Until today I thought I was pretty smart. I can do all sorts of, ummmm, stuff. And I'm the goodest person I know the the English. Oh, and I'm. Ummmmm. What the hell was I talking about?

Oh, yeah. Brain Age. I picked up this game today which is supposed to be a brain training game. Every day it presents you with a series of challenges that are designed to stimulate bloodflow to different areas of your brain. But first, it does a test to see what your current "Brain Age" is.

Apparently, I am wicked old.
That's right, after the first test it said I have the brain of a 66 year old. I think that the on screen guy also muttered something under his breath about how I also had the body to match, but when I asked him to repeat himself he just stared blankly out from the screen, as if he didn't hear me. Smug little bugger.



So I have decided to embark on a rigorous training schedule that involves playing this game at least once a day until I am no older than 45. I only pick that age, because I think that's the age I will actually be when I finally manage to get my score and age equal.

Oh, and although this isn't really a formal game review, I would like to give this game a score of 1 out of 10. Why the hell not, if it can bash me after only five minutes of play, I feel like I should be allowed to return the favor. (Okay, I don't really give it a low score, it's actually really fun... And if it does help me sharpen up the old brain reflexes then it will be well worth the $25 I paid for it!)

One million is a fairly large number. For example, if I had a million pennies, I'd be pretty pleased, if I had a million dimes I'd be ecstatic, and if I had a million twenties I'd be drunk. One million seems to be an almost mystical number in North American culture... You are a success when you become a millionaire, if you sell a million albums you have gone platinum.

If you can sell a million pixels at a dollar a piece, then you are my hero. Well, I can proudly present my hero in the making. About four months ago a lad by the name of Alex decided he needed money for University. He brainstormed for a while and came up with an idea, he would sell one million pixels of screen space. So he put up a web page that had a 1000 x 1000 area segmented into 10x10 blocks. He then began selling those tiny ten by ten blocks for one hundred dollars each.

If you had explained the idea to me four months ago, when the site first started, I would have called it crazy. But now, fours months later, Alex is $800,000 richer, and well on his way to making that million. If you want, have a peek at the page for yourself, it's a crazy jumble of tiny ads with a few bigger ones scattered around it, but the Million Dollar Home Page is truly a sight to behold.

Now, another "Millions" site that I have fallen in love with lately is MillionsOfGames.com. A clever little site that lets you "MOG" games you find on the web, allowing other people to view and play these games. The great part is that the games are all just linked, so the original creator just gets more traffic to their site out of it. MOG gets traffic as well, which helps their advertising revenue. Although so far MOG only has about three thousand games, it is growing every day, with no signs of slowing down.

It has now been almost exactly one month since I received my new logo from Ric Nicholls. It has been a very busy month, but somehow I managed to avoid sleep long enough to finish the new design based around this terrific logo. I hope you like it!

Of course, I already miss the syringe from the old site. That's a tough thing for me to admit, in some ways, because I love change, and I HATE needles. So for me to say that I miss a needle is a little bizarre. Maybe I'll try to work it into this design somehow.

I have been working on a tutorial for flash developers that shows how to build a basic high score system, and I created a tiny little game to go along with it. You can find it here:

Play CatchIt!

There isn't really much to it, the cool part is going to be the high score installer and score table generator. But even still, it is better than getting kicked repeatedly in the teeth. Unless you enjoy getting kicked repeatedly in the teeth, then this game is just asinine.

Oh, and one other thing, I have begun working on a quiz game, and I'm quite proud of the design I did for it. Have a peek at the development site, there isn't much to it, but I think it's kind of neat.

Now, normally I don't really worry about the environment. I'd just like to start off by saying that although I recognize that global warming is a terrible issue, and I really think there is more everyone could be doing to help out, the environment in the places where I hang out tends to always be the same... Sunny, warm, clean, pixellated, with a 50% chance of armageddon.

Last night I saw something that really got me thinking, however. My wife and I watched a little bit of the big Hollywood special, "Earth to America". The event featured dozens of high profile celebrities performing skits about the environment, health, and of course plenty of delightful Bush bashing. We watched for a while as they explained the evils of our reliance on fossil fuels, lowering greenhouse emissions, and fun stuff like MSG in our foods. Mostly it was a fairly dull affair, except for Steve Martin playing the banjo and Eric Idle doing a live performance with Tom Hanks and Steve Martin of the Meaning of Life song.

We were just about to shut it off when it suddenly got so funny I could barely tear my eyes away from it. It wasn't really laugh-out-loud funny, it was mostly a sort of funny on par with finding out that your local minister has been snorting cocaine off stripper's tits every Saturday night and then stumbling in to give his sermons still ramped up to the eyeballs on crystal meth.

You see, at the first commercial break I was urged to purchase not one, not two, but THREE sport utility vehicles and two different types of artery clogging fast foods. The commercial break ended and the comedians came back on and explained that the earth was in dire danger, the Kyoto accord may be our only hope for survival, and of course several Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes jokes also ensued. The next commercial break was more of the same. Bright red gas guzzling sports cars... Thin, attractive, athletic people consuming trple burgers with bacon and cheese.

Now, as I said, I'm not an activist by any stretch of the imagination. But this just bugged me. If you are going to go to all the trouble to put together a show about saving the planet, shouldn't you be trying to avoid selling more of this crap? To me this is roughly the equivalent of them having commercials for heroin during that new show Intervention, or ads for the local Dinosaur Exhibit during your creationist Christian broadcast. I'm not saying that any of these things is wrong or right, it's just not a great idea to advertise for items that represent the very thing you are trying to stamp out.

Well, that's my two cents worth. I'll let you get back to playing some games, but first, why don't you head over to Jack Thompson's web site and take every word to heart. I strongly encourage you to do your best to have not just violent video games banned, but every single one of those filthy games removed from shop shelves before the Christmas rush allows them to corrupt our planet.

It has been many years since I was in school, and even when I was in school I mostly just doodled, cracked jokes, and dreamed up creative ways to cut class and go play Bubble Bobble.

So when I realized that I needed to start getting certifications to prove to the world, and especially our clients, that I actually knew stuff... Well, the prospect was pretty damn scary. Still, last December I bought a book and settled down to studying for my Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Developer exam. It was a bleak day when I walked out of that first exam with the realization that one book and a positive attitude just wouldn't cut it. What I needed was more practical experience with Flash.

So I started digging through flash and trying to make use of everything I could, I opened up everyone else's source I could find and started answering questions in forums... Especially the questions I didn;t know the answers to. That was the best study tool of all. Open up the forums over at FlashKit, GotoAndPlay, or Actionscript.org and then start reading the questions that other people have posted. If you don't know the answer to the question, spend some time figuring it out. Even if you don't eventually hit upon the answer, it's still good practice.

Well, after all that I finally got the balls to go back and re-take the exam today. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the class clown is now a certified Macromedia professional.

"And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made."
- Exodus 32:35

I know, I know... Two posts in a day. Still, I couldn't help myself. Although I'm not a religious man by nature, recent developments have gotten me thinking about the wrath of God. Assuming that God exists, which is possible, then as our online worlds get more and more complex are we risking His wrath? While yesterday I might have said no, today is a brand new day.

I submit into evidence the recent plague that has seethed into existence in the World of Warcraft. Basically, to sum it up, the developers at Blizzard created a monster who could infect players with a spell that would drain their lives. The spell could spread from player to player, wiping out a party in a very short span of time. It was assumed that the players would either kill the monster and recover, or they would die in that lonely dungeon. They assumed wrong. People started popping up in town infected with an affliction known as "Corrupted Blood". Soon even the non-player characters in town were infected. Players fled the cities, hoping to escape the dawn of this red plague. The game masters tried to quarantine the infected areas to no avail.

If you want, there is some media associated with this story over at Bit-Tech. But it does raise the question, if there is a God, how does he feel about us creating entire universes of our own, populated with pixellated people who worship false idols.

Hell, even if you set God aside in this issue there is still the question of whether online worlds are evolving into viable digital ecosystems. If we start giving digital creatures the ability to reproduce, and the desire to stay alive, how long before they start adapting on their own? I know that it seems like a long way off, but then again, a plague tearing apart virtual citizens without it being planned by its developers seemed pretty far off yesterday...

So I recently decided to try a trial of Ryzom, and I have to say I'm really impressed. The only problem is, I think I've jumped on the bandwagon on this one a year too late. Still, with the release of their expansion pack Ryzom Ring on the way, I think it might be worth sticking it out for a bit. Ryzom ring features the ability for players to completely script and control a small section of the game, much like what Neverwinter allowed, except in a persistent online world. It sounds exciting. (Okay, yes, yes, I realize that that is almost exactly the entire purpose of Second Life, but Ryzom just has such a unified and distinct sense of style I can't help but prefer it.)

I've recommended this game before on my blog, but didn't buy it until now. Jets 'N Guns is a great shareware title that I recommend you at least play the free trial for. It's fast, furious, mindless entertainment. Good for blasting away a few minutes here and there.

Download Jents 'n Guns

I really want to get going on my own shareware projects, I have recently read several great articles on the subject and it has me pretty hyped. Hopefully over the next while I will be able to set aside some time to just delve deep into development on my games, I'd love to start marketing them and hopefully breaking even at some point...

I'm not sure how long this post will be. I decided to post using my PSP today, and so far this has taken me about ten minutes.

Still if this works I will be suitably impressed.

I don't think a month has gone by where I haven't read an article somewhere or another that related to the death of innovation in the gaming industry. In fact, I have probably obsessed over it more than once myself. But after some deep introspection and about five hours of Wipeout Pure I have come to the conclusion that innovation is highly overrated.

Don't get me wrong, I love innovative things. When I go out to dinner I try to order something new off the menu. When I go to buy games I sometimes just pick up a title I've never heard of. But a lot of the time I don't want to try crazy new things, I just want to be distracted.

Sure, there are a zillion real time strategy games, and there are about fifty zillion first person shooter games, but I don't see a problem with that. It's the same as with food, if every restaurant tried to serve new and unique foods where the hell would I get a hamburger when I needed one? If every single television show tried to be Twin Peaks what the hell would I do when I needed a cheesy sitcom?

So it is with great shame that I admit that when I got my PSP I overlooked Wipeout Pure, shunning it with a look of contempt. I turned up my nose and thought, "Been there, done that." But when I saw it was on for $40 at Future Shop I broke down and grabbed it. And I'm glad. As soon as I started barreling along those tracks I realized what I had loved about Wipeout XL when I first played it on the original Playstation. Solid controls, good learning curve, fun tracks, Pure has it all. The reason I played the original was because it was fun, this one is no different, it doesn't need to be. Sure, they added a binch of stuff to keep it fresh, but it's a formula that works, and sometimes I think people need to relax and realize that sometimes there is comfort in a certain level of repetition.

In school I was a doodler. I would sit there in class and draw for hours. I would draw anything I could think of. For a while I even had a series of creatures I called Furballs, who were essentially fuzzy smurfs that hated everything. I also drew a lot of stick men. Hundreds upon hundreds of stick men who would ravage the paper world they lived in daily, leaving little more than scorched paper in their wake.

Some things never change, kids still draw stick men, and it would seem that stick men still have an unquenchable appetite for carnage. What has changed is the format. Now instead of loose leaf paper, stick men shred virtual worlds in highly stylized flash animations. Today I would like to pay tribute to some of my favorite animations.

Several years ago I got my first taste of stickmen on the web with Xiao Xiao, a truly classic series that really raised the bar for stick animators everywhere. More recently I noticed the Blue 2 team, who have created the delicious "Unglued".

In addition, many games are being created using nothing more than stick men. The challenging "N" was released not too long ago, and it is pretty fun once you get into it. Another fun little time killer is Bowman, which is simply a nice archery game that is as addictive as it is simple.

