is that the sword is not a LASER SWORD, it's using something more believable like a plasma or charged particle effect, something that actually doesn't violate physics. Your idea and mine are relatively compatible. The point is that LASERS don't hiss and crackle, they don't bounce off each other, and they can't be focused so they only reach a finite length. They just can't. Period. The plasma, charged particle, or weird gravity effect explanations work a whole lot better.
Your defense of midichloreans seems to be "Well... It was just a theory that these jedi had, because even though they had starships, medical robots, advanced physics and the ability to travel faster than light, they couldn't figure out something like telekinesis so they had to guess." Isn't that about right? Your astonishing powers of debate have humbled me. Here is a delicious cookie.
Anyway, don't take my criticism of the goofy Star Wars universe so seriously. It's a goofy bunch of movies that didn't spend too much time on making the technology realistic. People didn't see Star Wars to watch 2001, they went to see goofy shit and explosions in space. Laugh at it, it's funny.
Heh heh... Actually, I'm kidding around, BUT, also trying to make a valid point about the writing.
I think the idea is to make the hole big enough so that the air up by the snow wall isn't 40-50 degrees... There'll be a warm area in the middle, and as you move further out it'll get cooler (we're only talking about a candle, here, not a campfire). If you build it right, the air isn't going to be moving around that much, other than a little convection from the candle.
;)
Wet snow implies that you're right around 32 degrees, not in the subzero cold I'm talking about. If you're in cold, WET conditions you're basically screwed right from the get-go. No solution is perfect, ha ha.
As far as windswept plains go, well, you'd probably not be stuck under those conditions, right? Cars travel fairly well when they're not buried. And people usually don't wander around windswept plains, anyway. Still, I suppose you could dig a foxhole and use your tent to trap air, and warm it with your candle. That'd probably work.
About the blankets and candles: if you're travelling in an area in which you might get stuck in a blizzard, wouldn't you have an emergency kit (shovel, blankets, candles, etc) of some kind in your car or backpack? We're not talking about expensive stuff, here. Most people who live in cold areas prepare for this sort of thing. I've got a ton of stuff in MY trunk.
By the way, a friend of mine who lives up by the Canadian border actually built a snow shelter with his daughter for fun, out in his yard. It was under 10 degrees outside, but she had it nice and comfortable in the shelter with a single candle. They piled up a big mound of snow, packed it nice and tight, and tunneled into it. Sort of a poor-man's igloo. He said he was totally comfortable in his shirtsleeves inside. Interesting stuff.
Cheers!
BORING! Why don't we do the first round of tests MY way:
HYPOTHETICAL SATIRICAL SITUATION:
Lab Technician: "Hello, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, are you ready to participate in the test?"
Bush: "I dunno. Guess so."
Cheney: "Get on with it!"
Lab Tech: Yessss.... Allllrighty, then. Here are your implements, gentlemen..." (Hands each of the men a plastic serrated butterknife and a spork).
Bush: "What're these for? Is it lunchtime? I like lunchtime."
Lab Tech: "NOT exactly, although it COULD be. It depends. We'll see how it goes. Ok, gentlemen, in your hands are a plastic picnic knife and spork. Once I leave the room, we'll dial the temperature down to around 50 below, and you'll use your implements to cut open and prepare a large, hairy animal to use as an emergency sleeping bag. We'll open the doors in the morning. Good luck!" (dashes out of the room and slams a door).
Cheney: "Hey, FUCK YOU! What the hell's going on around here? This was supposed to be a meeting with lobbyists!"
Bush: "I'm ascared, Mr. Cheney. Somethin's not right around here..."
Cheney: "Oh, for God's sake, grow a spine already. HEY! LAB NERD! WHAT ARE YOU UP TO UP THERE??"
Lab Tech (in a glass enclosed observation deck): "Ah! You noticed me! Well, I'm preparing your sleeping bag."
Cheney: "What the hell are you babbling about?"
Lab Tech: "Look to your left, gentlemen, I'd like you to meet Mama Jones. She's a 1,000 pound polar bear who has been chased out of her environment by your energy policy. She hasn't been fed in several weeks and we've put her cubs in a room a few hundred yards from here. We took the liberty of spraying you with some of their scent, just to make things more interesting."
Bush: "Wait; you what?"
Cheney: "Bullshit! This is nuts. Open the door or I'm going to rip your nuts off and feed them to you!"
Lab Tech: "That's the spirit! Well, good luck, gentlemen. Ah, here's Mama Jones now."
Mama Jones: "ROOOOOAOR!"
Lab Tech (to fellow grad students): "Ok, I've got twenty to one that Cheney shoves Bush at the bear within the first five minutes, do i have any takers? Yes! Apu, for fifty! I can cover that...