User Interface

Somewhere along the way that first word has started to be ignored.  I can think of two immediate examples, and with a little stretch I'm sure you can, too.

Villain 1. Microsoft - I've recently had occasion to transition from office Xp to 2010 and back again (too complex for this format - just accept that it happened).

Why isn't the place I go to get printer settings I'm the same place ?  Was there some fundamental law of society that said it had to move?  Some critical design flaw that was addressed by moving it?

So why did it move? Because an engineer in a basement at Redmond decided it should.

Villain 2.  Google - I recently helped my wife find an inexpensive android based smart phone. We went with the Xperia, not my first choice. I was a bit put off by the presentation of gmail on it, as I've become used to the look and feel on my Nexus.

Guess what?  The version on her phone was newer. Mine got updated and now sucks. This really looks like change for its own sake.

Actually it looks like Windows 8. Don't even get me started.

Mag-Pi build notes

The story so far...

We have acquired all of the basic parts to build the experimental machine. The core is a Raspberry-Pi model B. We're building a controller using arcade grade parts and the IPac/2 controller unit.

I'm very impressed with the quality of the Pi and the IPac. Need to spend some quality time with the o/s image tomorrow and see if I can improve its performance. The emulators seem a bit clunky.

Sound is going to be a bit of an issue. I'm not impressed with the sound quality, but our sound rig on this test was very rudimentary.

I am very tempted to use a CRT...

A bit of Headology

Sometimes I need to write stuff down just to remind myself what I'm thinking about. I really need to leverage the FB page.  I think making up the back story for the races of PGE is a great idea to start getting a fan base more engaged with the property. And I want to do more art for the sake of art and less as part of something else.

I want to build a world level strategy game. A big board game. I want it to be about alien invasion. I don't want it to be xcom or war of the worlds.

I really need a post apocalyptic project. With zombies. And cars with guns.

Biting The Hand

About 1.2 billion internet years ago, which for all you young kids is not last week, I used to read a web article published for a time on the site Happy Puppy. This is the really abbreviated wiki entry for it , in case you're interested, but it doesn't even scratch the surface.  As far as I knew, it was the site to download demos from.

Back in the day commentator Jessica Mulligan did a regular column, blogs didn't exist for us yet, called "Biting the Hand".   As an insider in the games industry (working mostly on MMOs at that time) it was a cool insight on stuff.  I don't know what ever happened to her, but she had a prophetic view.  And I think she followed the development of Star Fleet Command from the boards, which would make her the absolute of cool in my books.

Way back then she did a column on the introduction of user content to games.  I can't remember the context exactly, but I seem to think that one of the MMOs was considering allowing users to develop content.  I also seem to remember her thought son this were that the vast quantity of content generated this way would not in any way improve its quality.  Something about poo and sewers and volume of flow, but I could be making that last bit up.

And now I'm here to apply the same principle to Greenlight on Steam.  You may not have been bothered by this yet.  It looks like Steam has created a forum where every not-quite successful game developer can throw a "we're cool too!" on my Steam front end.  And most of these efforts look like rejects from the Apple Store.  If every third one isn't some kind of Minecraft clone, and seriously why would you want to, I'll eat my hat.  I'm speaking "metty-forik-lee".  For one thing I don't have a regular hat.

I'm honestly not even sure why it bothers me.  I know it has to do with the same horrible feeling I get at a convention when somebody wants to show me their partially cooked game.  "Hey look at my stuff!"  Are you referring to this left over pile of cut up cereal boxes?  Oh, those are "game pieces".  Yes, I need to be more tolerant of nascent talent.  No, I don't have a constructive action plan.

I guess it comes down to this:  I won't let anybody see anything I'm working on until I'm ready to sell it.  If I apply this principal to everything I see from everybody else either I'm way to fussy about completeness and "showability" or everybody else needs to rethink.

And no I will not buy your game on Steam if you made Terraria with one more thing to mine.  Or yet another game where "the environment is the game".