Ferris GTI

Mass Effect: An RPG for the Masses?

2008-07-05T18:11:00.000-07:00

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for over six months, you've probably heard of a little game called Mass Effect. The game has recently been released for the PC after an XBox360 exclusive period much like their previous titles Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, which had a XBox release for quite a while before their PC counterparts were released. While the release of Mass Effect has been comparatively quicker than those two titles, the game itself has had more than its fair share of controversy. The initial attacks on the game due to its "adult content" included a ridiculous report by Fox News that was so far skewed against the game that it couldn't be classed as anything but an abject failure of "journalism." More recently, the Digital Rights Management (DRM) features of the PC version has suffered a large amount of bad press due to the measures and limitations it places upon the installation of the game in order to attempt to prevent piracy. And attempt is the correct word, for even despite these efforts, unfortunately pirated versions of the game do exist. I won't buy into the DRM argument here, for that would be an entire article in itself.

I have to confess upfront that I'm a BioWare fan-boy, having loved pretty much everything that they've produced, but even taking that self-admitted bias out of the equation, Mass Effect is an excellent game, and worth just about every accolade that is thrown its way. The story, characterisation and universe created have a great depth, which is likely due to the fact that they spent an entire year just with writers creating all those aspects as the initial phase of creating the game. This is the sort of thing that can quite easily go unnoticed by many gamers when it's there, but if this aspect is lacking in an RPG, it'll often stick out like a car in the background of a fantasy/medieval movie. There's nothing that ruins the immersion of an RPG like a proverbial hit over the head with a plot inconsistency or non-sequitur. Mass Effect is a polished and well-rounded piece of work, and even though there are a few failings in terms of glitches, they typically don't cause too much aggravation such that it makes you want to blow away one of your own teammates.

But I didn't intend this post to turn into gratuitous praise for Mass Effect, because I'd like to consider what effect it might have on the gaming industry in terms of the development of future RPGs. Why do I think this one game could have such a profound effect? Because Mass Effect has the potential to garner a wider audience than most RPGs that have come before, and prove that the increased development time of RPG titles over the comparatively rapid production of a first person shooter is worth the effort.

Firstly, Mass Effect is that it's not a standard RPG. Why do I say that? It's not set in a medieval/fantasy environment. By and large, that is the realm of RPGs, and many people simply cannot stomach that, disliking the whole swords, magic, dragons, and everything that comes with the Dungeons and Dragons or its related ilk. Yes, I can some of you screaming that it's not the first such work, and will point to titles like Fallout or Knights of the Old Republic, but the only thing that is potentially considered more geeky than Dungeons and Dragons is a unbounded love for Star Wars. Yes, Mass Effect is still sci-fi, so there is still a certain element of geek, but seeing as it doesn't belong to any of pre-established sci-fi franchises, it gets off a little more lightly. The fact that the eye candy is nice doesn't hurt at all either.

The combat of the game is also more like an action game or a first person shooter. This is a big win because of the way that many RPGs feature dice-roll based combat that is very much in your face, resulting in your clicking on your target once, and then waiting until the dice roll in your favour and your character manages to hit and kill your opponent. Yes, there are some elements of control you have to modify your character's attacks, but the frustration of gamers screaming at their computer "Stop rolling ones dammit!!!" as a fight turns from a pushover to a defeat due to sheer misfortune is an undeniable failing of the mechanic. Sure, your shots still can go wide in Mass Effect, but there's an element of direct control that is absent in most other RPGs.

The game is also completely voiced. Any interaction between the player's character (Commander Shepard) and anyone he or she meets along the way is heard, and not read, as it usual for most RPGs. This is a big thing for gaining a new audience for RPGs. Another big turn off for non-RPG players is reading through reams of lengthy dialogue simply to get a quest to kill more monsters. It's not necessary to know someone's entire life story before they say "Go kill some orcs for me please", though failings of that ilk are not unheard of. The dialogue is snappy by necessity, and keeps the game pushing along, and even the dialogue choices that the player gets to choose are a few words that are merely a representation of the words Shepard will say.

All of these things feed into the overall cinematic feel of the game, which is the big winner for Mass Effect. After going through the process of customising their character's appearance, there's a nice introduction sequence which sets the tone for the entire game, even if the title and brief textual blurb is a little cheesy. The first hour of the game is interspersed with a health grab-bag of cut-scenes, such that the player can almost feel like they are playing a movie. The tempo and the stakes are high, the gameplay and controls are easy to pick up and understand. This cinematic feel is probably the most likely place that gamers will be converted to the genre, for the feeling of control in a movie-like experience is an appeal that is broad across a very large percentage of the gaming community. This was evidenced through the unprecedented acclaim for the single player experience of a first person shooter in the form of Call of Duty 4.

I must note that Mass Effect is by no means a perfect game, and while I've sung it praises, it does suffer from a few negatives. The AI has shortcomings at times, the main quest does suffer from being a little on the short side for an RPG, and the decryption mini-game can become a moderate annoyance, just to name a couple.

However, my aim with this article was to point out the areas in which Mass Effect has more wide ranging appeal than many other RPGs, rather than to provide a full and critical analysis of the game. (As there's already hundreds of other reviews on the web that do just that!) As an avid RPG fan, I can only hope that Mass Effect gains a comparative level of fame, and that it results in an increased RPG fan base which will raise the willingness of game companies to engage in the challenging development process that is required to produce quality games of this genre.

(Images courtesy of dignews.com)

DIY: building an (inexpensive) GTI mount for TomTom One satnav, plus hardwiring to the fuse box

2008-06-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd write a quick guide describing the way I created a mount and hardwired my Tomtom One satnav to the fusebox. It's pretty basic stuff really, and no doubt there are much more elegant ways to do this. Having said that, it all cost me next to nothing, and so far the mount has been very stable and the Tomtom charges and works perfectly. I figure it beats spending a lot of money on a proclip...

