planet rome.ro

The Tidiness Theory

2009-07-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

There is a theory that when most people are confronted with a mess, the natural instinct is to clean it up. This propensity toward cleanliness, or "solving" the mess, is what I believe is one of the two most powerful fundamental elements of game design.

In Pac-Man, the mess is the maze full of dots. You need to clean them up to achieve your goal of cleanliness. In Space Invaders, the aliens are the mess. Clean them up and you reach your goal. In Bejeweled you are presented with a messy screen of jewels. Arrange them in groups of matching 3's and you clean it up, one match at a time. Chess? Clean the board of your opponent's pieces, specifically his King. The ancient game of Go? Same mechanic.

The other powerful mechanic in game design is that of Building. Most great games combine these two mechanics such as any successful RTS like Age of Empires. Build your empire one unit at a time until you need to clean up your enemy's mess of units. In Katamari Damacy, you are cleaning and building yourself constantly. RPGs are all about building and cleaning up the messy landscape of enemies.

Sometimes this mechanic exists at multiple levels within a game. Looking at the meta-design, you know that Resident Evil 4 is all about cleaning up the game world of zombies. Within this game you need to keep your inventory briefcase clean and optimized as well. And all the while you are building your arsenal to make all the cleaning easier and more fun.

World of Warcraft is the epitome of these two mechanics and both are executed at multiple levels in the game. Your character, you are building. The world, you are cleaning, so you can build more. Professions are building so you can make items that help with the cleaning....which feed into more building. The cyclical nature of the design is what all designers hope to achieve.

This tidiness theory, this instinct toward Order rather than Chaos, may be evolutionary and part of our DNA. My question is: if a person, when presented with a mess in any kind of medium, chooses not to clean it up, are they in danger of failing evolution? And are games, as a form of teaching how to build and clean various abstracted messes, helping us evolve?

a visit to id software, 1993

2009-04-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

A Visit to id Software from john romero on Vimeo.

Joe Siegler IM'd me a couple weeks ago and said he found a VHS tape that had some DOOM footage on it before its release and if I didn't want it he was gonna throw it out.

I said, "Send it to me immediately."

So now I finally got it, ripped it to digital and then used iMovie to present it to anyone with an interest in DOOM history. The Vimeo page has more explanation on it so I won't go into detail here - check it out!

i'm on a boat!

2009-02-25T20:08:00.000-08:00

if you thought "Jizz In My Pants" and "Dick In A Box" were great, you simply must watch the video "I'm On A Boat" on YouTube - it's hilarious and awesome all at the same time. I'm not a fan of hip-hop at all but, boy, T-Pain does a really great job on the song and in the video. Now i have to check out his stuff.

If you like all the SNL songs you should get the album Incredibad - they're all on there. Go to iTunes and grab it and you will get all the videos too. Great deal!

random IM friday

2009-01-23T11:59:00.001-08:00

you know what's funny? random IMs from people i don't know - they always entertain. I figured it would be fun to share some of these with you. :)

At the end of this one the person says "Have fun" which, unbeknownst to him, is a game i made up and a lot of us here at Slipgate Ironworks play it everyday. So i say "good one" because he "won" the Have Fun game.

razer copperhead ftw

2009-01-19T14:50:00.000-08:00

so, yeah, the razer copperhead mouse just absolutely rules. I've been using the copperhead for a couple years now and started using the new Lachesis mouse on my iMac about 8 months ago. I got tired of the feel of the mouse and the cursor skipping around randomly sometimes.

I put my copperhead on the iMac and it's like night and day, it's that amazing. The copperhead feels like a BMW compared to the Lachesis which is more like a PT Cruiser and the prices should be swapped. The copperhead is a way better mouse IMO. It feels better not just in using the computer but also in games.

I'm left-handed so Razer's mice are really great for me. If i was right-handed, though, i would have to pick between using the copperhead or the logitech G5. they're both absolutely the best.

doom history 1994

2009-01-15T11:05:00.001-08:00

back in january 1994, one month after DOOM was released, Game Developer magazine ran an article, one which i've never seen before. Well, they republished the article today on gamasutra.com and it was great reading over it and going back in time. Something i thought would be most exciting is this screenshot here (scanned from the magazine page; i don't have the mag though) that shows the NeXTSTEP programming environment we used.

