Looking at some fuss on The Chaos Engine about the newly released information on the Revolution controller. All I can say is “wow”. Seriously. If its as usable as it seems (and judging from the people relating first hand use accounts on TCE it is), then its got the potential to really appeal to a wider market than your average console.

For a brief synopsis, basically it’s shaped like a TV remote control (a rather small one) so it fits in your hand like a wand or a mobile phone. There are buttons all over it, and a d-pad, etc; but they aren’t the primary control mechanism. The primary control mechanism is internal sensors which detect the angle the controller is pointing. So full three degrees of freedom rotation, (including twisting). That immediately elevates it above the PC mouse as a pointing device (as mice can only support 2 degrees of freedom). So you’ve got a pointing device as flexible and instantly usable as a mouse, but in 3D. So all of those lovely fun little games that work well in 2D with a mouse (Pong, Tetris, point-and-click titles, etc.) can have their game-play mechanics extended into 3D without having to worry about controller dynamics! Not to mention, its apparently even more usable for first-person-shooters (a genre typically crippled by the average console controller) with the addition of a light, attached joystick to be held in the other hand. And I don’t think I really have to dwell on the coolness of a light-saber game based on a controller you can swing like a sword. Time to get that accidental damage cover for the fragile things in the living room…

Here’s a link to an external site with an advert for the controller (immediately underneath the main picture). Sorry the text isn’t in English, but I haven’t seen it copied many places yet. I’ll probably upda
te this entry if I find better links.

Anyway - wow again - I’m hoping other console manufacturers come up with clones or that this catches on. I’d certainly buy one for the PC in preference to my mouse for FPS games.

EDIT: more links

CNN
GameSpy
GameSpot

I’m grinding my teeth at the moment after reading yet another article about the R*/GTA/Hot Coffee repercussions, and I feel I really have to get this off my chest. I should point out I haven’t talked with any of the guys I know at R* about this, because I don’t want to put them in the position of them talking about something their company no doubt wants the official line to be the only line.

But I must say, this is in no way Rockstar North’s fault! People say that they made a mistake putting that content on the disc, but thats rubbish. If I were say, 1 month from beta and Design decided a particular bit of content should be removed from the game, would I:

a) Go through every build asset and code module and remove every trace of the content, then deal with all the bugs and other problems caused by such a major change (missing assets, broken links from other features which reused those assets, code flaws introduced by losing bits of code other modules expected to be there, etc.)?
or b) Flip a toggle in code which stops the user ever seeing the content, a toggle to which a legitimate player has no access, while leaving everything else in place.

I’m sorry, as a software lead, my responsibility is to take option b). If I went to a producer and said, I’ve got two options, one with possibly large and time-consuming consequences, and one with no ramifications which leaves a bit of unused material on the final master; I’d like to choose the first option, they’d laugh at me until they realised I was serious and then tell me I was an idiot.

If someone deliberately sets out to alter the game that we’ve developed and have had signed off, then how in the name of sanity are we responsible for what they do? If I make wooden spoons, and I sell them to a man who snaps one in half and stabs himself with the splintered end, am I responsible for it?

Brave had an unfortunate bug at one point which made him look really like he was humping a dead rabbit, until we added a few lines to fix the problem. If someone hacks our game to bring the bug back, do we deserve an 18 rating for bestiality/necrophelia? Or would such a thing be ridiculous?

This controversy isn’t about sex, or violence (even though GTA has them both in spades), its about responsibility. I refuse to be held responsible for what other people do to themselves using things that I’ve done.

Another good piece from Joel on Software, talking about getting good people and doing good work, rather than trying to be that one company in a thousand that comes up with an idea no-one else has ever thought of. As for hiring staff with good working conditions, what can I say; the Company is based in Edinburgh! What else do you need! Oh well, okay then, I’ll buy dinner for the staff. But no dessert. And you fill up on breadsticks or poppadums, right?

Woah there. Sorry to anyone reading this through the RSS feed, which took my last entry as a prompt to mark as updated every single entry I’ve written. Hopefully this one won’t do the same…

Oh, and quickly before I trek off for another day - we have a new logo. Courtesy of Dave Keningale @ 4J Studios

Seeing this article reminded me, I’ll absolutely have to write out a coding standards document for the Company before anyone else starts working on the code-base. Heck, I’ll have to fix all of my code to some kind of appropriate standard as well!

Like the new colour layout? Its to match the subBlack theme on the forums, and is a bit more in-keeping with our company name. Now all I need is to figure out what we want in a logo…

Found it! Actually thought I’d lost the write up there. If you want to be terminally bored, you can also read Appendix C, which is a laborious and overly-formatted protocol definition.