All I used/bought was:

A cigarette lighter adaptor: female cigarette lighter socket on one end, two wires/alligator clips on the other end (from Jaycar)
A 3 Amp fuse (small size)
Some black cable ties (various sizes)
An old stubbie holder (black!)
A small rubber ball, flattened on one side (not shown!)
Little plastic bracket thingys (x 2) - as shown in photo!
Some velcro
Some black electrical tape

The mount:
I took the Tomtom windscreen mount apart, and placed the small rubber ball into the hole where the windscreen mount normally connects (with the flat side of the rubber ball facing out). I cut up the plastic bracket thingys to make them smaller, and attached them to the Tomtom's mount using the screws provided. I then cut up the stubbie holder, and wrapped a piece around the GTI's console (I figured it would protect the plastic from getting scratched). I then threaded cable ties through the holes in the plastic bracket thingys and wrapped them around the stubbie-holder-protected console. The cable ties work really well, fastening the mount solidly to the console. I then took another piece of stubbie holder and wrapped it (horizontally?) under the mount to hide the main cable ties, although of course I used some more cable ties to fasten the additional bit of stubbie holder! But overall it looked much neater this way. Of course, as I went along I trimmed the plastic ties once I had fastened them. Now you might think it all looks a bit dodgy (especially in one of the photos), but everything is hidden nicely behind the Tomtom mount... that is unless you want to get down in the footwell with a torch :)

The hard-wiring:
The female cigarette lighter attachment I bought from Jaycar had two wires attached ending in alligator clips. I removed the alligator clips and stripped some insulation from the wires. I then connected the earth wire to a screw (as shown), and I wound the power wire around the leg of a 3 Amp fuse and pushed it into an empty spot in the fusebox. You can see in one of the photos- it's the pink fuse in the top row. I had previously tested this empty fuse spot with a test light to make sure it was only powered when the ignition was turned on. Of course, make sure that you plug the fuse the right way around, otherwise you will end up powering the Tomtom bypassing the fuse entirely :)
Next I plugged the Tomtom's car charger into the female cigarette adapter I had just wired in. I ran the cable from the fusebox up behind the dash and behind the interior plastic trim until it emerged between the driver's seat and centre console. I fastened the cable in place at various points along the way using some electrical tape. Oh, and I decided to use some velcro to hold the cigarette lighter adaptor firmly in place in the fusebox, so that it wouldn't add yet another vibration/rattle to the GTI's dash :)

Changing the Tomtom's welcome screen:
I couldn't resist creating a custom VW welcome/splash screen for the Tomtom. It's really simple- just follow these instructions.

I think the most expensive item was the female cigarette lighter adapter- I can't remember its exact price, but definitely < $20. Everything can be removed if necessary, and I haven't damaged the original Tomtom mount or power cable (or my GTI!) in the process. Mounting the Tomtom down low works well for me... it doesn't get in the way of anything, and I can still clearly see it when driving (for the most part I just follow the voice instructions). I think the mount is less obvious down low, which is better for security. And if I'm parked in a dodgy area I can easily throw something over the mount to cover it up :)

I hope that this guide can assist those not-so-technical people like me out there :) Oh, and of course, you follow these instructions at your own risk... I am not responsible if you break your Tomtom, fusebox or GTI :)

EyeTV 3 for Mac: smart guides (at last!)

2008-05-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

I've been using EyeTV 2 for the past few years with my iMac G5 / TwinhanDTV Alpha digital TV tuner combination, and since then I have not looked back. The convenience of pre-recorded digital TV means that I avoid watching live TV nowadays. I much prefer watching the shows I have recorded at a time of my choosing, and with the option of skipping those annoying ads. But as good as EyeTV 2 is, it was missing what I consider to be an essential feature- the ability to create a list of TV shows that you want to have recorded in future, no matter when the shows are broadcast. Eg. a list of titles/keywords that can be run against the EPG, with the resulting matching programmes automatically scheduled for recording. If I want to record each weekly episode of Good Game, and all Columbo movies that happen to be broadcast at obscure times, then I shouldn't need to manually scan the EPG and schedule everything myself.

Thankfully, Elgato's EyeTV 3 provides a solution to this problem in the form of smart guides. A long-overdue feature, smart guides are highly-configurable and work as advertised. Smart guides can be created to simply record all future shows matching a particular title, or more complex smart guides can be designed to use a combination of fields such as repeat, channel, director, year, description and more. So it is easy to schedule a series for recording on a particular channel based on its name, with recordings limited to non-repeats only, and keeping a maximum of three recordings. Precisely what I was looking for. Of course there are many other new features in version 3, but for me, the inclusion of smart guides alone makes the US$39.95 upgrade for EyeTv 2 users an essential purchase. In fact, somewhat of a bargain I would say...

(image from elgato.com)

Classic FPS Gaming Maps

2008-04-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

AmstradHero here again! The recent release of the Call of Duty 4 map pack has added a few nice additions to its already impressive multiplayer map line-up. While I'll leave a detailed analysis of each map's advantages, disadvantages and ups and downs to Ferris (well, okay, maybe he won't provide that, but I've dobbed him in now!), I feel like I should make a couple of comments about the gorgeous 'Creek'. Firstly, it's visually stunning. Buildings, trees, foliage, a dried creek bed, this map has got character and attractive scenery in spades. Even better, that wonderful eye-candy doesn't impact the performance one iota, and it's still a frantic pace of killing and warfare despite its beauty and large map size. Even better, it's a well designed map. This is one thing that makes or breaks multiplayer maps, and while it's painfully obvious when a map doesn't work, it's not always obvious why.

Rather than producing a monologue of how not to make a map (although I may do that at a later date), let's take a look at some classic maps that have worked. As someone with a passion for building game levels, I would unashamedly say I would have loved to have come up with the design of these three gems.

