Week's over

I was utterly shocked when, on Wednsday night, I attmepted to compile an OpenGL file in Cygwin and it actually worked, on my very first try, exactly as the readme file instructed. Normally I have bad luck with getting this kind of development stuff up and running in anything less than two weeks. I need to savor this stroke of luck while the feeling is still fresh.

On that same topic, I'd like to host some PGL projects on the website for people to take a look at, but before that happens I need to

a) Find out how to let people view them without all the OpenGL tools.
b) create something worth demonstrating.

No idea as to the timeframe of either of those.

Perhaps you have heard by now of the Nintendo DS redesign. I think this is just what I needed to push me over the edge and save up for a DS of my own.

And finally, here is another "hard hitting" EGM interview, this time grilling the Perfect Dark Zero team. Let's see, that's two they've done with Microsoft. Still waiting to see something with Sony or Nintendo. This whole month over at Ziff Davis/1up.com has been like a hilarious sitcom, what with all their schpiels on "journalistic integrity", "hard hitting interviews" and a plagarized game guide. Who knows what zany controversy will come up next?

Cygwin!

My first day of work was yesterday (since I'm technically posting this at 1:00 AM on Wed.), and as expected no one showed up. I need to savor these nights, before business picks up and students realize they have free CS tutoring five nights a week.

I spent most of my time researching open GL, or rather, how to get it running on my own machine so I can work on my Computer Graphics coursework on my own machine. I found out that all the tools were availible for free download, which was great news. That is, until I returned to the apartment and realized I was missing the most imporant tool - a Windows C compiler.

So what's a guy to do? Reinstall linux on his machine? Hells no! That takes too long. Instead I spent the rest of the evening playing with Cygwin. Cygwin is, essentially, a Linux emulator of sorts for Windows. On a fresh install it will load up with a Bash shell and let you do some pretty basic Linux stuff. In order to use all sorts of goodies, the setup file allows you to pick and choose tons of different packages to download and install (kind of like Debian, only it works :p). Right now I've got it running with gcc, X-window, ssh, a whole bunch of other compilers, and what I think are the necessary tools for running open GL (Hell, I can get KDE running with it if I really wanted). And it all works just fine. Getting Cygwin to do what you want is a bit tricky at first, and there is some definite slowdown while running it, but I must say that it is still very impressive. I'll try my best tomorrow (um, today I guess) to test out those some open GL files.
Its criminal how much fun I have tinkering with this kind of stuff :)

This evening I also tried a very interesting brew. Dogfish Head Ale makes a beer called the "90 minute IPA", an Indian Pale Ale that is hopped for 90 full minutes. It is incredibly strong and very hoppy, but surpisingly not as bitter as I expected. Definitely a different kind of taste, though really enjoyed it (and recommend it!). Too bad it is far too expensive to buy normally; I suppose that college kids aren't supposed to become beer snobs.

Monday Potpurri

The previous entry was supposed to be a 2-parter containing game news and some random personal stuff. I got the first part out, but the second somewhat vanished in the hectic first weekend of the semester. So today will be a mix of everything I've wanted to tackle over the last few days.

First off, my 21st birthday was without a doubt the best I've ever had. We had a very large party the day after, and it was somewhat strange to realize that not only did I know most of the many people in attendance, but they were all wishing me a happy birthday. It was great to see a lot of friendly faces again, and I realized that maybe, just maybe, I've moved up a bit from my days as a socially awkward and reclusive teenager. In any case, thanks to everyone who was there; we'll have to do it again sometime.

Also, I did some research on the bottle of Jack Daniels 1915 Gold Medal Whiskey I bought at the liquor store as my first legal purchase. The bottle was the only one of its kind, cost me a cool $35. I was a little reluctant to spend that kind of money on a bottle of booze, until I found this ebay auction. I think I'll hold onto it for just a little longer...

Yesterday I saw my NFL playoff predictions fall to pieces, as both my AFC and NFC picks lost horribly in their championship games. Now its time for everyone who was right to point and gloat at me.
......

