It's twice as long as the Swan tirade, and in my opinion it's twice as good, too. I'm waiting to submit it until peak time though, so that when the Digg campaign starts, it'll become immediately popular.
Further afoot, I have chapter one of fifteen of one of Wildcat's fictions, and that'll be coming up tomorrow. This will come in weekly instalments that appear each Wednesday.
And Moxx's first article looms ever closer. I've been reading some of it, and it's the kind of thing you'd expect from that crazy cat, and it's about a subject that I'm sure you'll all enjoy.
23 October 2007
22 October 2007
Why Game Developers Should Give A Shit About Scripts and Voice Acting
Pwnzerfaust today provides us with an article whose subject I feel very strongly about, Of course, this being The Texas Rattlesnake, it's filled with capitalized profanity and at the end of it if you're a script-writer for a game, you're bound to feel pretty damn suicidal. I sent a team invite to Pwnzerfaust a few days ago via email, but the git hasn't replied to it yet, so here's his contribution sent via email.
So my friend and I, suspended in a half-way drunken, half-way really-fucking-tired stupor, were bored and looking for something to do late last Friday night, and since we had already put angry cats in homeless people’s backpacks the Friday before that, we decided to give a long, hard, calculating look at our list of options. After a few tries at the dartboard, one of us finally managed to sober up enough to hit something that wasn’t a foot, the wall, the ceiling fan, or my clock radio, and that thing was Halo 3. We fired up the Xbox360, popped in the game, and started co-oping on normal (because we’re sissy pansy-asses like that). We had loads of fun for a while, but then we decided to stop beating the shit out of each other with gravity hammers and play the game properly, and then it just turned into something to do.
Anyway, we got to the second level or so and watched the cut-scene because neither of us remembered to press the A button to skip the damn thing. After a fairly good line delivery by the person who voices the Prophet of Truth (“Thinking... what? That you might escape the coming fire?”), we heard something along the lines of this:
“Ma’am, the squad leaders are requesting a rally point. Where should I tell them to go?”
*After unnecessarily pulling the slide on her pistol* “To war.”
…What.
No, seriously; what?
I mean, I’ve heard of being metaphorically kicked in the balls, but I never thought metaphors would actually jump up and actually kick you in the balls, causing you literal physical pain in your symbolic token of manhood. My disbelief would have lasted a good deal longer if my friend had not both ruined and greatly contributed to the importance of the situation by shouting “BITCH THAT DOESN’T HELP AT ALL!”
After a fit of uproarious yet completely serious and professional laughter, we continued playing the game as we had, just barely having forgotten the previous corny line before another one came up. And another. AND ANOTHER. And the corny dialogue JUST WOULDN’T FUCKING DIE. It was like night of the living dead only the zombies are sound waves and they want to kill your brain cells rather than eating them. And they’re at least one-hundred times more horrifying.
Unless you’ve been living in a hole/serving in Iraw (arguably the same thing) for the past decade or so, you’ve probably noticed that this is a recurring pattern in big-budget, big-business video games. If you haven’t been living in a hole/serving in Iraq yet still failed to discover this trend, you probably failed the similarities part of the IQ test. Large gaming corporations have just seemed to stop caring about the potential benefits of well-spoken, high-quality lines. They honestly don’t seem to realize that bad voice actors can turn the most epic and serious of situations into absurd and unbelievable idiot festivals.
Let’s take something like… oh, I don’t know… Oblivion, for example. The voice acting wasn’t horrid, to be sure, but I think that it could have been so much more. I just didn’t FEEL the actors; their joy, their pain, their cries as I ripped out entrails with a fiery claymore that screamed with the voices of women, children, and exceptionally girly men. Oh, and Patrick Stewart. Seriously, what the fuck was that about? Did they just record him talking in his sleep or what, because that was simply dreadful.
Then there are games with good voice acting and good writers. The most recent addition to that category that comes to mind is the towering, phallic monolith that is BioShock. If you haven’t played it, go back and read my exceptionally witty comment about your IQ, only reword it in such a way that it includes the words “BioShock” and “phallic monolith” without sounding convoluted or contrived. If you HAVE played it, then you would know that it’s probably the best game released this year for many thousands of reasons, all of which I cannot list simply because this article is reaching critical mass with me staying (mostly) on topic. For me, one of the most noticeable of these reasons was the absolutely spectacular voicing. Every character, major or minor, has a distinct, unique personality that is created almost entirely with their voices and dialogue. Every time Atlas’ voice cracked in on the radio, I felt comfort. Every time Andrew Ryan bellowed out of the speaker, I felt chi!
lls run up and down my spine. “A man chooses, a slave obeys,” is officially my favorite piece of dialogue ever written for any movie, television, or gaming production because it was so remarkably surreal, disturbing, and passionate that I was literally too stunned to move for over a minute after the scene was finished.
I tip my hat to the developers at 2K, because they know what a good monologue can contribute to the mood and story of a game, they know what the muffled sobs of hideous shells of people undone by their own greed can do to intensify the already thick and spreading atmosphere. Unlike so many game developers today, they know that gamers are not drooling cavemen lumbering around shouting “Want make dead people with bang-stick!”, that we want a story and characters that involve us, that coerce us into a world not at all our own. Game play is a must have, a fantastic story is key, but neither of those can fully deliver the best gaming experiences there are to be had. As they say, most of communication comes not from what you say, but how you say it. If you want to say it in the form of a high-explosive device to the face as opposed to a masterpiece of human speech, then by all means go ahead and do so, but I guarantee you that you’ll get no erections of happiness from me.
So my friend and I, suspended in a half-way drunken, half-way really-fucking-tired stupor, were bored and looking for something to do late last Friday night, and since we had already put angry cats in homeless people’s backpacks the Friday before that, we decided to give a long, hard, calculating look at our list of options. After a few tries at the dartboard, one of us finally managed to sober up enough to hit something that wasn’t a foot, the wall, the ceiling fan, or my clock radio, and that thing was Halo 3. We fired up the Xbox360, popped in the game, and started co-oping on normal (because we’re sissy pansy-asses like that). We had loads of fun for a while, but then we decided to stop beating the shit out of each other with gravity hammers and play the game properly, and then it just turned into something to do.