Counterstrike: de_dust

If you haven't played this map, then either you've been hiding under a rock for the past decade or more, or somehow you've managed to avoid playing one of the most influential FPS titles ever. Not bad for something that was born from a Half-life mod. The elegant simplicity of this level is what makes it work. Even better, it showcases a few great design achievements.

Firstly, it caters for its gameplay. Counterstrike lived and died by its rounds of several minutes. Which means the action has to be tight and fast. If players are sitting around for minutes at a stretch with nothing to do or simply traversing to get to the action (yes, I'm looking at you, Battlefield 2), then it is no good. A round in de_dust could be over in a matter of seconds if things went badly, either leaving you to savour victory, or contemplate brutal defeat. Occasionally rounds would time out, but it was significantly less likely than someone actively winning.

Secondly, it caters for both the aggressive and the cautious. There's the tight inside area for quick carnage, or there's the bridge underpass for a skirmish of sniping and counter-sniping. Both are strategically important, meaning that you're catering for your two character archetypes in FPS games.

Unreal Tournament: Facing Worlds

No list of classic maps would be complete without this map. It's been in every incarnation of Unreal Tournament thanks to the recent addition of it for UT3 - oh, the travesty at it not being included in the shipped version! Why? Because it is unequivocally FUN. Yes, it is a heaven for those players that love sniping, and potentially hell for those that don't, but despite it's massive and imposing sniper nests at opposite ends of the map, this Capture The Flag map again delivers the goods in terms of grandeur and gameplay.While at first it seems like snipers are king, snipers can't capture the flag. So again, it caters for its design. As a pure deathmatch map, it would likely be an abject failure, but its matching of a level made for sniper fodder contrasted against the need for run and gunners to actually achieve the objective needed to win means that it was an instant classic from its inception.

Even better, the game mechanics of dodging (and translocation, if it's not disabled) that are integral to UT mean that sniping isn't the instant fatality provider that it could easily be if this map existed in other FPS games. Not to mention that the potential for countersniping is so high that snipers have to continually monitor their opposition rather than just peppering the running players with headshots.

Quake 3 Arena: The Longest Yard

This level was unusual and innovative for its time in that it consisted of a heck of a lot of nothing. Really and truly, there's virtually nothing in this level. Eye candy is virtually non existent, as is in fact, anything. There's minimal geometry or hard ground for players to stand on, yet it still plays great if you fire up Quake 3 now.

The reason this level is so well designed is due to item placement. If you can control the level in Quake 3, then you have a massive advantage over your opponents. The Longest Yard is a strange and incongruous beast that both enforces this aspect of the game (which is a weakness or strength depending on your opinion - but that is another argument I don't have time for here), but also breaks it ruthless style. The two most powerful items in the level (the railgun and quad damage) are situated in the middle of empty space in clear view (and shooting range) of the rest of the level. Which means despite that you are screaming through the air at break-neck speed with very little ability to kill other people, they very much have an excellent shot at killing you, especially if they've managed to make the jump previously and pick up the beloved railgun.

So there's a trio of classic and brilliantly designed FPS levels. You'll notice a lack of games from recent titles, and you might argue I'm dwelling in a nostalgia paradise, but the truth is that these maps were very influential in the success of their individual titles, and have also influenced the development of levels in all FPS games since. I'm sure if you look in your favourite FPS map, you can see a little fragment of them in there...

(images from moditory.com and gamespy.com)

Peggle Addiction: a first-hand account

2008-04-09T03:14:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought that a simple puzzle game could drag me away from Call of Duty 4? Especially a simple puzzle game that relies as much on luck as it does skill? But it's true- I am completely hooked on Peggle Deluxe. It is such a slickly-produced game, from the little snippets of catchy music to the bright and colourful graphics. But it's the addictive nature of the game as you watch the little ball bounce between the pegs, holding your breath as you hope for enough points to earn an extra ball, that keeps you coming back. It was quite a surprise to find that the simplicity of the game masks a deeper level of skill, which dawned on me the more I played the game. Skills such as timing your shot to hit a moving peg, and then deflecting the ball straight into the free ball bucket (also moving) at the bottom of the screen. Not easy to do consistently, and very satisfying when you manage to pull the shot off under pressure.

Peggle is the perfect 'casual' game. It is easy for non-gamers to pick up, but with enough depth and challenges to keep more hardcore gamers hooked. My tip for the best Peggle character to choose? Well, it depends very much on the level you are trying to beat. I don't think you can go past Renfield's Spooky Ball for beating levels with lots of evenly spaced out pegs. However, Claude's Flippers come in handy on levels where the ball has a tendency to drop down the sides of the screen. Master Hu is a good fall-back character, with his Zen Ball proving effective on most levels. Mr Pigeon swears by Warren's Lucky Spin, but we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Mind you, I rated Tula's Flower Power, so I guess nobody's perfect...

Polski Fiat / Fiat 126p / FSM-Niki 650

2008-03-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

You know, until recently I wouldn't have looked twice at a Fiat 126p (or FSM-Niki 650 as they were know in Australia), thinking that the were a wholly-unremarkable, sluggish small car. That changed when I read an article in Top Gear magazine (also published on the web) about the Polski Fiat 126 Group 2. Who would have thought that a company called 126 Group 2 is currently producing a Fiat 126-based rally car in their Poland workshop?

A quick search on the web reveals that the Fiat 126 has a large following, with enthusiasts all over the globe, including Australia. Witness the Martin Racing 126/Niki-rebuild video (and Australian Top Gear competition submission) below. Don't miss the blast around Mt Panorama featured at the end!

And 4performance's 'Building a Fiat 126p Rally Edition' youtube video is quite interesting, showing each step of their rebuild in detail.

What makes cars like the Fiat 126p so interesting is that they are affordable and look to be very simple to work on, both of which are important to anybody wanting to build a car as a project.