Although a lot of people may not see the beauty in a couple of stick people ripping each others heads off, I actually think that this is great artistic exercise. It helps artists get a feel for how things should look when they are moving. Plus, it's fun to make, and fun to watch. Is it art? Maybe, maybe not. But love it or hate it, stickmen aren't going anywhere for a while.

I'm heading over to Edmonton's annual Anime festival in a couple hours, and I must say that my inner nerd is jumping for joy. I started going to the festival about ten years ago, and at that time it was just a couple of guys who had commandeered several rooms at a local college to use the projectors to show anime films on. Although at its root that is what the festival is still about, it has grown a hundred times in magnitude and diversity since then. If you head over to the Animethon site you will see that this year they have karaoke, skits, video game contests, and all manner of other fun going on.

Okay, everyone else is ranting and raving about this, I'm certainly not going to sit quiet about it. On the off chance you haven't heard about it, Rockstar Games is currently going through a bit of a scandal. Parents and politicians are up in arms because a clever modder released a hack that allows you to play a sex mini game in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Apparently the point of the mini-game is to sexually satisfy both yourself AND your partner.

That's it, it's fully confirmed. The entire North American continent is well and truly fucked up. Parents are afraid that their children will see this while playing GTA:SA and become corrupted! And I can understand why! I certainly wouldn't want my son to have his cop-killing, pedestrian crushing, fast-food munching rampage interrupted with a SEX scene! And I sure as hell don't want my child to think that sex is supposed to be mutually enjoyable, I much prefer the sex that IS in the game right now. Good, wholesome, old fasioned, "pick up a prostitute, take her into the alley, watch the car rock, and then kick her out into the street" sex.

Now, part of the controversy is because Rockstar claimed that the content that is unlocked in the game was actually added by a hacker, and that the game doesn't actually contain that mini-game on its own. Well, if you head over to Gamespot you can see that this just isn't true. My guess is that when confronted with the information that someone had unlocked this questionable content, the rep from Rockstar games was so busy laughing that they couldn't think of anything to say but a total denial.

America, wake up. Lets face it, there is so much questionable content in this game that if you have a problem with the one bit that actually allows you to bring a bit of joy into another character's life, then obviously something messed you up WAY before video games came along. Hell, they have it right in Europe! Over there they heard about this and said, "So what? It doesn't change the game's rating. It was an adult game before, it's an adult game now."

That's what gets me about North American culture. There are places where you can get more prison time for certain consensual sexual acts than you can for drunk driving, or for beating someone nearly to death. Consensual sex in a video game should be a non-issue. Why does this need to be a fresh controversy? I can turn on the television at almost any time of day and see worse things than are in this game, hell, I can read Shakespeare and get just as much blood and violence.

On the bright side I can almost guarantee that all this fresh media attention is going to help sell GTA:SA over the next few months. In fact, with GTA:SA having been recently released for X-Box, I wouldn't be surprised if you could track a hefty transfer from the Rockstar marketing department accounts to the accounts of a certain game modder...

It has been quite some time since my last entry, but I have a very good excuse. In the last month I have gotent married, gone on vacations, and begun development of a new flash game.

The wedding was fantastic, the honeymoon was equally fantastic, and the game is a wreck. Okay, it's not really a wreck, but it is certainly coming along much more slowly than I had hoped. The problem is that I am studying again to re-take my Flash Developer Certification exam, so I still don't have much time to dedicate to game development. Somehow, I still manage to find plenty of time to TALK about game development, though.

For example, I managed to start a development diary for the game I am working on, which you can read by going to http://gameofrunes.blogspot.com.

And I also managed to track down a couple of games that I really want to play. One is just a quick little flash game that I really enjoy. It's called "the Mosquito Project" and is developed by Tiny Mantis. I highly recommend you head over there and check it out.

The second game is called Fate, and is basically a Diablo rip-off. Wait a second, I take that back. It's strange, for some reason I had mentally labelled Fate as a rip-off, but really that is a totally unfair assessment. Calling Fate a Diablo rip-off is really like calling Half Life 2 a Quake rip-off. From what I played of the demo, Fate is just an enjoyable dungeon romp with quests, cool equipment, nice environments, and a pet. Anyway, their site is over at www.playfate.com, it's worth a look just because it shows that the Wild Tangent technology isn't dead.

Recently I saw a post on the FlashKit forums that got me thinking about intellectual property. The basic premise is this: Some time ago one of the forum members, Kakihara, posted a game idea with an incomplete demo. The game concept was generally well received, but Kakihara never really followed the idea up. Recently he was browsing the web and found a game that seemed suspiciously like the one he had posted.

Okay, I'm going out on a limb here, but this post really addresses some issues that I find I have been mulling over a lot lately.

First of all, the issue of intellectual property. The world is rapidly advancing, and it seems like with each new advance people are trying to lock things down for personal gain as much as possible.

I remember there used to be a saying, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." But these days it seems like the saying should be changed to, "Litigation is the sincerest reply to mimicry."

It's a strange situation. As we create more and more labour saving devices, the value of our work actually decreases. Thus, more people move into the idea industry, which in turn saturates it and reults in lower value for ideas. To offset this, people generalize their ideas and lock them down more to allow for greater gain from a lesser commodity.

It has grown to the point where disputes over virtual goods are getting bloody. Take the recent case of the Chinese Gamer who was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing someone in a dispute over vitual goods. The item in question never existed, it's value is purely in the minds of the gamers.

It makes me wonder if perhaps there is a market for virtual insurance. Players pay me a certain amount of money every month, and if something happens to their account or their goods, we buy them a new account or a comparable item off eBay.

Crap, now that I've said that, someone is going to do it, and I'll have to sue them.

Okay, you've probably already read about this somewhere else, but just in case you haven't, the big rumor floating around the internet right now is that the Ninetndo Revolution may feature 3D projection.

This would certainly be a revolution, but the problem is, is anyone ready for that revolution? The game production pipeline is just now reaching it's stride with 3D games, are they ready for the jump to full 3D?

Well, as far as I can see that depends on a lot of issues. For one thing, it will completely change the way we look at level design. No longer will you be able to count on the player being able to view the scene from a specific angle. Of course, this is only if they don't require glasses. I think if Nintendo had actually come up with a way to project like they had in Star Wars on board the Millenium Falcon (the chess-like game) then I'd be really impressed. But as it stands I doubt that it could possibly be that extensive.

What I like is the idea tht Nintendo is still trying to push the boundaries of how people play. Sony has given a bit of a try at expanding the way we look at games, but despite the Eye Toy, it seems like Sony mostly content to just ride the wave of cash that rolls in from sequel after sequel.

Now, another thing I found interesting is an article on Christian video games. Although I'm not Christian, this strikes me as a largely untapped market. And I'm ot trying to exploit it too much, I just think that if the need is there it seems like a great way of making money with much less guilt. Sure beats cranking out the next Grand Theft Auto (now with innovative bestiality feature!). Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Grand Theft Auto, but a part of me still recognizes that the game is pure evil. So if someone offered me fifty thousand a year to make Christian games, or the same amount to work on the next Doom, which would I pick? I'd like to say that it would be the former, but who knows...

Last night I solved the second part of .Hack. .Hack is a terrific series of games published by Bandai that explores the adventures of a boy who has lost a friend to an online game. The boy, Kite, begins by playing in an online game known as "The World" and after a short while one of his friends drops out of the game and Kite discovers his friend has fallen into a coma. I love this game, I think it plays well, has good characters and a great premise. I also like the fact that the game comes in four parts. Although this means that once I have worked through the game I will have spent four times as much as a regular game, it also means I get to experience something four times that I never get with the majority of games I play... An ending.

The night before last I finally finished Resident Evil 4. I haven't finished two games in two nights since I was a kid, and I have to say it reminded me of one of the great joys of gaming. It's odd to think that over the last few years the trend has moved away from solving games to just playing them. Grand Theft Auto, Asheron's Call, The Sims, and now World of Warcraft... All of these are games that I have played without any intent to finish them, and in some cases the games don't even have an ending.

I think that one of the reasons I actually enjoy World of Warcraft as mush as I do is the simple factthat the quests are structured in such a way that each one feels like the end to a small game. You get a tiny in-game cutscene, a reward, and then you go on your merry way towards the next little quest. With most of the other MMORPG's I have played I never got that sense. For example, I played Anarchy Online for quite some time and although it had a quest generator, the quests never felt complete. Since every quest was random, they all sort of flowed together.

The strange thing that occurs to me, is that maybe I am just being old fashioned, or maybe I'm just clinging to archaic rules of play that no longer apply to the gaming world. When children get together to play, there are times when the game has a defined ending and winner, as in the case of games like baseball and football, but then there are also times when the whole point of the game is just to kill some time and have some fun, like tag. Who am I to say that because tag doesn't have an ending it isn't a great game? Hell, come to think of it, if I ever managed to find the time to hang out with my friends and one of them suggested a game of tag I'd probably be so excited I'd wet my pants... Just like the last time I played, I guess.

When it all boils down to it I guess that both game types are perfectly valid and enjoyable, and that maybe I'm just getting down on open-ended games because I'm still riding the high of finishing those two games. Still, it just feels like open-ended games never seem to provide that final moment of pride where you sit back, watch the credits, and sigh.

Today I would like to talk about online etiquette. Though I have no concrete proof, it is my theory that etiquette evolved to prevent people from battering each other to death in restaurants. Shortly after God created our race, or almost immediately after we evolved into a chef-like state (whichever floats your Ark), people began gathering in public places to have sit down meals together. After a time of brutal trial and error, people learned which was their salad spear, and which was their raw bloody giblet spear. An age of politeness and general well-being followed, during which there was a sheepskin napkin on every lap at dinner, and everyone excused themselves when they got up to leave the firepit.

Fast forward to today. Somewhere along the line many of our social graces have been discarded as either cumbersome or just downright silly. But in the new electronic age rules of etiquette are evolving daily, right beneath our noses. Last night as I was trekking through a dungeon with a band of cut-throat adventurers, I discovered a few of these rules. In order to give the non-gamers in the audience a little background, when you are out adventuring with a group in World of Warcraft and a rare item pops up, eveyone is forced to roll a die to see who the item goes to. I thought that was it, item pops up, I roll, if I win it, I win it, if not, better luck next time. I was so very wrong...

Here are the additional rules I discovered:
1. If the item that pops up to be rolled on isn't really useful to your class, you should probably pass on rolling on it. This will make your team-mates more inclined to let you have that shiny new axe you have been hoping to find when it comes up.

2. If everyone passes on the item, it isn't just "up for grabs". Apparently everyone else types /roll into the chat window and the person with the highest roll gets the item.

3. If you come across a chest, everyone does a /roll to see who gets that, too. Apparently it doesn't just go to whoever is the fastest or sneakiest... =)

I was fortunate enough to meet a great group last night who taught me all these rules, and who even abided by them. It was terrific, not only were we a highly effecient dungeon sweeping machine, but every member of the group was polite and willing to give up the treasure that the others wanted. It was in that moment that I finally saw the appeal of MMORPG's. Five players, working together, joking, and acting as one, in that dungeon I learned what makes these games so addictive, the feeling that everything you are doing is right. So for that I would like to thank Prior, Taamas, Unfred, and Sholeke. If anyone wants to see the screenshots from last night, I posted them at www.egoant.com/wow.

Last week I got up at my usual time, dropped my fiancee off at work, and since I had an extra hour before I was supposed to start work, I zipped over to the local Future Shop to see the PSP launch. I expected to see line-ups, news crews, and plenty of salivating gamers. My experience was much like the ones experienced all over North America... I got there and there were about six or seven people there, there was one guy from a local radio station, and all in all it was a pretty laid back affair. There were paper signs tacked up around the outside of the store that said, "Wrist band holders line up here", but nobody was bothering to issue wrist bands. I waited until they opened and made my way up to the display. I picked out a game and went to the counter to grab one of the machines, and then I stopped.

