Ace's Place

A quick review of a game by Hemisphere games named Osmos. This game is up for $2 on Steam for the weekend and I decided to just buy it. A trailer is here though I didn't bother to check it first, there is a demo as well.

The gameplay mechanics are pretty simple, you're a floating blob of matter, a "life form" or whatever, your goal in life is (usually) to be the biggest blob around. You do this by absorbing other pieces of matter, you die if you are absorbed by a bigger piece of matter.
You move around by ejecting matter from your body against the direction of your travel vector (the opening screen pointedly mentions Newtons Third Law, if it wasn't clear enough). This about sums up your end of the deal and if we left it there, would be a pretty crappy $2.

So there are gameplay modes, 3 of them. The first one, named Ambient is very simple, you get a field of matter and your job is to be the biggest of them all. No pressure or anything. Accompanied by the electronic music that resembles private airplane lounges more than 'sublime effects', it can be a very relaxing and interesting set of levels.

The second is named Force and seems to comprise of missions oriented around gravity. The first style starts you off as a blob of matter surrounding a 'star' and attempting to grow. This is surprisingly not as easy as it looks as orbital mechanics are not the simplest thing. The second style (there may be more I have yet to discover) is an attempt to "capture" (I.E eat) blobs named 'Repulsors' which are, oddly enough, repulsed by you according to your mass.

The third, Life is my term for it, is 1v1s (or maybe more later on) with other 'sentient' blobs of matter, where you compete to 'eat' them. This seems hit and miss, either a rather interesting bout filled with ejecting matter as you try to maneuver away from the enemy, or complete 'blargh' as it accidentally gets eaten in the first minute.

The sound I've mentioned in a sentence and that's about as much as it deserves to get. However the graphics are quite nice, fitting both for wide screen and for normal aspect ratios and being quite unique. A blue/red color scheme makes it easy to recognise who is eatable and who will eat you, and the effects work well enough.

Overall, I just bought it, but it seems to be worth a night or two of fun and it's something I feel comfortable playing with others around.

I'm abit annoyed at this article, so just let me rant.
This is mostly based off a single Haaretz article.

The article lays out the sorry state of CD in Israel. I'm not treating it as the holy gospel but two things scream out.
One is the Israeli attitude of "Israel cannot absorb a nuclear, biological or chemical strike. The conclusion was obvious. Israel will have to launch a preemptive strike."
This is a very nice assumption and I agree with it, but this does not absolve the goverment of working to protect civilians from possible attack. Civil Defense has side benefits everywhere, at the very least basic education. Even if we increase the protection factor of Civvies by just a few orders of magnitude, this can protect say...Netanya from a strike on nearby bases. Or the same for Jerusalem. This is ignoring the basic requirment of a country to defend it's citizens!
Second is the approach towards defense as a factor in calculation. Defense in Israel seems to be treated (going by published stuff only) as an afterthought, an "oh right, we can be attacked." And not as something serious to lay out plans for. Part of this comes back to the quote above, that Israel cannot sustain a real attack. But does that matter? Don't we have a basic obligation to not assume we're infalliable and we might take a hit? Conventional wise, we do that.
Why not do the same for chemical? That's a solveable problem right now. It would take abit of money and actually trusting people to use gas masks properly but it can work.
Biological is a differant issue but if we actually have Biowar we're all going to hell in a very fast car.

Nuclear is a whole differant kettle, we have working ABM and I'm willing to atleast partially trust it's numbers. But do we want to put everything in this assumption of "it'll either never happen, or ABM will do it's job"? Expanding PF for civvies is a childs play for an actual goverment.

That's it, comments are welcome.

I'm going to be apolitical regarding the Hebron evacuation, since I'm pretty sure my views on it are rather predictable. But reading some news reports shocked me in a way I havn't really expected.

Anyone whose non-Jewishness was discovered received the appropriate treatment: The wild, bleary-eyed little ones mercilessly hurled curses and insults at them. They are mere children and already experts in racial theory. Every possible epithet was hurled at the soldiers, but they, perhaps on orders from above, were silent as though catatonic. Their faces showed no emotion.

"If someone comes to kill you, kill him first!" shouted one of the children at a Border Policeman with a non-Jewish name [both Russian and Ethiopian immigrants and Druze were among the security units present], moments after the evacuation of the families from the market began on Tuesday. The youngster brought his face close to that of the soldier until they were almost touching. "It says in the Torah that I have to kill you. You are from the seed of Amalek ... You are a goy [gentile] and you are not allowed to tread on this holy ground. Get out of here, you and your friends!"

"You're not Jewish at all. You're a Nazi. We'll kill you and all the Nazis who are here." Other children, dripping with hatred, surround the group of soldiers and observe them with amusement, as in a zoo. Their mothers sit on the side and observe their glorious progeny, barely concealing their enjoyment.

"They aren't Jews," he says, pointing at the hundreds of men in uniform. "We are the real Jews." His father nods in agreement: "You're asking about the soldiers, so I'll tell you. They aren't Jews. Look at them, they're Russians, Ethiopians and Druze. And even those who call themselves Jews are not Jews. They're Zionists and leftists."