Anyway, we got to the second level or so and watched the cut-scene because neither of us remembered to press the A button to skip the damn thing. After a fairly good line delivery by the person who voices the Prophet of Truth (“Thinking... what? That you might escape the coming fire?”), we heard something along the lines of this:
“Ma’am, the squad leaders are requesting a rally point. Where should I tell them to go?”
*After unnecessarily pulling the slide on her pistol* “To war.”
…What.
No, seriously; what?
I mean, I’ve heard of being metaphorically kicked in the balls, but I never thought metaphors would actually jump up and actually kick you in the balls, causing you literal physical pain in your symbolic token of manhood. My disbelief would have lasted a good deal longer if my friend had not both ruined and greatly contributed to the importance of the situation by shouting “BITCH THAT DOESN’T HELP AT ALL!”
After a fit of uproarious yet completely serious and professional laughter, we continued playing the game as we had, just barely having forgotten the previous corny line before another one came up. And another. AND ANOTHER. And the corny dialogue JUST WOULDN’T FUCKING DIE. It was like night of the living dead only the zombies are sound waves and they want to kill your brain cells rather than eating them. And they’re at least one-hundred times more horrifying.
Unless you’ve been living in a hole/serving in Iraw (arguably the same thing) for the past decade or so, you’ve probably noticed that this is a recurring pattern in big-budget, big-business video games. If you haven’t been living in a hole/serving in Iraq yet still failed to discover this trend, you probably failed the similarities part of the IQ test. Large gaming corporations have just seemed to stop caring about the potential benefits of well-spoken, high-quality lines. They honestly don’t seem to realize that bad voice actors can turn the most epic and serious of situations into absurd and unbelievable idiot festivals.
Let’s take something like… oh, I don’t know… Oblivion, for example. The voice acting wasn’t horrid, to be sure, but I think that it could have been so much more. I just didn’t FEEL the actors; their joy, their pain, their cries as I ripped out entrails with a fiery claymore that screamed with the voices of women, children, and exceptionally girly men. Oh, and Patrick Stewart. Seriously, what the fuck was that about? Did they just record him talking in his sleep or what, because that was simply dreadful.
Then there are games with good voice acting and good writers. The most recent addition to that category that comes to mind is the towering, phallic monolith that is BioShock. If you haven’t played it, go back and read my exceptionally witty comment about your IQ, only reword it in such a way that it includes the words “BioShock” and “phallic monolith” without sounding convoluted or contrived. If you HAVE played it, then you would know that it’s probably the best game released this year for many thousands of reasons, all of which I cannot list simply because this article is reaching critical mass with me staying (mostly) on topic. For me, one of the most noticeable of these reasons was the absolutely spectacular voicing. Every character, major or minor, has a distinct, unique personality that is created almost entirely with their voices and dialogue. Every time Atlas’ voice cracked in on the radio, I felt comfort. Every time Andrew Ryan bellowed out of the speaker, I felt chi!
lls run up and down my spine. “A man chooses, a slave obeys,” is officially my favorite piece of dialogue ever written for any movie, television, or gaming production because it was so remarkably surreal, disturbing, and passionate that I was literally too stunned to move for over a minute after the scene was finished.
I tip my hat to the developers at 2K, because they know what a good monologue can contribute to the mood and story of a game, they know what the muffled sobs of hideous shells of people undone by their own greed can do to intensify the already thick and spreading atmosphere. Unlike so many game developers today, they know that gamers are not drooling cavemen lumbering around shouting “Want make dead people with bang-stick!”, that we want a story and characters that involve us, that coerce us into a world not at all our own. Game play is a must have, a fantastic story is key, but neither of those can fully deliver the best gaming experiences there are to be had. As they say, most of communication comes not from what you say, but how you say it. If you want to say it in the form of a high-explosive device to the face as opposed to a masterpiece of human speech, then by all means go ahead and do so, but I guarantee you that you’ll get no erections of happiness from me.
21 October 2007
Still to come...
If you look downwards, you'll see Katana's article about disappointing games - the ones that had potential to be classics, but fell just short at the final hurdle. It's really rather good.
Moxx should have his first article up in the next few days. We've been discussing it and we're convinced it's going to be very, very funny.
trapped, well, I dunno what he's doing. I should really badger him for information. It'll be something you'll wish you'd never read, you can count on that.
As for me, I'm going to be writing a few more humorous articles in the next few days too. Right now I haven't decided which one to use first, but when I do you can expect something that'll be funnier than the mostly-experimental swan article.
Moxx should have his first article up in the next few days. We've been discussing it and we're convinced it's going to be very, very funny.
trapped, well, I dunno what he's doing. I should really badger him for information. It'll be something you'll wish you'd never read, you can count on that.
As for me, I'm going to be writing a few more humorous articles in the next few days too. Right now I haven't decided which one to use first, but when I do you can expect something that'll be funnier than the mostly-experimental swan article.
Tragic Games
No, I'm not referring to games with a good plot that make you miss a character. I'm referring to those games that have one or two strong, very unique gameplay elements...but ultimately fail because the game is completely unpolished. They turn out buggy, with the mechanics badly used and just not fun. Here are a few examples.
1. Just Cause
Just Cause is a story about a Spaniard stuntman-turned-secret agent named Rico trying to overturn a regime somewhere in a group of islands. The game failed because it tried to be GTA, and didn't even get that far. The cars are impossible to drive, jungles make driving much more frustrating than cities (dodging every single tree is NOT FUN. Neither is driving on the main road) and it seems like the police are just ALWAYS after you.
