Ben's Busy Blog

2008-11-07T10:28:00.001-05:00

There's been a lot of discussion of the relative qualities of Fable 2 and Fallout 3. Both have been getting good reviews. Fallout 3 may have a slight edge in analytics due to Molyneux's historic cycle of over-hyping people's expectations, but both games all got solid reviews in the press.

So, which do you think you'll play first?

I'm thinking I'll be playing Fable 2 first. I have greatly enjoyed the previous efforts of Bethesda, to the point of having even purchased the collector's edition of Oblivion. I've had my fun, that's for sure, but those open-ended days also coincided with a much quieter time of life. Now I'm squeezed for time and always feeling like I’m under pressure. Furthermore, a realistically depicted post-apocalyptic wasteland sounds depressing. I'm going to opt for the happy funny corrupt kiddie-land feel of Fable 2.

Also, Fallout is affected by the 360 vs PC thing, where mods may improve the main game in time, but would require purchase of hardware to do this. Fable is going to always be the same game. I do look forward to the day I play Fallout 3, but it's farther down the road.

Of course I'm not going to buy either right away. There's renovations and programming and family time and my wife's schooling and work and...

The Art of Braid

2008-08-05T14:08:00.002-04:00

And now I'm writing about Braid, the game that's better than yours, you plebian. Of course I kid. Jonathan Blow's opinionated presentations have drawn great interest to his game, and a little antipathy to himself. But regardless of whether one's sensitivities have been inflamed by the denunciations of the auteur, the game's worth discussing. In this instance, I'm referring to David Hellman's Art of Braid article now available at Gamasutra. Hellman's display of iteration during the collaborative creative process offers useful insight into the refinement of thoughts from the idea bucket into a finished product.

The part that I enjoyed the most was the final page of the article, where Hellman broke down an individual scene by its layers. I really enjoyed seeing not only their development tool, but also seeing how they had composed the different layers. Subtle lighting effects in one layer enhanced the shadows on the grass. I want to discuss this more, but what I'd really love is to take the images and set up some rollover effects in order to better reveal the subtle differences between layers. Unfortunately, not enough time today. Too bad Gamasutra's online articles reflect their print-based roots and don't allow for advanced media.

Furthermore, I'd like to note that Hellman made several references to how during the development process, he had wanted to get parallax scrolling of multiple background layers set up in Braid. Boosted by no small amount of nostalgia, I would have greatly liked to see this effect on display, but sadly, I can't think of a single Braid video that had scrolling un-obscured. Ah well...

Halo 3's graphical effects

2008-07-24T10:32:00.003-04:00

Today on Gamasutra, there is a good but relatively brief interview with Bungie's lead effects artist, Steve Scott. I personally have met with relatively little discussion of how advanced graphical effects are produced. I enjoyed reading it.

Programming Responsiveness

2008-07-10T15:53:00.003-04:00

Gamasutra had a great article today on "Programming Responsiveness". It was by Mick West, co-founder of Neversoft. Apparently he's got his own website, Cowboy Programming, where he comments on coding issues. Based upon how much I enjoyed his article at Gamasutra, I'm going to have to make a point of skimming that site more often. He also has a personal blog which contained a neat bit on how he wired up his condo by using the electrical outlets. A man after my own heart there, as I'm working on problems running lines in my new house. On the other hand, I'm willing to bet that his budget far exceeds mine. Until I can tap my brother's home alarm installation experience, I'm going to stick with my workaround of running coax up the handrail of the stairs and then putting a rug over it when crossing walkways, so as to better avoid killing myself.

Oh, and I did beat Bioshock. Twice actually, as I ran back through much more expediently in order to 100% the achievements for the game. This was a few months ago, so I won't try to comment on the game at this point. On the other hand, I picked up Thief: Deadly Shadows off of GameFly, so there's another potential "Late to the Party" possible. On the other hand, I'm still busy doing things like unpacking boxes and hanging medicine cabinets.

Late to the Party: BioShock

2008-02-08T19:04:00.008-05:00

Inspired by this post over at Ascii Dreams, I started thinking about the games I've played. The games I finished, the unfinished and my pile of shame (Those games you never quite get to*) Why did a game wind up in one category or another? This was fruit for thought.

Of course, being your intrepid everyman, I am not reviewing your bleeding edge stuff. I'm casting my eyes backwards. In this frame of mind, I bring you Late to the Party.

BioShock - STATUS: Unfinished
Now how's this for an embarrassment? It's been out for months and I've barely left Fort Frolic! BioShock is a game I greatly respect and enjoy. I love it, and yet I'm turning it into a slog. When I come home tired from a day of work, it's just so easy to reach for a Tony Hawk or Crackdown, as opposed to the careful attentive playthrough that I feel BioShock deserves. So often, I'm loading it up like I need to punch a timeclock. Why? The rich environment and intricate narrative make it into a poundcake of a game for me. It's just heavy with goodness. When a story features the complex interplay of Randian philosophy versus selfishness and hubris, that's something that requires intensity and attention to detail. Now don't misunderstand me here. Bereft of its rich narrative, BioShock would be a pale imitation of itself, and wouldn't be a must-play experience. I wouldn't change a thing (aside from getting myself stuck inside a wall in Fort Frolic).

So things stays the same, I find myself home at the end of the day and thinking about unfinished projects, social obligations, and spending time with my lovely wife. When I can play something of my own choice, I rarely play BioShock, because when I play that game I want to have peace of mind. I want to be able to turn the sound up and the lights down. I want to know that I will not be interrupted. I don't get that enough. Oh BioShock, why are you such a selfish mistress?

* An amusing aside is that the 1UP Yours team actually managed a pile of shame squared by starting a feature about neglected games, and then neglecting that feature.

XNA: Maybe I'm just not suited to engine development

2008-02-01T01:01:00.001-05:00

So I'm trying to get back into programming again. I want to take more risks and hopefully have more achievements. Yet as I enter back into it, I find myself running back up against the same wall that I stopped programming on before: I have no clue whatsoever as to how I should keep my things in order. SpaceHook, the first game I've been working on, is going to have lots of stuff on screen: Rocks, aliens, blackholes, power-ups, your ship, etc. In C#/XNA programming, what is the best way to keep track of all of these entities moving around the screen? How do I keep all of the little bits straight? Is there a given data storage object that's best for keeping track of all of things? How do I program this thing so that it doesn't suck up all of the processing time?

Metaphorical example: Our little white cat is bothering me for treats before I go to bed. To get her out of my face so I can type for a bit, I toss one of her toys at her. Normally this ruse works with her, but at this point of the night, she promptly places it into the "Not Chicken" category and promptly ignores it. How do I program my game so that it can ignore things? In concept, you can't use your tractor beam on a black hole. Do you just check everything in its path to see if it's a black hole and then ignore it? Or do you start checking by eliminating black holes from the pool you're examining? What's more, how do you find out what's close to your ship? Do you check every goddamned object in the game? If I throw a grenade in Halo, I don't think that the game checks every fucking object in the level to see whether or not it's eligible for getting blown to hell. How do I program that?

Keeping track of a multitude of entities and running analysis of them goes into Big O notation and other stuff that bores me to cross-eyed distraction. This sort of engineering just is... fuck all boring to me. I look at it, and I think, "Hey, shouldn't someone have already designed a better mousetrap for this?" But I'll be damned if I know the magic words to use on Google for summoning up the desired results. Object management? Item database? Entity management? I feel like I want a database or just simply a big ol' table that I can sort on demand, but I don't see that functionality as being available. If you say database, that's a magical programming term that means you're demanding an enterprise-class beast of such complexity that will require enough books from O'Reilly to devastate a rain forest. I just want my stupid data sorted and I don't even know how to do that.

All this seems to say to me that maybe I should look back into Torque or perhaps check out developing with the Source engine. I'd rather design than engineer. Give me some Legos. Don't ask me to figure out the best design for bricks with interlocking pegs and sockets.

Ugh, in the end, all I've really accomplished tonight was adding 100 more points to my Gamerscore by beating the time trials in Crackdown on Psychotic difficulty. Woo, breakin the 4000 point barrier. Put that on my resume quick. /self-deprecation

Just bloggin'

2008-01-22T23:35:00.001-05:00

Cool! Bill Harris included my album cover in his blog. It's already on the first page when I vanity Google myself. I really enjoy Bill's blog and he deserves every bit of industry respect that he gets. I hope he only profits by his pastime, be it financially or via simple satisfaction.

I'm not sure what all to put in the blog tonight, but I'm trying to blog more often, now that it's all more laid back and fun. This might sound confusing, but should anybody want to check it, I want to leave something for them. It's all gratis folks.

