Padfoot240.com

Wow, since my last post too many things have happened. Well we broke the record for Blue Like Jazz. Yay!  I have a couple of posts coming up. One about projects I want to work, another about the merits of online gaming, and of course my thoughts on the new Harry Potter movie; Deathly Hallows part 1.  I am also slowly putting up some code snippets up on the top bar under Code.  Checkers is finally there, hopefully some other games/apps will join it soon.

But right now, something needs to be shared.

Gamer shows his mom a reflection of Starcraft from Day[9], and she posts her impressions in her blog.  This blog is a must read.  A truly remarkable summary of so much that the gaming community strives for.  I am so glad that someone who gets it speaks out and posts it in a public place.  We need more of this and less of the “gaming is for losers bro” posts.

If you haven’t figured out by now, I am a huge fan of Don Miller.  He is a fantastic author.  His writing has changed my life in multiple ways.  But that’s all old news if you read my blog.  What is new with Donald Miller these days?  Well other than keeping a phenomenal blog alive with daily writings, he has been making Blue Like Jazz into a movie.  Not some huge action packed hollywood blockbuster, but a smaller movie that really sticks to the book’s theme: nonreligious thoughts on Christianity.  If you haven’t read Blue Like Jazz, go read it now, and then watch the movie when it comes out.  It’s a great book, especially for someone without much faith in God in my opinion.  A series of essays and thoughts that go into detail about the core of Christianity.  This book is just not promoted enough.

Anyway, so on September 16th 2010 Don announced that even though the movie was written, crewed, and casted, it was going to be canceled because of a lack of funding.  What?  I had been too excited about this project to see it crash and burn due to something as trivial as funding.  You know what my reaction was to this?  “Where can I donate?” I wanted to see this masterpiece of a book in its movie form even if I had to fund it myself.  And it looks like a lot of other people did too.

A kickstarter was made with the idea that we the fans could come up with the $125,000 needed to fund the Blue Like Jazz movie.  Fun fact, if you watch the video on the kickstarter page, you can actually see my comment I left is featured about 1 minute in.  Cool!  There are even some incentives if you donate towards the movie.  After my donation, I am now an official Associate Producer of the Blue Like Jazz movie.  My name is even in the credits!

Well we had just under a month to complete the funding, and today we did it.  We are actually at $127,866 funded so maybe the movie will be just a little bit better.  Don can add in a car chase scene, CGI sexy carrot in, or something.

What a good story it would be.  Investors back out.  The movie is put on hold.  But the fans say, “No!  We will fund this movie.”

Well we did it.  So look out for Blue Like Jazz the movie coming soon.

Twelve years. Twelve years I have waited to get my hands on a sequel to Starcraft. Let me tell you how big Starcraft II is, if you don’t understand.  Let me put it this way, the original Starcraft changed the way games were made and accepted. The original build of Starcraft shown at E3 had such bad reception, often called Orcs in Space for the similarity it had to Warcraft, that Blizzard said it would rebuild the engine and game in two months. That is insane. But they did it. And it worked. Starcraft shipped with an intense three campaign long story mode as well as an online competitive multiplayer mode. While single-player certainly was mind-blowing(ZOMG multiple points of view, twists, and cinematics!!), the real was/is multiplayer games. Not only was it immediately a great success with friends, nothing like battling in space for Koprulu sector dominance, it bred a whole new type of competitive video game. The title “Professional Video Game Player” became more common and tournaments were held for thousands of dollars with thousands of spectators watching whose strategy would stick through it all. That is how big Starcraft is/was, it is still played competitively today.

Starcraft II was always a hope/dream of all the players, but it wasn’t officially announced until 2007.  People got way excited and the South Koreans went crazy.  The sequel to one of the best games of all time(undeniable fact) was coming to us.  We would finally find out what happened after the Zerg swarm finished off three HUGE fleets Terran+Protoss forces.  What changes have been made to our beloved fighting units?  What time has passed?  How are our characters doing since we last left them off?  Well, the game came, and it is awesome.  Oh is it awesome.  The multiplayer is great.  They found their strengths in the original and weeded out the weaknesses.  There are a bit of people clinging to the original Starcraft for their competitive game scene, but I think they are just afraid of change.  Yes, Starcraft II gameplay is different.  But it isn’t bad.  I love the new engine, the new abilities, how the game is a bit more ‘forgiving’ with your actions, and it just looks so nice.  Nothing is nicer seeing my Hydralisks shoot spines at Cory’s charging Zealots, psi-blades fully extended, just waiting to start breaking out their scythe like claws.  Who wins that battle?  Who cares, it looks freaking beautiful.  It plays smoother as well.  No more sense of jerky unit movement or stale scenery.  The game is great.  The game lives up to the hype it caused.  There are large parts that are disappointing to me though.