There we go. I can't say I have a favorite team for the Super Bowl anymore. I'll still watch it however, if for nothing other than the commercials.

CNN has an article about the nation's richest colleges. I'm still trying to wrap my head around why a school needs over a billion dollars in its coffers. Do they even realize that spending just a small fraction of it could improve all sorts of things for the students, who are paying outrageous tuition prices just to attend Harvard? Or am I missing a piece of the puzzle?

Lastly, there's a bit of controversy in the gaming world over a strategy guide for Dead or Alive 4 that 1up.com is being accused of plagarizing from a smaller fansite. Unfortunately, 1up pulled their guide off the site before I could compare the two, but I have been reading comments about the ordeal throughout the day. A 1up staffer the site by claiming that they watched the writer responsible for the guide spend hours with the game in order to get familiar with its combat system and the intricacies of each character. While no one doubts this, it isn't exactly a solid defense in my book. Someone could spend hours doing research on a topic or writing a piece of code and still not come up with a solid paper/program, only to find a perfect example somewhere on the 'net to simply reword and submit. I'm not saying that this certainly happened, but it is a definite possibility, and as a large, professional games site I expect 1up to do a thorough investigation and give us some honest answers. Considering all their shit about journalistic integrity recently, they pretty much have to. Still, something in me is saying that not only did they plagarize the guide, but that they won't admit to it either. Maybe this is due to the horror stories I've heard about EGM and Ziff Davis media, though who knows how honest they are.

Today's Post Part 1 - Games

If you've read penny arcade (and even if you don't), then I'm sure you know about the big interview with Peter Moore over at 1up. As usual, the groupies are jumping all over Dan Hsu's crotch over what they consider a tough and hard hitting piece of journalism.

I call bullshit.

This is a typical fluff piece with a few "tough" questions that are either irrelevant or have been answered before. Hsu springs this clever little trap with his question about the backwards compatibility list, which results in the same answers from Moore that we've heard a hundred times over; the list was not a choice, and it was larger than any writer expected. Hsu's query along the lines of "at what point do you just tell your people to get Splinter Cell working now?" is much more valid, but it doesn't have the same punch alone as it does without the little pincer attack (and even as an undergrad CS major, I know that software emulation is easier said than done, so the question still isn't that good).

In regards to Hsu's graphical comparisons, he cites the jump from Playstation to Dreamcast as being huge, but omits a comparison of Playstation to PS2, or even Dreamcast to PS2. Launch era PS2 games were essentially cleaned up PS1 games with the exception of a few standouts (which is just what the 360 faces; a lot of crud with some real standouts from 1st party developers). And as for the Dreamcast, a little launch title named Soul Calibur managed to look as good as a PS2 launch title named Tekken Tag, despite being older. The PS2 was initally not a very huge leap in graphical quality. The only reasons I can think for Hsu omitting this point is that a) he knows it would disprove his point or b) he didn't do his homework like a journalist should, and neither of these options is very good. In the end, these "tough" questions didn't give us any new insight about the 360 or its problems.

As for the rest of the interview, we have queries like "would you sell Rare to Sony or Nintendo" (when Nintendo were the ones who sold them off) and "would you give something up for Miyamoto to join Microsoft?". It is typical interview fluff. Hsu is a man who put himself into a situation with the things he said in his blog about integrity in games journalism, and needed to somehow prove himself to the readers. So he does a typical interview where he masks some easy (and already answered) questions as powerful and hard hitting. He keeps his job, and the 1up bloggers can tell him "great job Shoe! This is why I subscribe to EGM" yet one more time

In any case, I don't really see this type of interview to be any sort of progress over the usual BS that we get. It will be interesting to see if he really does approach interviews with Sony and Nintendo in the same light, though even if he does I'm not sure if it will do much good. I'll reserve final judgement until them, but for now I'm afraid that Dan Hsu (or any other game writer for that matter) has done anything to change the state of his trade.

In other news, I enjoyed an article by David Rodruguez (a developer from High Voltage Software), in which he bemoans the industry's reliance on cutscenes and bad storytelling. I've flapped my gums about this issue many times before, but hearing it come from an actual developer is much more interesting.

