To be found here at Lost Garden. Worth reading, if only for the comedic diagrams near the start.

Amen

News in today that Peter Jackson’s production company will be working with Bungie, Universal and Fox. Good news I think – it certainly seems a better candidate for a game-to-movie conversion than Doom. Plus the Halo ring structure is kind of outdoors (discounting the unusual sky backdrop), so they get to set it in New Zealand and pump some more money into their economy. I always like to see the Kiwis get ahead (although I’m compelled to admit its because I’m secretly hoping they’ll all get so rich they’ll start giving away free plane trips over there).

Of course, game-to-movie conversions are always going to be at least a little cringe-worthy, even when the game story is good, the movie can’t fit everything in (like a book-to-movie conversion) and it loses its magic. At least movie-to-game conversions can expand on the movie’s plot and get you more involved in the world.

One good example I found recently though was the book that Raymond E. Feist wrote after the success of Betrayal at Krondor. I’ve never played the game (I know, I know, how can I call myself a gamer), but I can see the shape of the game in the book, and feel just how the various stages would map to quests and sub-quests; and how the character/group mechanics would work. You can even almost see the levelling mechanics at work in the character of Owyn. If only all medium crossovers were so effectively possible.

Interesting article here on EVE/CCP’s use of IBM server tech to sustain their scalable server technology. I must admit I’ve always been impressed by their ability to grow the universe without having to break it into shards. Since massive universes have always been my thang, I’m curious as to the mechanics behind their scalable technology. I can see where the game mechanics help hide the boundaries between servers and where load balancing can be achieved, but I’d still like to poke around under the hood to see the little tricks they do to make it practical.

Well, the site’s finally starting to show up in a standard Google search for Black Company Studios (previously you had to enter “Black Company” in quotes to find it). Hopefully we’ll make it onto the front page soon. Still don’t quite understand why Lionhead is ranked number one on that search though. Meh, the intricacies of Google’s ranking algorithm are not for the likes of us mere mortals to understand. 🙂

Update (25/09): Onto the front page now! My surreptitious linking from other places seems to be working. 😉

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