Perhaps the Fiat 126p is another car I should add to my imaginary future garage?... :)

(image from topgear.com)

Golf GTI's in Canberra: Easter get together

2008-03-23T02:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday 23rd of March, midday. Telstra Tower car park, Black Mountain, Canberra. This was the meeting place for an Easter get-together and drive for Canberra members of GolfMkV.com's Australian Forum. It was also the first chance for many new forum members to meet in person, rather than online using their pseudonyms. Eight guys made it to the get together- one in a superbly-modified MkIV Golf GTI, with the rest in MkV Golf GTIs of various configurations and colours. We expected a ninth-member to show up, but an unfortunate screw-in-tyre incident prevented him from attending. Members who made the get together included: CiaranGTI / minigolf / GTI-racer / Kirium / thefullarchie (all the way from Brisbane :) / Bunty (couldn't come on the drive) and the MkIV GTI guy who's name escapes me for the moment! Oh, and of course me, Ferris :)

Note: larger versions of some photos are available here.

Telstra Tower car park, chatting as we wait for forum members to arrive

On our way! Ciaran's immaculate 'Black Magic' GTI close behind.

First stop along the way, and a chance to snap some photos. Good range of colours on display.

And a reverse-angle shot.

Across the bonnet of my GTI. Motorcyclist looks enviously at gleaming GTIs...

The roads were great. Mostly free of traffic, with some good bends and breathtaking scenery.

End of the road (well, at least the bitumen part). Time for more chat and photos.

Couldn't resist taking a few more photos of my GTI, especially when it's looking so clean :)

Uh, my GTI again. Did I mention how clean it is?...

All seven cars that took part in the drive. Cool MkIV GTI bringing up the rear.

Ready to start the drive back to Canberra.

Model Cars: The Ferris Collection

2008-03-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

I love classic cars. The shape and styling, the history, and the uniqueness of certain models really appeals to me. Of course the dream is to one day have a garage full of classics, each car in mint condition and perfectly maintained. The reality, however, is that I don't have the money to create such a collection. Come to think of it, even a large garage would break my budget! Not to mention the full-time mechanic required to restore and look after the vehicles. So, it looks like my dream is destined to be unrealised for some time. That's where model cars come to the rescue. Over the past year or two I have started my own model car collection. It's early days, but I am slowly purchasing new cars... particularly when I pass through Braidwood, where the excellent Car Models of Braidwood shop is located. I've included some photos of my model cars below. Apologies in advance for the average quality of the images- photographing small objects is hard! : )

Chrysler Charger E49

Austin Healy Sprite

Austin Mini Checkmate

Volkswagen Golf Mk1 GTI

Golf engine bay

I was a failed teenage game developer (part 3)

2008-03-07T01:47:00.000-08:00

(..continued from part one and part two)

It had always been a distant dream of mine to be a game programmer. At the time, of course, it was possible for young coders to whip up popular games in their own garage and flog them off as shareware. This shut-in, computer-chained lifestyle seemed like the sort of one I wanted to lead.

My bedroom had cut-out magazine pictures of my gaming heroes.. a PC Gamer interview with iD Software back in the Doom days, a Commodore 64 magazine piece on Jeff Minter, a shoddily self-drawn System 3 logo.. I'd gaze up at them almost daily, pinned on my little bulletin board.

I tried somewhat half-heartedly to achieve that dream. After saving months worth of allowance money, I finally managed to gather enough dough to purchase Andre LaMothe's enormous book Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus. It was littered with code snippets showing how to do simple graphical tricks, play sound, and so on. It also weighed in at a rather imposing 600 or so pages, giving it definite blugeoning potential. I think it may actually feature as a murder weapon in Cluedo.

This sheer intimidation factor alone left me unimpressed, and I returned back to the comforts of my QBasic world.

During the last two years of high school, I also kept a running diary about how I was going to create a 3D SWAT-based game. I used pages upon pages to lay out the game design and describe how it would work. Looking back on it, some of it was rather cool, even though Sierra have since made a game franchise that was pretty much exactly what I had in mind. Here's my crazy mind at work in the diary's first entry, describing the sound design:

Sound will be a high priority, I want, no, I need
headphones/mics for the game. This would make for
interesting conversations between the players..

"RED ONE, THE PERPERTRAITOR IS IN THE SOUTH
BLOCK, LEVEL 12E. OVER"
"COPY THAT, RED THREE. I'M THERE. GET BACKUP."
"ROGER RED ONE. WE'RE COMING. OVER..."

and stuff like that. You could have conversations during
the game!! And you could chose which person to talk to as
well. No music - that would spoil the atmosphere. Cool.

Sure, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but as anyone with XBox Live and any modern FPS can attest, the only thing headphone and microphones have brought to gaming is the ability for anonymous twelve-year-olds to call you a "GAY N00B FAG".

Just like the Hindenburg, so too did the plans for "SWAT" begin to slowly crash and burn, with the diary turning into an often-hysterical fest of teenage angst. It wasn't all lost dreams and skipped opportunites, mind you. Oh no. I did make some games. Five of them, in fact. And after looking back on them tonight, well, maybe it was for the best that I didn't end up in the business after all.

It seemed so funny at the time.

My first three were all Grod games (see part 1 of this series). They were terrible text adventures which involved a series of picking random action choices (A, B or C), one of which was going to be the correct answer, with the other two basically leading to 'GAME OVER'. No clues were given as to the correct answer, and most of the time it was just things that a 14-year-old would find cool or funny. As in the following example taken from Grod 3:

YOU DECIDE TO GO TO LAS VEGAS. YOU WALK TO THE AIRPORT
WITHOUT A HASSLE. THEN YOU ARE FLYING. WHILE ON THE PLANE,
THE STEWARDESS WALKS UP TO YOU AND TRIES TO CHAT YOU UP.

