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"There is a rhythm to hiking, as there is in walking. And once you find the cadence — after a day or two — your mind empties. All your social obligations related to work and friends and life are muted. They aren’t gone: they just no longer require your direct attention. There is a shocking beauty to this silence. It’s as if every day of our lives is filled with a white noise. And suddenly, in the presence of these unbelievable peaks, the noise is gone." Lovely pictures, but, more to the point, strong truth, from Craig Mod.
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"DOOM doesn’t belong in a museum, not because it’s not worthy, but because it’s rock and roll. It’s too fast, too loud, too hard, and too fucked up to be in a museum. There are some games that will work in a museum and some that won’t ever and that, by itself, doesn’t say anything about their value. We need both." Frank Lantz is right.
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"In this digitally distant world full of information that appears to only be moving faster and faster, you get to choose: how much will I consume and how much will I create?"
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Fascinating article on pseudo-3D graphics, and raster-based road graphics in particular; coders and gamers alike might enjoy this, although it's quite technical. (And: Racin' Force is just beautiful; I forgot how gorgeous voxels could be).
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"Yesterday was the inaugural papercamp in London, alongside its big sister bookcamp. I presented a half bookish half paperish presentation about travel guides. What I forgot to mention or make explicit: how there are totally different stages and needs for guide books – especially pre-booking, pre-travel, during travel, during holiday. So here is, from memory, what I talked about, with a few additions:" This was jolly good, an a neat branching point between the Paper and the Books.
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Lots of corrections. addenda, and general props from John Romero (who has a sweet personal domain) about the Game Developer article from 1994 linked to recently. Some interesting stuff, including commentary on the NeXTStep screengrab, some of the internal toolchain, and a few clarifications about the id/Apogee/Softdisk relationship.
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"We aim to re-start production of analog INTEGRAL FILM for vintage Polaroid cameras in 2010. We have acquired Polaroid's old equipment, factory and seek your support." They're serious. Wow.
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"A Ruby library that wraps the Viapost SOAP API, providing an easy way of sending post (you know, real letter box post) from your applications."
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"Starting a new column reprinting classic Game Developer magazine articles, this January 1994 premiere issue article goes behind the scenes of Id Software's Doom, talking to John Carmack and revealing technical specifics of the seminal game's creation." And it's cracking – lots of great detail, some neat ironies, and quite a bit about the id team's fondness for NeXT workstations.
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Consolevania is over. A shame, but they make their case well, and it was lovely when it lasted.
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"We’ve generated what we call the Personal Annual Report for all our users. It’s a unique-to-you PDF of data, visualisations and factoids about your travel in 2008, that we’re delivering over the next week via email to every Dopplr user who travelled in 2008. To give you an example, we thought we’d show you the Personal Annual Report of someone who’s had a very busy 2008 – President Elect Barack Obama." This is super-awesome. Can't wait for mine, no matter how small it is.
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"Your argument did not address my own, but nice try". I think I'm going to need this in future.
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These are lovely. The more I think about this, the more I like his Die Hard poster.
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"The purpose of this analysis is to determine the evolution of gravity in the Mario video game series as video game hardware increases." Not super-accurate, but not bad; the bit when it starts the comparison against GPU word length is a little silly, perhaps. But otherwise: fun!
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"Ikaruga doesn’t treat you mean because it wants to see you fail. Ikaruga treats you mean because it wants winning to feel wonderful. But the more I became addicted to that mechanic, the more uneasy I started to feel. Volunteering to be beaten and humiliated on the promise of eventual pleasure? Isn’t there a word for that?" I can't get on with Ikaruga – too much of a memory test, too much punishment, not enough pleasure – but I can totally understand these sentiments. Lovely writing.
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The Wire has started airing on German TV, in a dubbed version; fascinating interview on how to translate it whilst keep the flavour of the original show.
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How come I have not seen this before?
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Preserved at least in the screengrab of this post: today is the 15th anniversary of the release of Doom, and Offworld have reskinned accordingly. Fun.
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"The outcome of this rampant illegal software copying is that Windows is seen as "the first world standard" and any attempt to push a cheaper alternative is strongly resisted. They consider it trying to cheat local people out of getting the same quality of software that is used in the developed world, even though it's a legal way of getting quality software for free." Not what you'd expect, but totally understandable: as said before, there is a middle class everywhere, and it has the same aspirations everywhere.
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…and here's a tiny bit that got cut from the final interviewer, from Tom Chick's own site. Spielberg talks in more detail about balancing storytelling and gameplay, and expands a bit on the cutscene problem.
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Tom Chick interviews Spielberg on games for Yahoo!. Spielberg is consumate and smart, as you'd expect, but also well-grounded; he really does _play games_. "Yes, I've played Half-Life, of course" – the "of course" is the important bit.
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“Sackboy will be tremendously popular and this is the perfect time of year to knit the little chap. Knitting and customizing him means that he will be utterly unique and a very cool accessory. We’re very lucky to have him in the magazine and we hope that he’ll help to increase the already sizable crossover between the great communities of gamers and knitters, online or not.” Frankly smashing. I wonder if Mum's looking for a Christmas knitting project?
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"In short, [MSG] defies many of the characteristics we normally ascribe to a tabletop RPG — in the context of a very cynical, and very cool, cyberpunky future where even the minimal constraints on corporate action that currently apply are removed, and any residual ethical norms for businessmen are considered the domain of chumps. Excellent, in a word." Ordered, based upon Greg's writeup and also the fantastic downloadable version of the ruleset. Now, to find some players.
Doomed
28 July 2005
Dude, seriously: the trailer for the Doom movie looks like the final product will suck. A lot. It’s reminding me of Paul WS Anderson’s Resident Evil quite a lot. Combined with a bit of Paul WS Anderson’s Soldier. And maybe some of Paul WS Anderson’s Aliens Versus Predator to boot.
Paul WS Anderson is not a man whose oeuvre you wish to emulate.