Here's as much information as I can glean from this scan:
* it's John Carmack's NeXTStation; we had a NeXTCUBE which was used to scan the videocam images we made of our monsters (clay and latex)
* the cookie monster icon is for John's app, Fuzzy Pumper Palette Shop, which we ran on the Cube and processed the images that the videocam captured. The videocam was plugged directly into the Cube.
* the screen is mainly showing the debugging environment of SuperDebugger as DOOM is being debugged
* the DOOM app window has a black, draggable title bar with the 320x200 game screen rendered within it
* the Objective-C compiler is just under the game window
* at the bottom of the screen are icons representing the running apps; many are source files

About the article, here are my clarifications and bug fixes:
* the reason Scott Miller was trying to get in touch with me was because of my PC game (port) Pyramids of Egypt, a game i wrote originally in 1985 on the Apple II and ported to the PC in 1989. No one else was involved in making this game.
* John, Adrian and myself did NOT quit Softdisk after we started making Commander Keen; we did it all after work and on the weekends at the lakehouse
* Tom Hall was included in this group and it was mainly John C., Tom and myself that made Commander Keen 1-3. Adrian did a few graphics for Keen 3 at the very end of the project but he wasn't involved at the beginning
* One month after releasing Keen 1-3 we received our first royalty check and decided to quit Softdisk and form id Software on February 1, 1991
* id was located in Madison, Wisconsin between September 1991 and March 1992; this was when i started getting involved with Raven Software as they were local to the area
* id moved to Mesquite, Texas in March 1992; at this time, Jay Wilbur and Kevin Cloud joined the original team: John Carmack, Tom Hall, Adrian Carmack and myself
* DOOM was never originally going to be "Green and Pissed"; that was a game idea Tom had before we made Wolfenstein 3D and i thought it was a hackneyed idea (science lab experiment goes bad and mutants run amok) so i came up with the idea of a Castle Wolfenstein remake
* when Tom left id he immediately started working on Wolfenstein II - we licensed Apogee the Wolfenstein name to make the sequel but later decided not to continue with it.....so Wolf II became Rise of the Triad
* id's taking over distribution for DOOM is described as a "staff split" but Apogee and id were always two seperate companies
* the "medium detail" mode mentioned in the article was called "high-color mode" and was only available in the first version or so of DOOM and was removed because of its incompatibility with some video adapters
* bullets aren't physical projectiles in the DOOM engine
* we only put in multiplayer near the very end of the game even though we announced the feature in our January 93 press release about DOOM
* the graphics for Wolfenstein were mostly drawn by Adrian Carmack but Kevin Cloud helped a lot after he came onboard on April 1, 1992
* when we did video capture of our latex and clay models, the video camera was pointed at the model and a live video feed was plugged into the NeXTCUBE which, at any time, we could click a button to take a frame grab. This frame was then fed into our program Fuzzy Pumper Palette Shop which took it from 24-bit color down to a 256-color VGA paletted graphic. At that point it was saved on our network where Adrian and Kevin could load it into Deluxepaint II and clean it up.
* during Wolf3D's development we came up with the idea of a contest to find the hardest thing in the game; for beta, we drew a graphic that was NOT going to be the final code, so just before mastering we changed the graphic - we had never been "plagued by leaks"; an alpha version of DOOM *did* leak however
* Wolf3D was banned because of Nazi content in addition to violence; in Germany there is a sheet of banned imagery that will put you in jail if you are seen with it on - Wolf3D was full of this imagery (Nazi imagery)
* Cygnus Studios became Rogue Entertainment after an internal revolt; they were working on Strife for us
* a SNES version of DOOM *was* created in secrecy by Sculptured Software; they presented a final, finished SNES version of DOOM and sent it to us asking if we wanted to publish it; oh hell yeah! :)
* the Jaguar version of DOOM was done internally at id; it was very fun and challenging but the Jaguar died a slow death

Great article!

happy birthday, games!

