#oneaday Day 100: What a Novelty

[Side note: Day 100! Yay. This marks my 448th day of blogging every day. I've been half-tempted to start numbering the posts from when I originally started again, but then that will just get confusing. Perhaps I'll put the total number at the end of each post or something. I don't have an eventual goal number in mind—I fully intend to keep doing this until I can't do it any more, for whatever reason. But given that I continued writing through the disastrous events of last year, it'll take something pretty severe to stop me being here every day. Now, on to your regularly scheduled blog post.]

I can't program. Actually, that's a lie; I wrote a very good Treasure Hunt game in ATARI BASIC once. It used Graphics Mode 2, a custom character set, featured a randomly-generated playfield and custom sound effects. Okay, it perhaps wasn't "very good" but it was at least a completed project. Since then, though, my programming knowledge has tailed off somewhat. It's when everyone stopped using line numbers that it got confusing. I know ditching line numbers was actually a good thing in that you could more easily insert code where it needed to go rather than having to resort to increasingly-convoluted GOSUB/RETURN subroutines, but as soon as all these punctuation rules started to come in? Hmmm.

Perhaps it's just that I haven't spent enough time trying to learn one language. I spent a bit of time doing JavaScript and managed to get some fancy DHTML working, but have since forgotten it. I did some Java once, though it didn't do much. I worked my way through the first two chapters of a C# (pronounced "C-sharp", for anyone who had been wondering about it for as long as I had before I eventually found out) book and thought I was doing pretty well until I got to the first "independent project" type chapter and completely failed to produce the program required.

This is why I enjoy tools that allow you to express your creativity without having to know how to write a complete program. Sure, if you need to do something exciting, you can (and probably will) delve into scripting, but for the most part, the built-in tools are enough to get something up and running.

Over the years, I've used many different tools like this. By far my most beloved (and now outdated) is Klik & Play from Clickteam, which later became Games Factory and Multimedia Fusion. These required absolutely no programming knowledge whatsoever and simply a logical mind to figure out a series of "When this happens, make this happen" statements. Winner. And surprisingly flexible.

I'm also a big fan of the RPG Maker series, especially the later ones that do include a scripting language that allows people far cleverer than me to completely replace the game's battle system with something cool.

Most recently, I've come across Novelty, which is a tool for making Japanese-style visual novels. This is a completely free application—though still in beta—and is one of the most polished pieces of free software I've ever seen. It's incredibly flexible and allows for everything from barely-interactive "click to continue" visual novels that don't require any player decisions, to more in-depth Phoenix Wright-style affairs with buttons, hotspots, branching story paths and all sorts. There's not only a scripting language, but also an impressive markup language for creating graphical assets. There's no need to delve into these if you don't want to, of course, but for "power users" they'll be a boon I'm sure.

My only trouble with tools like these is that I have trouble getting started on something. I get some grand plan in my mind and either end up getting daunted by all the preparatory work which will need to be done (gathering/creating assets, planning and whatnot) or find myself starting, getting too ambitious and bumping into an insurmountable roadblock.

Still, it's nice to know these tools are out there for creative types. I have idle plans to experiment with making some sort of visual novel, but whether or not that will ever happen is anyone's guess.

void blog(string bollocks)
{
     Object@ myBlog = GetObject("Blog");
     if (myBlog !is null)
     {
            myBlog.SetText(bollocks);
     }
}

See? No problem at all.

blog("Cock! Piss! Partridge!")

Day 448

#oneaday Day 99: Mein Kraft

Yes, I have discovered Minecraft. Minecraft, despite being an indie game and therefore something I should technically automatically be championing, going by past experience, is something which I've always had something of a curious resistance to. It hasn't been by choice, though—the reason I haven't been playing Minecraft is not the same as the reason I'm not playing Call of Duty, for example.

In fact, if anything, it's more to do with the fact that when I finally gave in to peer pressure and bought a copy a number of months back, I only had my netbook with me and it ran like ass on there. And then it ran like ass under OS X on my Mac at home, too. For literally months and months I'd been saying to myself "I should really install it on the Windows partition of my Mac and try it properly…"

Well now I have. And what do you know? It's rather good, though it's the kind of game that appears to—at least in its current beta stage—be very much "what you make of it".

If you're one of the few people who hasn't contributed to developer Notch's millions so far, here's a brief rundown. You are dropped into a randomly-generated world made entirely of blocks of various materials. You have nothing to your name except a punching fist that can knock down trees. It's up to you to survive, because every night, the nasties come out and will do their best to kill you.

That's about it—but the main appeal of the game in its present state comes from the fact that once you've built yourself a secure shelter, it's time to start exploring the world and building stuff. You can create structures either by hollowing out existing terrain or by collecting resources and stacking them to build things—kind of like pixelated Lego blocks.

Then there's the "craft" part of the title—you can make items. The daunting part of the game for new players is the fact that no help is given when you start the game—without looking at sites such as the excellent Minecraft Wiki, you'd be expected to figure out how to make tools for yourself. And given that even making the simplest tools requires several steps (punch trees for wood, craft wood into planks, build workbench from planks, craft planks into sticks, combine sticks and planks in various arrangements to produce tools) it's arguably something of a long shot to expect people to do this for themselves.

Or is it? Steven Johnson argues in Everything Bad is Good for You that the cognitive processes you go through when figuring out stuff like this for yourself are very beneficial—good "brain exercise". You use past experience from previous games and other things you've done in the game you're playing to draw conclusions for yourself about what to do next. And sure enough, I found that once I'd started playing a bit and got the basics down, I started naturally experimenting with different arrangements of materials to see what they produced. Some things worked, some things didn't. If something doesn't work, you don't lose anything, either, so the game is set up to encourage exploration and experimentation.

There's also an element of risk, though. