Battleship:So far, this is the only Hasbro property originally licensed to Universal that has seen the light of day. It cost $250 million to make. Was it worth it?
Battleship is like a bowl full of vanilla ice cream when you're wanting dinner. I can only imagine the director giving his instructions: "Walk here!" "Swim here" "Jump here!" "Say this line!" It doesn't much matter who the actors are or what they do, so long as they do it passably, which they do. Not one of them has a personality of any consequence.
All that seems to matter is the Armageddon love setup and the mcguffin plot around which to hang lots of CGI transformer space ships, cybermen, guns, missiles, explosions, hokey technical jargon shouting, and beams of light. It's all put together ok, I suppose. In fact, the movie depicts the aliens as never firing until they are fired upon; they are always assessing threats and not instigating violence unless a threat is detected and immanent. Despite the opportunity to give the movie a moral edge based on this (like in District 9 or Super8), no such edge is given. Instead we get to blow up the aliens, yay us.
The little elements of the board game - the grid firing and the peg shaped artillery - are kind of funny, but not as funny as the constant and forumlaic deux ex machina.
So it's not a colossal disaster, but neither is it a shining success. It is what it is. E5.
The Hunger Games:In contrast, this is a shining success of a movie, undoubtedly the best adaptation of the books that could have been hoped for. It's the story of a girl who volunteers in place of her sister to fight in a game to the death with other children as spectator sport for the ruling Capitol oppressors.
The book series is an odd one: the first book The Hunger Games is an oddly set up thrilling adventure: the games are depicted as horrible enslavement, yet the great majority of the book revels in the adventure of the games. True, it also covers senselessness, starvation, hopelessness, sacrifice, and so on. But it doesn't give any sense of rebellion or real world change until the very end. Only in the second and third book does the rebellion start, and even a lot of the second book spends an awful lot of time in the thrall of a game. By the third book, the rebellion, casualties, cruelty, and loss pile up so high I was in shock. I couldn't believe anyone would write a story like it for entertainment; I think that's part of its brilliance.
Meanwhile, the movie stays fairly close to the book, but also includes very briefly a little bit of the world reactions, politics, and rebellion that is beginning outside of the game that forms the center story (these elements are taken from the second book). Interestingly, Roger Ebert complained about the lack of rebellion and politics in the movie, which is ironic since the movie actually has slightly more than the book does.
The movie is fantastically acted and directed, beautifully sequenced and shot, and thrilling entertainment. The little bits of rebellion and politics are very important additions and expand the scope of the movie just enough to bait you for the sequels.
The Iron Lady: This is a Meryl Streep set piece, and she is brilliant, as usual. The movie, however, is rather odd. It focuses on Margaret Thatcher looking back at parts of her life, which is all well and good, but it spends nearly half of the screen time in the present for no apparent reason other than to watch Meryl act old. The historical parts are much more worth the screen time and they suffer for being the lack of focus. Instead we get only bits and pieces of the historical story, which feels like only part of a movie.
Chủ Nhật, 29 tháng 4, 2012
Open Source Textures
OpenGameArt's texture section just received an update. There now is a category tree and files from texture packs are also available as single nodes (pages/description/downloads).
You can see some discussion about the new features on the official announcement's comments.
Thứ Sáu, 27 tháng 4, 2012
Homies
It's tempting to leave the "lesbian" post up as the last post a little while longer, but I have to keep my hand in, after all.
My country is 64. I went to a bar mitzvah at the hall in Mitzpeh Yericho, a yishuv on the edge of a cliff overlooking the steep rolling hills and valleys that lead down to the Dead Sea. The view is bare but beautiful. With friends around, good food, health, a beautiful land, and the freedom to be Jewish, I felt lucky with the time I live in. It's not always perfect, but it's better more often than it's worse when I think about it.
I did a lot of dancing at the bar mitzvah, which reminded me how much I love to dance and how much I miss it. I need to crank up my music at home and dance more.
I am spending shabbat with my old community in Talpiot (Jerusalem), after spending Independence Day (yesterday) with them hiking, bbqing, and at the bat mitzvah. I do love them, and I feel so much at home with them; I don't have that feeling in Raanana yet.
Obgames: I played 1.5 games of Scrabble on the hike/BBQ. I played both Troyes and El Capitain last shabbat when Nadine was around. I've also learned to play Vikings, Hanging Garden, Thunderstone, and Luca online at yucata.de . Vikings is a good mid-weight filler when played with the basic tiles. The expansion tiles might make it better. Hanging Gardens is pretty flat for me without much in the way of strategy. Luna is fiercely difficult to understand from the rulebook; we're in round 5 out of 6 and I'm starting to understand some of it. Thunderstone took me a few games but I feel like I have the hang of it now. It's a fun game, as good as Dominion. The monster queue is problematic in some respects; otherwise no complaints.
Maybe I'll give them longer reviews in the future.
My country is 64. I went to a bar mitzvah at the hall in Mitzpeh Yericho, a yishuv on the edge of a cliff overlooking the steep rolling hills and valleys that lead down to the Dead Sea. The view is bare but beautiful. With friends around, good food, health, a beautiful land, and the freedom to be Jewish, I felt lucky with the time I live in. It's not always perfect, but it's better more often than it's worse when I think about it.
I did a lot of dancing at the bar mitzvah, which reminded me how much I love to dance and how much I miss it. I need to crank up my music at home and dance more.
I am spending shabbat with my old community in Talpiot (Jerusalem), after spending Independence Day (yesterday) with them hiking, bbqing, and at the bat mitzvah. I do love them, and I feel so much at home with them; I don't have that feeling in Raanana yet.
Obgames: I played 1.5 games of Scrabble on the hike/BBQ. I played both Troyes and El Capitain last shabbat when Nadine was around. I've also learned to play Vikings, Hanging Garden, Thunderstone, and Luca online at yucata.de . Vikings is a good mid-weight filler when played with the basic tiles. The expansion tiles might make it better. Hanging Gardens is pretty flat for me without much in the way of strategy. Luna is fiercely difficult to understand from the rulebook; we're in round 5 out of 6 and I'm starting to understand some of it. Thunderstone took me a few games but I feel like I have the hang of it now. It's a fun game, as good as Dominion. The monster queue is problematic in some respects; otherwise no complaints.