WILL YOU GO TO THE LUGAGGE COMPARTMENT WITH HER OR STAY?
(A) GO OR (B) STAY: A

YOU GO TO THE COMPARTMENT AT THE BACK AND START TO
PASH EACHOTHER. YOU START TO GET REALLY EXCITED BUT THEN
SHE TRANSFORMS INTO OPRAH WINFREY AND MAKES A
SPECIAL ON YOU ON HER SHOW. THE TOPIC WAS
`MEN WHO RAPE FLIGHT ATTENDANTS. YOU ARE LAUGHED AT FOR
THE REST OF YOUR LIFE! HA HA! WHAT A LOSER! HA HA HA!

GAME OVER.

Ha ha ha indeed! At the time I was pretty proud of my creations. But one fateful day, my coding rival BISHTRONICS gave me a disk containing a solitary file: GROD4.BAS. Not only was it an unofficial sequel to one of my babies, it featured something the other Grod games didn't.. graphics and sound!

At the time, this was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen.
Yes, even more amazing than Robocop.

My mind was blown. Once again, my dismal productions had been bested! The next few weeks were spent tirelessly writing what I hoped would be the ultimate Grod game, Grod 5.

Might I add at this point, that drawing graphics in Q-Basic is one of the most mind-numbing, suicide-inducing things one can ever hope to do. It's full of statements like:

DRAW "BL200 bd100 r50 u60 r300 l250 g50 e50 r250 u20 ....."

that draw each line pixel by pixel. I couldn't even tell you what the above does anymore. But hell, my reputation, BARGOSOFT'S reputation was on the line here, so if it meant nights of sitting there manually creating terribly simple graphics line-by-line, that was the price that needed to be paid.

Suffice to say, Grod 5, like all the other games, pretty much sucked. Although it featured such gameplay additions as secret rooms (during "A,B,C" prompts, you needed to type a phrase that no-one in their right mind would type without looking at the code itself), and non-linear progression (you can go via the left door.... or the right door! Cripes!), it was still the same crusty old Grod underneath.

It's all about the gameplay, not the graphics.. right..? RIGHT?

As 1994 drew to a close, so did my three-year career in QBasic programming, taking with it my desire and patience to write these terrible games. And so, during the warm summer months, I wrote my last hurrah: Snake Stone : Death of a Galaxy.

Spanning around 2500 lines of code split into three separate files, it was the Grod-style of "A,B or C" text adventure gaming pushed to its limits. A long introduction sequence, frequent graphical interludes.. I spent far, far too much time on this baby.

And yeah, it still pretty much sucked.

Snake Stone in action

There was a Snake Stone 2 planned, but I only managed to write the introduction sequence and the first "A, B, C" question. I think once I got to that point, I realized that it was about time I invested my efforts in something other than giving a piece of crap a new coat of paint.. like, playing Duke Nukem 3D for instance. Yeah. That'd do just fine.

One day I shall auction off the code to Snake Stone 2 and make millions.

And on that note, this three-part epic on teenage nerddom draws to a close.

Epilogue

Before BISHTRONICS and BARGOSOFT eventually crumbled into nothingness, a third competitor emerged. Word had spread through the nerd playground that Todd - the IT teacher's son - had written games the likes of which no-one had ever seen someone write before.

We begged to see what these games were, and when he finally showed us, our jaws dropped. He'd written an air hockey game with actual VGA graphics, animation and sound. I imagine we were feeling something akin to what the developers of Awesome Possum must have felt after seeing Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Convined that he couldn't have made it himself, when we next were over at Todd's house for a party, both BISHTRONICS and BARGOSOFT decided to join forces to launch a corporate espionage attempt at finding out our new rival's secrets. Our attempts were stunningly successful. What did we find?

A copy of Andre LaMothe's Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus.

Why hello there, palms! Please meet my face. Repeatedly.

The end.

I was a failed teenage game developer (part 2)

2008-03-05T00:19:00.000-08:00

(..continued from part one)

At around the same time that I was churning out crud like Quik-Ad Micro, I was beginning to take a healthy interest in the PC demo scene. Mind you, the only exposure I'd had to the demo scene was a collection of MOD files contained on a PC magazine CD-ROM. So the only thing I actually understood about the demoscene was that you needed to have a truly awesome name for your 'group'. Therefore, if I wanted Bargosoft to be a QBASIC-powered force to be reckoned with in the elite world of "the 'scene", I would need to give it a suitably awesome 'scene name.

I pulled out a dictionary and started scouring the pages, looking for the perfect word. Something to rival Fairlight.. Future Crew.. Triton.. and so eventually I settled upon the rather dubious title of "HEATWAVE". It didn't take me long to realize that 'HEATWAVE' is actually a pretty terrible name for a demoscene group, so the search resumed for something cooler. For a brief period I decided upon "OPTICAL ILLUSIONS", but since that was too many letters for me to bother rendering in QBASIC code, I changed it to "ENTROPY".

A cool name deserves a cool logo.

Of course, what's a demoscene group without demos? With the name taken care of, I then proceeded to spend weeks producing awful, horrid demos, leading to what would be known as the Imphobia series. Actually, Imphobia is the name of some amiga 'scene magazine from years gone by, so I guess I was borrowing the title to lend it some sort of credibility. Viewing the demos now, of course, they almost seem like parodies of what a demo should really be.

Before the Imphobia series, however, were my humble beginnings as a wannabe demo writer. The first, GROOVY3.BAS, consisted of an seizure-inducing flashing background whilst the words 'PINK FLOYD' scrolled down the screen in alternating colours. In fact, just about everything I've ever written contains a section where the screen flashes random colours in a blinding manner. Perhaps it shall ultimately be my trademark as an artist once I've passed on.

The early fruits of my labour.

With my skills sharpened, it was time to move onto a real demo. The first Imphobia consisted of silly, mostly-random PC speaker music that played whilst the screen filled with basic ANSI graphics. Actually that's a half-truth, those two things didn't happen at the same time, since I had no idea how to do threading in QBASIC (or even if its possible). So the music would play first, then the screen would fill with ASCII, then another piece of music would play, then something else would happen, and so on. The grand finale was the display of the Bargosoft and Heatwave logos, followed by some crappy spiel about how awesome public domain software is.