The numbers spun through my mind like a slot machine. Whirrrrrr...... Clunk. $299 for the device. Whirrrrr........ Clunk. $100 for to games. Whirrrrrr..... Clunk. Another $100 for a decent memory card, so I can use the media capabilities.

I stopped by the store today, less than a week later, and they still have some in stock, and now that the initial frenzy has passed there's just no way I can justify paying $500. Sanity, unfortunately, has prevailed. Sounds to me like the release has been poorly received all over.

Oh, and as a bit of comedy I noticed the other day that Everquest 2 has an interesting promotion going on with Pizza Hut. Apparently if you type /pizza in game you can order pizza without ever having to leave the game! The only problem, of course, is that you still have to get up to answer the door. Maybe I should start a specialized nursing service for people who have lost the use of their limbs because of Everquest. The nurses could tend to these Everquest Social Amputees, answering the door and feeding them when the pizza arrives, and changing their depends every so often.

Today has been extremely painful for me, both as a nerd and as a human being. From a nerd perspective I have spent the day struglling to get a couple scripts to work and couldn't less impressed. I finally figured out what was happening with a script I was making that is supposed to merge two graphics in an application I am working on, and then promptly discovered that there might not be anything I can do about it. Then I ran into a number of issues trying to get an include file to work with a Blogger template. In fact, I will be nothing short of amazed if this post ever even sees the light of day.

What I have been doing to keep myself sane is listening to some of the amazingly fun tracks that are currently online at Bob Ricci's site. In fact, I recommend you head over there and give a couple of his tracks a listen, they are funny and a great way to kill some time and bandwidth.

In addition, I have been trying to come up with a way to finish several of the games I have been building, but every time I get home and get in front of the computer inspiration takes a nap, and I end up playing World of Warcraft for another couple hours. And to top it all off, my arms are killing me! I tried to do a fairly aggressive workout earlier in the week, and might have overdone it. Now, if you've ever met me you know that "overdoing it" for me is lifting about, ummmm, ten pounds. I am not a strong looking guy, and this is one case where looks really aren't deceiving, I'd put good money on your grandma being able to bench press more than me.

So here I am, physically battered, creatively humbled, and technologically impaired. And yet somehow I'm actually in a pretty good mood. I just feel like a break is right around the corner, just lurking, waiting to spring and make my day, or eat me... Either way works for me!

Several exciting new developments this week for hobbyist developers, and an interesting item for all the gamers in the crowd who have ever heard, "Shut off that machine and go make your bed!"

I guess, after saying that, I had best start with the bed bit. This week I read an interesting article that claims that making your bed is BAD. Maybe even more than bad, possibly evil. Apparently dust mites absolutely LOVE a well made bed. When you tuck in the sheets and tidy the whole thing up you are essentially trapping moisture in the bed, which makes it a fertile breeding ground for the little buggers. But wait, there's still hope! You can save yourself by not making your bed! Don't believe me? Read the full article over at the BBC! Hmmm, it's a good thing I'm not completely crazy, or I'd be sleeping in a sterilized plastic hammock after reading that.

All right, on to fun development stuff. FPS Creator was released on Feb. 24th and I'm only just now getting around to mentioning it. It seems like a great way to break into game development if you have little to no experience with coding. In addition, it seems like a great tool for anyone who is more concerned with creating 3D models, animations, and textures. Essentially FPS Creator lets you click together your own game without too much hassle. I gave the demo a try and enjoyed it a lot, it's a relatively hassle free way to kill some time and make something cool in the process.

What REALLY makes me stand up and take notice about FPS Creator, however, is the fact that it was created using DarkBasic Pro. I had always felt that some really cool stuff could be accomplished with DB Pro, but until FPS Creator came along I wasn't really sure what those cool things could be.

Okay, one more thing about FPS creator and then I swear I'll move on to another topic... I just wanted to note that if you want to earn a little extra $$$ apparently they are running a screenshot competition over at the FPS site, and first prize is $250.

All right, and the last thing I would like to do is celebrate PopCap's decision to release their framework source code and start up a developer program. I downloaded their tools and it looks like a pretty great thing, even though I'm still completely lost in it. Still, I think this could really pay off for them in the long run, as I'm sure there are a lot of developers who would love to get a piece of the PopCap pie, and at the same time make PopCap a little extra bling in licensing.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the next generation, and in a lot more ways than one. Firstly you have the next generation of consoles. Which of course has been on the forefront of my mind for quite some time. It's a big thing to consider. Sometime over the next year or two three new machines are going to be released that will consume hundreds of my dollars, and a great number of hours of my time. XBox2, PS3, and the Ninetendo Revolution all loom on the horizon.

But more than that I have been considering the next generation of gamers. This past weekend I had the opportunity to sit down with Ethan, a soon to be relative who is currently 11 years old. He's an avid gamer, and I have to say I enjoyed getting a new perspective on the industry through his eyes.

Firstly, retro gaming isn't dead, and it isn't something that is confined to old guys like myself. At 11 years old he was telling me how much he enjoyed playing Dungeon Keeper 2, which is a fantastic game that was releaseed when Ethan was only about 5 years old. When describing it he didn't even say the dreaded, "The graphics are old and crappy, but..." which is used to describe so many retro games.

Ethan also has a DS, and from the sounds of it he's a Nintendo kid through and through. It makes me think that Microsoft and Playstation might be putting all their eggs in one basket. True, the over 18 gamer crowd is where the majority of the money is these days, but if we ever have another industry crash then it will be a good thing for Nintendo if four or five years from then the name on all the kids lips is still Nintendo.

Finally, and certainly not least of the things I have been cosidering about the next generation, is the possibility of my OWN next generation. Will my wedding just a few short months away the idea of having an Aaron v2.0 has been creeping into my mind more and more frequently. Although I'm not quite ready to stop upgrading the original Aaron yet, I have to admit that the idea has some merit. Unfortunately the child won't be old enough to farm gold and trade materials for me in World of Warcraft for quite a few years, but I guess we could find other things to do with our time until then.

It's strange how these things creep up on you. I have been adamant all my life that I was 100% sure that I wanted children. Lately that number has dropped to around 75%, and the drop has happened primarily over the last six months. At this rate in a little over 18 months I will be adamant I need a child unless I do something now to curb the rapid degeneration of my anti-child convictions.

As I recall, at one point my blog was referred to as, "an interesting read, but a really ugly site". Today I have decided to recitfy that situation somewhat. So, TA-DA! Brand new funk all over the page.

Hopefully tonight I can finish re-implementing the comment system, and then I'll try to add all of the previous comments. I think I'll leave out all the spam comments, however. As well I hope to crank out a sizable post tonight, as there have been a LOT of things lately going on in the gaming world that I think need to be said, even if nobody is really even around to listen.

I recently realized that like many other people in North America I am completely obsessed with the underdog. Not the underdog these to appear in the Saturday morning cartoon, but just the underdog in general. The games that I generally prefer seem to be low-budget games that spring forth from the loins of little-known developers. But the truth of the matter is that it isn't just video game developers that get me, it's almost any small company.

The company I work for is only about ten people strong. And there are no more than five staff members in many of the shops that I refer to as my "favorites". It's probably one of the ways in which I consider myself somewhat old-fashioned. I like knowing the people in the places where I shop. Wait for it, because here comes the pimping.

So this next link is for all you pet people out there. It has come to my attention that many of you are letting your pets run around naked. I simply cannot abide by this behavior. It starts with your pets, and then next thing you know the craze will catch on with some kid, shortly thereafter everyone will be running around naked. That isn't the part that scares me. The part that scares me is that eventually it may become a widespread epidemic, and I swear to God that if my white trash next-door neighbors drop even one article of clothing because you refuse to put a jacket on your poodle the be using me as a case study in how video games make people violent. So please, just visit Paws for Effect and we can avoid the whole messy subject.

All right now that I have the pimping out-of-the-way, I can get on with game related news. Most of the news revolves around the fact that I rented Resident Evil 4. Now I must own it. It must be mine. Although I don't know if there's any replay value in the game, I have to admit that the bit of game that I did get to play was truly exceptional. It reminded me of when I first played the original Resident Evil, there's just something innately satisfying in the act of dispatching the undead. In fact it may be that the undead are the perfect villains. You can kill as many as you like, without appearing racist, sexist, or any other sort of “ist” you can think of. Although some people may object to the any violence in the act, there aren't many people who would give you a lot of flak for showing up at their house with a shotgun and blasting the hell out of any zombies who might be hanging out there.

My friend Lee is coming over shortly, and hopefully at that point the rest of the day will become a blur of high production Anime, caffeinated beverages, and insults slung between rounds of fighting games.

42 is a pretty great number. A lot of people know it because of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In addition I was born in '73, and both the 7 and the 3 divide quite nicely into 42. Oh, and one other thing, today I finally grabbed a 42 in 1 game cartridge for my Famicom. I picked up the Famicom quite some time ago at a garage sale and just simply haven't had the time or money to grab a game to test it out. So today I decided to head out to NexWave games here in Edmonton to see if they could help me out. Much to my surprise they had an Apollo 42 in 1 cartridge in stock, which is perfect because it has a LOAD of games on it, plus it's red, which means it will look good sitting in the Famicom... Hey, lets face it, I can't play these things every day like I used to, they have to look good on the shelf for most of the time!

Okay, so now that I'm back on track, there are a couple other things that I have been sort of holding in check and am ready to let go. First of all is the fact that at this year's E3 they are supposedly going to have all three next generation consoles playable. I would like to take a moment and say that as exciting as this is to me, obviously none of the Big 3 (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) obviously has any consideration whatsoever for my feelings. I'm quite certain that by now someone who works with each company has read my blog at least once and knows that I can't afford three new consoles. I'm still trying to find a way to get a damned X-Box without breaking the bank! Not to mention the Nintendo DS. My best friend has one, needless to say this puts me at a serious disadvantage in an all-out nerdfest.

On the bright side, however, my own games seem to be back on track. I recently commissioned an artist to help out with Xeno Fighter. His name is Ric Nicholls and I really think his style will be a tremendous asset when it comes time to launch Fighter. Now, you have to understand that when I say "tremendous asset" that is simply corporate-speak. The translation into everyday speak is, "he kicks a lot of fucking ass and will make my game brutally good".

And, on a final note, I would like to point out to all the unbelievers out there that it is still possible for the little guys to hit the big league. Case in point: Puzzle Pirates. This game completely flies in the face of conventional online role playing games. It is cutesey, the graphics are all 2D isometric, and as far as I know there are almost exactly zero rats to kill at level one. (That isn't to say that there aren't any rats on board all those pirate ships, however.) Despite all this, the game has the one key element that many big budget games lack. Fun. And for once this has actually gotten some notice. Apparently Ubisoft has picked up the rights to distribute Puzzle Pirates at retail. This could mean a big boost for the little company who built the game, Three Rings Design.

Crap. Did I say that that last paragraph was going to be my final note? It isn't. I haven't written anything in a long time, okay? Bear with me here. My absolute finalest, mostest last note is this... If you haven't already head over to Rake in Grass and download the trial version of Jets 'n Guns. It is quite simply one of the best side scrolling shooters to grace the PC since, er, well, I guess since they released MAME and let you play all those really great arcade shooters.

Ugh. I just thought of something else I wanted to talk about. Guess I'll save it for tomorrow. Sorry, I was just so excited to actually have the time and energy to post anything I guess I flew off the handle a bit.