What COULD have made the game almost a smash hit is the parachute. Rico has a re-usable parachute which you can stow and take out multiple times in one fall. Besides using it to fall great distances, you can use a grappling hook on cars, then use it to parasail above them. Also, after falling a long way, you can translate the momentum forward and travel quite a long distance by gliding with it.
Since Rico is a stuntman, you can also "jump" from your parachute to a vehicle, then shove out the driver and take it for yourself. Or, when being chased, you can jump out of your car and into the pursuer's.
But this is one of the points where the ideas fail. Wouldn't it be great to jump to their mounted turret, and take them out before jumping back to your car? There's also the tendency for all your crazy ideas to fail. I'd like it if the game were to encourage action-movie behavior by letting an abandoned car roll alongside another car without slowly veering away, or by taking out all those damn trees that result in so many chase-scene buzzkills.
2. Penumbra: Overture
Those without enough money to actually BUY a game may remember the free one called Penumbra. It was a horror puzzle game in which you didn't really get much that you would call a weapon. The physics system was even more refined than Half-Life 2, and you could interact with things beyond just grabbing and throwing them. Doors were opened by moving the mouse left to right. Levers were pulled by dragging the mouse back. Drawers were...you get the idea. It really helped the immersion factor.
What DIDN'T help immersion was having enemy animations with about 3 keyframes per attack. Some reviewers said the wolves in Overture just seemed to vaguely move upwards towards you for their 'leap'.
The problem is, you can only have a horror game if the player can die from their lack of reaction. So this essentially means there WILL be combat. But the interface is built in a way completely unsuited for killing anything. It seems about the equivalent of playing Postal by going to your inventory and using the command "Use Glock on Man" 27 times. (yes, that joke is sort of taken from Zero Punctuation)
This is especially disappointing because physics puzzles are even better than HL2 in a controlled environment. I was able to use a wooden board in Penumbra to make a ramp up to a vent, and I could imagine controlling something like a steering wheel. Fighting wolves though...let's not go back to Tomb Raider.
3. Far Cry
Far Cry wasn't exactly bad. It got about 90 scores on Metacritic, but every reviewer could see this one cliff in the game at which you just start falling. Far Cry was fantastic; besides being THE most updated graphical benchmark for DirectX 9 (and soon DirectX 10), Far Cry was a real thinking man's shooter.
Well, since this phrase is thrown around more than an asthmatic kid's inhaler in a game of Monkey in the Middle, I'll elaborate: It really pays off to look at a situation first. First time I played, I saw a beach full of enemies and assumed I should kill them. I proceeded to do so, and the game's mechanics certainly didn't discourage it. But next time, my binoculars found a little path on the opposite side of the cove...I drove my boat over and crept up it. I was able to tap the tower sniper on the shoulder before knocking his lights (and precious bodily fluids) out with a machete, then continued to sneak up on my objective without even being spotted by anyone. Since this objective was a jeep...the situation then evolved into an interesting car chase.
Far Cry is known for giving people entirely different situations through its wide open environments. But the problem is, this doesn't happen when you're indoors, and that's what much of the game consists of. While it's possible to use vents to get behind enemies, much of the game's tactical thinking gets lost about midway through. Beyond that is the fun-to-play qualities of your enemies that gets lost as you encounter mutant "Trigens" which use all the different attacks you'd expect a crazed monkey to use. Primarily...just leaping straight at you while absorbing all your bullets.
Even Crytek admits this is where they got lazy. They wanted their game out before the Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 fan-covered wonders. This becomes especially apparent in the game's "boss fight" which is essentially just 4 of the toughest bad guys in an open area where there's not much you can do except use noclip to get by, which is literally what I DID after about 5,000 tries at full health and decent ammo.
Crytek hopes to solve these problems in Crysis, although Ubisoft is also working on Far Cry 2. The games look equally impressive, with Far Cry 2 actually converting some Crysis fans. My computer can run Crysis in DirectX 10, so maybe someday I'll put up my review of it.
So that's everything I can think of. Comment on some other games that would've been great, but sucked.
1. Just Cause
Just Cause is a story about a Spaniard stuntman-turned-secret agent named Rico trying to overturn a regime somewhere in a group of islands. The game failed because it tried to be GTA, and didn't even get that far. The cars are impossible to drive, jungles make driving much more frustrating than cities (dodging every single tree is NOT FUN. Neither is driving on the main road) and it seems like the police are just ALWAYS after you.
What COULD have made the game almost a smash hit is the parachute. Rico has a re-usable parachute which you can stow and take out multiple times in one fall. Besides using it to fall great distances, you can use a grappling hook on cars, then use it to parasail above them. Also, after falling a long way, you can translate the momentum forward and travel quite a long distance by gliding with it.Since Rico is a stuntman, you can also "jump" from your parachute to a vehicle, then shove out the driver and take it for yourself. Or, when being chased, you can jump out of your car and into the pursuer's.
But this is one of the points where the ideas fail. Wouldn't it be great to jump to their mounted turret, and take them out before jumping back to your car? There's also the tendency for all your crazy ideas to fail. I'd like it if the game were to encourage action-movie behavior by letting an abandoned car roll alongside another car without slowly veering away, or by taking out all those damn trees that result in so many chase-scene buzzkills.
2. Penumbra: Overture
Those without enough money to actually BUY a game may remember the free one called Penumbra. It was a horror puzzle game in which you didn't really get much that you would call a weapon. The physics system was even more refined than Half-Life 2, and you could interact with things beyond just grabbing and throwing them. Doors were opened by moving the mouse left to right. Levers were pulled by dragging the mouse back. Drawers were...you get the idea. It really helped the immersion factor.
What DIDN'T help immersion was having enemy animations with about 3 keyframes per attack. Some reviewers said the wolves in Overture just seemed to vaguely move upwards towards you for their 'leap'.
The problem is, you can only have a horror game if the player can die from their lack of reaction. So this essentially means there WILL be combat. But the interface is built in a way completely unsuited for killing anything. It seems about the equivalent of playing Postal by going to your inventory and using the command "Use Glock on Man" 27 times. (yes, that joke is sort of taken from Zero Punctuation)
This is especially disappointing because physics puzzles are even better than HL2 in a controlled environment. I was able to use a wooden board in Penumbra to make a ramp up to a vent, and I could imagine controlling something like a steering wheel. Fighting wolves though...let's not go back to Tomb Raider.
3. Far Cry
Far Cry wasn't exactly bad. It got about 90 scores on Metacritic, but every reviewer could see this one cliff in the game at which you just start falling. Far Cry was fantastic; besides being THE most updated graphical benchmark for DirectX 9 (and soon DirectX 10), Far Cry was a real thinking man's shooter.
Well, since this phrase is thrown around more than an asthmatic kid's inhaler in a game of Monkey in the Middle, I'll elaborate: It really pays off to look at a situation first. First time I played, I saw a beach full of enemies and assumed I should kill them. I proceeded to do so, and the game's mechanics certainly didn't discourage it. But next time, my binoculars found a little path on the opposite side of the cove...I drove my boat over and crept up it. I was able to tap the tower sniper on the shoulder before knocking his lights (and precious bodily fluids) out with a machete, then continued to sneak up on my objective without even being spotted by anyone. Since this objective was a jeep...the situation then evolved into an interesting car chase.
Far Cry is known for giving people entirely different situations through its wide open environments. But the problem is, this doesn't happen when you're indoors, and that's what much of the game consists of. While it's possible to use vents to get behind enemies, much of the game's tactical thinking gets lost about midway through. Beyond that is the fun-to-play qualities of your enemies that gets lost as you encounter mutant "Trigens" which use all the different attacks you'd expect a crazed monkey to use. Primarily...just leaping straight at you while absorbing all your bullets.
Even Crytek admits this is where they got lazy. They wanted their game out before the Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 fan-covered wonders. This becomes especially apparent in the game's "boss fight" which is essentially just 4 of the toughest bad guys in an open area where there's not much you can do except use noclip to get by, which is literally what I DID after about 5,000 tries at full health and decent ammo.
Crytek hopes to solve these problems in Crysis, although Ubisoft is also working on Far Cry 2. The games look equally impressive, with Far Cry 2 actually converting some Crysis fans. My computer can run Crysis in DirectX 10, so maybe someday I'll put up my review of it.
So that's everything I can think of. Comment on some other games that would've been great, but sucked.
The case of the Rapid Typist
As part of this blog's feature-list, I'll be looking for stuff to use on the forum, to put on Digg and send out to a wider audience of people so that the actual blog staff have to do less work (I kid, I kid). This is the first of such, a hilarious detective story by currently-residing-in-Japan forum member Sum0. Be sure to digg it.
Ambrose Hopkins paused as he arrived at the front door of his trendy city house, in the trendy part of town. On the doorstep in front of him his cat, a Maine Coon called Apollo, was sitting, lazily licking herself. "I have no catflap," thought the tall, well-built amateur detective, "and my cat was inside when I left home. Something is afoot." Ambrose silently selected his house key from the inside pocket of his raincoat and slowly, silently, placed it in the lock and turned. The door opened on silent hinges with a silent push. Creeping inside, Ambrose closed the door behind him silently. He then hoisted himself on to the bannister of his elegant staircase and crawled up, avoiding the creaky wooden steps and using the posts as handholds. Reaching the silent sanctuary of the upstairs landing carpet, he dismounted the bannister, drew a highly-illegal fifty-thousand watt tazer from his left trouser pocket, and with a swift kick opened the door to his bedroom.
"Argh!" said the man inside, a short gentleman in a bowler hat wearing round spectacles and Lycra running shorts. The man's hands were poised over the keyboard of Ambrose's iMac, in an unmistakable home-key arrangement. Ambrose rose his tazer to point directly at the man's head, then reconsided and positioned himself for a thigh shot. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Argh!" said the man.
"I won't ask you again!" said Ambrose, activating the electric prongs so that they gave a satisfying crack and a blue glow in the half-darkness of his bedroom.
"I'm... I'm a time traveller!"
"Excuse me?"
"I travelled back from the future!" The man's eyes gleamed in the dull sodium glow of the street-lamps.
"What nonsense! Time travel is theorectically improbable, and that's good enough for me!"
"But... but... I have travelled back in time ... in order to retrieve the private diary of the famous Ambrose Hopkins!"
"You... you have?"
"Yes!"
Ambrose rose his hand to his chin.
"Well, that would explain the Lycra. I'm ... famous in the future?"
"Yes! You're a legendary detective!" said the short man.
"Amateur detective," said Ambrose.
"Yes! Everyone knows you. I was hired by a company to retrieve your private diary from your computer... because... everyone wants to know what was going on in that head of yours!"
"Why, that's fantastic!" said Ambrose, beaming.
"I was just about to search for it, see..." The man turned to the computer and tapped effortlessly on the keyboard. He certainly could type quickly, thought Ambrose. "Look, here it is! Now, if I may just download it to my future memory device..."
"There's time for that later. Come, have tea with me!"
"But I really shou-"
"You've come all this way to get my diary. Surely you'd relish the chance to relax and have a cup of tea with the famous Ambrose Hopkins?"
"Well, er... I suppose so!"
"Excellent, friend! Let us retire to the sitting room."
-
Ambrose poured some more tea. "So, Mr Sterling. Your description of the future is fantastically vivid. What do you think the most important invention in the future is? I mean, will be?"
"Well, it'll be -- I mean, it was... er... the invention of mind-machine interfaces in... 2050!"
"Really? Fascinating!"
"Yes, it... it lead to a real revolution in how we use computers. No longer do we use our hands to push buttons, or move cursors: we just think the thought, the computer picks up on it and executes it instantly. It's really something. Of course, it all happened years before I was born. I've never known any other way."
"I see. Excuse me, I think I hear the door. Please, my friend, wait here. Have a slice of cake!"
The small man sat rigid, eyes roaming the sitting room. It was very, very Victorian: elaborate wallpaper, a large cabinet, rows of leather-bound books, large luxurious armchairs, and a large, HD-ready flatscreen television. Ambrose had left the room. The small man slowly got up and made for the door, which had been left ajar. He leaned out into the corridor -- Ambrose had headed to the front door, and was nowhere to be seen. The small man tiptoed down the corridor into the modest-sized kitchen, where his point of entry -- the back door -- was still unlocked. Quietly, the man reached for the door-handle and turned it, with the greatest of care not to make a noise --
Click.
A jolt went through the man's body.
"Mr Sterling, I'd like to introduce you to my good friend, Detective Thompson." The small man looked at the long arm holding the pair of handcuffs snapped tightly around his wrists. A gruff-looking, moustached man narrowed his eyes at him.
"I'd like to inform you, Mr Sterling," said Detective Thompson, "that you are under arrest for breaking and entering a private property, and for illegally accessing Mr Hopkins' computer system. You have the right to remain silent."
"What? What is this? I'm... I'm a time traveller! I thought... you... you said you believed me, Ambrose! It's true! The... the lycra!"
"I'm sorry for the masquerade, Mr Sterling, but I knew you were lying all along. For the one thing, the very notion of time travel is ridiculous."
"But we discovered a way! Using wormholes and--"
"That's irrelevant, Mr Sterling. You mentioned that in the future, computers are controlled by mind-power alone."
"It's true! It's incredible!"
"And yet you have an almost phenomenal ability to touch-type. I noticed it when you were using my computer."
"I-- but--"
"How, exactly, would a traveller from a civilization where keyboards are obsolete know how to touch-type?"
"It was--" The man started to sweat.
"I propose, Mr Sterling, that you are actually the popular novelist, Mr Howard Wells, whose stories of crime and mystery are a hit in the weekly publication Tales of Crime and Criminality, and who additionally penned a fantastical tale of time travel in your recent novel, Waterloo 3001! This would, naturally, account for your ability to type ever so well and also your uncanny ability to come up with such an unlikely explanation for your activities. Your intention to steal my diaries was a simple ruse to gain inspiration -- or should I say, plagarise material for your ever-popular series of stories!"
The man frowned. "Well, Mr Hopkins. It would seem that real life has put me into a situation that, if I were to write it, my readers would criticise as being utterly unbelievable! I tip my hat to your skills of deduction, as one story-teller to another."
"Take him away, Detective."
"Right you are, Ambrose." Detective Thompson led the restrained Mr Wells down the corridor and out of the front door, to the waiting police car.
Ambrose Hopkins walked back to his sitting room, and drank tea with his cat.
Ambrose Hopkins paused as he arrived at the front door of his trendy city house, in the trendy part of town. On the doorstep in front of him his cat, a Maine Coon called Apollo, was sitting, lazily licking herself. "I have no catflap," thought the tall, well-built amateur detective, "and my cat was inside when I left home. Something is afoot." Ambrose silently selected his house key from the inside pocket of his raincoat and slowly, silently, placed it in the lock and turned. The door opened on silent hinges with a silent push. Creeping inside, Ambrose closed the door behind him silently. He then hoisted himself on to the bannister of his elegant staircase and crawled up, avoiding the creaky wooden steps and using the posts as handholds. Reaching the silent sanctuary of the upstairs landing carpet, he dismounted the bannister, drew a highly-illegal fifty-thousand watt tazer from his left trouser pocket, and with a swift kick opened the door to his bedroom.
"Argh!" said the man inside, a short gentleman in a bowler hat wearing round spectacles and Lycra running shorts. The man's hands were poised over the keyboard of Ambrose's iMac, in an unmistakable home-key arrangement. Ambrose rose his tazer to point directly at the man's head, then reconsided and positioned himself for a thigh shot. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Argh!" said the man.
"I won't ask you again!" said Ambrose, activating the electric prongs so that they gave a satisfying crack and a blue glow in the half-darkness of his bedroom.
"I'm... I'm a time traveller!"
"Excuse me?"
"I travelled back from the future!" The man's eyes gleamed in the dull sodium glow of the street-lamps.
"What nonsense! Time travel is theorectically improbable, and that's good enough for me!"
"But... but... I have travelled back in time ... in order to retrieve the private diary of the famous Ambrose Hopkins!"
"You... you have?"
"Yes!"
Ambrose rose his hand to his chin.
"Well, that would explain the Lycra. I'm ... famous in the future?"
"Yes! You're a legendary detective!" said the short man.
"Amateur detective," said Ambrose.
"Yes! Everyone knows you. I was hired by a company to retrieve your private diary from your computer... because... everyone wants to know what was going on in that head of yours!"
"Why, that's fantastic!" said Ambrose, beaming.
"I was just about to search for it, see..." The man turned to the computer and tapped effortlessly on the keyboard. He certainly could type quickly, thought Ambrose. "Look, here it is! Now, if I may just download it to my future memory device..."
"There's time for that later. Come, have tea with me!"
"But I really shou-"
"You've come all this way to get my diary. Surely you'd relish the chance to relax and have a cup of tea with the famous Ambrose Hopkins?"
"Well, er... I suppose so!"
"Excellent, friend! Let us retire to the sitting room."
-
Ambrose poured some more tea. "So, Mr Sterling. Your description of the future is fantastically vivid. What do you think the most important invention in the future is? I mean, will be?"
"Well, it'll be -- I mean, it was... er... the invention of mind-machine interfaces in... 2050!"
"Really? Fascinating!"
"Yes, it... it lead to a real revolution in how we use computers. No longer do we use our hands to push buttons, or move cursors: we just think the thought, the computer picks up on it and executes it instantly. It's really something. Of course, it all happened years before I was born. I've never known any other way."
"I see. Excuse me, I think I hear the door. Please, my friend, wait here. Have a slice of cake!"
The small man sat rigid, eyes roaming the sitting room. It was very, very Victorian: elaborate wallpaper, a large cabinet, rows of leather-bound books, large luxurious armchairs, and a large, HD-ready flatscreen television. Ambrose had left the room. The small man slowly got up and made for the door, which had been left ajar. He leaned out into the corridor -- Ambrose had headed to the front door, and was nowhere to be seen. The small man tiptoed down the corridor into the modest-sized kitchen, where his point of entry -- the back door -- was still unlocked. Quietly, the man reached for the door-handle and turned it, with the greatest of care not to make a noise --
Click.
A jolt went through the man's body.
"Mr Sterling, I'd like to introduce you to my good friend, Detective Thompson." The small man looked at the long arm holding the pair of handcuffs snapped tightly around his wrists. A gruff-looking, moustached man narrowed his eyes at him.
"I'd like to inform you, Mr Sterling," said Detective Thompson, "that you are under arrest for breaking and entering a private property, and for illegally accessing Mr Hopkins' computer system. You have the right to remain silent."
"What? What is this? I'm... I'm a time traveller! I thought... you... you said you believed me, Ambrose! It's true! The... the lycra!"
"I'm sorry for the masquerade, Mr Sterling, but I knew you were lying all along. For the one thing, the very notion of time travel is ridiculous."
"But we discovered a way! Using wormholes and--"
"That's irrelevant, Mr Sterling. You mentioned that in the future, computers are controlled by mind-power alone."
"It's true! It's incredible!"
"And yet you have an almost phenomenal ability to touch-type. I noticed it when you were using my computer."
"I-- but--"
"How, exactly, would a traveller from a civilization where keyboards are obsolete know how to touch-type?"
"It was--" The man started to sweat.
"I propose, Mr Sterling, that you are actually the popular novelist, Mr Howard Wells, whose stories of crime and mystery are a hit in the weekly publication Tales of Crime and Criminality, and who additionally penned a fantastical tale of time travel in your recent novel, Waterloo 3001! This would, naturally, account for your ability to type ever so well and also your uncanny ability to come up with such an unlikely explanation for your activities. Your intention to steal my diaries was a simple ruse to gain inspiration -- or should I say, plagarise material for your ever-popular series of stories!"
The man frowned. "Well, Mr Hopkins. It would seem that real life has put me into a situation that, if I were to write it, my readers would criticise as being utterly unbelievable! I tip my hat to your skills of deduction, as one story-teller to another."
"Take him away, Detective."
"Right you are, Ambrose." Detective Thompson led the restrained Mr Wells down the corridor and out of the front door, to the waiting police car.
Ambrose Hopkins walked back to his sitting room, and drank tea with his cat.
20 October 2007
Good News
Good news, guys, the blog here is about to get ten times better. Yeah, that's right, I'm joining the team here. Think of me as less serious than Katana, less hateful than Matias, and much, much funnier than drunkymonkey. Waaay funnier.
Honestly, who writes about swans, anyway?
Honestly, who writes about swans, anyway?
ONE FUCKING TRIBAL
When talking about awesome boss music with a friend, he brought up the music from the final boss of Jet Force Gemini, an old game for the N64. I loved this game and would have beaten it had ONE TRIBAL not been missing...
You basically need every single tribal in order to reach the area in which to beat the game. This proves difficult when you are standing two feet away from a spot where every FAQ and walkthrough in the universe is saying a tribal should be standing but ISN'T.
As such I was left to repeatedly play the rest of the game as it was, and there's a reason it was one of Rare's more famous games from the old N64 era....well, even if it does have like a 70-something on metacritic.
But let's face it. Halo 3 got a 94. You can't trust anyone now.
The game is played out in a style similar to that of Quake, Shadowgrounds, or any other sort of shoot-anything-that-moves fest. You get a plethora of different weapons that never seem to run out of ammo, ranging from a machine gun to a homing missile launcher (which seems to look more like a pistol somehow...fuck every weapon looks like a pistol...that gun on the right is a sniper rifle)
The way you control your character, though, is a bit unusual from most games. You move around like any Super Mario 64 or Donkey Kong 64 or Conker's BFD or anything like that, but when you hold the R button, the camera pulls in close to your character, you actually get an aiming crosshair, your character goes transparent, and you now have the common FPS-style movement seen today.
I realize this is now kinda common in games like GTA today, but back then I think it was the perfect execution, and the perfect way to get people to transition to that whole WASD thing, and learning that yes, the left and right buttons just make you STRAFE. And, if you didn't like it, you could run around like Mario until you have the need to shoot an enemy that's above you. Boss fights sort of pretended you always had R pressed, and kind of worked well for it because you'd need that camera view anyway.
The boss music wasn't bad, but I think the main reason I loved it back then was because the bosses were so good. The best way to execute a boss fight is to have bullets and attacks flying everywhere, and yet ensure that any half-competent player can follow a certain method to dodge them. Basically, keep em on their toes, but never knock him off them.
You'll also notice in the video I just linked that, among two other characters, you get to play as a dog. Now, this makes about as much sense as the Warcows from Unreal Tournament 1, but it still elicits a fan response just the same. It's nice to have something just as absurd as the game mechanics it's built around, as well as the satisfaction of knowing an entire army was laid to waste by a puppy with a gun taped to his back.
The game also has this whole Sonic & Tails co-op mechanic: Shortly you find a little robot called Floyd. (which, thereafter, confused me whenever anyone referred to Pink Floyd) When you plug in a second controller, another person can control Floyd and shoot stuff with his fairly hard-to-control laser gun (but hey, it gets friends interested in the game) While the game also had a decent multiplayer mode, this was really what we preferred doing.
I've been able to find ROMs of the game in the past, and I'm wondering if any emulators have let it be played with the mouse. If so, I'd certainly pick it up again.