2008-12-15T22:13:00.001-08:00

Some of you may have noticed i've been a little lax in my birthday announcements this month. There's just so many of them i figure i'll do one for all of 'em unless i get feedback to the contrary. Also, i want to save up the really juicy stuff for the revamp of this site that will present everything in story form. Check out Tom Hall's site as he linked an article today in The Escapist about Commander Keen.

Here are the birthdays:
10th - DOOM
14th - Commander Keen 1-3
15th - Commander Keen 4-5
23rd - Hyperspace Delivery Boy & Heretic (two 'H' games on the same day!)

In case you were wondering about the screenshot, it was referencing a future Keen game we planned on making: Keen 7 - The Universe is Toast! But we started working immediately on Wolfenstein 3D and........the rest is history.

short interview

2008-11-18T11:21:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow I'll be doing an interview with the Adrenaline Vault podcast group. If there's anything you want to know, go post in their forums and i'll see what i can do.

left 4 dead - omfg

2008-11-09T14:56:00.001-08:00

ok, so i downloaded the Left 4 Dead Demo off Steam and played it...and all i can say is WOW. Amazing. Everyone, go pre-order this game as it's a sure contender for Game of the Year.

Published and developed by Valve (well, really, developed by their newly-acquired studio Turtle Rock Studios in LA) and using the very beautiful and speedy Source engine, Left 4 Dead does very right what i was attempting with Daikatana - going through a story with sidekicks. There have been some great decisions made with the way the L4D sidekicks are handled (some learned from MMORPGs like having character names above the sidekicks and being able to run through them) and the very limited options for interacting with them because they basically do all the things you'd want them to do without telling them. In Daikatana, commanding the sidekicks could become a hassle, especially when they didn't do what you told them! LOL.

Aside from Painkiller being a decent attempt at DOOM-for-the-21st-century, L4D does the best job i've ever seen at being able to recreate the DOOM atmosphere and insane action of hordes of enemies coming to destroy you. The pacing of the gameplay is perfect with lots of slow and fast sections, a lot of that determined by how observant you are to your surroundings. The AI Director system in L4D is also a major help for replaying the game over and over. I've already blasted through the entire demo twice in a couple hours and loved seeing the gameplay change the 2nd time through.

And for me the most awesome feature is the CO-OP gameplay that i've been waiting for since Duke 3D and Quake in 1996. FINALLY! The sidekick AI is already excellent but playing CO-OP online is going to really make this game stand out. In the demo you can check it out - it's really cool.

I also wanted to close with a quick note about Portal - if you haven't played this short game, you absolutely need to. It's a breath of fresh air in the FPS genre and tells a great story without actually telling it. The final level and credits are just .....wow. You have to play this game. Even when you're finished, there's more to do with Advanced Maps and Challenge Maps. Made me feel the same way after finishing Resident Evil 4 and unlocking a bunch of new content that felt like the dev team really put a lot of love into their game.

Oh, and Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 are tons of fun as well. Ok so now you know all the games i've been playing LOL.

NOVEMBER 13th!!!!!!! :D

rest of the world: vote!

2008-10-15T20:35:00.001-07:00

Do you ever wonder who the rest of the world would vote for in this very important election year? Well, check out this informal poll and if you're not a US citizen go ahead and vote.

If you ARE a citizen, just look at the results. BE GOOD!

10 most significant games

2008-08-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

It's time again for another Top 10 list and the fine folks at CrispyGamer have provided just that. There's not much for me to say other than CHECK OUT THIS LINK

stormwind: misaligned for four years

2008-08-27T12:23:00.001-07:00

World of Warcraft is coming up on its 4th anniversary in November and one of the biggest texture alignment issues I've experienced in any game has still gone unfixed.

This is the entrance to Stormwind. These wooden beams appear in other areas of the game -properly aligned. How can a texture misalignment of this magnitude go unaddressed for so long? The lighting bug in the entrance of the Booty Bay Inn was fixed months ago (finally) but this huge mistake is still around.

WHY?

iPhone app issues

2008-08-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

So right now the biggest issue with the latest iPhone firmware release is the splitting of iTunes accounts. You can read more about this issue on the net but basically people are getting the Black Screen of Death when installing iPhone Apps or they are not able to run their App Store apps anymore due to the account splitting.