How Long?

I'm sorry for this completely unecessary update, but as of today I've gone through 21 years of life. And dammit, I need a drink.

First Day of Classes

After just one day of classes, it isn't easy to gauge just what the semester will be like . Still, I have to take a stab at it.

Computer Graphics - apparently all that time reading about game development is going to pay off. I knew every term in the first lecture and what it meant. Now I just have to figure out how to do it, which is a completely different beast. Should be a fun and interesting class.

Number Theory - this one is going to be hard as hell. Lots of proofs and very hard math will be the norm. However I'm excited about this one too, because it looks like we'll be learning some very interesting things. That is, if you consider proving the fundamental theorem of arithmetic to be fun :) I just have to make sure to keep up with the work and ask lots of questions.

Operating Systems - This will be another toughie, but judging from past experiences with this prof. I should do just fine if I put in the necessary time. Of course necessary time often means working on a program until four in the morning. I've...become used to it actually.

Software Engineering - tough to predict this one. It seems that it will be mostly lecture with big papers/projects as our assignments. Should be interesting though, since SE is such a critical thing to understand.

Music - yeah, I'm taking a nice little music class too. Now the professor I'm taking has taught friends of mine in the past, and they loved him. I can tell he really knows his stuff, but something about his personality rubs me the wrong way. How do I describe it.... ah yes. He's a cultured and sophisticated musician. That means he comes off as pretentious, impatient, and a little bit elitist. This seems to be common among arists/music types, and I just don't like that. His best comment?

"You all speek English don't you? Well, at least to some degree..."

No sir, I speak in fucking 1's and 0's. But when I get students for CS tutoring I dont' make them feel stupid becuase they can't write numbers in binary. In his defense, it isn't easy to do lecture when people are silent to your questions. In any case, I'll just chalk it up to first day misunderstanding and try my best to participate.

Last year I signed up at Gamasutra, the site for game developers, in order to do research for a paper. I got a booklet in the mail from them detailing the Game Developers Conference. It is actually open one day for students, and nothing would make me more ecstatic than to attend. However, the cost and distance are far too much. That won't stop me from "kind sorta in passing" mentioning it to professors in some wild and failed attempt to get the school to send me. Might as well try.

Lines!

First day back on campus, and I had no classes to attend. I feel...guilty about it. Like I'm a business major or something :p. That meant I had plenty of time to take care of early semester business. Geting books from the mail, hitting the bookstore (for one $8 paperback - its for Number Theory, and it has to be one of the toughest books around), adding money for food, and visiting professors. Of course, being the first day back, everyone else had the same idea as me, and every time I stopped to do something, sure enough there was a line.

I hate lines. No, not the distance between two points; I love those. I'm talking lines of the "queue" persuasion. Now I can't think of any person that actually enjoys waiting in line, but for me it is so bad that I will often walk away in frustration, thus missing out on important business or even eating. I suppose this dislike boils down to two things. One, I hate feeling like I'm wasting large amounts of time doing nothing. Two, I'm an asshole who could live without all the silly gossip that you often hear while waiting in line, especially at Loyola. I just don't care about how much you drank over the break, or what some spoiled princess spent over the holidays.

My strategy is always to come back at a later time, hopefully when the line is shorter or gone so I can my shit done without any hassle. I would pin its success at about 50-50. Thankfully it worked today; I made a loop around the student center/academic buildings and by the time I hit each stop again, the lines had vanished. The only exception was the bookstore, which can be expected.

In any case, I have to get over this phobia. Things would probably be done even quicker if I just hunkered down and waited.

In other news, I discovered today that while I may not have won that NSA/I-fund scholarship, I still have an oppurtunity to apply for a summer internship. I have absolutely no clue what my chances are of actually being hired, but at this point I'll simply be content with chances. If all goes well I'll find one that turns into an oppurtunity.