Heath Ledger died today, an unlooked for tragedy. Inasmuch as he affects my life, I set to wondering about The Dark Knight, but that's finished filming already, so I suppose it will be his last film. It probably won't have any sort of effect similar to The Crow, as Brandon Lee died onset in what could be seen as a continuation of the mythology around his father's death.

I had a reasonably productive night. Cooked a simple dinner for Natty. Cleaned out the cat boxes. Downloaded some of the latest XNA updates with an eye towards getting back on my feet with that. The greatest motivation behind this was my discovery of the Dictionary class.

Anyway, I'm going to crash, Hope you all have a good night.

Geek Cribs Analysis

2008-01-16T12:37:00.002-05:00

Maybe you've already seen it, but Kotaku posted a collection of photos of the work desks and entertainment centers of famous game designers (and some other folks). To the critical eye, all sorts of things can be discerned...

Ken Levine's a suck up! Okay, I like GWJ too. But did you know he apparently plays guitar, likes HeroClix and needs a better iPod case?

David Jaffe likes bobbleheads, Kevin Smith, and... hrm, just who is that mini-bust of?

It seems like someone in the house of god-game maker Sid Meyer has got the Jesus. Is that symmetry?

Ted Price's desk is clean... Suspiciously clean. Wait! There's a loose USB cord on the floor! Whew, for a second there I thought the marketing & PR guys had his place cleaned up and artfully placed merchandise with labels showing.

Peter Molyneux's workspace has an empty Aeron chair, empty coffee cups, and EMPTY PROMISES! You bastard! You brokes ma heart!

Richard Garriot's included a single picture of his house, a woeful understatement of his ri-goddamn-diculous house.

Dan Hsu likes Sandman! And he likes the Ultimates! And he has the original Weiss and Hickmann Dragonlance soft-covers! Gasp! I'll be he thinks that Ziggy's gotten too preachy too!

I approve your keyboard, Crecente

A Non-Standard HVAC Installation

2008-01-14T12:49:00.001-05:00

I'm not quite sure what's going on, but in our kitchenette here at work, there is a wailing coming from the air vent. And when I say wailing, I mean whale wailing. Sure, taking a moment away from my desk to grab a cup of tea becomes only that much more relaxing when accompanied by the soothing songs of the cetaceans, but the comfort level is compromised by the perplexing nature of how one fits a whale in a vent.

Band Meme & Stan Lee

2008-01-10T12:39:00.001-05:00

The always enjoyable and insightful Bill Harris posted in his blog about fun meme that goes like this:

Your band name is the title of a random Wikipedia article

Your album title is the last four words of the very last quotation from this random list

Your album cover is the third entry from Flickr's Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days

Hence I bring you the "Vagaries of the Crowd", the debut album of Coat of Arms of Vermont!

In other amusement, I love this picture from a gallery's tribute to Stan Lee. The Hulk looks so thoughtful as he sips tea with his chihuahua. Oh, and the awesome Brandon Bird had a piece in it, and can be seen here shaking hands with Stan.

Closing statements

2008-01-02T19:47:00.000-05:00

A month ago, I decided to discontinue the Busy Blog and stated my reasons to friends and family, but never got around to posting why I'd stopped. I originally started this blog as a way to keep track of my efforts to be productive and also to publicize them. By letting other people know what I was doing and what I felt about it, I thought that I'd generate sympathetic support for what I was doing. In retrospective, I was trying to croudsource my self-discipline. This never worked. Friends and family are people that want to spend time with you, who like being with you. They might have your best interests at heart, but I believe it's antithetical to their human nature to detract from their time spent with you. You always hear about driven people neglecting their personal connections. This is because aside from edge cases friends and family are counterweight to work. I can't expect my friends and family to help me become a better worker. They'll try to help me be happier, because sadness is shared among those who you're close to, but they can only go so far. And I can't blame them for that one bit.

As part of the new year, I've confronted the fact that I will most likely never become a videogame programmer or designer. Not only is it difficult to find a job in the industry, it is even more difficult to find a job there that doesn't wreak havoc on your personal life. I love my wife and she needs me. I can't afford to throw that away for any job. I can't expect to become a part of the videogame industry, and it's hurtful to my future if I waste time pursuing it as anything other than a hobby. It makes me sad to think it, but I guess it's another case of giving up on being a rock star or a famous actor.