In order to celebrate the release of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 I've decided to dictate my next couple of Blogger entries. Although I realize that at the moment my voice file is a little bit rough, it's still kind of fun to just sit back, relax, and actually watch the words appear as I speak to myself. Anyone who's spent any length of time with me knows that this is pretty much my preferred method of operation, I do so love to hear the sound of my own voice.

Yesterday a couple friends and I decided to go to West Edmonton Mall and just hang out for a little while, and then watch Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. While the movie was pretty cool, the thing that really stole the show yesterday with the Nintendo booth that was set up in the mall. There, in all its glory, was the new Nintendo DS. Like greedy children we all snapped one up, all of us except for Lisa, when it comes to new technology, chivalry really is dead. We then spent a few minutes experimenting with the picture chat feature. Immediately after that we all jumped in for a couple rounds of Metroid.

I began to feel the shakes, here it was right in my hands, how had this wonderful device managed to sneak up on me? One of the people working in the Nintendo booth approached us and asked which one of us thought we were a Nintendo expert. Everyone immediately looked at me. Of course, this is when the posturing started, I stuck out my chest, straightened my back just a little bit, looked him dead in the eye and said, "I guess that's me". 20 seconds later, the posturing stopped. The first question that he asked me was, "what is Mario's last name?" And with that question, I dropped a little Koopa in my pants.

At this point I'd like to point out that I don't actually believe that I know everything. In fact I'm fairly certain that there are at least four things that I don't know. It just so happened, however, that this was one of those four things. Immediately behind me some guy piped up, "Mario Mario." I turned to him and laughed, as if he'd made some gigantic joke. Apparently the joke was on me. Mario does in fact have a last name, and it is in fact Mario. Whoops, there I go bumped down another notch.

In the end, I did manage to score myself one of the T-shirts that were available as prizes. At that point, though, it was really more of a pity question than anything. I'd missed my big shot, now I think he just wanted to give me a T-shirt sought to dictate get me out of his hair.

Today had a quick look at the Nintendo DS web site. I also had a quick look at the EB Games web site. From what I can tell all of the games that I really wanna play for the Nintendo DS are still quite some time off. Although that might not prevent me from breaking down and purchasing in the next couple of months, it should hold me offer at least a week.

Well, I must say that it's actually gone pretty well using Dragon to create my post today. I have to confess the thing that I love is that it's really easy on my hands, and I am getting to that age where I'm going to have to decide which I prefer, typing or playing video games. If you're reading this post, you probably know how that decision's going to turn out.

Recently I have been combing the internet in search of artists. I knew that somewhere out there there must be a place where I can go and browse the works of different artists and then select one who I liked. It was also a requirement that whoever I selected would enjoy pimping themselves out for cash, as it doesn't do me any good if I like the artist, but the artist doesn't like my money. (Unless the artist just loves to work for free, but in some cases I actually prefer to pay them, i's a lot easier to impose deadlines when there is a paycheque hanging in the balance!)

In my search I found a site with all that and more. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the best site on the internet: www.DeviantArt.com. Okay, so maybe it isn't the best site on the internet, but it is pretty damned cool. Tons of artwork, a real sense of community, plus easy access to see who is available for commissioned art and who isn't? Oh! And add to that a female artist who has bondage pics of the superhero who I identify with most? Come on, the site has got to be good! After just a few short minutes on my lunch break I found this site: www.mhoefener.tk. Michelle is a very gifted artist who has terrific rates for portraits and custom art. I guess I actually shouldn't be doing advertising for her, now that I think about it, because if I decide to have her do any work for me I'll want her schedule to be clear. Okay, forget what I said, she's terrible, she sucks, don't click on the links above they will burn out your eyes.

Now, on to gaming news. I would like to start out by sending a quick message to Sony. The message is this: "Fuck you, Everquest, I have managed thus far to elude your evil clutches and you aren't going to lure me in with beautiful graphics and voice overs. End of story, now get away from me you whore."

Hmmmm, nope. Didn't work, I still want it. That's what I hate about games like Everquest 2, they are like Compulsion Seeking Missiles (CSM's). They know that I want to obsess over something, and they provide a perfect environment in which to do so. With Half Life 2 hitting the shelves here in Canada today I should be able to resist the lure of EQ2, but the truth is that something inside me seems to need that online fix, and it is that need that the CSM's lock onto. It all basically boils down to this, I hate the levelling up process, but I love fighting monsters. In fact, now that I think about it, it almost seems like all the things I hate about MMORPG's are the exact same things I crave. Does that make me a lunatic? Yeah, I think so.

Whenever I find myself in a new city alone I like to play a little game with the universe. This game is one that I am quite certain will get me killed some day, and yet it's so much fun that I can't help myself. The game is pretty much the real life version of the one I play online every day.

What is this mysterious game? Is it Pac Man? Nope, somebody else plays real life Pac Man in the streets of New York... Is it Grand Theft Auto? Nope... That's more of a lifestyle than a game, although it could also potentially kill me. No, the game that I play is simply browsing. Just like every now and then I try to get myself completely lost on the internet, when I'm in a new city I try to get lost within it. I will pick a direction and begin walking. Any time something down a side street catches my eye, I change direction. Basically the game is based on exploration, with very few action elements built in.

Last time I played was in Calgary, and that's where I met Paul. Paul seemed like a nice guy who was a bit down on his luck. He asked me for some change to buy himself a hamburger and I decided that I might as well buy him dinner. So Paul and I walked over to the McDonalds and I bought him a two cheeseburger meal. Unfortunately, I couldn't join him, as I'm trying to cut down on foods that make me bleed from the eyeballs. (Okay, McDonalds food doesn't actually make my eyes bleed, but thinking that it does helps me to avoid those juicy delicious burgers.)

Anyway, Paul lives on the street, but he claimed to have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the X-Men. We talked for a bit and I wished I had more time, really. He moved around a lot, he said, but he rarely felt lost because he was guided by his father's spirit. That's the great thing sometimes about reality, it really can be stranger than fiction.

Recently I decided to try doing the same sort of thing on the internet and was pleasantly surprised by some of the great indie gamer sites I was able to find. First and foremost was GameTunnel. How this site has managed to elude me so far is actually a bit of a mystery. Although the site itself just seems to be starting to take off, it does have some good content and some sweet links in there, I highly recommend you go check it out. From the tunnel I linked off to the Indie Gamer Forums. So far from what I can see it seems like the forums have almost zero posts that contain the word SUXOR, so needless to say I'm damned impressed.

It's strange. I remember years ago that you could actually zip around from site to site seeing interesting things just using the "links" section of each site you visited. Now it seems like although everything is interconnected, it is connected in a much more nebulous way. You really have to have a goal in mind to get anywhere, and I find that a little bit sad. Still, I guess it's a small price to pay, we lost useful links, but we did get banner and pop-up ads! So it isn't all bad. Oh wait, it is.

Quite some time back I read an article about how the sale of used games can actually hurt the developers of the games. Unfortunately I haven't been able to track down the original article. I know, I know, where's my proof? What kind of a journalist am I? Well, I'm not a journalist, I'm a blogger, which means that I don't need facts, just an opinion and a couple of minutes to fill a web form with BS.

Anyway, the basic principle, as I recall, was this: With the sale of each brand new game, the developer gets a cut. But when that game comes back to the store on a trade-in the store is the only one who profits. With the high turnover rate of games and more and more trade-in offers appearing every day that means that it is often possible to get a game that has been released within the last week or two used for a good price.

More recently I read a blog written by Scott Miller, the owner of 3D Realms. The article discussed how game rentals may also be hurting the bottom line for game developers. I have posted a fairly extensive comment there about the subject, the gist of which is that perhaps game companies could provide the rental stores with trimmed down versions of the games for reduced rates. That would allow the players to get a decent amount of play value for their rental dollar while promoting sales by leaving players wanting more.

As an avid game player, and purchaser, I normally don't do the trade-in thing. Recently, however, I traded in three games to pick up Fire Emblem for my GBA. I also stopped by at the Video Game Trader in Calgary and picked up five PlayStation and Dreamcast games for $30. For six dollars a game I just couldn't resist. Of course, lord only knows if I will ever find time to actually play them, but they are all great games and should have been in my collection before now anyway.

So, I think the bottom line here, the point that I'm trying to get at, is that the video game industry baffles me almost daily. There is't a month that goes by that I don't see an article that claims that the industry is exploding with life and goodness, and then a little down the page will be an article about how yet another game company had crumbled. Obviously there are some major growing pains that need to be resolved, and finding a working business model that takes into account both rentals and used game sales will be very important. If anyone in the industry wants some crazy suggestions, drop me a line, but I can't guarantee that the suggestions will be possible. In fact, I can't even guarantee that the suggestions won't involve robotic fish, I have been known to be somewhat unstable around Halloween.

This past month has been crazy. Truly mental. But now that things are slowing down a little bit I am finally getting to do some of the things that I truly love to do. One of those things is digging up information on the games that I love, and of those games the one that continues to both amuse and vex me is Carnage Heart.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, and I imagine that's pretty much everyone, Carnage Heart was a mech based strategy game where you actually had to program the artificial intelligence of your units. It was a great game both because of its complexity and its unforgiving nature. Anyway, yesterday I remembered that there had been a different version released in Japan that I had never been able to track down.

I set out on a quest to locate it. I scoured every site and search engine I knew of and in the end discovered that not only was there another version for Playstation, but that Artdink had released a version for the PC that allowed you to play by e-mail! After a bit more searching I started to panic, my lunch break was approaching its end and as far as I could tell nobody had ever bought the game, and certainly nobody was selling it. I had totally missed the boat on a PC version of one of my favorite games. True, all the signage pointing to the boat had been in Japanese, but I find it remarkable that in the five years since this game was released on PC I hadn't even come across one reference to it. Are my nerdly powers waning? Or have I just been ignoring foreign markets, instead choosing to invest my gaming time in domestic fare?

I will look into it a bit more on my lunch break today, but in the meantime, if anyone out there knows where I could download or buy a copy of Carnage Heart: Second Zeus for PC, I want it, I need it, and it's very possible I will die without it.

I really miss play time. Not standard video game play time, I still get a bit of that, but creation play time. I miss having time where I can sit down with DarkBasic, or Flash, or whatever, and just try ridiculous shit. Things like, "Hmmm.... I wonder if I could make a video game where you make toast" or "What if every character in the game had a piece of toast instead of a head?" or maybe even trying something that isn't toast related in the least. (Hmmmmm, ever since we started eating less bread in our diet an astounding number of my ideas end up being toast related, come to think of it.)

With one of our major projects at Tietokone coming to a close it finally looks like I might actually have some time to play again. I have an interface that I am working on in flash that I think might be fun to show off, and almost completely useless. See, that's the sort of stuff I need to work on now and then. I need to build something that when someone asks me how it can make money for a corporation I can answer, "I think you could probably get a couple bucks for the hard drive it's stored on..."

As a side note I noticed that they are planning to do a Star Trek MMORPG. I think this is an absolutely brilliant idea. Finally a Star Trek game where you can go to the holodeck and think up something fun to do in the Star Trek universe. Now, before I get a hundred rabid Klingons on my doorstep let me explain something, I don't think that Star Trek itself is boring. In fact I have enjoyed quite a few of the episodes. However, I just don't think that the Trek universe is well suited to most game types. What makes Trek interesting are the stories about moral dilemmas, and the thinly veiled political references. When I contrast that with something like Star Wars, where the only dilemma is what to do with all the hands I chop off with my lightsaber, I end up wondering how a Trek MMORPG could possibly be fun. It might be cool if you could assemble an entire crew and then take crew based missions, one person captains ot to the planet, a couple people beam down, a science guy gets readings on some weird life form while the red shirts hold off a bunch of rock monsters... Nope, still doesn't sound that fun to me. Hopefully the people working on the game have better ideas about the subject than I do.