My gripes on the game are mostly on core design decisions for the game that take away more than they add I believe.  I really wish they would be changed, but I doubt they will be.  Now, i’m not talking balance changes for different army units, those are coming later this month actually, but bigger changes that would take a re-release of the game probably.

My Gripes…

• Split Game Campaign
  • Now, the first Starcraft had three campaigns included in it, one for each race.  Starcraft II originally had that planned but they scrapped that idea to make each campaign longer but split up across three separate games.  So Wings of Liberty is the Terran campaign, Heart of the Swarm as the Zerg campaign will come out later, and Legacy of the Void being the Protoss campaign will be released even later to complete the storyline for Starcraft II.  This enables them to get each campaign out one at a time giving us an episodic game rather than waiting longer for the entire thing, or so they say…  Now, this isn’t a huge deal in itself in my opinion.  But paired with these other gripes of mine, it becomes a much bigger problem.
• Tutorialish Singleplayer
  • We cried foul over the release of separate games at first because we’d be paying for less singleplayer, but Blizzard assured us that Starcraft II Wings of Liberty would have a Terran campaign that spanned just as long as all three campaigns in the original Starcraft.  Ooooh, now this was sweet music to our ears.  A longer and more in depth Terran campaign means more story, more character development, more twists, and more cinematics!  And the same will go for the Zerg and Protoss campaigns coming to us later!  Well, this longer Terran campaign wasn’t all it was cracked up to be…Let me explain.  One thing I wasn’t expecting is that singleplayer has A LOT MORE units than multiplayer.  They kept a lot of the old units from Starcraft in singleplayer.  That is cool I think.  Firebats, wraiths, medics, and even vultures get to make an appearance.  Then there are new units that aren’t in multiplayer that show up singleplayer, predators, diamondbacks, automated refineries, and even ghostesque spectres.  So, a plethora of units in singleplayer is GOOD.  It makes singleplayer that more exciting since you can make even MORE strategies and combos.  But here is where that bonus ends.  A majority of the campaign’s levels are ‘tutorial levels’.  Tutorial levels are specially designed for the player to produce and learn how to use one specific unit.  That one specific unit will be the most effective way of beating that level, so you are a little bit forced to beat that level by building that unit and using strategies with that unit.  It makes the player feel a little tied down.  The player can’t decide what strategy they want to use since they almost HAVE to use the tutorial unit.  Tutorial levels aren’t bad, they are actually a little bit helpful, but when you boast about a campaign being just as long as the original game’s entire set of campaigns, the majority shouldn’t be tutorial levels(in any game’s campaign).  Since the majority is tutorial levels, it makes the entire storyline feel like a giant tutorial.  I was waiting for the tutorial release when I was free to use whatever units/strategies I wanted to and act like a real army commander.  But that feeling came much too late in the game, around 4 or 5 levels left, when it should come quite early or even in the middle at the latest.
• The Total Cost vs Don’t Mess With My Multiplayer!
  • Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is a full priced game.  A full single-player, even if too tutorialish, and a solid multiplayer, which is arguably the reason to buy Starcraft, is worth a full price.  Some games don’t even have a multiplayer and charge a full price, so Starcraft II, one of the BEST games of this year, is definitely worth $60.  Now, the next two games…will they be worth full price and do I we want them to be?  For them to be full price they each will have their own single-player, hopefully a little less tutorialish, AND their own multiplayer.  Their own multiplayer.  I don’t want them to have their own multiplayer.  I don’t want ANOTHER multiplayer when we are still playing and Blizzard is still balancing this one.  I’d much rather pay less for the next couple games and just receive a single-player addition, or even pay full price to keep this multiplayer the sole Starcraft II multiplayer.  I was never a big fan of the two multiplayers in the original Starcraft along with Broodwar.  Everyone just played the BW multiplayer almost and the old one got left in the dust.  I don’t want to keep paying for a new multiplayer and switch to different units and play styles when each game comes out.  But, we will see what the price scheme is for the next two games.  Blizzard says they won’t over charge us, so that makes me think it will actually be lower.  Still not to crazy about the different multiplayers though…

None of those gripes on their own is anything major, but I think they affect each other too much and it adds to a bigger problem when all are present.  Now we are having to deal with, and purchase, three different games each with their own multiplayer, that will split players, and, by the looks of it, each have a really tutorialish single-player campaign.  Starcraft II is a great game, but this problem just wasn’t a good design in my opinion.  It isn’t a deterrent from buying any Starcraft II game but it does cause some disappointment afterwards, and that is almost just as bad.