I had the issue with my Apps not running anymore a few days ago. To fix it, I connected my iPhone to iTunes through my computer, uninstalled all the Apps through iTunes, then reinstalled them all through iTunes. It took a while but it worked.

I've had my iPhone crash during App installs and have gotten the Black Screen of Death three times now. Here are a few hints for avoiding the BSoD until a firmware update fixes this:

(1) Do not install more than one App update at a time
(2) When installing an App, do not use the iPhone until it's finished installing

I've since followed these steps and have not gotten the BSoD anymore. One nice side effect from installing one App at a time is that the new App fills the hole in the icon grid left by the previously updated App. When you Install All, the iPhone will put all the new icons at the end of your icon pages, leaving behind gaping icon holes.

ghost recon

2008-08-09T20:53:00.000-07:00

As you may well know, the country of Georgia and Russia are totally going at it right now. The body count is rising and it's a political mess. I'm not writing this post to talk politics. No, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite games of All-Time - Ghost Recon.

The original PC version of Ghost Recon was released in November 2001. The entire campaign took place in Russia with some locations being in Tblisi and Ossetia - the sites of today's turmoil. That's what sparked my interest in jumping back into the game again. And I'm so glad I did - it's truly one of the greatest games made. I can play it for hours and hours; it never gets boring. In fact, it's massively suspenseful.

Ghost Recon was the very first (and one of the very few) games where enemies in camouflage are 100% effective. You can be lying in prone position on the ground as a sniper in your ghillie suit, scoping out the area, and not spot the enemy crawling slowly toward you in full camo - it's that amazing.

It has every multiplayer option you could hope for....and I always hope for Co-Op. It has excellent support for Co-Op as well as a bunch of other modes. My favorite way to play is to just jump into a Quick Mission on Castle MP06 (daytime), make Team A be only myself as a sniper with an SP25 + Grenades and Team B be a Demolitions expert with an MM1 and a Tank Killer rocketlauncher. I like trying to take the entire place out by myself. If I get killed then I'm auto-switched to the Demo member and I just go nuts bombing the whole place until I'm taken down (it's inevitable). I start with a Team B member because I like hearing the confirmation of every kill.

After saving Moscow from the Russian rebels, the game ends. But that's not all. Red Storm released two additional add-ons: Desert Siege (2002) and Island Thunder (2002). DS took place in Africa and IT took place in Cuba. Both are just spectacular experiences. The storylines are serious and the environments and missions are sublime. In all games, the enemy AI is what totally shines - they are TOUGH. You'll know what I mean if you try to play a map by yourself with no backup. Crazy suspense and totally FUN.

You can buy all of this in one big Ghost Recon Gold box for about $20. It's so worth it. The graphics look dated by today's standards but it's the gameplay that will live forever. It's DirectX so it works great on everything. I play it on Vista with no issues. Performance is top-of-the-line as the game is 7 years old. Go pick it up - you'll love it.

wolf3d = 16

2008-05-05T23:43:00.000-07:00

So here I sit, typing this update on my MacBook, an amazing Apple product, writing about a game I worked on 16 years ago which just happened to be a mere 3 years after I stopped writing for my first Apple love, the Apple II platform. It's been a long time between heavy use of Apple products but now is the time for me to fully switch back into Apple mode. I'm already addicted to my iPhone, Apple TV and MacBook. Next up: iMac and Mac Pro and I'm off and away - goodbye Microsoft.

I just figured I'd announce my switch on Wolfy's birthday. The relevance? Wolfenstein 3D was a game lovingly crafted by 4 guys, 3 of which were longtime Apple II fanatics and coders; a game that was based on one of our all-time favorite Apple II games, Castle Wolfenstein. So you see, it all comes back around to Apple one way or another.

(To see something Wolfy made with Legos, check this out)

Update: I just saw that SxePhil on YouTube said happy birthday to Wolf3D!

the amazing ironman

2008-05-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we bought a time slot at the nearby San Mateo AMC for the entire company to watch Ironman at 4pm. Everyone showed up which is usually a good sign. I loved all the previews (The Love Guru, You Don't Mess WIth The Zohan, The Hulk) and then the movie began.