Maybe I'll give them longer reviews in the future.
Thứ Sáu, 20 tháng 4, 2012
Arx Libertatis 1.0 "Bloody Gobblers!" released!
 |
Walking in the underground city hub in Arx Libertatis |
 |
Looking up magic recipes and managing inventory while a vision enhancement is active in Arx Libertatis |
Arx Libertatis 1.0 has been released. We already wrote about the engine a month and a half ago but this is the first official, stable release of the GPL-licensed engine for the proprietary first-person cave RPG Arx Fatalis.
But being able to play the proprietary game is not the end of the development. There are plans for future milestones, for example a Qt-based modern game editor and support for modern shaders. I look forward to it!
Thứ Tư, 18 tháng 4, 2012
Call Me a Hippie Lesbian Collegiate
I can't recall the series of events that led me to rediscover Cris Williamson's seminal [1] The Changer and the Changed yesterday. I rediscovered my great love for it: strong, feminine, inspiring, sentimental. Like I like my women.
College music, hippie music, middle-aged lesbian music. I discovered her and artists like her (I had an awesome Woody Simmons album) in my early twenties in the early 90s, and even then I was a generation removed from when they were made in the 70s. I haven't listened to them for fifteen years. Now I'm a generation removed from who I was in my early twenties. Something in me thinks there's something wrong with liking it; shut up, something. I'm blissfully ignoring you.
[1] I'm aware that this word has ironic overtones here.
College music, hippie music, middle-aged lesbian music. I discovered her and artists like her (I had an awesome Woody Simmons album) in my early twenties in the early 90s, and even then I was a generation removed from when they were made in the 70s. I haven't listened to them for fifteen years. Now I'm a generation removed from who I was in my early twenties. Something in me thinks there's something wrong with liking it; shut up, something. I'm blissfully ignoring you.
[1] I'm aware that this word has ironic overtones here.
Tesseract, Cube2 next-gen'd
A FOSS gaming engine stalwart made a major leap forward today. Sauerbraten/cube 2, everyone's favorite octree, in-game editing game engine has finally implemented modern dynamic lighting, making its innovative mapping system a lot more intuitive and easy to use, as well as allowing for all kinds of new game play. Tesseract loses the backwards compatibility of Cube 2 in order to take full advantage of modern gfx cards.
Personally, I'm looking forward to games that utilize to implement destructible terrain, and the inevitable Minecraft clones that come with it. So go out coders, and create!
You can find the sourcecode on Github here
EDIT: Well, that was quick! Hirato from Sandbox / Redeclipse pointed out this day/night cycle made with the new code:
Chủ Nhật, 15 tháng 4, 2012
A Las Barricadas CC-by-SA boardgame & Kickstarter
Yes...you read right, a board-game on FreeGamer :p
Playable completely without the aid of a computer or similar device. But hey... it's a game and libre licensed, so it is not really that OT.
So this ominously named "Black Flag Games" collective has recently jumped on the Kickstarter hype and seems to have quite successfully financed their game by it (but you can still donate to the cause). Currently they are at $5,932 of their $3,500 goal with 22 days to go.
I noticed it because they already started releasing graphics on OGA under the CC-by-SA license as promised:
Personally I am looking forward to this, as I actually proposed something quite similar in my long running "game design brain-fart" thread. Luckily for them I released these ideas into the public domain... otherwise I would be sooo suing their a**es off :p
P.S.: viva la revolución... errr I for one welcome our new Kickstarter overlords!
Playable completely without the aid of a computer or similar device. But hey... it's a game and libre licensed, so it is not really that OT.
So this ominously named "Black Flag Games" collective has recently jumped on the Kickstarter hype and seems to have quite successfully financed their game by it (but you can still donate to the cause). Currently they are at $5,932 of their $3,500 goal with 22 days to go.
I noticed it because they already started releasing graphics on OGA under the CC-by-SA license as promised:
Personally I am looking forward to this, as I actually proposed something quite similar in my long running "game design brain-fart" thread. Luckily for them I released these ideas into the public domain... otherwise I would be sooo suing their a**es off :p
P.S.: viva la revolución... errr I for one welcome our new Kickstarter overlords!
Thứ Bảy, 14 tháng 4, 2012
Trigger Rally Online Edition Open Sourced on GitHub
Trigger Rally Online Edition race start on a sand track with green trees and an animated checkpoint ahead.
The project was created by the lead coder of the original/classical Trigger Rally version.
By the way: if you are interested in helping me to sort out missing license-clear graphics and sounds for the classical Trigger Rally, I created a thread on OpenGameArt for that purpose.
Thứ Năm, 12 tháng 4, 2012
The Big corrections round-up post (and TA contest)
So... you might have followed the lengthy discussion in the comment section of this blog entry of mine from last week... if you didn't don't worry you didn't miss anything important :p
However I was corrected in quite a few things (besides all the disagreements), so I though it would be good to post a sort of "counter statement" to clear up some recent mess-ups by me:
First of all, the developers from Q2W informed us that in fact most (but not all) of their art assets are CC-by-SA or GPL, which is great. They have also released a Linux installer now, so feel free to check it out if you are gaming on this platform (like me). Oh and I have also updated the video to a newer one, in case you didn't notice yet.
Also, and I am to be honest quite surprised by this, OverDose does in fact have an open source-code repository since some time now, where you can download the source to the engine and some of the cool in-house tools they have developed. No clearly visible notice on the website about this however :-/ Even on the wiki they have no link to it I think.
Ah, and I was also informed that UFO:AI has now released an Linux version of the mentioned 2.4 RC.
