I think I agree with you. But the way you phrased your comment made me have to think twice and read it more than once. Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying: they're not "games", they're "adventures" and deeper than the modern conception of video games. They (text based adventures) were not games, they were, somehow, more... a way that hackers communicated with each other. Made jokes with each other. Spun engaging tales to others interested. Programmed and had fun. Did things for the hell of it. Told a story. Engaged the player. Let the player become part of the story. Hacked. Am I way off track? The masters of text-based adventures were poets, philosophers, comedians, wizards, magicians, storytellers, riddle makers, writers, mathematicians, programmers and, (I dunno how they did this last one) friends? People I'd never met, but I bet if I met them in the street I'd like... that kind of friend
with a challenging puzzle and a growing level of difficulty geared toward the solution of a rich storyline
Good points Anne; I agree totally. The other thing about the old text based adventure games is that they were often hilariously funny! If not always obvious, there were always "inside jokes" that only a nerd would be likely to pick up or, indeed, maybe, find funny (for example, 69,105). The responses from the parser were often humerous as well (e.g. the response from "attack me with sword"). Then, of course, the grue.
There were many other great adventure games but, in my little part of the world Infocom always entertained me.
I can't speak for any of the early programmers, but I think they somehow were doing the same as me: having a lot of fun with emerging technology. I liked that feeling.
Maybe. But Return to Zork (RTZ) will definately not run on the Scumm VM.
Actually, there is a work-in-progress engine for it [scummvm.org] already
Nice. Thanks for the link. I was wrong... I didn't know people were working on that. Gosh, I must be getting old.
Who would have thought I'd be sitting here typing these comments about a game that I played maybe 14 or so years ago. And it gets worse. I played the original Zorks (on a C64).
RTZ was state-of-the art when I first played it and I distinctly remember being amazed at the graphics and the wonders of modern technology and how amazing I thought the graphics were. It actually inspired me a little bit (Doom moreso) to read up about graphics (Michael Abrash books) and delve into 80286 asm (before that I was doing demos on the Amiga [motorola 68010 asm]). It was about this time that I had to move on (sadly) from the Amiga into a new life (which funnily enough led me to study biology, which eventually led me back to programming... long story;-)
I wonder if we'll get "Return to Zork" too in a few years..
Maybe. But Return to Zork (RTZ) will definately not run on the Scumm VM. Despite RTZ departing from the traditional Zorks I actually quite liked it. The "other" Zorks (e.g. Zork Nemesis et al) I didn't enjoy so much... I think they were missing the humour.
The more I read Stardock's report, the more I feel that they're just playing the masses and producing "spin". For example:
* Legitimate complaint: Requiring the user to always be online to play a single-player game. Though we do think publishers have the right to require this as long as they make it clear on the box.
*Borderline: Requiring the user to have an Internet connection to install a game. If the game makes this explicit on the box, that's one thing. Customers should be able to make informed purchasing decisions.
And, from their "Gamers Bill of Rights":
Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game
Don't these things seem contradictory? They're just pretending to be on the customers side when they're, in reality, no different to any other company. They use weasle words. They say things that "sound good" to, perhaps, make them seem like they're on the side of legitimate purchasers. I am not sure they are though.
They even released their company report to the public! That's a cool company.
Well, their method worked... at least for you. That is not a "Company Report"; it's a "Customer Report". The two things are very different. The latter is a kind of advertising. From a business perspective it makes sense to release such reports. It makes the consumer feel as though they're part of a community. At the end of the day though they're another business doing buisness-like things--nothing new here.
From a business prospective, it's important to create DRM that doesn't prohibit the user, but still protects your product at the same time.
Great observation. But I don't see how you can support that. How did Stardock create DRM that protected the product and at the same time created no prohibitions for the user? I ask because I am sure there a heaps of users (not to mention publishers) that would benefit from this great result that you say Stardock achieved. Yes. I am cynical.
Which games can't you play? All the games I have let me play even if I have turned off (firewalled) net access. Not saying that you're wrong, I'm just interested because my limited collection of games all work (for single player) with no net once they're activated.
With the risk of sounding cliche, I'd like a citation for that.
To such statements, I say "Ohh puhleeze!" I use generic power supplies for all my PCs, which I never switch off by the way. Apart from increased noise after about 3 years of constant humming, I have no complaints for a product that costs me about 18 dollars.
Generic PSU's do not undergo the same rigorous testing that "brand" name ones do. You might get a good batch. You might not. PSU's that a company is willing to put their brand name against perform consistantly. The voltage stays within a given spec. The load and wattage stays within a spec. A "spec". Yes, the better PSU's have specs that they adhere to. Not to mention the often better cable management which can lead to overall cooler systems.
Interesting. That is how artificial diamonds are formed too... vapor forming around a diamond seed in a vacuum chamber.