In 1994, Future Crew released the legendary "Second Reality". I released.. this.

The next three demos in the Imphobia series weren't much better, just featuring more elaborate graphics. In one of them I even introduced some goofy political point about how religion and nazism leads to nuclear war or something. Who the hell knows what I was thinking; to be honest, the only thing I can remember of my highschool years is the tragedy when I accidentally taped over my VHS copy of Fraternity Vacation with the Oprah Winfrey show.

It should've been called Imphobia 3-D.

Nuclear holocaust stunningly realised in QBasic.

I started inventing these stupid phrases to go along
with the gfx, thinking I was "deep".

In the next (and final) part : Bargosoft Game Studios is founded, but BISHTRONICS deals it a crippling blow..

(PS :Your reward for getting this far is yet another example of
BARGOSOFT motivational imagery)

Call of Duty 4: Fight the Lag

2008-03-02T23:42:00.000-08:00

If, while playing Call of Duty 4 on Xbox Live, you see me join a game only to leave 5 seconds later, please don't think I'm some kind of game-hopping n00b. I have a good reason for visiting game after game like some kind of nomadic... er, nomad. That reason is lag, which all Aussie online-gamers will be intimately familiar with. Unfortunately Call of Duty 4 is not immune from this problem. When I get a good connection (as represented by green bars) the game is fantastic, with the best players inevitably placing well on the leaderboard. Once the connection drops to yellow- or even worse- red bars, all bets are off. Skill has little to do with anything, and blind firing with a submachine gun on full-auto is the order of the day. It's really very disappointing when you empty a full magazine into the enemy, only to see them stop, prop, and drill you through the forehead with a carefully-aimed shot. All this could have been avoided if COD4 players were provided with some kind of connection filter, allowing us to filter out all games below a certain connection level. I believe that HALO has this option, as do 99% of online PC games. As it stands, we Aussies have two options: 1. Hope that a friend is online and playing in an Aussie-dominated game (with a spare spot available to join), or 2. Spend 30 or 40 frustrating minutes searching for games, connecting to them, and then immediately leaving upon discovering that you have a woeful connection. I'm sure that all it would take to end this misery for Aussie gamers is for a small patch to be released providing the connection filter option. In the meantime all we can do is hope and wait...

(image from pregamelobby.com)

I was a failed teenage game developer (part 1)

2008-03-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

Hi. My name's MrPigeon, and I suck. No really, I do. At first, I wasn't sure why Ferris would let me post in his blog, because I'll probably suck at this too. I figure I may as well write about what I'm good at, so my first three entries will be dedicated to how my inherent suckfullness got me to this sorry point in my life.

My passion for programming started at a young age, probably around ten or eleven years old. I remember that one of the first things I wrote was a text adventure game in BASIC (using the free GWBASIC that came with MS-DOS 3). It was loosely based around a freeware Commodore 64 game called Grod The Demented Pixie.

The game itself was quite terrible and only barely qualifies as being called a text adventure because:

It contained text.
I'm sure at the imaginative age of 10 it seemed like quite an 'adventure'.

It also contained my very first easter egg, in that if you typed in a secret phrase at the end (probably something like "ATARI LYNX RULEZ") you were treated to pages upon pages of a ten year old's wisdom. I would come back day after day to pour more words into it, transforming it from a simple "hello everyone this is a secret message!" to a epic record of my simple little life at that point. Sadly, I no longer have the game itself, but below is a 99% accurate recreation of what it would've contained.

I have been playing Double Dragon 2 a lot today and
it is really hard. If you press punch and kick at
the same time Billy does a really cool jump kick it
is awesome. It gets really hard at the farm level though
and I can't get past it because of all the punk girls
with the chains. Luke says that when you complete it
you get a picture of a naked woman which is pretty weird
and I hope my mum does not find out. Anyway it is a
good game and I give it 95.7 out of 100 and I hope that
they make Double Dragon 3 because that will be even
better.

In high-school, I befriended a guy named Tony. As far as high-school friendships go, ours was a fairly competitive one. Not out on the track, however. Ours was a friendship fueled by the fury of QBASIC pogramming. I had just finished reading about billion-dollar maverick Bill Gates' founding of Microsoft, and now had a burning passion to create my own software company offering quality, QBASIC-written wares to.. well, no-one really. But that's beside the point. And thus, BARGOSOFT was formed on one dreary winter's day in June of 1994. Tony, meanwhile, had created his own 'company', BISHTRONICS, founded on much the same principles.

It was healthy and fun competition. Each day we would arrive at school with boxes of 3.5" disks containing our latest creations, for the other to drool and be jealous over. I tended to be caught behind the 8-ball a lot of the time, and as such it was often I who was left blinking in amazement as BISHTRONICS showed off its new software. I still vividly remember the day that Tony showed me his newly-implemented menu system featuring a 'highlight' bar that could be scrolled up and down using the arrow keys. I'd never seen anything like it. All through lunch I was sitting in stunned silence, trying to figure out how it could be done.

Our competitiveness soon blossomed into all-out war. We started doing early morning raids upon the classroom computers, unleashing our homebuilt DOSShell replacements upon them, hoping to hear the positive swoons of the teacher when they next turned on the computer - knowing full well how much it would torment the other.

The terrible software I invented during that period came thick and fast. There was "Bargosoft Quik-Ad Micro", which proposed to do the following:

Ever wanted to display your own ads for software? This
program will create your ad with a touch of colour and style.
Just type in your message after you choose to write your ad.
Unfortunately I haven't figured out what to do after that so
you will have to write that section by yourself. Anyway,
have fun!"

So ultimately if you typed in your advertisement text, it would display it in the middle of the screen surrounded by flashing, rotating ASCII asterisks. Who needs expensive PR departments when you can harness the raw power of Bargosoft Quik-Ad Micro FOR FREE?

Quik-Ad in Action!