If only to get that ONE...
FUCKING.
TRIBAL.
You basically need every single tribal in order to reach the area in which to beat the game. This proves difficult when you are standing two feet away from a spot where every FAQ and walkthrough in the universe is saying a tribal should be standing but ISN'T.
As such I was left to repeatedly play the rest of the game as it was, and there's a reason it was one of Rare's more famous games from the old N64 era....well, even if it does have like a 70-something on metacritic.
But let's face it. Halo 3 got a 94. You can't trust anyone now.
The game is played out in a style similar to that of Quake, Shadowgrounds, or any other sort of shoot-anything-that-moves fest. You get a plethora of different weapons that never seem to run out of ammo, ranging from a machine gun to a homing missile launcher (which seems to look more like a pistol somehow...fuck every weapon looks like a pistol...that gun on the right is a sniper rifle)The way you control your character, though, is a bit unusual from most games. You move around like any Super Mario 64 or Donkey Kong 64 or Conker's BFD or anything like that, but when you hold the R button, the camera pulls in close to your character, you actually get an aiming crosshair, your character goes transparent, and you now have the common FPS-style movement seen today.I realize this is now kinda common in games like GTA today, but back then I think it was the perfect execution, and the perfect way to get people to transition to that whole WASD thing, and learning that yes, the left and right buttons just make you STRAFE. And, if you didn't like it, you could run around like Mario until you have the need to shoot an enemy that's above you. Boss fights sort of pretended you always had R pressed, and kind of worked well for it because you'd need that camera view anyway.
The boss music wasn't bad, but I think the main reason I loved it back then was because the bosses were so good. The best way to execute a boss fight is to have bullets and attacks flying everywhere, and yet ensure that any half-competent player can follow a certain method to dodge them. Basically, keep em on their toes, but never knock him off them.
You'll also notice in the video I just linked that, among two other characters, you get to play as a dog. Now, this makes about as much sense as the Warcows from Unreal Tournament 1, but it still elicits a fan response just the same. It's nice to have something just as absurd as the game mechanics it's built around, as well as the satisfaction of knowing an entire army was laid to waste by a puppy with a gun taped to his back.
The game also has this whole Sonic & Tails co-op mechanic: Shortly you find a little robot called Floyd. (which, thereafter, confused me whenever anyone referred to Pink Floyd) When you plug in a second controller, another person can control Floyd and shoot stuff with his fairly hard-to-control laser gun (but hey, it gets friends interested in the game) While the game also had a decent multiplayer mode, this was really what we preferred doing.I've been able to find ROMs of the game in the past, and I'm wondering if any emulators have let it be played with the mouse. If so, I'd certainly pick it up again.
If only to get that ONE...
FUCKING.
TRIBAL.
The case against: Swans
I normally consider myself to be quite a mild-mannered, calm man with a definite lack of hatred running through my veins, but occasionally this stature towards the world is broken when unavoidable yet infuriating concepts and entities present themselves. Therefore, I have decided to share with you my hates, the things that get my blood boiling so badly by the end of thinking about it I've already killed several innocent people.
The first of these hates is something that used to scare me when I was a little nipper. Actually, perhaps "scare" is the wrong word. A better (group of) word(s) would be "petrify with great conviction". Meeting this malformation of creatures would be like the child-form of the Day of Judgement, where instead of Saint Peter you get a great white beast with apparently no eyes looking at you, trying to get in close so it can peck your hand off. It hisses at you like you're the greatest inconvenience it has ever suffered, and soon you'll be lying on the ground, blood dripping to the floor. In short, this animal is the Cthulhu of childhood.
I'm talking about swans.
Now, most people seem to think that they're the royalty of the sea or something. Other aquatic creatures see them, and they move out of the way, looking on as they "gracefully" glide to where they want to be. But I see them as more of a mob, those animals move out of the way not because they feel as if the beings they are likely to upset are better than them, or have more rights, but because they'll get ripped to shreds if they don't. Big Tony the Swan will not tolerate other animals acting as if they have a right to exist.
Because, let's not kid ourselves. Swans are horrible vicious creatures with no empathy towards anyone or anything. They are undeniably beautiful, but so were Sirens. Hell, so is Poison Ivy, but while you wouldn't necessarily want to have intercourse with a swan, their appearance is deceptive. You're lulled in, you want to go up to them and stroke them, or give them a piece of bread, but then you hear that hiss. It is the blood-curdling cry of Satan's duck.
I wouldn't mind swans so much if they just kept themselves to themselves and didn't interfere with anything that didn't involve them, but let me ask you a question. Have you ever tried to feed ducks while swans are about? It truly is a horrific vision, and one that philosophers probably argue is a mirror to the human race. As soon as a bread crumb falls to the ground, the swans are on it, leaving the less fortunate, but much more peaceful ducks, hungry. It is your duty to the rest of the duck world that, next time you're distributing bread products to our webbed-foot friends, you make sure the swans are distracted with the cries of some small child, while you selflessly and heroically give the underdogs a well-needed piece of Warburton's.
You want further prove that swans are evil? They are the national animal of Denmark. Do you know what also comes from Denmark? That's right, the Vikings. Perhaps I'm a little biased here as the Vikings practically raped my country and through them the most pure Britons you'll get in this country all live in Wales (which is really embarrassing), but those two as a combo would be even more horrific than the upcoming Alvin and the Chipmunks movie.
I can almost imagine ten thousand heavily armed Vikings riding into battle on the backs of ten thousand hissing swans. When Aragorn was talking about the day that the hope of men fails, he was obviously talking about that day. The last battle at Mordor was a cakewalk compared to what that would be like.
And just to prove that I'm not utterly proud of Britain, according to Wikipedia, the Queen "retains the right to ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water". This is the same Queen that had Princess Diana killed (kudos to you, conspiracy fans!), and only smiles when ten thousand or more people are waving at her. And whilst we're on the subject, British tabloid/toilet roll The Sun once claimed that immigrants had been eating the Queen's swans. I know fine well this story isn't true. No one would eat a swan. But a swan would eat you.