Anyway, I guess I'm going to be looking at the logic for getting ahead in life, and trying to pursue my hobbies too. I'll also be trying not to go insane doing this. I can't say I dislike the idea of taking this blog and just turning it into a general purpose beast. It could even be kinda fun really. Who doesn't love a vanity project?

Tuesday Wrap-Up

2007-12-05T01:01:00.000-05:00

Today was a difficult day. I spent a little time with the Neverwinter Nights editor tutorial, but there really hasn't been much time for reflection unfortunately. I'm pretty well worn out. I had to take the day off from work due to family issues. It's just been one long day. I don't think tomorrow is going to be a lot easier.

Monday Wrap-Up

2007-12-04T01:01:00.000-05:00

Last night after blogging, I found a good guide to the Neverwinter Nights 2 "Electron" editor. I followed it a little ways before I was just too tired to go on. Tonight I've done a little scratching out of ideas into a notebook and I'm going to scratch out some more. I'm still not doing as much as I would like myself to, but I'm happy that keeping this blog is doing well for keeping me honest and reminding me to work.

Weekend Round-Up

2007-12-03T00:37:00.000-05:00

It's been a productive and eventful weekend, but I still managed to get the rest that I needed. I got a lot of work done around the house, and did some Christmas shopping. My grandmother fell down on Saturday and broke her hip. I found out a bit late in the day, so we went up and visited her today. She seems to be doing really well, which was a relief. Oddly, I felt really tired when we got home, so I guess I was pretty tense the whole time.

I'm angry with myself because I haven't done anything creative the whole weekend. I was pretty busy though, and played a lot of LOTRO. Luckily tonight I caught myself and quit. I'm posting this, and then I'm going to either fiddle with the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine, or curl up in bed with my notebook and write.

Friday Wrap-Up

2007-12-01T02:37:00.000-05:00

I'm glad I just slogged my way through work today. I just want to rest and relax. Screw creativity. I want to recover from being tired and not get sick

Thursday Wrap-Up

2007-11-30T01:25:00.000-05:00

Ugh, today kinda sucked. Got up early for Natty's doctor appt, then went to work an hour late. Got tied up and didn't leave on time, so I missed my bus. This resulted in me having to wait in the windy cold for about an hour for my bus. I just feel like crap. On the plus side, I do have some fresh bread made. I'll try doing a little composure of thoughts before bed, but I really need to make time to just sit down and write on one these nights. I can't excuse this just because last weekend's Thanksgiving vacation was a complete travel hell.

Wednesday Wrap-Up

2007-11-29T00:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I can't say that my record's been the best since restarting this blog, but I'm working at it. It's been a rough week too, as I didn't have any chance to really recover after the travel hell of Thanksgiving. Over the last few days, I have been working though. I've installed Neverwinter Nights, and I spent a pleasant evening writing up a flowchart for the 'wrapper' sequence of scenes in... hrm, I don't really have a name for the Neverwinter project, so I suppose it'll stay as "Neverwinter Project" for now. I also reached an exciting conclusion as to handle the ambiguity of the identity of the characters in the wrapper sequence: I'll let the player decide :)

Anyway, I'm off to bed where I'm going to try to get a little writing in before sleep.

Sunday Update and Restart

2007-11-26T01:35:00.000-05:00

So this is the restart of the busy blog. The original purpose of this blog was to keep myself honest about getting work done over the lean months of unemployment. Although not an overwhelming success, I'd have to consider it a good tool for my own productivity. Eventually though, I abandoned it in the midst of a really hectic time in my life. I no longer had undifferentiated time to gather yarn. No matter how difficult, my goals were clear, so without regret I abandoned it.

Now I find myself gainfully employed and somewhat stable in day-to-day life again. It's great and all, but I think I've sort of plateaued. There's no obvious outlet for my energy. My hopes and desires are about as focused as a magic 8-ball. This has been bugging me.

I'm going to try to restart the busy blog in all earnest again and try to get things done. It's going to be re-purposed though. I've got a job and I'm putting in eight hours a day during the week. I don't have any guilt about productivity anymore. I don't have to count chores completed in order to make myself feel better about things. But I want to move forward in life, and hopefully restarting the busy blog will help me do this.