Ah, back in the day. The wonderful thing about back in the day is that you have distanced yourself from it enough that all the crappy things have zero meaning any more, and all that is left is the glory. Back in the day I used to play at being a developer. I remember I would create little websites using WYSIWYG editors and animated gifs like they were going out of style. For those of you who don't know, by the way, they DID go out of style, so you can take them off your site. Please.

Anyway, way back then a friend of mine pointed me in the direction of a little program called "Flash". I was keen to try it out, and after just a short while I was creating what were basically interactive animated gifs! OOoooo.....

Fast forward to today, after several years of absorbing information about databases, class structures, object oriented programming, and a million other things that would bore many people to tears, I have once again fallen well and truly in love with Flash. In fact, I'm not ashamed to say that I think Flash is the best thing to hit the internet since, ummmmm, well, since ever dammit.

Basically this newfound programming rapture has erupted from my attempt at becoming a certified Flash Developer. While studying for the exam I have discovered things about Flash that I never knew, things like being able to read the ID3 tags on MP3's. I had no idea flash could do that... Or how to work with people's web cams. I had a vague idea flash could do that, but until I finished reading about it, I didn't realize how fun it could be. The more I read about it the more excited I get, I want to rush home and just play with Flash MX 2004 until my eyeballs pop out and my brain explodes. Anyway, if I come up with anything cool from all the stuff I'm learning I'll be sure to post a link here....

Okay, so here's the situation... Lets pretend that one night, while you were sleeping, someone entered your house and made off with a whole bunch of your stuff. When you woke up you blearily stumbled out into your living room and found that everything in a straight line from your front door to the corner where you kept your television was just gone. Vanished in the night.

This might not seem like a very likely situation, but trust me it's possible. The exact situation above happened to me oiIt happened to me, and in a way it happened to Valve Software. Except with Valve what was stolen was millions of dollars worth of proprietary technology. In case you don't really follow video game news, you can read all about the theft here.

Now, I don't know how Valve handles this sort of thing, but I know how I handled it. I became more than a little paranoid for a while. I would check all the locks in my house twice before bed, and if I had to get up at night to go to the bathroom, I went to the bathroom by route of the front door. It was quite a while before I felt really safe in my apartment. Apparently over at Valve they have a different approach. You can't possibly be broken into if you just hand out keys to your place on the street. At least so it would seem. Apparently they recently sent out a bunch of Counter-Strike: Source beta discs. As a free bonus included on the disc was all of the dialogue files for Half Life 2, effectively allowing anyone who wants to have a listen to hear the entire story of the game from start to finish.

This, in my humble opinion, is a trememdously huge fuck-up. I don't understand how it could happen, honestly. It's almost as if they are using these thefts and screw ups as ways of gaining media attention, much in the same way that the creators of Duke Nukem Forever are generating hype for their game by shooting for the world record longest development time for any human endeavor, the Great Pyramid of Giza included (which is estimated to have only taken 20 years, Duke is almost half way there!).

Anyway, this post was only really started as a way of building up to a threat. If anyone reveals anything to me about the plot from Half Life 2 I will do terrible things to them. If I accidentally stumble across a site that has a transcript of those files on it, or if one of my friends breathes a word of the plot I will fart in their general direction, and I assure you, few things are more terrible.

Two months ago I was convinced that I could do without Doom 3. One month ago I took another look at the screen shots and thought, "Well, it looks pretty nice, but I'm waiting for Half Life 2." Thirteen days ago someone in a chat room mentioned that it was due out in the next 24 hours, and something in my mind snapped. I was out in the street checking the local shops within fifteen minutes, buzzing from store to store like a bee gathering pollen. Not here? Okay, next place... Not here? Off we go...

Eventually I found out that it wasn't due out until the following day, so I placed a pre-order and went back to work. The next day I went to EB Games and waited in line for my copy, drooling and making nerd jokes with the rest of the people gathered there. Four days ago, I solved it. Desperate to squeeze a little more enjoyment out of it I went online to play some multiplayer. What a waste. The single player mode in Doom 3 had been so brilliant, so finely tuned, so incredibly immersive, that the multiplayer just felt wrong. I had gotten used to Doom 3 making me feel a certain way, a certain amount of tension, a creeping dread... The ever present sense that around the next corner could be a darkened shadow filled to the brim with nightmarish horrors intent on ripping out my intestines and feeding them to their half-insect hellspawned children. As soon as I logged into my first multiplayer server that feeling of dread packed its bags, defenestrated them, and then shot itself in the head with a rocket launcher. The feeling was dead.

The multiplayer was exactly the same sort of multiplayer I have come to expect from a FPS, fast paced running, shooting, grabbing weapons, and listening to the youth of the internet slinging racial and homophobic slurs. And in the corner, a zombie wept. Now, I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with standard FPS gameplay (except the slurs), it's just that after playing through the single player mode, the multiplayer just seemed empty.

Ah, well. The nice thing about that, I guess, is that I can trade in Doom 3 for Half Life 2 and not feel like I'm missing much... Unless I decide to play single player again in Nightmare mode.

Well, I checked the logs for my other site, Xenotrader.com, and apparently I'm on the road to financial ruin. It's no wonder the internet bubble burst. I moved about 40 gigs worth of data last month off that site. I had 31,000 unique visitors, pretty amazing really. Of those 31,000 people around 120 of them clicked on the ads on the site. I have made it my goal to click on an ad on every site that I like, every time I visit. Before I put up any ads I had no idea how this sort of thing works. I pay a mere $19US for the Xeno site, and all it takes is about fifteen clicks a day to make that back. Fifteen out of about a thousand. Hold on a second, I'm going to go click on someone else's ads right now... Be right back...

There, I'm back. I just went over to The Underdogs, a site I have been visiting for years, and clicked on every ad they had. Sure, it doesn't make up for my years of leeching, but its a start. Anyway, I need to get back to work, I just wanted to pop in and express my amazement at the idea that anyone could make money off the net. It's a good thing I'm such an egotistical bastard that I'm willing to pay the extra money out of my own pocket just to have a game online that I can show to others and say I built, because there's no way it's ever going to turn a profit!

The lazy days of summer are upon us, and for some reason I just don't have enough time to get in all the lazing I need to do. I've been working longer hours than usual lately trying to get everything done that is on my plate, and for some reason I actually seem to be increasing my workload with every thing I complete. It' strange, it's almost as if somehow I have changed polarity and all my effor actually has the reverse effect of what it should.

I do have some good news, however, I have opened up my Xeno Fighter game for open beta, and have made a massive amount of changes to it. Over the next couple weeks I will be adding in all sorts of additional fun features, like teams and tournaments, as well as hopefully finding time to rework the interface and characters. If you would like to play, just head over to www.xenotrader.com/fight. Basically what I have done is begun making fixes and improvements to a game I have been sitting on for while. There are plenty of things that I thought could be improved, and since I can't seem to fix any of the issues in some of the other games I'm building, I decided I would see what I could break in this one.

I also have some bad news. As you can see at the official web site, Sonic City Gaming here in Edmonton has closed its doors. The simple truth is that while it seemed like a great idea to have a video game shop on Whyte Avenue here in Edmonton, the reality is that without a liquor license your shop has a 75% chance of going under on the avenue. Although when they first started up I was a little jealous that they got there first, as I had been planning almost exactly the same thing for ages, I am still sorry to see them go.

Small business owners can be strange. Recently an internet cafe opened up in a strip mall a little ways north of my house. Somebody, somewhere must have thought this was a great idea, or they wouldn't have put any money into it. But the location is just so bad I can't imagine them lasting very long. Of course, I guess it isn't really that different from the games I make or this blog for that matter. I enjoy them, and if I get a few regular customers along the way, well, that's good too. Of course, my financial future doesn't hinge upon the success of my random little rants. I shudder at the thought.

Okay, I don't post for half of a month and then I do two posts in a day, that's just the way it goes... Deal with it. After I got home tonight I noticed that my CodeBaby beta kit had arrived. I'm just starting out with it so I really can't present you with much yet, but I'm pretty excited about it.

Not nearly as excited as I was when I finally realized who was creating the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War game. Relic. Frikken Relic. Now, it's already been established that I am totally in love with Bioware, but what I have failed to mention is that of all the developers in the world, Relic is the one that kicks my ass so hard that I forget their name, apparently. For those of you who don't know they created the spectacular Homeworld and the quirky Impossible Creatures. So when I first saw the movies for Warhammer 40k: DoW I didn't realize the pedigree that backed this bitch. I need this game, I need it bad. I think I might have to reinstall Homeworld to hold me over.

This past weekend I took a break from work to head over to check out the 11th annual Animethon at Grant MacEwan Community College. I met up with a couple of friends there, Yuri and Emilio, and we all had a pretty good time. As the biggest nerd in the group I would have to say that I probably enjoyed the show the most, but I'm pretty sure a good time was had by all. While we were there Emilio and I began discussing video games, and first person shooters specifically. Emilio said that he had picked up a copy of Painkiller, and that he had tried the FarCry demo and it was pretty impressive as well. In response to this I decided to download the FarCry demo and see what all the lack of hype was about.

The truth about FarCry is that it's pretty awesome. The graphics are beautiful, the sounds are terrific, the environment is amazing, and the lighting, oh the lighting... FarCry is the type of game that really makes me wonder just how many blockbuster titles the industry can support. This fall there are such an immense number of huge releases that the game industry is expecting to make just slightly more money than has ever been printed in the US. Let's just have a look, shall we? Spider Man 2 was just released, as was Riddick, and Driv3r. Pretty soon we have Half Life 2, Doom 3, GTA: San Andreas, Gran Tourismo 4, Fable, oh... my... sweet... Jesus. Amoung all that even a super sweet high budget, fantastic game is likely to be lost in the shuffle. Games are getting bigger by the second.

Before I actually get to the point of this post I want to expand on some of the amazing things I saw in th FarCry demo. Wide open spaces with very lush jungle terrain, beautiful water effects, realistic shadows, and enemies that work well as a team. Add to that the fact that when enemies are shot they fall quite realistically and then bleed pools of blood that flow well with the terrain and you have a game that makes killing not only fun, but easy on the eyes. Now, I know that I mention game violence a lot, but I'm going to do it again, because it's a topic that I think is worth examining from many angles.

Here we go. If I were to walk over to my local pet store and buy myself a mouse and then run home, stuff it in a tiny sack, and beat it into a bloody mess with a tack hammer, people would probably think I'm sick. In fact, if anyone found out about it I could be charged with cruelty to animals. Over a mouse. How about if I did that with an ant? Although most people might think I'm a little strange, they wouldn't think I was a monster if I took pleasure in the killing of an ant. In fact most people who are scared of insects take pleasure in killing wasps, bees, ants, and spiders every day.

Right now, most AI opponents in games aren't really much more intellgent than ants. It's okay to snuff them out because they are put there for exactly that purpose. But games are evolving quickly. Every enemy placed into a game is given a certain amount of desire for self preservation, even if it's just to shoot at the player to avoid being killed. My question is this, how long before the villains in our games are smarter than a mouse? How long before they want to live more than a mouse? More and more that desire to stay alive is going to continue to evolve, maybe until we have enemies that are genuinely afraid when you step into the room with that shotgun.

It's pretty easy to argue that you aren't really killing the villain permanently, that if you wanted that villain could be reborn by simply starting the game over. But millions of people around the world believe in reincarnation, and that doesn't mean it's okay for me to kill them. You could also say that a computer generated enemy has no sense of self, and so nothing is lost in their destruction. And yet we agonize over pulling the plug on a relative who has been brain dead for weeks, lying in a coma. Maybe it's okay to turn off the programs that we have running because we created them, but then again, with cloning being a reality does that make it alright to turn off a clone? At what point does it become unethical to terminate an intelligent process?