I originally started writing this a while ago, but now the first balance patch has been announced by Blizzard so I thought I’d throw in my thoughts here too.

• First Announced Balances
  • Adding destructible rocks to the Desert Oasis map
  • Protoss
    • Zealot: build time is being increased from 33 to 38 seconds
    • Warpgate: cooldown is being increased from 23 to 28 seconds
  • Terran
    • Reaper: build time is being increased from 40 to 45 seconds
    • Bunker: build time is being increased from 30 to 35 seconds
    • Siege Tanks(siege mode): damage is being decreased from 50 to 35, +15 vs. armored
    • Battle Cruiser: damage is being decreased against ground units from 10 to 8.
  • Zerg
    • Ultralisk: damage is being decreased from 15, +25 vs. armored to 15, +20 vs. armored
    • Ultralisk: building attack (Ram) is being removed because the damage rate is too similar to its normal attack, which will be used against buildings instead

Hmmm, interesting first patch ideas.  Terran gets the biggest nerf, as they should, but not to, arguably, their most over powered unit, the Marauder.  The Marauder is such a powerful early game unit since it is SUPER EFFECTIVE against all tier 1 units from Protoss AND Zerg.  The Reapers are a big problem for anybody besides a pro gamer.  Siege Tanks are a nice nerf to the Terran wall they always seem to put up.  Maybe we can actually get some ground units to attack the wall without being blasted to smithereens.  The Battle Cruiser nerf is probably the most random thing on here I think, you rarely get to see them in game so I’m not sure if I think they are overpowered.  Early Battle Cruisers are REALLY effective in almost any game.  The Zealot nerf, not sure how I feel about that.  You can get an obscene amount of zealots out early and if you aren’t watching them coming while trying to get a good economy going, it isn’t too forgiving.  I guess I like it since now zealot rush is more of an all in instead of just an easy opening build.  The ultralisk change isn’t really a nerf at all, more of a buff I think.  Now the ultralisk does splash damage against buildings.  This is very useful when attacking a wall, a building being repaired, or even a grouping of supply depots/gateways.  Very helpful I think.

So the balance plans are good, but I don’t think they are enough.  Terran’s bio ball, especially the marauder need a nerf.  Zerg need some sort of help.  Not sure what it is, but something.  Maybe even have spawn larva on autocast…And just the heck of it, because I hate them so much, Void Rays need a freaking nerf!  I cannot express how much I hate void rays.  Mass Void Rays are almost unstoppable since their attack gets higher and they essentially have more then they really do so you can’t even counter them with an army of similar size!  And I don’t care what anyone says, not letting them get mass void rays isn’t a counter to mass void rays…I just need to learn to attack faster and more often…

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on the great game that is Starcraft II

WHOA that was fast!  I really did NOT intend on grabbing a new TV literally the day after I posted that last blog.  I like to do research, plan out things, and figure out what problems I will encounter for a while before I make a move.  But in the end, a good deal is sometimes better then waiting around to possibly get a slightly better TV.  A local store out here by Irvine called Modern Electronic Fixtures, dunno why they sell TVs, apparently overstocked and needed to sell this TV asap.  So I went and got it.

Check it out ladies and gents!

All in all the price came out to just under $700, TV+tax+2 year manu warranty, which was just what I was looking for!  Amazing how these things work out sometimes.

It looks glorious and we broke in some 1080p Halo last night.

My infamous TV-from-the-trash has had a good run for only a $300 repair cost.  I guess it is just a bit too old, or spent too much time in the trash, and the projections are starting to fail off and on.  It is getting really annoying to see the blues dip down from the top and form ghosts in the middle but not on the sides.  Distracting really.  It is the worst during video gaming, hurtful blue items look like helpful green items etc.  But that is what you get with projection TVs, when they get too old or jostled around a bit they go all wonky.  Man I hate old hardware.