There was also "Bargosoft Music Manager", which prompted the user to enter in an octave, tempo, and notes that they wanted played through the PC speaker. The most amusing thing in retrospect about this and many of the other applications is that they all featured huge video-game like introduction sequences, featuring flashy logos and overbearing PC speaker music. Music Manager itself was quite a stand-out, because not only did it feature the aforementioned logo presentations, it also featured about a minute's worth of fake magazine quotes (from equally fake magazines) praising it before it even got to the main menu:

`A powerhouse achivement!' - Computer Utility Magazine
`The best QBASIC utility we have seen so far!' - PD Monthly
`Definetly Bargosoft\Heatwave's best effort yet' - PC Domain
`Another winner for Bargosoft!' - PC Upgrading

Then there was also the ill-conceived "Bargosoft Homework Manager". This thing would ask you what subject the homework was for, what the homework was about, the due date, and any other "relevant information" you might have to offer. What might the program do next, you might wonder? Well, it sure as hell doesn't do the homework for you. In fact, all it does is send the following to the printer:

--------------------------------------------------------
**THE BARGOSOFT\HEATWAVE HOMEWORK MANAGER VERSION 1.0**
--------------------------------------------------------
Subject: <...>
Assignment: <...>
Due Date: <...>
Relevant information: <...>
--------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1994. Bargosoft\Heatwave.

How useful! Surely such a program would be the wildest dream of any overworked student looking for assistance in their studies.

The observant amongst you would've noticed the rather curious "BARGOSOFT\HEATWAVE" up above. What's that all about, you might wonder? Well, to find out, you're going to have to wait until tomorrow's update for part 2. In the meantime, inspire yourselves by witnessing the Bargosoft mission statement:

(PS: The **EDITED FOR SAFETY REASONS** bit was already there. I guess even as a fourteen year old I was paranoid of crazy internet people)

(PPS: Anybody willing to send me "a sample of their QBASIC skills" can still feel free to do so, and make me feel even more embarassed about myself)

In tomorrow's entry: Bargosoft becomes a force to be reckoned with in the imaginary "demoscene" of Stanthorpe.

Interview with Amiga game music legend: Olof Gustafsson

2008-02-28T22:43:00.000-08:00

Long-time gamers like me will fondly remember the Commodore Amiga computer, and the amazing games that were produced for it. The Amiga kicked off the careers of many gaming industry legends, with many having roots in the Amiga demoscene. One such legend is composer/musician Olof Gustafsson, pictured above. Olof, using the handle Blaizer, originally composed tracker music for a demogroup called The Silents. The original members went on to form Digital Illusions, and release the awe-inspiring Pinball Dreams, followed by Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions.

These games were lauded for not only their brilliant graphics and gameplay, but also their amazing soundtracks, which were composed by Olof. Needless to say, Olof went on to compose many more great tunes for other Digital Illusions games. The reason I thought to post an article about Olof? Well, I recently stumbled across an embarrassingly-inane interview with him on YouTube. Take a look and you'll see what I mean. I don't think language is the stumbling-block here, I think it's just a plain lack of research and knowledge. Eg, the interviewer:

Thinks Olof was a member of Razor 1911 (0.57 mins)
Asks if Digital Illusions still exists (3.25 mins)
other examples I couldn't be bothered to document

Maybe it's just me, but does Olof look like he wanted to escape at around the 2.54 min mark?

Fans of Olof's might not realise that he is still active in the demoscene, and that he composed the music for the amazing Starstruck Amiga demo by TBL, which was the winning demo at the Assembly demo party 2006. You can see the demo below. It's even more impressive when you consider that it is running on an Amiga, with the music playing courtesy of the Amiga's 8-bit 4-channel 'Paula' sound chip! The music is up to Olof's best, and I love the choreography of many parts of the demo, eg. at the 5.35 minute mark.

A higher quality version of the demo and an mp3 of the soundtrack can be downloaded here from pouet.net.

Good news for Xbox 360 gamers: in the interview Olof reveals that his new company, Epos Game Studios, will be releasing their first game via Xbox Live Arcade. I for one can't wait!...

Rise of the Gaming Bug?

2008-02-26T22:50:00.000-08:00

Hi, I'm AmstradHero. After plugging my NWN2 module in his last post, Ferris has now been generous enough to allow me to guest post on his blog - which I'm going to take advantage of by writing about bugs in computer games. I'll start with a little warning that this is a little bit lengthier than previous posts...
Every gamer knows what it feels like to get frustrated with a game. Whether it's losing to opponents in an online match, struggling to defeat a particular hard segment of a game, or simply figuring out the correct path through a puzzle, games are designed to be both fun and challenging. However, the one frustration that is the bane of every gamer are bugs or gameplay elements that simply don't work. If you've been a gamer for any length of time, you're almost certain to have your own horror story about a bug or glitch that caused you countless hours of grief. It is also true that sometimes these can work in your favour - and certainly, I remember clocking up the high score in a variant of choplifter on a BBC Micro due to a glitch that let me continuously destroy a tank for points. The Internet proved a saviour for PC gamers when it enabled the release of patches that have now become commonplace. While this was a fantastic step forward, the problem that has increasingly reared its ugly head is that games are being released and that patches ARE expected, as opposed to being a means of dealing with a series of unfortunate events that cannot be avoided. Additionally, often these patches are being used to add in functionality that should have been included from a game's first release.
Let's draw on some recent examples to prove a point. First off, I'd like to take aim at one of the pride and joys of my FPS gaming enjoyment for many years - the Unreal Tournament franchise. When the Unreal Tournament 3 demo was released, I, like many other eager fans, downloaded the UT3 demo with much anticipation and indeed a sense of glee at returning to the frenetic pace of a game that makes you feel like you should be taking a cocktail of speed, acid and amphetamines just in order to get the maximum enjoyment out of it. Dealing death with an Instagib shock rifle while leaping off walls and maniacally laughing like the arch-villain out of a B-Grade action flick is exactly what I'd come to love and cherish about the series. However, when I downloaded the demo, I was brought back to reality with a resounding kick up the jacksy and the completed obliteration of a gamer's false sense of self-worth as embodied by the power of his gaming rig. After playing one vehicle CTF fragfest against bots and finding it putting my moderately aged system through its paces until I dropped the settings down a little, I decided to fire up a deathmatch game for pure unadulterated slaughter. Or I tried to. My box froze unceremoniously on the menu and I clicked "play game", and nothing short of a reboot would fix it. Undaunted, I fired the demo up and tried again, after all my machine is getting a little long in the tooth... Load up, choose instant action, play game... BAM. I spent more time installing the darn demo than I did playing it. If I hadn't been a one-eyed UT fan, I wouldn't have recently bought UT3 and found that the full version lacks all the bugs of the demo that was obviously released far too early. Thank God. I still love you, Epic.

The trouble is, this isn't an isolated case, and it extends to full versions of games as well. I found STALKER close to unplayable due to various glitches and even when it wasn't being more buggy than a Louisiana Bayou, I found myself continually clearing out a never-ending stream of bad guys who would attack on sight as though someone in this radioactive zone was churning out people like Darth Sidious in Attack Of The Clones. Then there's Heroes of Might and Magic 5 seemed like a lesser cousin of its predecessors when released, though this may have been because half the information about the units or the gameplay wasn't made clear - it took about 500Mb of patches before you gained even basic things like checking the abilities of your troops! I could go on, like moronic AI, an appalling inventory system, or having enemies disappear or be encased in walls in Mass Effect, or the patches required to Neverwinter Nights 2 in order to make the camera usable. It is even possible to level complaint about your moronic AI allies in Call of Duty 4, but with these I'm hitting smaller issues and I think we've long learnt to expect as much support from AI in single player FPS games as we do expect facts from a US election campaign. (I should confess that I absolutely loved both Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4 regardless)

Of course, it would be remiss of me to argue the poor maligned gamer like some whining child or someone falsely claiming worker's compensation benefits, without presenting the other side of the argument. Testing IS done by gaming companies, but the problem they have to deal with is that they are dealing with an unknown platform. There are countless combinations of various bits of computer hardware from numerous manufacturers, and then there's varying patch levels for those components to consider - though by and large that mostly boils down to video drivers. This sort of problem is one of the factors that might lead to the death of PC gaming in favour of consoles, but that's another discourse entirely.

As for the solution: well, that's the sixty-four million dollar question, isn't it? Test cases are a fairly useless approach for most situations given the wide variety of possible actions in today's complex games. After all, speedrunning relies heavily on the unexpected consequences of various unforeseen actions, and if this type of ingenuity is taken away, then gamers will feel hamstrung by a lack of freedom. While heavy testing of individual segments can be carried out, the large scale problems are the challenge, due to lacking the ability to have several thousand testers at a company's fingertips. Unless, of course, the public beta angle is pushed more heavily. This, of course, has to be done in a carefully managed, fashion, because gamers do not (and should not) become the first line of testing. This also results in the difficulty of releasing a game sample large enough to give the gamers a taste of the game without giving them too much such that they don't want/need to buy the game. Ideally, games would undergo a substantial testing regime internally, followed by a closed beta, then finally an open beta for larger scale testing to occur. Of course, this also means that release dates should not be set unrealistically, and that companies should adhere to the maxim that dictates quality is better than quantity, and something should be done right, or not at all. Quality is something that gamers have come to expect, and the plethora of bugs and oversized patches issued for many modern games can start to leave a slightly bitter taste in one's mouth.

Fate Of A City: upcoming Neverwinter Nights 2 module

2008-02-25T00:46:00.000-08:00

I'll admit right away that I'm not an RPG fan. It could be because I don't have the free time required to play through an RPG. Then again, I'll happily devote time to completing a Grand Theft Auto game (as I'm sure to do once again when Grand Theft Auto IV is released). So that can't be the reason. Perhaps it's just the whole fantasy environment that doesn't excite me - I'm not sure. In any case, RPGs like Neverwinter Nights 2 are massively popular with gamers and modders alike. Which leads me to Fate Of A City, a Neverwinter Nights 2 module being developed by fellow Canberran AmstradHero. AmstradHero is a particularly talented guy who has taken a break from writing short fiction to develop what promises to be the the most impressive Neverwinter Nights 2 mod to-date (if the excited chatter on NWN2 forums is anything to go by). It's almost enough to get me interested in playing an RPG again!

Almost...

(image from fateofacity.blogspot.com)

COD4: Xbox 360 Controller > PC's Mouse and Keyboard

2008-02-23T18:47:00.000-08:00

I never thought I'd say this, but I have found an FPS that I prefer to play on console rather than on PC. The game is of course Call of Duty 4. I have previously written about how much better COD4's controls are compared with other Xbox 360 FPSs, but it was only recently that I had the chance to experience COD4 on PC. The venue was a LAN cafe in Canberra, where I joined around 30 of my workmates for an extended COD4-session. After the usual reconfiguring of controls, I began playing - confident that my previous experience with the game would hold me in good stead. But something was wrong, I just couldn't get comfortable with the controls - a first for me on a PC shooter. Perhaps it was the lack of additional buttons on the mouse to assign various controls to, but I found that I didn't have enough fingers on my left hand to comfortably access all the functions I needed. Try as I might I couldn't reconfigure the keys any better, leaving me with the shocking revelation: Call of Duty 4 on console is superior to the PC version. The Xbox 360 controller provides much faster and more convenient access to the controls you need, while not sacrificing aiming accuracy - the scourge of the console FPS since time immemorial. I'm no PC FPS n00b - having played more than my fair share over the years - so this conclusion is as much of a shock to me as it is to you. It's a good shock mind-you, as it overcomes one of the last remaining bastions of PC gaming superiority... :)

(image from gadgetsandgames.co.uk)