Seventy years have passed, which I guess means we can all throw away the book on 30s Germany. You know where we've heard these statments before? Nazi germany, where kids would run along streets and attack Jews and threaten them.
Lack of appreciation for the irony in History is not something I'm known for, however this is quite new. I think the Haaretz editorial said it best, this feels strikingly similar to the way American evanglicals act in their summer camps. Trained, no, brainwashed from birth to hate all others, a sure belief they are on the path for the best, this is far too similar to totalitarian regimes for me to be comfortable.

I wish this note would have been abit longer, but I think this speaks for itself.

We've all seen it a million times. A new startup, an Internet organized group, a few friends saying they want to do it. It's not surprising that people want to make their own games, it's a natural want to express creativity in a new medium. If it's not making your own amateur movies with cheap effects, or running a garage rock band, it's writing your own game. Yet how many amateur game projects can you count, that have succeeded? I'm pretty sure the list is quite small compared to the projects attempted.

Before we can answer what happens, lets identify whats involved in
most amateur game projects.

1. A healthy amount of code. This will vary based on project, and how smart the creators are. If they're smart, it'll be based on an existing engine, or use a lot of free middle ware. The overly ambitious will embark on a genre defining journey of extrema graphics and the best game play. From my tone and common sense, you can guess why that doesn't work.


2. Large amounts of art assets. With no art assets, theres no game. Now many projects either underestimate the amount of art involved(every crate, every box, every tree), or assume it's as easy as rapidly coding.


3. Creativity and working under constraints. Most game projects are not about “What can we put in to make this game fun.” but rather “What can we take out without hurting the core game experience.” It is for this reason that most games, and most advice to new game developers, start out with “prototype, make it simple, make it fun, go from there.”

Now what typically happens in most projects? A mix of hubris and plain inexperience. Most projects, quite predictably, are ambitious and wish to do all sorts of nice things, like redefine a genre, create the best game ever, etc. Not really that useful, nor really helpful for anyone. Also, most game projects are started out by programmers, or to be more precise, technologically oriented people. These people typically do not really understand the large amounts of time it takes to create art assets for games, never mind 3D games. Also, lack of planning is a key problem. A design goal of “Make this shooting thingy fun,” isn't really helpful, not to a programmer, to a developer, or to anyone bar the person who wrote this down.

Furthermore, many programmer focused projects carry around with them a self inflated sense of the programmers ability. Typically, the project will start from scratch, and take many weeks to get to a state where it's playable and where other team members input is relevant(getting the engine up to scratch, etc.), this is a fatal mistake. The mantra of some of the most successful hobbyist projects, among them Red Orchestra and Counter Strike(both successful First Person Shooter mods which turned into retail products) has been to build on and improve existing games, and to use their code base. This significantly reduces early development time, and enables developers to reach the critical stage where game play is actually defined and tested.

The other side of the mountain is where most people(who are not programmers) end up. Full of cool ideas, and lack of ability to implement them. In many projects, there's a will, theres a way, but no one is around with a map, or with hiking shoes. It's not impossible to create worthwhile mods using only provided tools without writing a single line of code, but it's definitely easier if someone's around who can actually understand what all the jib-jab about for loops, function calls and objects is about.

As an additional factor that is usually not considered, is what the Internet provides. The Internet is both a blessing and a curse to all game makers. On one hand, it's an essentially boundary-less expanse of talent and interested people. On the other hand, it's an vast, uncivilized land full of people who will take any excuse to deride your project even if they can't do better. Many a project has failed because it forgot that it's possible to find artists or programmers on line, who might be willing to help, either for fun, or for a small sum of money. But there are also projects which have failed because they took in interest input too readily, ending with a project that is full of compromises which satisfies everybody.

If so, what is recommended for such projects to succeed? There is no ten step plan to gaming success, no pre-defined list of what makes games succeed, or grab awards. Gaming is littered with examples of this, from Sims, to Loco-Roco and DEFCON. However, there are some general hints that help.

1. Plan early, plan often. Not to be confused with setting things down in stone ahead of time, but before you start any journey of magnitude, it helps to have a clear set of goals, and requirements. This is especially true of any group effort, where, needless to say, every person has a different view of what the game will be about, how it will look, or play. A coherent effort will bring results far more readily then a dozen people each dragging the game to their own likes.


2. Re-use. There are three dozen or so open source game engines(OGRE, or such) out there, there are several commercial game engines which enable mod development openly(Source, Unreal Engine being the best examples there.). If you're writing a game from bottom up and all you plan is to create a variation of a known genre, you're better off using pre-made tools, it's unlikely a first attempt will be better.


3. Re-use. Yes, but re-use art assets. Does your box really need to look different then every other box out there? There are several open source texture repositories, more which cost a small sum of money. There's no issue using them. Some of the most wildly known games, among them Half Life 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R and Doom 3 all use the same common texture repositories, changing them only slightly before using them.