So what do you guys have?  What do you look for?  Where do you look for it?

I’ve got my eyes on something around $700, 1080p, and maybe in the 40 inches.  Extra inputs are always nice but they aren’t a deal breaker for me.  I don’t need excessive things such ethernet inputs, ipod docks, dvd integration, etc.

So far I’ve found a couple to look at, but as usual I always learn more from our input.

• http://www.testfreaks.com/televisions/lg-42ld450/
• http://www.walmart.com/ip/Panasonic-TC-L42U22/14100710
• http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sony/13422987
• http://www.walmart.com/ip/LG-42LD450/13904850

Probably going to wait a bit before I go get it.  Build some cash up over the summer to pay for it.  So let me know if you hear anything about TVs later on as well.

So I want to keep busy over the summer.  And I’ve planned out a list of things that I would like to get accomplished on my website before Fall quarter starts up again.

• My Portfolio Page
  • I’d like some kind of page from my blog that details what I’ve done/worked on.  Kind of like how I put up my checker’s project but it would also include a way to download my code and instructions to run it.
• Resume
  • I guess this would go along with my Portfolio.  Is putting your resume online your own personal website a good idea?  Or would it better to link to your linkedin profile?  Tell me people in the work force!
• Project Wish List
  • A list detailing out projects that I’ve dreamed about creating some point in my career.

By the looks of things, it seems all three of these could go on the same page just under different tabs or headers.  I’m thinking it should be have a much different look than my blog if it’s going to be seen by possible job prospects.  So I don’t know if I’d want to just make another wordpress “page” and put it there.  Can I have links to non internal wordpress pages on my nav menu?

In other news, I’m broadening my programming languages with C++.  It’s a little different than Java, but it is a good kind of different.  More freedom, more power, more things can be done.  But as we all know, with great freedom comes great responsibility…  But C++ is the mainstream language for VIDEO GAMES!!  Waahoo!!

I’ve been frequenting a website called Reddit(caution: adult content in content marked with nsfw) lately.  I think it is kind of cool the way it is structured.  Users post some kind of content, pictures/text/links/video/etc. and everyone else in the community gets to ‘upvote’ or ‘downvote’ the content.  The more upvotes a piece of content gets, the more it is pushed towards the first page of content.  Downvotes work in the opposite manner.  Thus, the community actively is constantly receiving/giving new content and it shares the coolest bits of it with everyone else while avoiding the boring/trashy/duplicate content.  You can also include a comment on that content and the same vote policy also governs the comments on each piece of content.  I’m always a big fan of bottom-up structure instead of top-bottom; I think it provides the users with enough power to play within the system while disallowing the higher-ups from playing with the system.  However, it does have the same major problem that a solely-community-driven community encounters: the hive-mind.  The hive-mind refers “to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.”  This isn’t always a bad thing or even wrong for that matter.  I mean I guess humans, for the most part, have a hive-minded attitude towards murder, rape, abuse, etc.  That’s good.  People, by nature, tend to surround themselves with mostly people who think similarly to themselves to some degree.  The problem begins when a hive-mind starts to become hostile to others not subscribing to it.  Reddit has a notoriously hostile hive-mind mostly pertaining to a couple of specific issues:

• Christianity: Christians are seen as stupid, ignorant, mindless people.  The subreddit page about atheism is one of the more popular pages on reddit, but it contains more anti-Christianity content than pro-atheist content.  To a lesser extent, the same is also applied to Islam.  Atheists are seen as enlightened heroes.
• Republicans: Again, republicans are seen as stupid, ignorant, clueless people that apparently want nothing more than to destroy America and tax all of its citizens to death.
• American International Policy: Any time America pokes around in another country’s affairs, it is terrible and a breach of their sovereignty.  Most recently, Isreal’s actions have been close to murder and America’s support of Israel is a terrible thing.
• The Police: The police are huge jerks with too much power and are always tazing, shooting, beating, and killing random people for no reason.

Here is a particular example I thought was rather harsh.  The picture was posted and this comment had received the most upvotes-this is the comment most people thought that others should see first.

I think, that on some level, religious indoctrinators are PERFECTLY AWARE of how nonsensical and ridiculous the beliefs they seek to perpetuate are. That is WHY they so eagerly seek out the young. On some level in their minds, they know PERFECTLY DAMN WELL that if they wait until a young person has developed skills in critical thinking and skepticism, that the indoctrination won’t ‘take’.

