Posts by Fletch

  • Graphically Misleading Ads

    Quote from Tequila

    The ads were Godawful, for sure. It was hard to tell the difference between the CoD ones and the BiA ones, such was the level of mediocrity; hardly representative of the respective games, and hardly making for good television.

    Same advertising group made them both. Which is also why Mikey's BIA audio sample appears in the COD commerical.

  • The Four Rules Of Good computer Games (from 1983)

    Saw this on Slashdot: http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/i ... growup.php

    It's an article from 1983 about what good computer games should be. The four rules go as such:

    1. A home computer game should not be designed to minimize playtime - it should not be designed to take away quarters by making the game impossible to beat.

    2. It should use the full power of the computer - it should do things that only the computer can do well, and it should use all the appropriate resources the computer provides.

    3. It should be an excellent game, not just excellent programming - the play itself should be exciting and not serve merely as an excuse to show off the programmer's expertise.

    4. Above all, the game should be designed so the player controls and, to some degree, creates the game as he plays - I have little patience with games that play me, forcing me to follow only one possible track or learn one mechanical skill if I hope to win.

    So for the most part, the rules are all still valid. #1 is still one of the biggest critera for game reviewers. Players want play hours the double (or even triple) digits. #2 is obviously the reason we all have video cards that are probably worth more than most people's computers. #3 pretty much sums up the Xbox 360. You've got games that show off just waht the hardware can do, and then you've got Geometry Wars which is the best game on the system to play right now. #4 is the reason we have games like GTA, Katamari, and all the MMORPGs.

    Thought it was a fun read for all the old memories. Plus the article goes on to talk about have revloutionary and original this new studio called Electronic Arts is. Seems they're trying to make a game studio that doesn't crank out clones of other games or lots of sequels. Can't wait to see what they come up with in the next 20 years.

  • the new cartoon thread

    I find it kind of ironic that most of the deaths in the Middle East and Asia have been rioters accidentally trampling each other or getting caught in their own fires. Not a funny ironic, mind you. Just a sad ironic.

    Also, African riots are probably going to get a lot more dangerous, because that is a whole continent that has been brimming with racial, ethnic, tribal, and religious tensions for a hundred years. Anytime somebody sets off something like this, you get deaths in the hundreds or thousands by the time it's over.

  • Funky 3D room painting

    I still think the room paintings are fakes.

    1) There are some bad aliasing problems in those shots, like somebody sloppily photoshopped it.

    2) For that illusion to work, your eyes or camera lens would have to be at a very precise spot, looking at a certain angle. So it seems like a waste of energy if you are not an exact height.

    3) The one shot has paint over the doors, requiring that they be open to that precise spot for the illusion to work.

  • In war its interrogation, not torture you dumb U.N.!

    Quote from mawibse

    Perhaps the word torture is a bit misleading, we are talking about sleep deprivation, prolonged solitary confinement and force feeding of starvers, common "stress and duress" techniques. Not pulling fingernails or electric shocks!

    Yeah, don't forget the getting naked and piling up in human pyramids, having bags taped over your head as people take pictures to send home to loved ones Good thing they were being interrogated.

  • Google Picasa

    Quote from Section_Ei8ht

    and in about two weeks, someone is going to discover that picasa makes copies of all you pictures and puts them on a google server, and there will be yet another uproar similar to whats happening with google desktop 3.I'm not saying it does that, and I'm not saying I care. In fact, I'm not sure what I'm saying. cool program, though.

    My firewall hasn't reported any port activity from Picasa. Guess I'll have to wait for the next version.

  • Interview with John Gibson about Red Orchestra and Tripwire

    I'm inclined to agree somehwat with Peri. There's a middle ground between "releasing crap" and "releasing a perfectly polished gem." If you're going to do many iterative releases, the first one needs to 1) be fun and 2) provide a direction of where it's going.

    Take a look at CS. for those of you that remember Beta 1 (which I think might only be like 5 people here), it was crap. It was Mansion and Assault, one basic player model that was basically copied with a T and CT skin (that looked pretty much the same), bad lag, and the most unintuitive guy/ammo buy in history. you had to buy your gun, then buy the correct ammo type to go with it. So if you don't know which gun uses .30 cal and which uses 9mm, you had to just play around with it. BUT!! It was fun. Mansion turned into a giant rush towards to middle for the AWPs left after the round. The shotgun was like a railgun from across the level. It hooked people. Then you got an update every month or so, and pretty soon the community was able to pitch in enough assets to build up the entire thing into something great.

  • Red Cross condemns use of emblem in video games

    From a strictly legal standpoint, the case has some merit to it. The Geneva Conventionis binding international law, and if it says the member nations have agreed to protect misuse of the logo, then they have the right to. There are some caveats.

    First off, the Geneva Convention hasn't really been used as precedent in non-military cases, so it will be interesting to see how a judge applies it to a business case. My guess is the judge will stand by it for fear of casting any legal doubt upon the Geneva Convention as a whole. You don't want to be the judge taht gives every third world dictator the ability to say the Geneva convention has been struck down in court.

    Secondly, there seems to be a high probability that game companies could come up with a lot of prior art (evidence that the symbol was used before it was declared to be used under only certain circumstances). All it takes is one example (the English flag for instance), that that casts doubts on the merit of the infringement. It doesn't completely invalidate it, but it puts fair-use back on the table. However, this is all dependent on which court system they go through. US and EU patent law is very different.

    The one arguement that could probably save most developers in court is that the defense of the Red Cross logo has been lacking for years. Part of copyright law demands that you actually defend against improper use. That's why you usually get sued when you use somebody else's stuff (unless you're eBaum). But courts have pretty much ruled that if you stop defending your stuff, it pretty much becomes fair game until you start defending again. This would basicaly mean that from hear on out, games can't use it, but all existing games are pretty much free from liability.

    All in all, the Red Cross looks on really sturdy legal ground, and I don't think any developer or publisher will really go to the mat over this because it would cost a fortune in court to fight the Red Cross, plus he PR would look really bad. Instead, you'll see red backgrounds and whtie crosses, hearts, needles, bones, or any number of other acceptible iconography.