Though these sorts of questions seem like they are a long way off, I think that they are questions we need to start looking for the answers to.

I have made no attempt to disguise my love/hate relationship with MMORPG's. I love the concept, I love the idea of a massive world to explore and ever changing content to keep things fresh. However, I hate the levelling treadmill, and I hate paying a monthly fee. I just noticed that Dark Age of Camelot is literally begging players to come back. In fact, they are even offering former players a free 14 day re-trial. I think I might take them up on it, just as I took Anarchy Online up on the offer when they presented a similar deal a while ago. I expect that I will end up doing the exact same thing, however, and maybe only renew my subscription for a month.

The funny thing is that with more and more great things being said about City of Heroes I have been tempted to give it a try. Once again, though, I have a hard time shelling out the $60 for a game that I know will just end up costing me money and eventually be worth absolutely nothing.

I think that's what scares me the most about MMORPG's, actually. I am a bit of a collector when it comes to video games. I keep all the original packaging and manuals and have them all stacked on shelves or stuffed into boxes. Every so often I like to crack open a golden oldie and revisit what made me think it was such a great game in the first place. Sometimes I find that the game doesn't hold up to the image I have in my rather foggy memory (most of the Might and Magic series, Seaman, Seaman.... What the hell was I thinking?), and occasionally I find that the game is actually every bit as great as I remembered (StarCraft, X-Com, Carnage Heart, almost any Capcom game for NES). But five years from now the MMORPG's I have on my shelves won't even be playable, there will be no servers for them, and even if there are servers for them, am I going to want to dust off my credit card for a touch of nostalgia? I doubt it. I don't like the idea of games that are so completely disposable, it frightens me a little, both as a gamer and a developer.

As a developer it must be doubly frightening. It's always nice to be able to show stuff off to people, or to look back on the things that you have made. Once they shut down the servers on some of these games that option is gone. If I were a carpenter I would love showing off the chairs that I had built, but it would suck if one day everyone's asses fell off and the government decided to burn all the chairs. I know, I know, terrible analogy, but even still, it sucks that your entire body of work could be rendered unplayable by an accountant.

In Edmonton, where I live, there is a little company known as Bioware. Perhaps you've heard of them. They are responsible for pretty much the coolest shit ever to grace the PC role playing world. Until Baldur's Gate my interest in PC role playing games had been steadily declining. Since then, however, it has been going strong.

As an a nerd living in Edmonton, an Ednerdtonian, Bioware has become a sort of Holy Grail. Every Ednerdtonian seems to know somebody who works there, and if they don't then they have probably at least applied for a job there once or twice. In my case, it's a bit of both. So when I saw a demonstration of CodeBaby's new web technology I was immediately excited. You see, CodeBaby is Bioware's sister company, and through this link I feel that while I might not be able to grab the Grail, by developing using CodeBaby's production package I might be able to at least have a look at it.

So what is this technology? It's pretty cool actually, it allows you to have a little 3D avatar on yor site that can help guide people through your page, answering questions and just basically looking cool. They are currently using this technology to showcase some of the martial arts moves for their upcoming game, Jade Empire. Now, I really wanted to get my hands on this, but apparently they do all the work for you. As great as that is for the customer, it's not so good for me, as it means I'll have to find another outlet for my creative impulses. Perhaps something like SitePal will be more to my liking...

I have been playing online games for a very long time. In fact, come to think of it, I think I have been playing online games since before there was an online worth mentioning. When I was much younger I had an Atari 800xl. I considered it the pinnacle of human evolution. I could pop in a cartridge and play Pengo, record home made programs onto the cassette drive, and with just a few lines of code turn my little television into a strobe light. As I was entering high school I got my hands on a 300 baud modem and started logging onto local Bulletin Board Systems. I'd stay up late wandering through the early MUD's and building a trade empire in a galaxy rendered entirely with words.

Since then a lot of things have advanced. Not only are the worlds rendered in beautiful detail, but they also feature an array of things to do that would have boggled my tiny fourteen year old mind. And while I don't usually consider myself one of those guys who pines for the good old days there is one thing that I truly miss about the old BBS games. As strange as it sounds the one thing that technology hasn't improved, and in fact seems to have almost destroyed, is creative abuse.

Perhaps I should provide a little background. Recently I have been playing a game called Kings of Chaos. In this game you create an army and set out to attack other people and steal their gold, which in turn allows you to built a stronger army. Then, with your stronger army you can launch an even more powerful attack against someone with even more money, and then use that money to... Well, you get the idea. It isn't really a very complex game. Attack, spend, rinse, repeat.

However, some people in the game get a little irritated when you attack them. In the good old days when this happened in games of this sort it could potentially start a war of wits between you and your new found adversary. They would fire off a creative insult and the gauntlet would be thrown. From that point on the messages between the two of you would be public, and the verbal smack-down would be judged by your peers. But it was all in good fun, and ninety nine percent of the time nobody's feelings were hurt, it was just a fun little diversion, a way to vent, and a way to show off your ability to fend for yourself, intellectually.

At some point along the way this all changed. Recently I received a message from someone in Kings of Chaos that said:

"oi mate tell brittlover to leave my mate chaos_of_kermit alone or next time you have millions of gold i will attack with no mercy so you better tell him to lave chaos_of_kermit alone"

As far as I was concerned the gauntlet had been thrown. I simply responded that if his friend didn't like being attacked then perhaps he should run out and pick up a copy of "Barbie Horse Adventures" for X-Box, as I'm pretty sure nobody would attack him in that game.

Here's where it gets depressing. You see, in the old days I would have received a response like the following:

"I called the store to see if I could get a copy for my friend and apparently they are completely sold out, oddly enough, to someone matching your description."

I mean, it's not even the greatest comeback in the world, but it's miles above and beyond the response I actually got, which was this:

"you like barbie and you call yourself a orc leader you barbie **** lover f*** off you d*** head"

Sad, isn't it? A perfectly good insult wasted on someone who doesn't even have second grade english skills. It has gotten me wondering, though. I realize that there are a lot of people out there to whom english isn't their first language, and in their cases grammar like that can be excused. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone in Germany to cheer with delight after seeing me write a sentence in German. But I simply refuse to believe that every single person who plays video games doesn't speak english.

This got me thinking, are online games actually lowering the literacy rate in North America? Or is the internet evolving to create an entirely new language, one that is universal and encompasses all languages? Maybe the internet is actually killing english entirely, and soon those few of us who still speak it will find ourselves trying to find ways to use it in day to day life just to justify knowing it, like th author who translated Harry Potter into latin.

I would be curious to see if the ease with which things like punctuation and spelling are abandoned online is starting to translate into real world issues for your learners. I found a site online that has a nice little overview of the sorts of things that a child is expected to learn in grade two.

On the page it states th following as things that a child should know by the end of the year.


By the end of the year, they should be able to:
> use capital letters at the beginning of sentences;
> use periods to end sentences;
> approximate the use of quotation marks;
> use capital letters and exclamation marks for emphasis;
> use question marks; and
> use common contractions.


Now, lets examine the most recent message from my friend over at Kings of Chaos, shall we?


"oh really that is why when you tried to spy on me and when you attacked me (so did brittlover) i defended you attack (and brittlover) and caught you aren't made for ths game mate"


If a man is truly judged by the strength of his enemies, then I really need to find some better enemies. If I were a super hero and this guy was my arch nemesis not only could I not join the "Justice League", but I'd get turned down for membership into "Power Pack".

Anyone who has ever seen me when I get obsessed with a little programming problem, or a video game, or anything for that matter, knows that I can be a little crazy when my mind gets locked onto something. This blog is no different. Although my posts have slowed down somewhat (I'm not posting twice a day any more, well, except today... Hmmm...) I still like to see where the people who visit my site are coming from. Thankfully, through the miracle of Statcounter, I can easily see the links that people use to get to my site. So far a lot of the links come from search engines, but over the last few days there have been a couple from a site called the Empire of the Claw.

As soon as I saw that link I decided to rush over and see what it was all about, and to my gratification it turns out that the site is exactly the sort of site I love to find. Posted on the site for free download are a bunch of totally radical fonts, including a whole collection of retro arcade fonts. Although I don't know who the Claw is I would like to thank them for the link, and for the fonts. Claw, you made my day. (Now that I think about it, could Claw possibly be the infamous Dr. Claw from the Inspector Gadget cartoon? Only time will tell...)

As a side note I'd like to mention something about the types of searches that could possibly lead you here. I find it truly funny that of all the things you can type into Google, there is one that will bring up this site first in the list. What is that search? Is it "video games"? Hahaha, nope, I wish... Is it "confessions junky"? Nope, too obvious. Believe it or not if you type in "church of robotology" I am the king of the heap. Numero uno. It makes me feel like I owe the world a little more background on the Church of Robotology. The best way to start out would be to read the entry in the Futurama Encyclopedia on Robotology. From there you might as well move on to The Centre for Robotology and Robotonomy, a fun little blog that has, er, pictures of some of the Robo-Messiahs, saints, and popes that abound. After that your only option is to pay me a hefty sum and have me write "the Comprehensive Guide to the Worship of Robots", which you can then release in hardcover and market as an alternative to the bible. Of course then we'd be branded heretics and would have to contend with Ninja Priests, and to be honest nobody wants that.

After receiving payment for my first completed flash game I decided that it was time to go out and spend a little bling. My first instinct, of course, was to head over to the local game store and buy, well, everything. So many great games are out right now that I just don't have time to play them. For example, I have been dying to try Disgaea, as well as another fantastic looking tactical game, LaPucelle Tactics. As well there are about a hundred other games that I feel I need to play. Custom Robo looks great, Phantasy Star Online III: Card Revolution (despite the fact that I barely have time in a day to type out its name) also looks like a lot of fun. Painkiller has been recommended to me by my friend Emilio, and he's sort of like my patron saint of cool, simply playing a game recommended by him is likely to improve my social standing... And last, but certainly not least, I need to find a game that plays well split screen for when my friend Lisa comes over to hang out, something fast moving with role playing elements, like maybe Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.

So that was the plan. Leave work... Buy game. Two steps out of my door that plan went straight to hell. I walked out of work and my eyes fell upon the computer book store across the street and I knew what I had to do. I marched straight over and bought Jobe Makar and Ben Winiarczyk's excellent book, Flash MX 2004 Game Design Demystified. Because honestly, I don't have much time for console games lately. The reason I don't have that time is because I spend my evenings making flash games, and I've sort of been stumpling along unguided so far. So I thought maybe, with the help of this book, I could finish the games faster, and thus have more time to play games... Of course, if things continue the way they've been going I might just end up using that time to take on more flash game projects...

Today is a good day to be a nerd. While over at SlashDot I noticed an article about how clubbers in Barcelona are getting implanted with an identification chip known as the VeriChip. This tiny device, about as long as a dime and maybe one eight the width, is implanted under the skin and contains an identification number that can be accessed using a special reader. Now I know that this idea terrifies a lot of people, but to me it's just plain cool.

The uses for something like this are incredible. For a lot of years I worked as a security guard, and we all carried passes that we had to scan to access certain doors. But with a system like this they could make being chipped a requirement of the job and then just add your VeriChip ID to the list of valid access codes. There's very little risk of you misplacing your access card as most people tend to remember if they have left behind a body part. And when you are no longer allowed access they just ban you from the list. Hell, they could even make it so that people who didn't want to be chipped could just be given a portable version, I suppose, but then if a card when missing, at least those of use with a chip could just hold up our arms and say, "Wasn't me!".