I think that makes them the worst kind of cynical double thinking hypocrites.

This is the reddit hive-mind’s view of Christianity.  How sad.  How terrible.  We are scary close-minded(literaly) people who prey upon children in order to brainwash them into believing ‘nonsensical’ myths.  I’m torn whenever I see people on reddit post things like this.  Part of me is furious.  Really?  If you honestly believe that we think our own beliefs ridiculous, prey on kids, can’t stand up to critical thinking, or even that we are responsible for holding back science(that’s my favorite one) I honestly have to say that you are the indoctrinated one.  I’m sorry that as a parent, they try to raise their child to believe what they think is the right way to live.  Calling an indoctrination foul has its place, but not as a blanket statement!

Another part of me is sad for them.  Did most of these people experience some sort of childhood where Christianity was shoved down their throats all the time?  I feel for those people, I really do.  They see Christianity as this terrible force that comes to enslave and Jesus as this hardened school teacher punishing you for every sin.  I pray they realize that that wasn’t Christianity.  And this picture isn’t either.  I pray they encounter Jesus in his reality through some other means.  I pray they are actively searching and not just shouting out indoctrination fouls while they themselves are indoctrinated with another religion.  You can find all the examples of harsh, rule-founded people claiming to show Christ’s love to others, but that doesn’t make Christ’s love any less real.  You can take all the Bible verses you want out of context in an attempt to make the Bible say things it isn’t, but in the end you can’t escape Christ’s love found right there in the word.

Now, I am not hating on reddit.  I really enjoy it; I particularly really love the gaming and lolcat sections.  But it does suffer from this hive-mind which can make sharing differing thoughts on reddit sometimes just downright impossible.  Whether your differing content gets downvoted so far that it can’t see the light of day or everyone gets nasty in the comment section, it is just hard to survive once the hive-mind has targeted you.  If you want a pretty well written thought on reddit, I would suggest you read this comment by an actual user.  But this aspect to the community is probably why I, and many others, will always remain a reader and never a contributor.

I found this article today entitled “5 Reasons It’s Still Not Cool to Admit You’re a Gamer”.  The author identifies five things that are negative, or just plain sad, about being an avid video gamer and why we are ashamed of them.  I honestly think these thoughts are on to something.  Almost everything that I have to defend my love of video games from is apart of this list.  But I think the article should have been named, “5 Reasons Video Games aren’t Reaching their full Potential”.  Video Games, in my eyes, are becoming a form of art.  They are creative ways for involving people in narrative story.  There is no formula for a good video game, it is actually EXTREMELY hard to create a solid game that people really enjoy and even harder to create one that the majority of people enjoy.  Creating a good game involves placing interactive ways to sense things of a narrative.  It is a form of storytelling while adding a new dimension to it.

Whats that?  Video games as art is complete rubbish?  The same was said about Literature.  About Cinema.  About Music.  And just like those three, Video Games need some time to smooth out the bumps.  We have too much crap in the genre to be taken seriously yet.  Movies like The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, or The Shawshank Redemption are all viewed as some of the best movies of all time.  Aren’t they art?  Or at least major parts of them?  Movies like UHF, The Stupids, or Napoleon Dynamite are three of my favorite guilty pleasure movies of all time.  They are definitely not art.  I think that is where Video Games currently are; making thousands of Superbads that give everyone a good fun time, but doesn’t really move you or stir up any emotions.  Video Games need to focus on making their Casablanca, or whatever.  And there definitely have been some beautiful games that are high up there.  Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is my personal favorite game and is arguably the best video game of all time.  Maybe there has been some beautiful games made, but for every single amazing game, there are 100′s of ‘Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen: Listen to Drive’ kind of games out there…

So what is holding them back?  Well let me break this article down for you with my thoughts on each one along with a quick quote from the article that I think has its merits.  I would still encourage you to read the article first, only 2 pages long, since it will give you a better insight about the author’s, and my, thoughts.