But wait, the tale gets suddenly worse. Yes, even worse than the blatant swan propaganda that is the Ugly Duckling. For in Australia there is a horrid abomination of feathers. To call it a living thing would be truthful yes, but it would likely make you lose hope in this whole life thing. I spotted one while on my holidays in August, and I've only just stopped having nightmares.
Yes, it is a black swan (and, incidentally, another one behind it). These, truly, are the bane of humanity. Within their black form lies the beating heart of a thing devoid of emotions, of concepts like love, honour, decency, and friendship.
Friends, I propose a crusade. Pick up your guns and harmful household utensils! Swans cast a dark shadow on this world, and our only choice is to butcher them all!
They are planning the same thing upon us.
The first of these hates is something that used to scare me when I was a little nipper. Actually, perhaps "scare" is the wrong word. A better (group of) word(s) would be "petrify with great conviction". Meeting this malformation of creatures would be like the child-form of the Day of Judgement, where instead of Saint Peter you get a great white beast with apparently no eyes looking at you, trying to get in close so it can peck your hand off. It hisses at you like you're the greatest inconvenience it has ever suffered, and soon you'll be lying on the ground, blood dripping to the floor. In short, this animal is the Cthulhu of childhood.
I'm talking about swans.
Now, most people seem to think that they're the royalty of the sea or something. Other aquatic creatures see them, and they move out of the way, looking on as they "gracefully" glide to where they want to be. But I see them as more of a mob, those animals move out of the way not because they feel as if the beings they are likely to upset are better than them, or have more rights, but because they'll get ripped to shreds if they don't. Big Tony the Swan will not tolerate other animals acting as if they have a right to exist.
Because, let's not kid ourselves. Swans are horrible vicious creatures with no empathy towards anyone or anything. They are undeniably beautiful, but so were Sirens. Hell, so is Poison Ivy, but while you wouldn't necessarily want to have intercourse with a swan, their appearance is deceptive. You're lulled in, you want to go up to them and stroke them, or give them a piece of bread, but then you hear that hiss. It is the blood-curdling cry of Satan's duck.
I wouldn't mind swans so much if they just kept themselves to themselves and didn't interfere with anything that didn't involve them, but let me ask you a question. Have you ever tried to feed ducks while swans are about? It truly is a horrific vision, and one that philosophers probably argue is a mirror to the human race. As soon as a bread crumb falls to the ground, the swans are on it, leaving the less fortunate, but much more peaceful ducks, hungry. It is your duty to the rest of the duck world that, next time you're distributing bread products to our webbed-foot friends, you make sure the swans are distracted with the cries of some small child, while you selflessly and heroically give the underdogs a well-needed piece of Warburton's.
You want further prove that swans are evil? They are the national animal of Denmark. Do you know what also comes from Denmark? That's right, the Vikings. Perhaps I'm a little biased here as the Vikings practically raped my country and through them the most pure Britons you'll get in this country all live in Wales (which is really embarrassing), but those two as a combo would be even more horrific than the upcoming Alvin and the Chipmunks movie.
I can almost imagine ten thousand heavily armed Vikings riding into battle on the backs of ten thousand hissing swans. When Aragorn was talking about the day that the hope of men fails, he was obviously talking about that day. The last battle at Mordor was a cakewalk compared to what that would be like.
And just to prove that I'm not utterly proud of Britain, according to Wikipedia, the Queen "retains the right to ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water". This is the same Queen that had Princess Diana killed (kudos to you, conspiracy fans!), and only smiles when ten thousand or more people are waving at her. And whilst we're on the subject, British tabloid/toilet roll The Sun once claimed that immigrants had been eating the Queen's swans. I know fine well this story isn't true. No one would eat a swan. But a swan would eat you.
But wait, the tale gets suddenly worse. Yes, even worse than the blatant swan propaganda that is the Ugly Duckling. For in Australia there is a horrid abomination of feathers. To call it a living thing would be truthful yes, but it would likely make you lose hope in this whole life thing. I spotted one while on my holidays in August, and I've only just stopped having nightmares.
Yes, it is a black swan (and, incidentally, another one behind it). These, truly, are the bane of humanity. Within their black form lies the beating heart of a thing devoid of emotions, of concepts like love, honour, decency, and friendship.
Friends, I propose a crusade. Pick up your guns and harmful household utensils! Swans cast a dark shadow on this world, and our only choice is to butcher them all!
They are planning the same thing upon us.
First CREATIVE TF2 machinima created
Well, Lit Fuse was very good at being able to make the first Clips of Nothing Happening in Team Fortress 2 Editted Together. BUT I HAVE MADE the first machinima!
Even if it's 6 seconds. (you can't actually do this ingame; it's an illusion)
Even if it's 6 seconds. (you can't actually do this ingame; it's an illusion)
19 October 2007
Check out the banner!
Thoughtfully provided (free of charge, mind you!) by the masculine, tough-guy form of MS-DOS4. I'd say he has a worrying monopoly on this "custom images" jazz, what with designing most of the custom images you'll see on the forum as well.
Anyway, you've probably also noticed that there has been some changes in other areas of the blog as well. There's a nice blue theme running through everything, and I've added links to the three places (other than this) you'll find Inconvenienced throughout the web.
There should be a bundle of activity over the weekend, so watch out for that.
And because I thought it deserved a bit of an advert, check out Sum0's detective stories. Despite one of them being about a murder, they made me smile.
Anyway, you've probably also noticed that there has been some changes in other areas of the blog as well. There's a nice blue theme running through everything, and I've added links to the three places (other than this) you'll find Inconvenienced throughout the web.
There should be a bundle of activity over the weekend, so watch out for that.
And because I thought it deserved a bit of an advert, check out Sum0's detective stories. Despite one of them being about a murder, they made me smile.
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