Otherwise? Stunt-Rally does indeed have a player-collision option, which I somehow missed... but at least I am not the only one who feels that the physics are a bit off :p
Last but not least, and that is the only real news in this post:
The rather early in development steam-punk themed MMORPG Tempest in the Aether are hosting an art contest in collaboration with OGA too (to celebrate their first release). A bit of a pity that it will probably be somewhat overlooked due to the big OGA contest mentioned in Bart's previous post, but maybe you want to contribute to this game as well.
P.S.: Criticize me all you want, and I am open to corrections as you can see, but don't expect me become a "proper" journalist! After all this is the "splatter zone" :p
However I was corrected in quite a few things (besides all the disagreements), so I though it would be good to post a sort of "counter statement" to clear up some recent mess-ups by me:
First of all, the developers from Q2W informed us that in fact most (but not all) of their art assets are CC-by-SA or GPL, which is great. They have also released a Linux installer now, so feel free to check it out if you are gaming on this platform (like me). Oh and I have also updated the video to a newer one, in case you didn't notice yet.
Also, and I am to be honest quite surprised by this, OverDose does in fact have an open source-code repository since some time now, where you can download the source to the engine and some of the cool in-house tools they have developed. No clearly visible notice on the website about this however :-/ Even on the wiki they have no link to it I think.
Ah, and I was also informed that UFO:AI has now released an Linux version of the mentioned 2.4 RC.
Otherwise? Stunt-Rally does indeed have a player-collision option, which I somehow missed... but at least I am not the only one who feels that the physics are a bit off :p
Last but not least, and that is the only real news in this post:
The rather early in development steam-punk themed MMORPG Tempest in the Aether are hosting an art contest in collaboration with OGA too (to celebrate their first release). A bit of a pity that it will probably be somewhat overlooked due to the big OGA contest mentioned in Bart's previous post, but maybe you want to contribute to this game as well.
P.S.: Criticize me all you want, and I am open to corrections as you can see, but don't expect me become a "proper" journalist! After all this is the "splatter zone" :p
Malaise
I'm not closing this blog, but it has been, and will probably continue to be, a slow period for a while. A post every week or two.
I didn't report on Games Day in Jerusalem or any of the other recent session reports in Jerusalem or Raanana. You can go to the Jerusalem site maintained by Nadine or the Raanana site maintained by Ellis. They have more of a head for this sort of thing right now.
My life is focused entirely on writing a book, which is funny because I'm not actually doing any writing; I'm avoiding writing by watching movies, a few TV shows, or reading material irrelevant to my book. I lack discipline or purpose or a wife or something. On the one hand I feel that I am driven to do something worthwhile with my life; simply existing isn't enough. A book will not only contribute to the world in a permanent way, it will also make my life better: through the discipline of having done it and for the (minimal) prestige of having done it.
On the other hand, something there is inside me that fights against it. Maybe because my ex-wife told me I'm stuck and doing this would be something like what she would want me to do. Or maybe I'm depressed, or need a lot of wind down from my long but useful job. Or maybe it's too big a project for me until I break it down into steps. Blog posts a couple of pages long, even when they require research, telephone calls, and database organization, are so much easier.
Which is the point. I don't want it easy; I know I don't. Whenever I hit an amusement park, I go on a roller coaster not because I think they're fun but because they terrify me. We need to face things that terrify us once in a while. We need to break routines, follow a vision, make the world better. Make ourselves better.
If you have suggestions that can help me get started (I've actually culled together a few of my older blog posts and written a few pages of random material), please comment.
I didn't report on Games Day in Jerusalem or any of the other recent session reports in Jerusalem or Raanana. You can go to the Jerusalem site maintained by Nadine or the Raanana site maintained by Ellis. They have more of a head for this sort of thing right now.
My life is focused entirely on writing a book, which is funny because I'm not actually doing any writing; I'm avoiding writing by watching movies, a few TV shows, or reading material irrelevant to my book. I lack discipline or purpose or a wife or something. On the one hand I feel that I am driven to do something worthwhile with my life; simply existing isn't enough. A book will not only contribute to the world in a permanent way, it will also make my life better: through the discipline of having done it and for the (minimal) prestige of having done it.
On the other hand, something there is inside me that fights against it. Maybe because my ex-wife told me I'm stuck and doing this would be something like what she would want me to do. Or maybe I'm depressed, or need a lot of wind down from my long but useful job. Or maybe it's too big a project for me until I break it down into steps. Blog posts a couple of pages long, even when they require research, telephone calls, and database organization, are so much easier.
Which is the point. I don't want it easy; I know I don't. Whenever I hit an amusement park, I go on a roller coaster not because I think they're fun but because they terrify me. We need to face things that terrify us once in a while. We need to break routines, follow a vision, make the world better. Make ourselves better.
If you have suggestions that can help me get started (I've actually culled together a few of my older blog posts and written a few pages of random material), please comment.
Thứ Tư, 11 tháng 4, 2012
Announcing the Liberated Pixel Cup!
I'm excited to announce that OpenGameArt.org is will be teaming up this summer with the Free Software Foundation and the Creative Commons for a big summer games contest, the Liberated Pixel Cup!
The TL;DR version is that the Liberated Pixel Cup will take place in two phases. The first phase will be the art phase, in which artists will be asked to submit pixel art that matches an existing body of professional quality art that we're building specifically for the contest. The second phase will be the programming phase, the object of which will be to create a game using the pre-made assets along with the assets created by contestants during the art phase. A longer overview (as well as the official rules page) can be found on the website.
I've been running OpenGameArt.org for just over three years now, and I'm incredibly excited because this marks the first official recognition we've received from the FSF and the CC. It's particularly awesome because it'sa massive boost for OGA's goal -- that is, bringing artists and coders together to make awesome games!
So, spread the word, donate to the cause (donations will be used to add to the already impressive base art set, and fund contest prize money), and above all, join us and take part in the contest!
Bart K.