Chemical vapor deposition. I don't think it's in a vacuum though. A vacuum (by definition) is an absense of matter. Chemical vapour deposition works (IIRC) by having a gas (such as methane... i.e. matter) which is heated and then doing magic to seperate carbon from diamond deposits.
I think you mean Infocom. But what you're talking about is not far from the truth. Zork et al ran (run) on a virtual machine not unlike Java (the Z-machine). This was an amazing advantage back in the day. Infocom "merely" had to port their z-machine to run on different machines and their games would work. If an architecture had a z-machine implementation Infocom could release their title across multiple platforms.
Are we talking about the same thing? The subject title is "Is JavaScript Ready For Creating Quality Games?" Now, I concede, that the subject or the summary doesn't really contradict what you're saying but what annoys me is you're assuming that it's talking about stupid web-based games (I may be wrong. I am just assuming from your comments on xor and png and browsers and stuff...)
Assuming for a second I am misunderstanding. I think that web-based games are about 20 years behind the current technology. XOR? For what? Collision detection? I'm not even sure I would have used xor 10 years ago for (as you put it) "image composition". XOR with a mask, yeah. Not sure that is exclusive to PNG though... actually I am sure it's not. PNG is a file format, not a display format or anything that remotely resembles the image in RAM. It doesn't resemble what your web browser does either (except in the most absract way I guess).
See what I mean? There are so many things wrong about your comment. And the biggest thing I think is that you're talking about browsers and how they handle data. The sooner you forget about browsers and elevating the people who write markup language to the status of programmers the better. Yes you can make games. Yes you can make pretty blinking lights.
Well, I agree with most of what you say. However, judging by the quality of several recent games that I presume were written in C++ using frameworks that I assume were also written using C, C++ or (parts) ASM, I can't assert that I believe that the framework being available to JS developers would have improved the situation. The guys doing stuff in c/c++/asm are not doing everything themselves... they use lots of libraries. What makes you think that the same libraries being made available to JS programmers would improve the situation? Wouldn't it make the situation worse?
It is getting easier and more popular with libraries like jQuery, MooTools, Prototype, etc
What does "easiness" (of programming) have to do with the end quality of the game? It could probably be argued that "easiness" (fancy API's etc) actually reduce the quality of games by giving tools to people who do not know how to wield them properly. This is obviously not true for all games; there are simple games that can be adequately programmed in lots of languages. Addictive, puzzle-like, entertaining games. Then there are other games that push the envelope of what is possible. Pushing the envelope does not make a good game though so I digress.
To cut a long story short I don't think the availability of libraries etc to do the grunt work of games will improves things. In fact, I think it may result in an influx of poorly programmed/poorly thought-out games written by people who know enough to program a web page or move a LOGO turtle. It may of course be great for prototyping.
Note to QuantumG: Exclude your tetris implementation from the above comments. Nice work.
[Are open source games doomed to...be limited to only ones that were completely and totally rejected by their original copyright holders?
It's kind of funny that you use the word "doomed". You do know that id has open sourced their games? I don't think any of those games were failures. There are heaps of examples from other companies as well.
It is ofcourse impossible to get all the exploit-isk out of the game, we'll just have to live with it. Tech 2 prices are on the rise and the last 2 days have been heaven for market speculators, making billions on market manipulation (a condoned action by CCP)
This doesn't strike you as being... "insane"?
I mean, fuck, if CCP can build an economy around a game then I suppose it's good for them. Market speculators in a game. It's a fucking game for c'sake, not a damn country/government. I am not sure what to be more amazed at: that a game has market speculators; or that there are people stupid enough to contribute to this "economy".
For example, in the video game Unreal Tournament, when a player shoots at a target with the 'enforcer' weapon, the projectile does not necessarily hit the point that is aimed at
Personally I think it does the exact opposite. I think Far Cry 2 *may* have done this. But if I line up a head shot (sniper) and put a bullet in the AIs head and he doesn't die, then this makes it seem far less realistic to me--especially when I let loose two shots to be sure and then aim down for a direct body shot and the guy still somehow manages to stand.
Randomness is good, but I don't think making bullet paths random is great. Sure, in real life there is random wind and other influences (projectile shape/smoothness, the barrel, and all that), but at the distances (and speed of projectile) I am talking about it's negligible. Two direct head shots and a just-for-fun/'cause-I-can body shot in quick succession should not fail just to add 'randomness'.