The other cool technology that was featured in that article is a device called the BrainGate from Cyberkinetics Inc. This device has just been approved for FDA testing, and it allows you to plug a cable into your head and control your cursor with your mind. Talk about having gaming potential! Imagine, you are playing the latest Resident Evil game and when something scares you, your character jumps! And when someone in Doom, Half Life, or Unreal Tournament launches a rocket at your sorry ass and yells, "Think fast!", they frikken mean it. Even role playing games would be made easier, you want to get your sword out? Think it. Want to fade into the shadows? Think it. Want to spend some time outside in the sunshine? Tough, it's the future, the ozone layer is gone and gangs are running rampant in the streets, best to stay in your bunker hooked up to the machine...

This morning in my inbox there was a link from a friend to a new contest being held by Microsoft. Apparently they are giving away an X-Box, and he wants one. In the interest of keeping up with the Joneses, or in this case Wuensches, this has made me want to win the contest as well. The contest is a clever little marketing gimmick designed specifically to generate buzz e-mails in massive quantities. It's sort of an online game of tag. You send out an e-mail to someone and they are given the opportunity to send out an e-mail to someone else. You have to wait to be tagged by someone, and the only way new tags get introduced into the system is if new people sign up. It is almost devilish in its simplicity.

So I am hoping that the regular readers of my blog (both of you!) will take the time to visit www.xbox.com/tag and register yourselves in the contest. Then, once you are registered send me a tag at egoant@egoant.com. The more tags I gt the more times I am entered in the contest, and the better my chances are of winning. As well, the more tags you send out, the more times YOU will be entered in the contest, and if you win the X-Box then I can grab a few beers and come by your place and play.

I have a little news this morning, last night I finished programming the first game I have ever been paid to build. The price tag on the game was a pathetic $250 US, and I spent over 40 hours working on the game in total. Hmmm, let's see, 250 divided by 40, that works out to $6.25 an hour! Well, it was more fun than flipping burgers. Of course, if you now factor in the ten or so hours I spent trying to get payment for the prototype, plus the additional time I spent dealing with their random changes, and then add in the time and effort that I know it's going to take to get final payment out of this sketchy client... Well, let's just say that there's no way I'm going to be making a living at this unless I decide to mortgage a nice carboard box in the river valley.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am no longer a fugitive from the law! Okay, so maybe I was never actually wanted by the law, but if I had let my taxes go any longer then I very well might have been. So at lunch time today I ran down to Canada Place and dropped off the statements of my earnings. Unfortunately, due to time and bad filing, I didn't get to write off nearly as much stuff as I could have. Everyone I know who does contract work jokes about writing off lunches for business expenses, and one contractor I know even writes off video games as software expenses.

Unfortunately, I am neither that bold nor that well organized. So I probably took a fairly beefy hit on taxes this year because I forget to save receipts. Oh, yeah, there is also the fact that I absolutely refuse to write off games. The funny thing is that because I MAKE video games it's probably even a legitimate expense to a degree. I could call it research. But somehow that cheapens the games in my mind. No longer are they labeled as objects of fun, they are now just tools to be used in my trade. It's sort of like a sperm clinic writing off pornos, those magazines were never meant to be taxable expenses, even if in this case it is perfectly reasonable.

Wow, you know you are a nerd when videogames and porn can be equated to each other so easily.

Sure enough, XenoTrader was brought down yesterday. However I managed to get in contact with my web host and arranged to have my bandwidth upped to 30 gb of traffic, hopefully that should do it! So the game is back online, and this week I will be working my ass off to create more, and better, games for people to play over at XenoTrader!

I am going to start this post with a number, and that number is 2,103. Why that number? that is the number of hits that my flash game, XenoTrader: Protector has received since midnight. Now, I know that doesn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but when you consider that this blog has received about 665 hits since it was created in December, it all of a sudden seems like a whole lot.

So now I'm not sure what I am going to do! I have never had a site run the risk of getting wanged before. But if things continue at their present rate, that little flash game has less than a day or two to live. My site host says I have a grand total of about five gigs of traffic allowed per month, and in the last 16 hours that little game has eaten about one fifth of that.

Needless to say, this sudden attention has made me go a little wild about creating flash games. I want to be making them twenty four hours a day. I want to get hopped up on amphetamines and make flash games five times faster than anyone else, ever. I know that this surge of interest inthe game isn't going to last, but it certainly demonstrates the power of a good alliance with someone. All I did was agree to add a link to Albino Black Sheep to my game page, and BAM! Suddenly people are playing my game.

Okay, I'm a little excited, time to relax. Oh, and in the time it took me to type this my hit count jumped to 2,193. Thank you to every single one of those 90 people!

I forgot to mention..... HOLY CRAP!

I was going to mention this but somehow it slipped my mind. I installed Unreal Tournament 2004 a little while ago and have been quite enjoying it. However one thing that I haven't seen discussed much is the fact that the game is just slightly larger than a text file containing the entire calculated value of PI. That's right, I said it, UT2K4 takes up an infinite amount of hard drive space, plus a little extra.

Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a little, but it really does take up something like six gigs of space, which is a pretty hefty amount. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I recently saw a post over at SlashDot about a team that made a fully 3D, and quite beautiful, first person shooter that can be downloaded in less time than it took you to read this run-on sentence. If you want to check it out it can be found at theprodukkt.com. A word of warning, though, the game itself requires some pretty insane specs from your machine, so it might not run on your computer if your rig isn't specifically designed for gaming.

I would like to start out today's post with a couple fun links. First i one that was sent to me this morning, it's good clean fun that will send your soul straight to hell without passing go, and certainly without collecting one hundred dollars. I present the Jesus Christ Action Figure!

The second link is a little closer to my heart. Anyone who knows me knows that I have an affinity for retro games. I have two working original NES systems at home, and on occasion have been known to fire up a little Mario action. That's why when I saw this clip of a guy playing the Super Mario Brothers music and sound effects on his guitar, I wept salty tears of joy. (Video is in WMV format)

Now on to the meat of the post. Last night I was browsing through the forums over at FlashKit when I came across a post from someone who was looking to build a turn based fighting game. This got me reminiscing about a game I played a few years ago. Of course, this is not really a difficult thing to accomplish, honestly. I have seen traffic signs, scraps of loose paper, and even assorted fruit that have got me thinking about the games I've played. But the game I started thinking about specifically was actually a series of games put out by a company calle BattleMail.

Their games were highly addictive, easy to play, had a great look to them, and are completely gone. I tried to go to their site, battlemail.com, and all I got was one of those pages that people put up to squeeze a few extra advertising dollars out of their domain name without having to provide any content. What the hell happened to them?? They were going strong, they had BattleMail Kung-Fu, BattleMail Soccer, BattleMail Jousting, hell, it seemed like they were on their way up when I last saw them. And now nothing.

So I am planning to track down the creators and ask them what happened. I think there might be a story there. Who knows, maybe there is some juicy tales of betrayal, or murder, or a pact with Satan that went horribly wrong! Or perhaps there's just a tale of mismanagement and .Com dreams gone awry.

Insert Captain Kirk Voice Here

"Can't....post.... Must...keep...working...on...game!"

Needless to say Ihave been barely posting lately. However I did decide to just pop in and post a quick link to my latest masterpiece... It's a little flash game called "Xeno Protector" and if you want to give it a try you can find it here:

http://www.xenotrader.com/protector.php

Bitten by the Dev Bug

Lately I have really been pouring my heart and soul into getting as much development done as possible. I have been trying t learn a lot of little things with VB.Net at work, and in the evenings I have been trying to fine tune my Flash coding skills. In that light I have been trying to respond to as many requests on the GotoAndPlay site as I can.

This little game, which is meant as a tutorial for people trying to make RPG's in flash, is the result of one such request for help. It only took me a short while to code, and I actually think that with a little work it could probably be made into something fun... A little bit of character development here and there, some items strewn about, and maybe a boss monster or two and we'd be rocking...

Anyway, if you want to check it out, you can view it here: Sample RPG Page

(Oh, there aren't any instructions posted, I was thinking I would get to those eventually... Maybe I'll put them online tonight.)

In Tech We Trust

Yesterday I had a very close call, and it was because I trusted technology. Here's the situation, I had just left work and was walking towards my bus stop when I reached an intersection. I saw that the light was red so I stopped, and as I am prone to do I was almost instantly lost in thought. I am at times a bit of an absent minded professor... Except that I'm not a professor. Regardless, when I looked up I saw that the walk signal was on so I started across the intersection, and was narrowly missed by a speeding cab! Instantly I was furious at him, I couldn't beleive he would run light that was fully.... GREEN?!? Just as I noticed that the light was both green for him and a walk signal for me, his light changed to amber, and then to red. At that exact moment the walk signal turned to a red hand. I watched the signal for another light cycle, and sure enough it had somehow become inversed, it always said "walk" when it meant, "stay the hell where you are", and it always said "stand there like an idiot" when it meant "go ahead and cross, it's all good".

Now, as a nerd I have a very strong love / hate relationship with technology. I have been around technology for so long, so intimate with it, that I have come to know and respect both its strengths and its flaws, and like in many relationships, I suppose that I had started to take it for granted. But yesterday made me realize how dangerous that blind trust can be. One malfunctioning circuit, one crossed wire, one light bulb! One light bulb being turned on instead of another and my life was almost extinguished.

With robots like the Qrio and Honda's Asimo, more and more automation in the workplace, as well as the fact that we are very close to being able to fly commercial flights without pilots, we are rapidly reaching the point where our trust in technology almost exceeds our trust in each other. In many ways I can see why that is. While a machine may malfunction, the machine itself is not malicious in its intent. While a robotic pilot may shut down and crash a plane, it would never deliberately fly that plane into a building to make a political statement. It's a strange balance, many machines evolve out of our distrust of each other, and in turn they end up requiring us to trust each other even more.

Take, for example, online credit card processing. Online shopping has become a somewhat common occurence. Amazon.com, Ebay, EBGames, and many other sites all have code designed to securely process your credit card tansactions. These systems evolved out of our fear of things like identity theft and credit card fraud. So we place our trust in these companies and in the programmers who are employed by them. But even the companies themselves only have the assurance of their programming team that these systems are actually secure.

I think what it boils down to is that with any new technology we need to examine the level of human interoperability, really. How much supervision do our robotic employees need? Are we really doing ourselves a service by removing ourselves from the equation? I think wht we need is a tighter integration between man and machine, that's why I find articles, like this one about a video game controlled by human brainwaves, to be so fascinating.

Money Falling from the Sky

Video games are big business. Really big. And yet for some reason I'm not making any money off it yet... However, I have noticed a number of pretty big contests lately, and the number of contests just seems to be growing daily. Today I saw an announcement for a $50,000 contest for cool Java games. A few days back a friend sent me a link to a 3D Mobile Gaming contest with around $100,000 in prizes. Add to that the fact that this past year the IGF split their judging into two categories, effectively doubling the available prizes!

It seems to me that while many video games are becoming bigger and bigger productions, it also seems like there are more and more opportunities opening up for the little guy. Pretty fantastic news, really, especially for people like me who would like to be able to make a couple bucks in their spare time doing something they love! Well, enough chit-chat, I think I need to get to work on my contest entries...

Technosexual

I have been hearing the term "metrosexual" pretty much every day over the last while... It's on tv all the time, my friends use it, and I have been called one myself. In all honesty, I probably fit the bill to a certain extent, except that I'm not that incredibly well groomed. I attribute that to the fact that I am, at my core, an utter nerd. I can't even begin to explain how excited I was when I saw that Whyte Knight was selling the GURPS base set for only $15 this past weekend. There has to be a term nerd-o-sexuals somewhere...

On a side note I found a new web comic today. By "new" I mean new to me, apparently it has been around for quite a while. It seems pretty cool, even though I haven't had time to really dig into it yet. What I did find, however, is tha the entire site basically condenses everything my best friend loves into one tidy package. He likes anime girls, apple computers, and loves the punisher. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you an anime girl wearing a punisher outfit on a site called Applegeeks... Lee, you can now die happy.