• We Can’t Shake the ‘Lonely, Anti-Social Virgin’ Stereotype
  • For some reason this still gets pinned on us.  Nerdy, pasty, white males who have social problems or whatever you want to assume we are.  Why did we retain this stereotype?  It used to be for all computer users.  The geeks of highschool were the ones that typed up their essays with custom margins, put pictures in their slide shows to make it look professional, had a blog on this super nerdy thing called the internet and actually wrote out their thoughts online for other super nerdy loners to read.  Well guess what?  Now it is super cool to be the computer nerd.  Blog, personal website, facebook profiles, tweeting, they are all looked upon as the norm.  In fact, if you don’t use the internet then you are the weird one.  So how did gamers keep this and everyone else didn’t?  Easy.  Computers/The Internet moved away from this stereotype, games haven’t(as much).  Which is explained in the next point.
  • “Everybody plays video games now, right? My mom plays them. Yet, there is still a “if you have touched a video game controller, you have never touched a boob” stigma attached. It’s so universally believed that somebody put up a whole lot of capital to start a business cashing in on it(gamecrush.com)–where you can pay women to play video games with you, or just look at their boobs).  And damn, do us gamers ever play the part. Get us on chat or an Xbox Live headset with a female and suddenly we’re drunk on puberty juices.“
• The Industry Thinks We’re All 17-Year-Old Douchebags Like
  • I said, we grew out of it but games did not.  I think really the only needed thing to point out is all the ramped up sexuality in games.  It isn’t even called for.  It is almost like the video game is created as an excuse to model some busty 3D female.  Crude mini-games where you press buttons to watch two people bone?  Cheat codes to make all the women in the game bouncing around naked?  Video gamers were mainly teen males back in the day, so maybe you could argue that the industry was just appealing to their audience.  But we grew up.  We also were joined by females, almost half of active gamers are women.  We are adults now with spouses and jobs and would like to have something called dignity.  We want to deal with something other than angsty teenage hormones in our games.  We want to deal with actual themes plots.  We want to deal with things that matter.
  • “Again, “Mature” is the rating, and I’ve come to learn that “Mature” in video game land means “teenage male.” So here we are again with the stereotype, the games themselves selling the kind of sex fantasy that appeals to specifically to males who have never actually had a relationship with a female.“
• Video Game Storytelling is Still at the Level of B Movies
  • This point is were I wouldn’t agree totally with what the article has to say.  While most games do indeed not care much about a story or plot, many do and make an effort towards it.  I think it is a little unfair to throw Halo, Gears of War, and Mass Effect all into the same storyline of ‘some random dude kills a lot of aliens’.  You an do that with a lot of movies.  Look at this, The Thing, Predator, and Aliens all revolve around killing the alien(s) but all their stories are not only completely different but they are quite good as far as keeping me interested go.  Again, Casino Royale, Gladiator, and Lord of the Rings I, II, and III all are great action movies and have great storylines.  But if you really wanted to, you could just say they are just about killing.  And again, Definitely Maybe, Failure to Launch, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days can all be called generic chick flicks, but each has good story and I like them.  So sure, they can be abstracted down to common threads, but you’re throwing away the stories that make them good to do so.  Right now Video Games are mostly action based because it makes people excited if they can put themselves in the shoes of a warrior.  Other aspects of this art will come when they are implemented solidly.  Like I said before, many people will just make a quick crude game, but the artists are the developers who will push the way people play the game and the stories within them to change these standards.
  • “With very, very few exceptions, video game plots are stuck at this level. It’s storytelling at its most primitive: good guy with a gun, thousands of bad guys, the happy ending comes when you make enough of the bad guys dead. Characters are crude, cartoonish archetypes–grizzled soldier, grizzled gangster, femme fatale, cool hit man, bumbling fat guy, robot.“
• We’re Still Obsessed by Shiny Gadgets
  • I’m playing a game called Alan Wake right now.  It’s great.  It is genius.  It shakes the ‘Lonely, Anti-Social Virgin’ stereotype.  The makers do not think I am a 17-year-old douchebag.  The story is thrilling and I’m still not sure how it will end!  The graphics are so clean.  The game deals alot with light and darkness and I really haven’t seen shadows or rays of light rendered so beautifully anywhere else.  So why is a game like this getting rated down by quite a few people?  Somebody took a screenshot of the game, zoomed in 500 percent and started to count the pixels to make sure every frame was rendering at the maximum 720p resolution the Xbox 360 is capable of.  Some frames weren’t, people got mad, and said it sucks.  There are over 2,000 posts on the topic at the game’s website.  Really?  They cut down on some quality that is BARELY NOTICEABLE and all hell breaks loose?  Don’t get me wrong, I think if you’re cutting quality because you’re being sloppy and just want to finish then you better fix it.  But the game looks freaking beautiful.  The developers know what they are doing when they decide to cut the pixel count down in areas to make the game better.  If a painting is amazing but people find out later that the painter didn’t use the best kind of paint possible is that painting suddenly less?  Well I actually don’t know the answer to that question, so painters you tell me.  But I wouldn’t really care since the painting still looks good.
  • “Who’s that woman Alan is talking to? Where are they going? How does it play into the story? What emotions is this scene going to elicit? Tension? Dread? Humor? HOW CAN YOU WORRY ABOUT SUCH THINGS WHEN THE ROLL CAGE ON HIS PICKUP TRUCK ONLY HAS A 19:25 PIXEL RATIO.“
• We Have Some Serious Entitlement Issues
  • One word here guys, piracy.  And you know what, I stand convicted.  I could count on one hand the number of games I have pirated, but that doesn’t really excuse my theft does it?  I’ve been thinking over the whole issue of downloading things for free, music, software, games, and I have to say that I really kind of feel bad about it.  I should stop.  I need to stop.  It is the right thing to do.  I could make up excuses all day long about how I wouldn’t buy that game anyway, so they aren’t really losing any money.  I mean, logically, if I like a game and I want more games like it from the makers of the game, shouldn’t I support that game so the makers can make money to create more great games?  We need to take responsibility for this market of games that we love and want.  We can’t spoil it by only taking and not giving.  Now, this doesn’t mean I’m perfectly okay with how DRM is managed or how DLC is used.  But both of those were kind of in response to pirating in the first place.  Maybe if we don’t break the developer’s trust then we wouldn’t have to be governed by actual game content released as DLC.  Maybe if we just put out some money, our video games COULD render every object in our games in the maximum resolution.  Maybe the game writers could start to experiment a little with game plot lines and branch out into A+ plot lines that emotionally involve us all.  Maybe the developers won’t have to resort to sex-shock as a marketing scheme and start creating games with better content.  Maybe once we begin to release the limits we have put on video games, the others will begin to lift and we won’t look like 17-year-old-horny-douchebags to everyone.
  • “Gosh, I wonder why these publishers are putting all of their resources into the harder-to-pirate consoles instead? Forget about the debate over the morality of file sharing. It’s not that; it’s just simple cause-effect. We’re smashing out the windows because it’s fun, and then crying because the rain is coming in. It makes us all look like spoiled, entitled brats with no concept of how the adult world works. Don’t tell me this is because gamers are mostly kids, either–the average age of video game players is 35.“