4. Know your limits. Don't set out to create a 150-map First Person Shooter, don't write an RPG to equal Lord of the Rings. Common sense, but it's important not to let delusions of grandeur interfere with common sense and a need to get a product out of the door.


5. Release early, release often. While this maxim is more true of open source application development then game development, it really is relevant. The sooner you can get some sort of working executable(or mod package) out there, the sooner you can get wide interest, offers of help from random third-parties, or the such. Waiting for perfection before release will result in vapor-ware.

This post came out of a post in SDN which is here.

Games for Windows is a certification program started by Microsoft in their whole “Windows” branding/marketing campaign. It is similar to Certified to work with Vista, and Certified For Vista branding campaigns.

To start out, what is Games for Windows? Acording to Microsoft:

The Windows Vista Games Explorer (GE) is similar in concept to the Windows XP folders “My Documents” or “My Pictures.” The idea behind all three of these is to centralize similar content in one place and allow for easier organization and context-sensitive activities. The GE extends the My Documents or My Pictures concept by allowing richer organization and control over games. The GE allows gamers to view, organize, modify and interact with all the games installed on their system. It also offers the opportunity to game publishers to communicate important game information more effectively. The system is completely data-driven, so it is very easy for a game publisher to update game information over time. In this way, the Games Explorer enables gamers to keep up to date with game communities, tips & tricks, etc.

In other words, time to do what consoles have had forever!

A quickrundown of it’s features from Wikipedia.

An “Easy Install” option that installs the title on your PC in the fewest possible steps and mouse clicks
Compatibility with the Windows Vista Games Explorer (see below)
Compatibility with the Xbox 360 controller (where applicable)
Installs and runs properly on x64 versions of Windows Vista and is compatible with 64-bit processors (though the game itself can be 32-bit)
Supports normal and widescreen resolutions, such as 4:3 aspect ratio (800 x 600), 16:9 aspect ratio (1280 x 720), and 16:10 aspect ratio (1152 x 720)
Launching from Media Center (Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate have Media Center)

Some of the better features are as follows. Taken from the MS Developers network.

The game must be visible within the Games Explorer on Windows Vista.

The game must not create shortcuts on the desktop, in the Start menu, or in any other location to launch the game. Instead, this functionality should be exposed through the Games Explorer through the game’s icon and associated tasks list.

Tasks and shortcuts for uninstall must not be created. Users should be able to remove the game using the Programs control panel (known as Add/Remove Programs on Windows XP and previous versions).

controls, not that anyone cares. With a tidbit regarding gamers being forced to use admin mode. This bears repeating. With Games for Windows, you will no longer be forced to use Admin Mode to game, this is an important security step.

All games must execute within the context of a Standard User in order to allow Windows Vista Parental Controls-enabled accounts to play the game. Installation, patching, and removal may require elevated rights, subject to the requirements in section

also forces intergration with Xbox360 controller, which can only be a good thing, and Live, which again, is not bad.

Quite abit of information regarding 64-bit and security, summed up in:

Every executable file (.EXE extension) must have an embedded manifest that defines its execution level.

To maintain compatibility with x64 versions of Windows:

Titles and title installers must not contain any 16-bit code or rely on any 16-bit component.

If the game is dependent on kernel-mode drivers for operation, x64 versions of these drivers must be available. The game setup must detect and install the proper drivers and components for the 64-bit Windows OS.

All executable code files (e.g., .EXE and .DLL extensions) must be signed with an Authenticode certificate.

se of installation:

Games with a traditional installation must provide a simplified path in their setup user interface:

Display a maximum of one EULA

Provide default and custom installation options. The default option must bypass all selections for the install (such as installation folder, component selections, etc.), assume the default selections and then run the game or launcher upon successful install without addition prompts.

Install any required OS components (such as the DirectX and Visual C runtimes) silently without prompting or guarded by component version checks using the correct Microsoft redistribution package(s).

Provide removal only via the Programs control panel for both the game application as well as user-generated game files. This must ensure all installed files are removed and all settings (firewall, registry, etc.) are cleared. Redistributed OS components must not be removed.

Vista Game Explorer is an issue, covered by several developer blogs. In a nutshell, it forces them in how to display certain things, like ESRB information and settings, not inherently bad, just limiting.

The other possible issue is covered by Rahul Sood(VoodooPC CEO, good blogger) here.

Microsoft is working to create a community experience similar to Xbox Live called Windows Live, where people can chat, set up games, and play. In the future, PC and Xbox 360 gamers will even be able to play with and against each other, a cross-platform experience that sounds really cool to me. My concern is that Microsoft will charge a membership fee to those who want to be part of this. So long the fee is $50 per year or less, it’ll probably be a good deal for users, but game developers that support the GFW cause may have to give up their recurring revenues to Microsoft.

Generally however, it can only be a good thing, if it makes releases stabler, enforces proper interaction standards with the OS, etc. I am quite sure I am not the only gamer who is sick with lack of standards regarding games, Games installation, user right abuse, etc. Any step towards solving this mess is a good step.