Slashdot Mirror
s/hacked copies/cracked copies
Umiri, as funny as it may sound I think that you and jd agree ;-)
I think I agree with you. But the way you phrased your comment made me have to think twice and read it more than once. Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying: they're not "games", they're "adventures" and deeper than the modern conception of video games. They (text based adventures) were not games, they were, somehow, more... a way that hackers communicated with each other. Made jokes with each other. Spun engaging tales to others interested. Programmed and had fun. Did things for the hell of it. Told a story. Engaged the player. Let the player become part of the story. Hacked. Am I way off track? The masters of text-based adventures were poets, philosophers, comedians, wizards, magicians, storytellers, riddle makers, writers, mathematicians, programmers and, (I dunno how they did this last one) friends? People I'd never met, but I bet if I met them in the street I'd like... that kind of friend
Yeah... those old games...
with a challenging puzzle and a growing level of difficulty geared toward the solution of a rich storyline
Good points Anne; I agree totally. The other thing about the old text based adventure games is that they were often hilariously funny! If not always obvious, there were always "inside jokes" that only a nerd would be likely to pick up or, indeed, maybe, find funny (for example, 69,105). The responses from the parser were often humerous as well (e.g. the response from "attack me with sword"). Then, of course, the grue.
There were many other great adventure games but, in my little part of the world Infocom always entertained me.
I can't speak for any of the early programmers, but I think they somehow were doing the same as me: having a lot of fun with emerging technology. I liked that feeling.
Maybe. But Return to Zork (RTZ) will definately not run on the Scumm VM.
Actually, there is a work-in-progress engine for it [scummvm.org] already
Nice. Thanks for the link. I was wrong... I didn't know people were working on that. Gosh, I must be getting old.
Who would have thought I'd be sitting here typing these comments about a game that I played maybe 14 or so years ago. And it gets worse. I played the original Zorks (on a C64).
RTZ was state-of-the art when I first played it and I distinctly remember being amazed at the graphics and the wonders of modern technology and how amazing I thought the graphics were. It actually inspired me a little bit (Doom moreso) to read up about graphics (Michael Abrash books) and delve into 80286 asm (before that I was doing demos on the Amiga [motorola 68010 asm]). It was about this time that I had to move on (sadly) from the Amiga into a new life (which funnily enough led me to study biology, which eventually led me back to programming... long story ;-)
Now, get off my lawn!
I wonder if we'll get "Return to Zork" too in a few years..
Maybe. But Return to Zork (RTZ) will definately not run on the Scumm VM. Despite RTZ departing from the traditional Zorks I actually quite liked it. The "other" Zorks (e.g. Zork Nemesis et al) I didn't enjoy so much... I think they were missing the humour.
I have a view-master that I use to look at all the old photos of dinosaurs and other documentary images such as popeye and three little pigs.
The more I read Stardock's report, the more I feel that they're just playing the masses and producing "spin". For example:
* Legitimate complaint: Requiring the user to always be online to play a single-player game. Though we do think publishers have the right to require this as long as they make it clear on the box. *Borderline: Requiring the user to have an Internet connection to install a game. If the game makes this explicit on the box, that's one thing. Customers should be able to make informed purchasing decisions.
And, from their "Gamers Bill of Rights":
Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game
Don't these things seem contradictory? They're just pretending to be on the customers side when they're, in reality, no different to any other company. They use weasle words. They say things that "sound good" to, perhaps, make them seem like they're on the side of legitimate purchasers. I am not sure they are though.
They even released their company report to the public! That's a cool company.
Well, their method worked... at least for you. That is not a "Company Report"; it's a "Customer Report". The two things are very different. The latter is a kind of advertising. From a business perspective it makes sense to release such reports. It makes the consumer feel as though they're part of a community. At the end of the day though they're another business doing buisness-like things--nothing new here.
From a business prospective, it's important to create DRM that doesn't prohibit the user, but still protects your product at the same time.
Great observation. But I don't see how you can support that. How did Stardock create DRM that protected the product and at the same time created no prohibitions for the user? I ask because I am sure there a heaps of users (not to mention publishers) that would benefit from this great result that you say Stardock achieved. Yes. I am cynical.
Which games can't you play? All the games I have let me play even if I have turned off (firewalled) net access. Not saying that you're wrong, I'm just interested because my limited collection of games all work (for single player) with no net once they're activated.
I heard Google uses the same stuff too.
With the risk of sounding cliche, I'd like a citation for that.
To such statements, I say "Ohh puhleeze!" I use generic power supplies for all my PCs, which I never switch off by the way. Apart from increased noise after about 3 years of constant humming, I have no complaints for a product that costs me about 18 dollars.
Generic PSU's do not undergo the same rigorous testing that "brand" name ones do. You might get a good batch. You might not. PSU's that a company is willing to put their brand name against perform consistantly. The voltage stays within a given spec. The load and wattage stays within a spec. A "spec". Yes, the better PSU's have specs that they adhere to. Not to mention the often better cable management which can lead to overall cooler systems.
Interesting. That is how artificial diamonds are formed too... vapor forming around a diamond seed in a vacuum chamber.
Chemical vapor deposition. I don't think it's in a vacuum though. A vacuum (by definition) is an absense of matter. Chemical vapour deposition works (IIRC) by having a gas (such as methane... i.e. matter) which is heated and then doing magic to seperate carbon from diamond deposits.