Dirt Cheap

Okay, I'm still kind of stuck on the 3D topic today. So while I'm on it I might as well bring up Milkshape. There are a lot of 3D tools out there, and of all the ones I have tried, Milkshape is the one I keep coming back to. At only $25 US it is a perfect way to do some great quick and dirty modeling. I use it to create models for DarkBasic, as well as for flash, and for any of the mods I have done for games like Unreal and Quake. Not that I have ever finished a mod for either of those games. But I guarantee if I had a clone to do all my 3D work I would force the clone to use Milkshape. And while I am cloning, I need another to do the programming, while I just do the writing and design.

Play Time

Today I got to play with a tool by Discreet called Plasma. Basically what Plasma does is helps to create 3D content for the web. I have to say that I am really enjoying it. For those of you who don't know, Discreet makes 3D Studio Max, GMAX, and a bunch of other stuff. Plasma is one of those other things, and it is terrific for doing web based 3D. It allows for export to either Macromedia Flash or Director formats. If you would like to check out something that I build in just under two hours, check out the Xenotraders page. I made an intro for the game that is basically just a cheesy space flyby, but considering the entire thing was produced in less time than it takes to clean three days worth of spam out of your inbox, I have to say it's pretty impressive!

I am foaming at the mouth a bit today, by the way. They went and released Unreal Tournament 2004 and I can hardly wait to get my grubby little paws on it. There is just one catch, however... I have no money. Oh, actually, now that I think about it, there's another catch, I don't really have any time to play it. Hmmm.... Actually, there's a whole lot of catches, for example the zillion games I have lying around my house that I have yet to finish. That's odd, the foam around my mouth seems to have completely dried up!

With Friends Like This...

I would like to begin this post by saying that I have changed my policy on loaning out my games. My new policy is pretty simple, if you want to borrow a game from me all you have to do is stop by a local Electronics Boutique and give them the full purchase price of the game. They will loan you my game, when you are done with the game simply stop by my house and drop the game off. If I'm not home you can just leave the games around back in the shed, nobody will look there I assure you.

For those of you who know me this may seem like a pretty drastic change in policy. There used to be a time when I would loan people games and then forget they had them, they would come back to me months later and say, "Hey, Aaron, here's that game you loaned me, thanks a bunch," and I would feel great because getting a game back after a long time feels almost like buying a new game. But that has all changed now. The reason is simple, when I actually ASK for a game back, I mean it, I really want that game back, and one particular asshat doesn't seem to understand that.

A friend of mine got his first computer a while ago, about a year ago actually. On the day the computer arrived I helped him hook it up and als brought over a bunch of games for him to try out. This past Saturday we were supposed to hang out. Now I've been bugging him for my games back for several months, pretty much every time he calls me for tech support, really. So needless to say, when he showed up without my games I was pissed.

First of all when I asked for them back he told me that he still wanted to keep Fallout Tactics for a while. I was so desperate to get my games back that I even told him I would burn him copies of the games. Now let me explain something, I am not a fan of piracy, especially when making a profit in the PC game industry is already incredibly tough. Chances are I would have burned intentionally corrupt versions just so that he would think I had tried my best, when in fact I think he should just go down to the store and buy a used copy of Tactics for $15.

So now I am right back at square one. Time to call him up and arrange a time for him to drop off my games. Maybe this time he'll have something other than beer and Jack Daniels for breakfast and remember my games. Or maybe I should just ask him which pawn shop they are at so I can go down there and pick them up.

Straight Trippin'

I was reading an article on CNN about how TV might be losing out to video games and it got me thinking... Currently television has sweeps week, during which they all compete to have the craziest shows and attract the most viewers. Imagine if online games were handled in the same way, imagine if games not only replaced television, but adopted it's structure. A subscription based service that allowed you access to a large number of games, some of them might be fantasy games, some of them science fiction, some drama. Now at any time you could change games to any one of the ones you currently subscribed to. Maybe they are bundled like cable channels are, for example. Assuming that video games ran on a combination of advertising and a share of the subscription fees based on ratings then they would have sweeps weeks as well. Video games would compete to have features or events rolled out to attract players during specific time periods.

Oddly enough this model doesn't actually offend me as much as I had thought it would, in fact it has a lot going for it. First of all you would have a lot more choice as to which games you wanted to play, you could switch out to a different game at any point, as long as it was within your game bundle. Not only that, but the game bundles would be constantly evolving, with new games being introduced all the time, and lower rated games vanishing. In fact, that's probably the biggest drawback. I know that more than once I have fallen in love with a show, only to have it canceled because it lacked mass appeal. Futurama, Family Guy, and the Tick live action all spring to mind.

In other news, I think that someone needs to buy me two round trip tickets to New York. The American Museum of the Moving Image has a new exhibit called "Blip! Arcade Classics from the Museum Collection". It's a display of classic arcade machines from 1978 to 1982 and the price of admission comes with three free tokens. Oh, and while you are buying those tickets for me, see if you can book me a nice hotel, too, and maybe some broadway show tickets! Hey, if you're going to send me to New York, you want me to really experience it, don't you?

In the Name of Progress

The company I work for, Tietokone Consulting, is slowly starting to move away fom development work. This means that in order to keep my creative side active I have had to take on all manner of side projects. Currently I am developing a flash game, called Xenotrader, building a website for my guild, the Sovereign Legion, and also trying to get some work done for the Ausukusa team.

Needless to say, I'm going a little bonkers. But even still, I have managed to dig up a few interesting links... First of all is this one, one that I find very interesting. Why? Here's a little story, a few short months ago I proposed to my girlfriend, making her my fiancee. During that process I of course had to find a ring, and I found a pretty terrific one that I pretty much broke the bank on. But she loves the ring, and I think it's great. What would have been greater, though, is if I had been able to get a stone twice as big for half the cost. Well guess what, pretty soon you might be able to do just that. Read this article at the BBC, and weep if you have already paid for your diamond...

And in sad news, Lucasarts has decided to can Sam and Max 2. I have to say I am VERY disappointed by this. The original, Sam and Max Hit the Road, was one of the defining moments in gaming for me. It was a brilliant game, filled with quirky humour that I still try and work into day to day situations whenever it is humanly, or nerdly, possible. Maybe some rogue developer will steal the source code and it can be finished by a community of zany underground programmers. Or does that sort of thing only happen in my imagination?

High in Protien

My fiancee volunteers at the Provincial Museum here and over the next couple of days they are having their "Creature Convention". During this time you can go down to the museum and check out the bugs and, if you are so inclined, even eat some bugs. I am pretty stoked about this! I am always up for trying something new so Care has agreed to bring me a couple Rice Crispie squares with meal worms baked right into them.

The way I look at it you have mad cow disease, chicken flu, and of course the things that are described to me in the zillion spam e-mails I get a day seem to indicate that many farm animals may, in fact, be carrying STD's. Insects are pretty much the one pure source of protien we have left, so I better start learning to like it now. Although Fear Factor makes it seem like eating insects is something really scary, in fact they are a viable food source and by the looks of it would make a great addition to the Atkins Diet. I'll let you know how it tasted tomorrow!

Mmmmmm..... Toasty!

I just pulled my clothes from the dryer and put them on hot, and now I don't want to do anything else for the rest of the day. The warmth from the dryer has completely sapped my ambition and made me wish I was right back in bed, all curled up with my fiancee. But I guess I can muster the strength if I need to...

I just wanted to log in and put up a quick post about my sketches. Last night I scanned a bunch of my old sketches and posted them to a little flash gallery. I fully admit that I am not much of an artist, but the gallery in flash works pretty well... Anyway have a look an feel free to comment at the bottom of this post to tell me what you think!

Global Ambition

Well, we all knew it had to happen at some point. The military has teamed up with the makers of There to build a full sized virtual copy of the planet earth. Using real world terrain data they are mapping the entire planet. Let me just run that by you one more time for effect..... The WHOLE FRIKKEN PLANET. And they hope to have it done by September. Of course, so far all they have modeled is a bit of Kuwait, but I'm sure that once the military finishes formatting all the data they have into something that is easy for the techs at There to import, I think they will really start cruising along with it. The whole idea is both cool and a little scary, like most technological advances, and I'm curious to see if they can actually finish it. If you want more information, check out the article at BBC News.

I am making excellent progress with Xenotrader. Over the weekend I managed to make the playfield much larger, as well as build in a mini map. Today I received word from my web host that the mySql database and the ElectroServer are both online, which means soon I should be able to start testing with multiple users! This should be an exciting week... You know, in a totally geeky sort of way.

The Old Stomping Grounds

I am writing this update from an internet cafe on Whyte Avenue here in Edmonton. For those who know of it they know that it is a terrific place to kill a few hours of the day. Small shops ranging from thrift stores to internet cafes (with everything in between) run the length of about a five block strip. Whyte is young, hip, and old and rustic all at the same time. I used to live a few blocks from here, several years ago, and I hadn't realized how much I missed it until today. The second I set foot on the avenue I felt elated. Imagine if you had been single for two years, and then one day the person who had dumped you called you up and begged for sex. That's pretty much the feeling I get coming back here. Even though many of the shops had changed, and the faces of the panhandlers and busquers had changed, the feeling is still the same.

I stopped by Whyte Knight games and salivated over all the vintage Atari, Intellivision, NES, Genesis, and even Master System games. I spent a full ten minutes just checking their old G.I. Joe action figures to see if they had any of the ones I destroyed with my B.B. gun when I was an angry farm teen. I then head over to Warp One games to check out the new action figures. I hadn't seen the newer StarCraft toys yet, and I have to say that I was tempted by the Hydralisk. Of course, twenty three bucks just seems like a lot of money right now, so I didn't bother.

I also searched through their RPG manuals to see if they had anything that would help inspire me for Xenotrader, but I realized that I still have plenty of unread space game manuals from when I originally started developing Xeno two years ago. I did however see the latest edition of GURPS and realized that it is one of the few systems that I haven't perused, and yet probably one of the most flexible. I wonder if it might be worth checking out just to see if it would make a good base system for building video games from...

Well, I don't want to spend too much money in the internet cafe, especially whn I will be back at my home computer in little less than an hour. I hope that my computer doesn't realize I had this illicit affair with a dirty public computer.

Freitag

Well, it's a payday and that means pastry. I stopped at Tim Horton's this morning to pick up a dozen for everyone here at work. Today on my lunch break I am planning on scoping out other game blogs for my links section. I also plan on devouring every doughnut left in the box in the lunchroom, so my coworkers better get their asses in gear if they don't want me to turn into a four hundred pound game playing bean bag chair. I have already found one blog that promotes the sharing of new game concepts, it is the aptly named Computer and Video Game Concepts blog. I might even submit a few ideas myself, assuming I can dig any up that I don't actually plan on developing myself...

These past few weeks I have been going a little bit Flash crazy. I discovered an excellent multiplayer server application called ElectroServer that really seems to make the development of multiplayer flash games a lot easier. I am so excited by the prospect that I have re-opened development on one of my older concepts, a web based space trading game I call Xenotraders. Maybe saying I re-opened development isn't quite the right term, actually. What I did was trash everything I didn't like about my old design, which is everything. Then completely redesigned the game from the ground up and kept the name, which I really like.

Last night I stuck around work for a while because I was hoping to attend the Edmonton Flash User Group meeting. Take a moment to navigate to that page, I'll wait until you get back...


Back? Okay, now here's the problem, when I looked at the date under the heading "next meeting" I saw the date listed as the 19th. The problem is I completely ignored the month. So I showed up last night to find the whole place locked down. Apparently the meeting was on Wednesday, and from what I hear it was a good one. Damn. Well, I'll try to be a bit more careful with dates in the future, I guess...