Five classes tomorrow, so I better hit the hay early. Coming up this week is a full fledged analysis of the Xbox 360. I'll give you a teaser right now:

The Xb0x 360....Spiffy

Break's over, back to work

I had nice little update planned for yesterday (I hate going four days without a post), but a family emergency required me to make a trip deep into the NY/NJ Metropolitan area. Everything is okay, but I have to say, driving anywhere near the City during rush hour on a Friday is incredible. Volume wise, it isn't any different from traveling on the Beltway at the same time. The difference is in some of the random, aggressive and dangerous stunts that drivers often try to pull off, soley so they can move five feet ahead of the other guy, only to lose that when their lane stops moving and eveyone else coasts ahead of them. I have to salute anyone who drives that commute every day (insert random stab at New Jersey drivers here).

This weekend is my last two days home before returning for spring semester. It was a very quiet break; no chance to see old friends, and not much to do outside of a few trips to the mall. That probably sounds a bit lonely, but I enjoyed the piece and quiet. I managed to take care of some important business, and I was able to play my fair share of good games. I got to write a lot too, some of which you've seen, and some of which needs a couple more revisions. Most importantly, the break was a chance to get away from that special kind of drama which manifests on college campuses. I'm going to make sure that crap stays to a minimum this spring. I'll have a lot on my plate, and the only way I'll manage is if I focus on my work and not on the "he said she said". I think I can handle it just fine.

Let's head to the links:

Every Thursday this month, Turner Classic Movies will be showing the films of Hayao Miyazaki. His movies are pretty much the cream of the crop when it comes to anime; they're beautifully animated, wonderfully imaginative and just plain entertaining. They aren't perfect by any means; I think Miyazaki overuses certain themes and motifs throughout his films. Nevertheless, if you're interested in checking out something a little different on TV, you can do a whole lot worse.

Yet another politician being pushed out of office due to scandal. I don't know what to make of all these pols. being kicked out; should I be happy that such corruption is being removed, or should I be upset that the government is really as corrupt as they say?

For any Loyola students out there; there's a Facebook.com group for Counterstrike fans made by yours truly. Head over there if you're an AWP whore and damn proud of it.

Gaming Retrospective: the lost piece

This was a final part to the Gaming Retrospective that I wanted to do, but only recently finished. It is a bit long winded, but I hope some of you enjoy it.

If I were to describe the gaming scene of 2005, I would immediately think of the word “quiet”. This seems surprising even to me, the person who says it! Was this really a quiet year? After all, we saw the launch of the PSP, the Gameboy Micro, and the first entry of the next generation, the Xbox360. The Hot Coffee mod brought huge amounts of attention and scrutiny from some of the biggest talking heads in Washington. The Playstation 3 was finally revealed, and the speculation is at a fever pitch over the possibilities of the Nintendo Revolution. And it seemed that for a while, it was impossible to get through the month without Florida attorney Jack Thompson opening his foul, flame spewing mouth to accuse the community of some foul act on par with Pearl Harbor.

So was it really that quiet of a year? In terms of news and announcements, I suppose it wasn’t. But at the end of the day, the industry is all about the games, and in this respect 2005 fell a bit short. At least, it did compared to 2004. Last year we saw the release of San Andreas, Halo 2, Half Life 2, Metroid Prime 2 and World of Warcraft all within two months. Combine that list with some of the other great holiday releases and the other ten months of the year, and you have a sickeningly good line up of games. 2005 on the other hand saw most systems getting one standout title and a few lesser and/or niche releases.

The Gamecube started incredibly strong with Resident Evil 4, but eventually lost that as an exclusive, while rest of the year was filled in with a few 3d interpretations of some Game Boy Advance games (Fire Emblem, Battalion Wars). Of course the delay of Twilight Princess was a huge blow to the Nintendo faithful, so much so that preorders were being canceled because of it. The entire industry is waiting to see what the Revolution can do, but as a result the Gamecube (a faithful companion to me since launch day) is on its last legs.