OpenGameArt.org
P. S. I'd like to offer a special thank you to Chris Webber (aka paroneayea) from the Creative Commons, who conceived this idea and made it happen. You rock. :)
Thứ Ba, 10 tháng 4, 2012
Stunt-Rally 1.5 Multiplayer
We are getting a lot of nice mails from developers lately... not sure yet if I am annoyed by the spam or pleased that I don't have to do any research of my own :p
These must be the benefits of real journalists who always get these nice offers from lobbying firms to write fair and balanced articles for them (yeah, I included some social commentary in this blog!).
So... what was in my spam folder lately? Stunt-Rally got an version 1.5 release (changelog here) which a prominent new feature: multiplayer!
You can find a small guide to set up a multiplayer game here. Not sure if player collision is also implemented... it would be cool however ;)
In general I really think the physics are too bouncy however... not sure if that hits the nail, but something feels off about them. Also... "LOD popping" trees is soo last century :p
These must be the benefits of real journalists who always get these nice offers from lobbying firms to write fair and balanced articles for them (yeah, I included some social commentary in this blog!).
So... what was in my spam folder lately? Stunt-Rally got an version 1.5 release (changelog here) which a prominent new feature: multiplayer!
You can find a small guide to set up a multiplayer game here. Not sure if player collision is also implemented... it would be cool however ;)
In general I really think the physics are too bouncy however... not sure if that hits the nail, but something feels off about them. Also... "LOD popping" trees is soo last century :p
Thứ Năm, 5 tháng 4, 2012
The Big idTech 2 round-up post
Hello fans ;) Today we get back to the main business of this blog: gaming news!
And of course my favorite genre: FPS (forevar!)... specifically everything related to the Quake2 engine (idTech2).
The reason is that we got a nice mail from the developers of Quake2World, which I had not really on my radar as still under development. But now they released a public beta, which I have not tried yet as there isn't a Linux download (yet).
But judging from the pictures and videos, I am was quite sure that DFSG standards are not fulfilled... and they know and don't care (very short sighted... but well).
So that is why I decided that they don't deserve a news post all by themselves :p
Low and behold... an update on all Q2 based games that *are* on my radar:
AlienArena is preparing for a new release with a reloaded trailer and some update one engine improvements:
Ya3dag, also released a new version recently and I still think its cool in-game editing features should be picked up by some other idTech2 engines. Can't be that hard to port...
Especially for UFO:AI it might be a nice way to modify missions. Speaking of which... they are also preparing a new version 2.4 and released an RC (changelog) recently. Again no Linux download, so I am skipping it for now. They have however almost reached full FOSS status of their sound-effects... at least that is what they say, the graphic they posted says CC-sampling plus though, which is AFAIK not FOSS compatible :(
Now to the games that don't show any real visible progress: War§ow is just postingstupid stuff interesting trivia on their blog. However I don't consider the long awaited 0.7 release vapourware yet.
Another matter in the vapourware category is OverDose though... in development since what feels like at least a decade, and still no release anywhere near (which is also their excuse why they don't share their nice engine improvements or for that matter any source-code all together >:( ). However they recently posted a lengthy news on Moddb in what seems to be an attempt to jump on the current "Kickstarter" bandwagon. Think what you want of that... but they are for sure not getting any of my cash before there isn't a engine-source release...
And of course my favorite genre: FPS (forevar!)... specifically everything related to the Quake2 engine (idTech2).
The reason is that we got a nice mail from the developers of Quake2World, which I had not really on my radar as still under development. But now they released a public beta, which I have not tried yet as there isn't a Linux download (yet).
But judging from the pictures and videos, I am was quite sure that DFSG standards are not fulfilled... and they know and don't care (very short sighted... but well).
So that is why I decided that they don't deserve a news post all by themselves :p
Low and behold... an update on all Q2 based games that *are* on my radar:
AlienArena is preparing for a new release with a reloaded trailer and some update one engine improvements:
Ya3dag, also released a new version recently and I still think its cool in-game editing features should be picked up by some other idTech2 engines. Can't be that hard to port...
Especially for UFO:AI it might be a nice way to modify missions. Speaking of which... they are also preparing a new version 2.4 and released an RC (changelog) recently. Again no Linux download, so I am skipping it for now. They have however almost reached full FOSS status of their sound-effects... at least that is what they say, the graphic they posted says CC-sampling plus though, which is AFAIK not FOSS compatible :(
Now to the games that don't show any real visible progress: War§ow is just posting
Another matter in the vapourware category is OverDose though... in development since what feels like at least a decade, and still no release anywhere near (which is also their excuse why they don't share their nice engine improvements or for that matter any source-code all together >:( ). However they recently posted a lengthy news on Moddb in what seems to be an attempt to jump on the current "Kickstarter" bandwagon. Think what you want of that... but they are for sure not getting any of my cash before there isn't a engine-source release...
Thứ Ba, 3 tháng 4, 2012
Flowers of Haifa
Tal, Saarya, and I took a mini-vacation to Haifa last weekend. We vacation before Pesach, rather than on Pesach, because a) places are more crowded on Pesach, and b) it's harder to get kosher l'Pesach food (not hard, but harder).
Why Haifa? Because neither of my kids had ever been there and the price was ok.We've already vacationed in the Golan and Galil, Tiberias, Tzfat, Tel Aviv, the center, the Dead Sea, the Negev, and Eilat.
Saarya and I started out on Thursday afternoon with a few divrei torah at an annual Pesach yom iyun in Raanana. My Hebrew isn't that good, but the speakers were good and you can't beat the price (free).
The Hotel
We picked up Tal from work and make it to the Theodore Hotel without much difficulty. I made the booking using Agoda.com. The Hotel is named after Theodore Herzl and is located on Herzl St. It's smack in the middle of a lowbrow consumer area and right next to a haredi area. The road is under construction and the only parking was in a parking garage located in the bottom of the hotel but run by some other company (20 NIS a pop to park for any length of time). It's nowhere near the coast, but it's a 5 minute walk to the science museum and a fifteen minute walk to the German colony and the bottom of the Baha'i Gardens - you can't do much at the bottom of the Baha'i Gardens. You have to walk up about 600 steps and around the outside of the Baha'i Gardens to get to the inner gardens and the shrine.
The hotel towers over the neighborhood and the view from the top is expansive. It's pretty at night with the lights of the city around, but in the day you get to see Haifa, which is a port for container ships and not that pretty.
The room was clean and small, with basic amenities: a TV with 21 channels, a safe, free WiFi, one tea bag, instant coffee bag, and sugar packet per person. Tal had a less-comfortable looking fold out bed, while Saarya and I took the double. Each floor has a small bookshelf in the corridor outside the elevators. I looked in all of them and found one book that seemed like it might be readable and a copy of Angela's Ashes, which I read all but 100 pages of over shabbat (it's depressing).
Breakfast came with the reservation and it was neither lavish nor pitiful, but ok. Cheeses, vegetables, an egg/vegetable thingie, burekas, cereals, fruit fresh and canned, instant coffee and plain tea (like in our room). Dinner and lunch on shabbat were actually very good and we paid very little for them because they slipped us into the group rate for the group that was staying in the hotel over shabbat. Unfortunately, the hotel was ill-prepared for the group. There were not enough tables for dinner so we had to stand around waiting, and it was incredibly loud the whole time. The hotel lobby and dining area rapidly turned into a disaster area by the middle of Friday evening and stayed that way the rest of shabbat.
The service for the room was quick and helpful: once to bring more towels and once to help with the room safe. The desk service was also helpful. The management service was not. The manager was suspicious of us when we came for meals on shabbat, couldn't find out names on the list (even though we had their coupons which they had given us before shabbat) and looked like he was going to try to charge us twice for the meals. This was eventually straightened out.
The Tea Incident
Worse was the tea incident. They served tea during dinner and I had three teabags in my room. I skipped tea during dinner because I wanted to clear out quickly to give other people a chance to eat. After dinner, the dining room still had a shabbat water urn running, and my room didn't. I was on floor 15 and didn't really want to go get a teabag from my room, so I asked them for tea and they wanted to charge me for the teabag. It took ten minutes of arguing with them that I could simply get the plain teabag from my room but I would rather not have to take the shabbat elevator up 15 flights to do it and it's just a stupid plain teabag. They eventually relented and gave me hot water and a teabag, but when I asked for a packet of sugar they said they would have to charge me for the sugar, at which point I gave up and drank it without sugar.
German Colony
Thursday night we walked to and then down the German Colony, eventually reaching the port. The German Colony is a pretty row of restaurants right below the Baha'i Gardens. None of them are kosher, but it was nice to look. We were there late on Thursday night and there were very few people around, which seemed to me to be very odd; a similar stretch of restaurants on Emek Refaim in Jerusalem is generally packed with people on a Thursday night. maybe there were better places in Haifa to hang. We walked back a different direction, reading some of the ubiquitous historical plaques about the War of Independence on the way.
Movies
We watched two movies: My West is a silly Western with Harvey Keitel and David Bowie. Bowie is the leader of a gang that looked like the Harry Potter villains. It was cute. Raise Your Voice is a Hillary Duff puff piece, very predictable cross between Fame and Dirty Dancing, but nowhere near as rich as either of those (more like a TV episode). It had its moment.
Madatech
Friday morning we walked to the National Museum of Science, Technology, and Space (aka Madatech). Other than the hotel it was the most expensive part of the trip, and that was even after the 50% soldier discounts Tal and Saarya received. It was a fairly interesting hands on museum with things to push, pull, and wave. But the descriptions of each exhibit required some revisions; they often forgot to relate exactly to what the exhibit was doing, which sometimes made it difficult to understand. We saw a nifty basic 3D movie about the universe. We skipped out on the sports science exhibit because Saarya was getting restless.
Hiking
After some false starts we found a beautiful place to hike just past Haifa University. It is the right season to hike, with flowers blooming all around and lovely views of the valleys. I got the kids to sing me some Hebrew songs during the hike, which was cut short because Tal was getting restless.
Baha'i Gardens
Shabbat morning we hiked ths many stairs to see the inner gardens of the Baha'i Gardens of Haifa and the shrine of the Báb. The Báb is the messenger who came before the Bahá’u’lláh, and you can read all about it on their site. It was all very Reb Nachman. Pretty gardens and trees. It's supposed to be peaceful, but there are way too many tourists (like us) marching through it to achieve any peace. No wonder they kick everyone out by noon every day.
Sorry no pictures, since we visited on shabbat.
Nof Hotel Chinese Restaurant
Saturday night we stopped for only bowls of soup at this restaurant before heading back home. Judging from the soups, the restaurant is worth a visit next time we're in the area.
Why Haifa? Because neither of my kids had ever been there and the price was ok.We've already vacationed in the Golan and Galil, Tiberias, Tzfat, Tel Aviv, the center, the Dead Sea, the Negev, and Eilat.
Saarya and I started out on Thursday afternoon with a few divrei torah at an annual Pesach yom iyun in Raanana. My Hebrew isn't that good, but the speakers were good and you can't beat the price (free).
The Hotel
We picked up Tal from work and make it to the Theodore Hotel without much difficulty. I made the booking using Agoda.com. The Hotel is named after Theodore Herzl and is located on Herzl St. It's smack in the middle of a lowbrow consumer area and right next to a haredi area. The road is under construction and the only parking was in a parking garage located in the bottom of the hotel but run by some other company (20 NIS a pop to park for any length of time). It's nowhere near the coast, but it's a 5 minute walk to the science museum and a fifteen minute walk to the German colony and the bottom of the Baha'i Gardens - you can't do much at the bottom of the Baha'i Gardens. You have to walk up about 600 steps and around the outside of the Baha'i Gardens to get to the inner gardens and the shrine.
The hotel towers over the neighborhood and the view from the top is expansive. It's pretty at night with the lights of the city around, but in the day you get to see Haifa, which is a port for container ships and not that pretty.
The room was clean and small, with basic amenities: a TV with 21 channels, a safe, free WiFi, one tea bag, instant coffee bag, and sugar packet per person. Tal had a less-comfortable looking fold out bed, while Saarya and I took the double. Each floor has a small bookshelf in the corridor outside the elevators. I looked in all of them and found one book that seemed like it might be readable and a copy of Angela's Ashes, which I read all but 100 pages of over shabbat (it's depressing).
Breakfast came with the reservation and it was neither lavish nor pitiful, but ok. Cheeses, vegetables, an egg/vegetable thingie, burekas, cereals, fruit fresh and canned, instant coffee and plain tea (like in our room). Dinner and lunch on shabbat were actually very good and we paid very little for them because they slipped us into the group rate for the group that was staying in the hotel over shabbat. Unfortunately, the hotel was ill-prepared for the group. There were not enough tables for dinner so we had to stand around waiting, and it was incredibly loud the whole time. The hotel lobby and dining area rapidly turned into a disaster area by the middle of Friday evening and stayed that way the rest of shabbat.
The service for the room was quick and helpful: once to bring more towels and once to help with the room safe. The desk service was also helpful. The management service was not. The manager was suspicious of us when we came for meals on shabbat, couldn't find out names on the list (even though we had their coupons which they had given us before shabbat) and looked like he was going to try to charge us twice for the meals. This was eventually straightened out.
The Tea Incident
Worse was the tea incident. They served tea during dinner and I had three teabags in my room. I skipped tea during dinner because I wanted to clear out quickly to give other people a chance to eat. After dinner, the dining room still had a shabbat water urn running, and my room didn't. I was on floor 15 and didn't really want to go get a teabag from my room, so I asked them for tea and they wanted to charge me for the teabag. It took ten minutes of arguing with them that I could simply get the plain teabag from my room but I would rather not have to take the shabbat elevator up 15 flights to do it and it's just a stupid plain teabag. They eventually relented and gave me hot water and a teabag, but when I asked for a packet of sugar they said they would have to charge me for the sugar, at which point I gave up and drank it without sugar.
German Colony
Thursday night we walked to and then down the German Colony, eventually reaching the port. The German Colony is a pretty row of restaurants right below the Baha'i Gardens. None of them are kosher, but it was nice to look. We were there late on Thursday night and there were very few people around, which seemed to me to be very odd; a similar stretch of restaurants on Emek Refaim in Jerusalem is generally packed with people on a Thursday night. maybe there were better places in Haifa to hang. We walked back a different direction, reading some of the ubiquitous historical plaques about the War of Independence on the way.
Movies
We watched two movies: My West is a silly Western with Harvey Keitel and David Bowie. Bowie is the leader of a gang that looked like the Harry Potter villains. It was cute. Raise Your Voice is a Hillary Duff puff piece, very predictable cross between Fame and Dirty Dancing, but nowhere near as rich as either of those (more like a TV episode). It had its moment.
Madatech
Friday morning we walked to the National Museum of Science, Technology, and Space (aka Madatech). Other than the hotel it was the most expensive part of the trip, and that was even after the 50% soldier discounts Tal and Saarya received. It was a fairly interesting hands on museum with things to push, pull, and wave. But the descriptions of each exhibit required some revisions; they often forgot to relate exactly to what the exhibit was doing, which sometimes made it difficult to understand. We saw a nifty basic 3D movie about the universe. We skipped out on the sports science exhibit because Saarya was getting restless.
Hiking
After some false starts we found a beautiful place to hike just past Haifa University. It is the right season to hike, with flowers blooming all around and lovely views of the valleys. I got the kids to sing me some Hebrew songs during the hike, which was cut short because Tal was getting restless.
Baha'i Gardens
Shabbat morning we hiked ths many stairs to see the inner gardens of the Baha'i Gardens of Haifa and the shrine of the Báb. The Báb is the messenger who came before the Bahá’u’lláh, and you can read all about it on their site. It was all very Reb Nachman. Pretty gardens and trees. It's supposed to be peaceful, but there are way too many tourists (like us) marching through it to achieve any peace. No wonder they kick everyone out by noon every day.
Sorry no pictures, since we visited on shabbat.
Nof Hotel Chinese Restaurant
Saturday night we stopped for only bowls of soup at this restaurant before heading back home. Judging from the soups, the restaurant is worth a visit next time we're in the area.
Thứ Hai, 2 tháng 4, 2012
Why Free Culture could be Good for the Games Business
Today I'd like to talk about how free culture can be (perhaps counter-intuitively) good for the commercial games business. I'm using Dungeons & Dragons (and its recent and highly successful fork, Pathfinder) as a concrete example of what I'm talking about, but there's no reason this couldn't also apply to computer games as well.
I've been a Dungeons & Dragons geek for 20 years now, pretty much since I was introduced to it my freshman year of high school. Back in my high school days, D&D was in its second edition and the internet was in its infancy. Dungeons and Dragons was owned by a litigious beast of a company called TSR, which was well known for sending nastygrams every time someone put up a web page with any fan-created D&D content. This was particularly ironic, since the whole idea behind Dungeons & Dragons was that they threw some rule books at you and then told you to create your own content with them.
In the late 1990s, for a variety of reasons (no doubt including its poor treatment of its customers), TSR was in financial trouble and was bought out by Wizards of the Coast. As any follower of a games company knows, it's always a bit scary when another company acquires a company that you like. Usually it turns out to be a bad thing, because the company doing the acquiring is invariably bigger and generally cares less about the actual quality of the product and more about monetizing it (think of all the studios EA has bought up and ruined). In this particular case, our worries were unfounded; the acquisition of TSR by WOTC actually resulted in a huge cultural change for D&D...
Enter the Open Game License, a share-alike license for table-top roleplaying game content, and the hands down the single best thing ever to happen to Dungeons & Dragons. Shortly after they purchased TSR, Wizards of the Coast released the 3rd edition of D&D under this license, which opened D&D not only to fan expansion but also to commercial development. In fact, after the OGL, the most frequent complaint I heard about D&D is that the popularity OGL-licensed content made the d20 system (which was the underlying system that 3rd edition D&D was built on top of) made it too difficult to compete with. 3rd edition introduced the idea of a System Reference Document, which was a body of content that was free-as-in-speech and included the basic information necessary to play and the game. Mind you, 3rd Edition had its issues, but it was easy to play, learn, and (most of all) build on top of, which resulted in a massive wealth of content, both commercial and player-created.
Unfortunately, the days of Wizards of the Coast were ultimately shortlived, as they were purchased by the toy and games giant Hasbro in 1999. I have no information from inside the company, but from the outside it would certainly seem that the culture of WOTC changed for the worse shortly thereafter, with nearly annual layoffs, generally around every Christmas. After Hasbro acquired Wizards, they released Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, which was essentially a more expensive re-release of 3.0 with some balance issues fixed, that ultimately felt like a $100 errata pack. 3.5 was successful as well, but there was no denying the general sense of disappointment gamers felt; it could have been a lot more than it was, and the differences weren't really substantive enough to justify the hefty price tag.
I'm going to digress for a moment and talk about tabletop roleplaying games in general. One thing that seems to happen in the tabletop world is that a new edition of a game will be released, then add-on content will be released for the new edition until eventually the add-ons become so numerous that they're impossible for someone who is GMing the game to keep track of all of them. Eventually, players feel that their needs and wants have been met by the existing content, and no longer feel the need to purchase more; at that point, the games company will go back, examine the limitations of their current system, and create a new one, starting the process anew.
D&D 3.5 had reached this level of saturation when WOTC/Hasbro put out 4th edition. By far (in my opinion) the most distressing change between 3.5 and 4.0 was the gutting of the Open Game Licence and the creation of the Game System License. 4th edition had its own system reference document, but it was pathetic (PDF warning) in comparison to the 3rd edition one, and included nothing in the way of useful content. 4th edition also included a number of system changes under the hood, which aren't the subject of this blog post. While I don't want to start a big flamewar about which rule system is better (that's been done to death), it is objectively true that a lot of people who were happy with 3rd edition felt that 4th edition had departed too far from the rules and style of play that they were used to, and continued to play 3.5 as a consequence.
At this point, any good capitalist will tell you that if there's an existing, un-served customer base that wants to be served, then it in your financial best interest to serve them. A company founded in 2002 called Paizo Publishing, which had been successfully releasing add-ons for 3.0/3.5 (among other things) decided to pick up the OGL licensed D&D 3.x content and expand on it, and the Pathfinder system was born. Pathfinder, which like its predecessor, has a complete System Reference Document, which is particularly notable in that it's much more complete than the original 3.x SRD. (As an aside, if you're interested, you can find the official version here, and a highly usable web version here. They provide more than enough information to play the complete game, including all the official expansions, for free).
The release of Pathfinder, while based on D&D 3.5, did far more than just address game balance issues -- it also added quite a lot of content that made the game more fun to play in general. As a consequence, Pathfinder has cut into WOTC's revenue, bringing in customers that may have otherwise bought into D&D 4. (As an aside, I feel a lot more disappointed in the 3.5 update to 3.0 now that I know what it could have been. Seeing how far Paizo took Pathfinder and how much they added makes WOTC/Hasbro's little 3.0->3.5 update feel like even more of a money grab.)
Now that I've established this background information, I'll finally get to my point: if you don't think about it very hard, you may assume that, since the OGL content has clearly lost WOTC/Hasbro money, it's a bad idea commercially. And from their eyes, it probably is. What most people don't consider, though, is that releasing an open system has allowed someone else to step in and turn what would have been a stagnant product line into a commercial success. Any talk from commercial publishers about how free culture is bad for business is utterly uninformed and missing the point of free culture -- what they mean to say is that free culture is bad for companies like them that aren't able to recognize what their customers want.
For companies like Paizo, free culture has created an opportunity for commercial success, and they've managed to monetize their product without removing it from the commons. And, should Paizo ever undergo an unfortunate change of management and decide not to release any more OGL products, another commercial entity could pick up where they left off and continue to make money by giving customers what they want.
The lesson to be learned here is this: the next time you hear someone suggest that free culture is somehow anti-business or bad for the economy, point out to them that it's only bad for stagnant businesses that feel the need to compete by keeping the market closed, rather than releasing content that their customers want. And there's absolutely no reason this can't apply to video games as well.
Peace out,
Bart Kelsey
OpenGameArt.org
P.S. In case you didn't see it above, here is the complete and unabridged Pathfinder System Reference Document, which contains all of the official Pathfinder content, including add-ons, and is completely playable on its own. If you like it, buy their books. They're excellent. :)
P.P.S Here is a shameless plug for my Pathfinder blog, with all OGC content. :)
I've been a Dungeons & Dragons geek for 20 years now, pretty much since I was introduced to it my freshman year of high school. Back in my high school days, D&D was in its second edition and the internet was in its infancy. Dungeons and Dragons was owned by a litigious beast of a company called TSR, which was well known for sending nastygrams every time someone put up a web page with any fan-created D&D content. This was particularly ironic, since the whole idea behind Dungeons & Dragons was that they threw some rule books at you and then told you to create your own content with them.
In the late 1990s, for a variety of reasons (no doubt including its poor treatment of its customers), TSR was in financial trouble and was bought out by Wizards of the Coast. As any follower of a games company knows, it's always a bit scary when another company acquires a company that you like. Usually it turns out to be a bad thing, because the company doing the acquiring is invariably bigger and generally cares less about the actual quality of the product and more about monetizing it (think of all the studios EA has bought up and ruined). In this particular case, our worries were unfounded; the acquisition of TSR by WOTC actually resulted in a huge cultural change for D&D...