7 times - try it.
more than 7.
Well the summary and article may have said that. But from the ecofont website:
Printing with a laser printer will give the best printing results
http://www.ecofont.eu/look_at_ecofont_en.html
This is unprecedented; this is the first time a magma has been found in its natural habitat
Is this professor also known as David Attenborough?
I think you mean Infocom. But what you're talking about is not far from the truth. Zork et al ran (run) on a virtual machine not unlike Java (the Z-machine). This was an amazing advantage back in the day. Infocom "merely" had to port their z-machine to run on different machines and their games would work. If an architecture had a z-machine implementation Infocom could release their title across multiple platforms.
Are we talking about the same thing? The subject title is "Is JavaScript Ready For Creating Quality Games?" Now, I concede, that the subject or the summary doesn't really contradict what you're saying but what annoys me is you're assuming that it's talking about stupid web-based games (I may be wrong. I am just assuming from your comments on xor and png and browsers and stuff...)
Assuming for a second I am misunderstanding. I think that web-based games are about 20 years behind the current technology. XOR? For what? Collision detection? I'm not even sure I would have used xor 10 years ago for (as you put it) "image composition". XOR with a mask, yeah. Not sure that is exclusive to PNG though... actually I am sure it's not. PNG is a file format, not a display format or anything that remotely resembles the image in RAM. It doesn't resemble what your web browser does either (except in the most absract way I guess).
See what I mean? There are so many things wrong about your comment. And the biggest thing I think is that you're talking about browsers and how they handle data. The sooner you forget about browsers and elevating the people who write markup language to the status of programmers the better. Yes you can make games. Yes you can make pretty blinking lights.
Xest, I actually agree with you mostly by the way. I just don't agree that "easiness" or "availability" is a great metric.
Well, I agree with most of what you say. However, judging by the quality of several recent games that I presume were written in C++ using frameworks that I assume were also written using C, C++ or (parts) ASM, I can't assert that I believe that the framework being available to JS developers would have improved the situation. The guys doing stuff in c/c++/asm are not doing everything themselves... they use lots of libraries. What makes you think that the same libraries being made available to JS programmers would improve the situation? Wouldn't it make the situation worse?
It is getting easier and more popular with libraries like jQuery, MooTools, Prototype, etc
What does "easiness" (of programming) have to do with the end quality of the game? It could probably be argued that "easiness" (fancy API's etc) actually reduce the quality of games by giving tools to people who do not know how to wield them properly. This is obviously not true for all games; there are simple games that can be adequately programmed in lots of languages. Addictive, puzzle-like, entertaining games. Then there are other games that push the envelope of what is possible. Pushing the envelope does not make a good game though so I digress.
To cut a long story short I don't think the availability of libraries etc to do the grunt work of games will improves things. In fact, I think it may result in an influx of poorly programmed/poorly thought-out games written by people who know enough to program a web page or move a LOGO turtle. It may of course be great for prototyping.
Note to QuantumG: Exclude your tetris implementation from the above comments. Nice work.
I agree, and there are lots of them as well.
[Are open source games doomed to...be limited to only ones that were completely and totally rejected by their original copyright holders?
It's kind of funny that you use the word "doomed". You do know that id has open sourced their games? I don't think any of those games were failures. There are heaps of examples from other companies as well.
I'm amazed at your delusions of grandeur
I am sorry if I gave that impression. It's not true, and I am truly puzzled.
It is ofcourse impossible to get all the exploit-isk out of the game, we'll just have to live with it. Tech 2 prices are on the rise and the last 2 days have been heaven for market speculators, making billions on market manipulation (a condoned action by CCP)
This doesn't strike you as being... "insane"?
I mean, fuck, if CCP can build an economy around a game then I suppose it's good for them. Market speculators in a game. It's a fucking game for c'sake, not a damn country/government. I am not sure what to be more amazed at: that a game has market speculators; or that there are people stupid enough to contribute to this "economy".
For example, in the video game Unreal Tournament, when a player shoots at a target with the 'enforcer' weapon, the projectile does not necessarily hit the point that is aimed at
Personally I think it does the exact opposite. I think Far Cry 2 *may* have done this. But if I line up a head shot (sniper) and put a bullet in the AIs head and he doesn't die, then this makes it seem far less realistic to me--especially when I let loose two shots to be sure and then aim down for a direct body shot and the guy still somehow manages to stand.
Randomness is good, but I don't think making bullet paths random is great. Sure, in real life there is random wind and other influences (projectile shape/smoothness, the barrel, and all that), but at the distances (and speed of projectile) I am talking about it's negligible. Two direct head shots and a just-for-fun/'cause-I-can body shot in quick succession should not fail just to add 'randomness'.