As usual the Playstation 2 had some solid titles in pretty much every genre, but God of War is the only one that stood strong throughout the entire year. Gran Turismo 4 came out, but it released sans online multiplayer and with graphics that showed both how much juice you can squeeze out of the PS2 (ie. Beautiful car models) as well as how old the console is getting (ie. Blocky bus model next to car). Driving game fans ate it up, but it didn’t make nearly the same splash as GT3 did years ago.

The Katamari Damacy sequel was released to not even half the hype and buzz that the original did. If we are to believe a certain crumudgeon game journalist, there’s a reason for this; We Love Katamari is a rock star, the one that fully knows how popular it is and won’t think twice of reminding you. It can piss off the fans as much as it wants, because it knows they will keep coming back to it. That’s a jarring feeling to have, and perhaps fans weren’t quite sure what to make of a game that is bold enough to call itself “We Love Katamari”. Or maybe they just didn’t want to spend the extra ten bucks it costs at retail. Cocky bastards at Namco… still, I hear it plays damn good.

Many of the PS2’s best games from 2005 were decidedly niche titles. As much as I love Shadow of the Colossus, it is geared towards very specific crowd of people, and no amount of praise from journalists will help if the general populace doesn’t understand it. Dragon Quest 8 closes the book on Japanese RPGs this generation as far as I’m concerned, but a lot of the genre’s fans had their minds on nothing else but Final Fantasy 12 and Kingdom Hearts 2. Though to be fair, DQ8 did see a huge spike in popularity over at Gamefaqs shortly after Christmas; perhaps there is a chance after all.

With all of the hype over the 360, the original Xbox was somewhat of a bastard child in 2005. Forza Motorsport was a strong entry that gave Gran Turismo a serious run for its money, but otherwise there was a severe lack of good exclusives during the year. Jade Empire released to such little applause that I almost forgot it was released, and Far Cry Instincts was….well, it was Far Cry again. Look at any other GOTY list for Xbox and it is chock full of multiplatform releases, and with the possible exception of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, none of them inherently play better on this platform than on any others (besides some polished up visuals). Looking into the crystal ball for 2006, I can’t find any knockout titles for the Xbox as support ramps up for the 360. Rest in peace Xbox; you did damn well in your rookie season.

Speaking of the 360, it is certainly feeling some post launch blues. The majority of its lineup is multiplatform, and the only game that really seems to play better on the system is Call of Duty 2. As for its exclusives, there’s doesn’t seem to be much of an evolution. We all know that Project Gotham 3 looks a whole lot better than PGR2, but I haven’t heard a thing about whether it plays any better. Rare has two new games, but from the looks of it the N64 might be calling to ask for its gameplay back. Still, the PS2-esque nature of the launch could be a sign of future success.

Earlier this year most of the gaming community was waiting for the inevitable destruction of the Nintendo DS at the hands of the Sony PSP. Instead the PSP struggled to produce quality titles after its launch, while the DS became arguably the most impressive console of the year. The PSP cheerleaders in the gaming press are still reeling from it, but slowly they are learning that a few PS1 remakes and stripped down PS2 games are not enough to sell a system.

Oh, and then there’s the PC. Civilization 4 came out and blew us all away, and Battlefield 2 impressed for a little while (until the fanboys took control). But once again the only game that mattered was World of Warcraft, which can now call all other MMOs its bitches. Even the mightiest of gamers can fall to this siren’s song, to the point where the only thing they can think of outside of sleeping, eating and working is increasing their honor points and defeating Ragnaros. Damn you Leeroy Jenkins. Damn you to hell.

Make no mistake – this was a year of learning. We learned that developers are going to continue to push the limit of acceptable content in games, and that someone needs to grow up and learn to defend the industry from the increasing amount of sound bites and threats from politicians. We also learned that Rockstar games will not be the ones growing up. Sony discovered that it doesn’t matter how many times you say that a piece of machinery is sexy, or how many features you can cram onto a circuit board. If your console can’t produce enough quality games, it will suffer. Microsoft found out that the worldwide launch of a console simply results in more headaches, and that Japan may like Gaijin culture, but they still don’t like Gaijin electronics. Nintendo learned that it can still throw down in the handheld arena, but that it cannot compete as a traditional console maker any longer. The Revolution is the company’s biggest bet since the NES, and they’re putting all their chips behind it.