Enter the Open Game License, a share-alike license for table-top roleplaying game content, and the hands down the single best thing ever to happen to Dungeons & Dragons. Shortly after they purchased TSR, Wizards of the Coast released the 3rd edition of D&D under this license, which opened D&D not only to fan expansion but also to commercial development. In fact, after the OGL, the most frequent complaint I heard about D&D is that the popularity OGL-licensed content made the d20 system (which was the underlying system that 3rd edition D&D was built on top of) made it too difficult to compete with. 3rd edition introduced the idea of a System Reference Document, which was a body of content that was free-as-in-speech and included the basic information necessary to play and the game. Mind you, 3rd Edition had its issues, but it was easy to play, learn, and (most of all) build on top of, which resulted in a massive wealth of content, both commercial and player-created.
Unfortunately, the days of Wizards of the Coast were ultimately shortlived, as they were purchased by the toy and games giant Hasbro in 1999. I have no information from inside the company, but from the outside it would certainly seem that the culture of WOTC changed for the worse shortly thereafter, with nearly annual layoffs, generally around every Christmas. After Hasbro acquired Wizards, they released Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, which was essentially a more expensive re-release of 3.0 with some balance issues fixed, that ultimately felt like a $100 errata pack. 3.5 was successful as well, but there was no denying the general sense of disappointment gamers felt; it could have been a lot more than it was, and the differences weren't really substantive enough to justify the hefty price tag.
I'm going to digress for a moment and talk about tabletop roleplaying games in general. One thing that seems to happen in the tabletop world is that a new edition of a game will be released, then add-on content will be released for the new edition until eventually the add-ons become so numerous that they're impossible for someone who is GMing the game to keep track of all of them. Eventually, players feel that their needs and wants have been met by the existing content, and no longer feel the need to purchase more; at that point, the games company will go back, examine the limitations of their current system, and create a new one, starting the process anew.
D&D 3.5 had reached this level of saturation when WOTC/Hasbro put out 4th edition. By far (in my opinion) the most distressing change between 3.5 and 4.0 was the gutting of the Open Game Licence and the creation of the Game System License. 4th edition had its own system reference document, but it was pathetic (PDF warning) in comparison to the 3rd edition one, and included nothing in the way of useful content. 4th edition also included a number of system changes under the hood, which aren't the subject of this blog post. While I don't want to start a big flamewar about which rule system is better (that's been done to death), it is objectively true that a lot of people who were happy with 3rd edition felt that 4th edition had departed too far from the rules and style of play that they were used to, and continued to play 3.5 as a consequence.
At this point, any good capitalist will tell you that if there's an existing, un-served customer base that wants to be served, then it in your financial best interest to serve them. A company founded in 2002 called Paizo Publishing, which had been successfully releasing add-ons for 3.0/3.5 (among other things) decided to pick up the OGL licensed D&D 3.x content and expand on it, and the Pathfinder system was born. Pathfinder, which like its predecessor, has a complete System Reference Document, which is particularly notable in that it's much more complete than the original 3.x SRD. (As an aside, if you're interested, you can find the official version here, and a highly usable web version here. They provide more than enough information to play the complete game, including all the official expansions, for free).
The release of Pathfinder, while based on D&D 3.5, did far more than just address game balance issues -- it also added quite a lot of content that made the game more fun to play in general. As a consequence, Pathfinder has cut into WOTC's revenue, bringing in customers that may have otherwise bought into D&D 4. (As an aside, I feel a lot more disappointed in the 3.5 update to 3.0 now that I know what it could have been. Seeing how far Paizo took Pathfinder and how much they added makes WOTC/Hasbro's little 3.0->3.5 update feel like even more of a money grab.)
Now that I've established this background information, I'll finally get to my point: if you don't think about it very hard, you may assume that, since the OGL content has clearly lost WOTC/Hasbro money, it's a bad idea commercially. And from their eyes, it probably is. What most people don't consider, though, is that releasing an open system has allowed someone else to step in and turn what would have been a stagnant product line into a commercial success. Any talk from commercial publishers about how free culture is bad for business is utterly uninformed and missing the point of free culture -- what they mean to say is that free culture is bad for companies like them that aren't able to recognize what their customers want.
For companies like Paizo, free culture has created an opportunity for commercial success, and they've managed to monetize their product without removing it from the commons. And, should Paizo ever undergo an unfortunate change of management and decide not to release any more OGL products, another commercial entity could pick up where they left off and continue to make money by giving customers what they want.
The lesson to be learned here is this: the next time you hear someone suggest that free culture is somehow anti-business or bad for the economy, point out to them that it's only bad for stagnant businesses that feel the need to compete by keeping the market closed, rather than releasing content that their customers want. And there's absolutely no reason this can't apply to video games as well.
Peace out,
Bart Kelsey
OpenGameArt.org
P.S. In case you didn't see it above, here is the complete and unabridged Pathfinder System Reference Document, which contains all of the official Pathfinder content, including add-ons, and is completely playable on its own. If you like it, buy their books. They're excellent. :)
P.P.S Here is a shameless plug for my Pathfinder blog, with all OGC content. :)
Chủ Nhật, 1 tháng 4, 2012
April Snippets
Reaction 1.0 Beta is an Action Quake 2-like based on ioq3 with "freeware" BY-NC-SA assets.
A list of open source Minecraft-style games was recently shared in a Reddit thread.
219 bytes tron is:
Swallow for browser-based games , as introduced in a AltDevBlogADay post, is:
A list of open source Minecraft-style games was recently shared in a Reddit thread.
219 bytes tron is:
<body id=b onkeyup=e=event onload=
z=c.getContext('2d');
z.fillRect(s=0,0,n=150,x=11325);
setInterval("
0<x%n
&x<n*n
&(z[x+=[1,-n,-1,n][e.which&3]]^=1)
?z.clearRect(x%n,x/n,1,1,s++)
:b.innerHTML='game⬜over:'+s
",9)
><canvas id=c>
Swallow for browser-based games , as introduced in a AltDevBlogADay post, is:
- A directory scanner which packages files into a single JSON file
- A small part of your build chain
Đăng ký:
Nhận xét (Atom)