It was 2 hours of amazing action, dialogue, acting and technological goodness. Robert Downey Jr. has completely vindicated himself with this movie IMO. And Jeff Bridges was, as always, bigger than life and extremely smooth even as an evil corporate Dude. The cars were awesome, the computers futuristic, the tech unbearably cool and the acting superb.

And even better, at the end of it, it's just the beginning for Ironman - the sequel will see Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury recruiting Ironman into S.H.I.E.L.D. As far as I'm concerned this is the highest quality comic brand that's seen the big screen. When I was a kid I was a Spiderman and Ironman devotee so this movie made me really happy.

Go see it!

actionscript 3 class definition and importing sickness

2008-02-28T16:18:00.000-08:00

Sorry, but this post is about some programming garbage.

Okay, so i decided to write a little ActionScript 3 code since it's all object-oriented and somehow "real" compared to the previous joke versions. I was trying to create a small class that did some simple stuff and get it working in the Flash environment. After reading several examples straight from Adobe and some forums I wrote what looked like a simple, pristine piece of code that should have worked.

The error I got when I tried running the code was this:

1180: Call to a possibly undefined method xxxx

This basically means that Flash couldn't find the class that I created. But I didn't get any errors from the "import" statement that references the .AS file that has the class in it (inside a package{}).

If I changed the filename I'm trying to import I get an error. Ok, so it knows the file is there but it cannot find the class inside the file for some reason.

I searched all over the net for an hour trying to find the answer to this problem. NOWHERE DID I FIND THE SOLUTION THAT I AM ABOUT TO GIVE YOU. The solution to the problem is something that, evidently, Flash programmers JUST KNOW from experience but the solution isn't written anywhere that I could find on the internet and my Flash coders don't know how they know the technicality I'm about to explain.

So it comes down to this: the way you write the name of your class MUST be the EXACT way you name the .AS file it's in.

For example: if I create a class named BugJar like so:

package
{
  public class BugJar
  {
    //...code...
  }
}

then I **MUST** save it in a file named BugJar.as!!!!

Inside my framecode I would have:

import BugJar;

...and it would work.

This is just completely disgusting to me as a programmer. Linking the name of a class to the filename of the file it's in is just wrong.

What's worse is that Flash doesn't even give you the proper error for this:

filename: bugjar.as

package
{
  public class BugJar
  {
    //...code...
  }
}

framecode:

import bugjar;
var jar:BugJar = new BugJar();

The above example WILL NOT WORK and Flash doesn't give you an error message that helps you understand or fix this problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

blue oyster cult loves star blazer?

2008-02-25T12:03:00.000-08:00

So I was watching some of my favorite Blue Oyster Cult vids on YouTube and when I started up "Take Me Away" I was amazed to see someone playing Tony Suzuki's Star Blazer on a green-screen Apple ][! WTF??? CRAZY.

I never saw this vid on MTV back in the day so this was new to me. If you want to check out more BOC vids check out "I Love The Night".

you got mcroll'd!

2008-02-10T19:11:00.000-08:00

This video is so jacked up and disturbing it made me cry I was laughing so hard!

mew

2008-02-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

A recent favorite group that I discovered (through my wife) is Mew, a very complex pop Danish band. Check out their website and you'll immediately notice by the insane navbar at the top, and the audio, that this group is really different.

Their 3rd album, Frengers (2003), was their first big hit album (check out the songs: 156, Am I Wry and Snow Brigade on YouTube) and their latest, "Mew. and the Glass-Handed Kites" is amazing. Check out the video of their single from this album, Special.

an end....and a new beginning

2008-01-22T18:31:00.000-08:00

I decided to delete the hoopla regarding Mike Wilson because, really, there was no need to dwell on anything other than the important part—that Mike is helping some great games get out there. No matter the past, the bottom line is I sincerely wish Mike real success on this opportunity and know that he’s capable of it.

For my part, I’m looking forward to playing the games that his developer network is creating at this moment. I’m familiar with some of the guys running studios he's publishing and I can say without exaggeration that they are extremely skilled individuals. I, and all of us in the industry, should hope the best for them. Indies rule!

korgoth! i can't even breathe watching these

2008-01-21T01:07:00.001-08:00

cloverfield. omfg.