Tuesday Wrap-Up

2007-09-05T00:59:00.000-04:00

Well, today was a sluggish step forward. I was very tired all day, even to the point of taking a nap. A nap which was quickly followed by getting ready and driving off to have dinner with my mom and Rich.

Earlier in the day I accomplished a load of laundry. I also moved furniture around and got the sitting area more together. There were a few other things, but mostly nothing too important. I was doing a lot better over the weekend, which is ironic as I'd just thought I was puttering around in preparation for even greater things this week. Ah well, might as well make sure I get enough sleep tonight. Nighty night

Labor Day Wrap-Up: Back from the Honeymoon

2007-09-04T01:11:00.000-04:00

Hey, so I'm finally back on the horse again. I've been back since the middle of last week, but I've been counting the last few days as 'off' since I was just so lagged out. I've done nicely though, ramping back up to heavy productivity. In the last few days I've gotten a few things done. I caulked the cracks in the floor. Lugged home and assembled a really freaking heavy cabinet from Ikea. While bringing it home, I dropped it and cracked an important corner piece off. Went to Home Depot, bought a clamp and felt all carpentery(ish?) as I glued it together. I've been up to all sorts of stuff, which I'm just going to abandon attempts to recount at this point. I feel like I'm making a difference again, and I'm going to try to stick with it.

Monday Wrap-Up

2007-08-13T23:20:00.000-04:00

Well, today is the last predictable regular update of the busy blog, as I'm about to depart on my honeymoon. When I get internet service on our trip, I hope to write some things in, but unfortunately, I'm not exactly holding out hope. Either way, I'll keep a log of the trip somewhere. Anyway, today was spent running errands and preparing for the trip. So far, it's all going as well as could be expected. I'll keep my fingers crossed that things will remain sane.

Sunday Wrap-Up

2007-08-13T02:36:00.000-04:00

I cleaned the hell out of the house today. We also ran a few errands. It's a little tense here with the trip almost upon us, but I think things will work out okay.

Saturday Wrap-Up

2007-08-12T01:30:00.000-04:00

For the better part of the day, I took today off. I did some useful errands with Natty, which took up several hours, but mostly I just chilled out.

Friday Wrap-Up

2007-08-11T01:17:00.000-04:00

Well, it's only four days until the honeymoon. Wow. I think I'm caught in a sort of lull, where everything seems unimportant since I'm about to embark on the trip.

Today we went and saw Grandma. Yesterday we'd been forced to cancel our trip due to the torrential rains that hit the Pittsburgh area. We'd called her from the car to cancel the visit. During the call, Grandma had been coughing and a little hoarse, but I wasn't worried. She said she wasn't feeling well, so she wasn't really feeling up for a visit anyway.

Then this morning I got a worrisome email this morning from my sister. Apparently she had received a call later that night from the rest home. Grandma was still coughing and was running a slight fever. They wanted official permission to give her antibiotics. This was worrisome... and to be selfish, it was also a bit annoying because I thought I'd been named the first point of contact for any issues with Grandma, but this makes it seem like my mother doesn't trust me. Anyway, we made certain to get out to see her today. She was actually doing quite well when we got there. In fact we talked for over an hour with her. She can still talk up a storm if you get her going. Also she was pretty much on the ball during the conversation and didn't show any confusion. She did try showing us some pictures that we had seen before, but that's not really anything I can particularly blame on senility, just boredom.

I don't think I really achieved too much else today. I definately blame it on this tiredness I've been feeling, and the sense of futility regarding accomplishments before the trip. Nat's been pretty nervous too, and I've been spending a lot of time with her, but I would definately say that can't be where I've lost all my time. *shrugs* On return, I vow productivity... and maybe being trapped overseas with little internet distraction will prove very useful for accomplishing some programming again. *Shrugs*

Thursday Wrap-Up

2007-08-10T01:30:00.000-04:00

Today was a rainy day. So rainy in fact, that it washed out roads and caused mudslides. It was during all this that we happened to be in the car trying to drive up and visit Grandma. We called from the car and canceled until tomorrow.

I didn't really get anything much of interest accomplished today. I've been trying to change my sleep patterns, but so far I've just been getting up early without getting to bed earlier. This left me really tired all day. I took a nap in the late afternoon / early evening, but that seemed to leave me even more tired.

At least I got a little work done prepping the new laptop for Scotland. *shrugs*