Yet the most important thing the gaming community learned in 2005 was that gamers are not stupid. As 1up points out, Acclaim is dead, Working Designs is dead, EA’s sales were down, and several Japanese companies have merged together in order to protect themselves. All because something happened that I never would have expected:
Publishers flooded the market with average sequels and licensed games in 2005, and gamers actually got sick of them. The third Prince of Persia was released to incredibly mixed reactions, and the seventh Tony Hawk game in seven years received record low scores. GTA and Madden, the biggest franchises in gaming, saw new releases, but Liberty City Stories wasn’t able to jump start the PSP, and even diehard Madden fans have been disappointed with the 2006 entry. Remember all the hype that Final Fantasy 10 received the year before it came out? 2005 wasn’t nearly as kind with FF12.

I do not believe that the gaming industry is headed for a crash. We already have one next gen console, with two more on the way this year. Meanwhile the current gen should fill the first half of 2006 with their swan songs. However 1up indicates once again the glut of mediocre titles and the rising costs of gaming, which are exactly the problems we now associate with the years 1983 and 1995. The industry has definitely slowed down, and not every gamer is completely enthusiastic about the next generation.

My advice? Everyone, especially developers, should take a look at a few of the most talked about games of last year; Resident Evil 4, Kirby’s Canvas Curse, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and Geometry Wars. Some of them are more radical than others, but each is a fresh new take on a classic game or gaming convention. Let’s figure out what it is they’re doing right, what it is they’re doing wrong, and use that knowledge to make the next generation a better one.

Big Loss

You know, it doesn't matter if your football team won the NFC East the year after another team from the division went to the Super Bowl. It doesn't matter if you made the playoffs a year after having a losing season. When you see your team lose as bad as the Giants did on Sunday, there is no feeling of "they still did better than expected." No, you still feel like crap, ashamed to wear your Giants hat around the block, and not very much interested in the playoffs anymore. Chances are the vast majority of readers are having troubles understanding how someone can get so upset over a football game, but you'll just have to bear with me. Geekery be dammed, I love my sports and I always will.

Dan Hsu's blog post about editorial integrity in gaming journalism is still getting comments from people, and another writer Aaron McKenna has posted an essay about what he considers to be a lack of quality among game reviews/previews. Enough has been said on the subject that any input from myself would probably be a moot point, so instead I'll try to take some lessons from these guys and be as critical as necessary with my own game write-ups. That Onimusha review was a little to wishy washy at the end. I'll have to watch myself next time.

Quick Change

The Gaming Retrospective can be found on lc1201.com as well now. Figured I might as well stick it up in both places.

That's it for now. Sorry to disturb you all.

Show and Tell

It is getting to that point in Winter Break where everyone else in the family is leaving for school or work again, and I've only a little over a week before I head out myself. I feel too guilty spending my time playing games all day, and wrestling with mySQL (the grizzly bear of software) for my work study job gets aggravating after about four hours. So what's a procrastinator to do? Take pictures of random stuff and post them here (can you tell I'm bored?)

A picture from outside my home. We had a lot of snow in the last few days, and while it has caused everyone a lot of grief, it also looks rather pretty.

I recieved a small sum of money this christmas, money I planned on saving at first - it was enough to cover at least a new textbook for the coming semester. Then it appeared that I would be making dean's list after my toughest semester yet. So I decided to splurge and by something completely unecessary.

Behold the Street Fighter 15th anniversary arcade stick. I don't know if it will make me any better at fighting games, but the artwork alone makes it a very nice showcase.

Turns out I missed Dean's List by about .032 though. Guess its karma biting me in the butt for not going for the textbook.

Finally, it seems my boredom managed to create something productive. With the help of a handy internet guide I managed to tinker with my original, broken Dreamcast a little. While I need to test it with some real games, I think I just might have fixed it. Of course once it came back to life it had to take care of some business.

Owned.

2006

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.