Well, there you have it.  Agree.  Disagree.  Critique.

So today, May 25th, is what has come be known as Geek Pride Day.  Don’t ask me why or who started it, just embrace it!

Geek Love Poem

The Geek Manifesto:
Rights:

1. The right to be even geekier.
2. The right to not leave your house.
3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
7. The right to be out of style.
8. The right to be overweight and near-sighted.
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
10. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities:

1. Be a geek, no matter what.
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a “museum of geekiness.”
6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
9. Never throw away anything related to geekdom.
10. Try to take over the world!

I gotta say I don’t agree with everything on the manifesto because geeks have evolved a lot since these last couple years.  And they are just rights, not musts.  Just because I have the right to those things doesn’t mean I will exercise them.  Take rights 2,3,5, and 8.  Now why would I want to exercise those?  However, Right 7 I fully embrace when I rock the mancapris.
Anyway, have a good Geek Pride day.  Celebrate as you will.  Continuing the spirit of Geekiness I will be posting a super geeky blog post in the coming days.  It is actually half-way written right now, but I felt that this one should be put up on Geek Pride Day.

I need to set up a portfolio page on here, but not as part of my actual blog.  I need to design a clean looking portfolio where I can post my work online.  Any tips from you guys?

I have another game I’ll be posting up this weekend called GridMatcher.  It’s pretty simple.  You just match a given shape to its twin in a grid.  The faster you match, the more points you can get.  Matching 10 in a row correctly multiplies your score.  Heck, since it’s going online, maybe I should implement a high-score feature…So I am going to be trying to fix that Checkers thing soon.  The same issue is probably going to affect this game as well so if you couldn’t play Checkers, then you probably won’t be able to play GridMatcher either.

Anyway.  For all you Android OS phone owners, check out PIXEL JAMZ!  Coming to your phone at the end of this quarter!!  Or at least that is the plan anyway.  It is my last project class and I’m kind of excited for it.  So if I am blowing off playing Starcraft II or Halo: Reach with you, this is what I am working on.