2008-01-20T01:53:00.000-08:00

Just saw the movie and I can't even describe how awesome..... just..... wow. Totally blown away. I'm a major fan of monster movies and this was totally unexpected.

I knew it was shaky cam and all so be prepared for that if you go see it. You get used to it pretty quickly. I love the fact that all the actors are total unknowns and the entire movie is told from one character's point of view. You have no idea why the monster is there, where it came from or anything else - the characters don't dwell on watching TV and the military has no answers either.

So it's the most realistic portrayal of what it would probably be like if a creature was rampaging through New York. We were totally blown away by it and need to go watch it again.

major apple love

2008-01-18T02:10:00.000-08:00

These days it's hard not to notice just how awesome Apple has become. Sure, you pay a premium price but you enjoy the best of the best with an aesthetic quality unmatched by even their most sincere imitators.

I've been an Apple guy since 1979 and devoted 10 years of my life to the 6502 nestled deep within the Apple II series. I admired the Mac but wasn't a Mac nut until the latest OS release, Leopard. And now the Mac just simply rocks.

It started with the iPhone I got back in June. Coolest device I've ever owned and it's still the best. Frequent firmware upgrades make me really happy. Because of the phone I went out and got a MacBook laptop with Leopard installed so I could see if Mac OS X with all of NeXTSTEP's awesomeness inside it was really all I was hoping it would be. And wow, was I blown away.

Until you've used a computer where the OS was written FOR the specific hardware you just don't know what you're missing. The world of the PC is based on the reality that everyone's computer is different and requires special drivers to make it work right - but only with that one device. The Mac is different - it's designed to work together as a whole and you can really tell the difference. Even the pixelicious scrolling in Safari is enough to show you how smoooooth the experience is.

So, in love with the MacBook, I went out and got an Apple TV since I had tired of the buggy-ass D-Link streaming video box I have (and the garbage one before it). And again I was totally amazed at how awesome and easy this device turned out. I'm a total iTunes devotee so the Apple TV just worked exactly as I had hoped. Better in fact.

And now MacWorld 2008 has shown promise that Apple's long awaited rise to prominence has begun. I'm excited about the future of Apple again.

Duke Nukem Forever Screenshot!!!

2007-12-18T18:04:00.000-08:00

We all knew the day would come - the eventual release of Duke Nukem Forever. Well, the release date has not been set but to placate those anticipating a Christmas launch (ain't happening) the team at 3DRealms has finally released a DNF screenshot of The Duke hisself!

And tomorrow at noon, Texas time, they will be releasing the first teaser trailer for the game!!!

I, for one, cannot wait for the Duke to rise again. It's been a looooong time but it's better to be late and super great than punctual and barely functional.

UPDATE: The teaser is out and I love it! (right-click, save as) The Duke is back and I'm going to like it no matter what.

My own observations and thoughts from the teaser:

(1) Love the Terminator hammering going on while the scenes fly by. Ominously badass.

(2) The redone Duke theme song sounds a little overworked for me. Heavier power chords like the original would sound harder if run through a Pantera-style GSP (Dimebag's sound ruled).

(3) Totally love the American flag at the end - Duke is All-American FTW!

(4) I love the quote at the end, "I'm looking for some alien toilet to park my bricks, who's first?" The reason is because it portends more sophisticated one-liners than you'd expect. I loved D3D's lines immensely but seeing a slight evolution in style was very nice.

(5) The tech is great, the graphics (textures, anims, etc.) are great. If the gameplay holds true to the original in that there's intense FPS fighting and tons of interactivity with the environment then I'm predicting huge success. One huge reason Half-Life 2 did so well was that they stuck with their incredible formula from HL1 and it continues to work.

My thought is that the very interactive nature of D3D's environment was one of the defining elements of Duke's IP and that continuing to include that kind of interactivity with the environment will further cement Duke's IP and heighten the probability of DNF's success. That and the over-the-top Duke attitude and humor make for one of the most engaging character-driven FPS's to come along in.....oh, about 12 years (come February 2008).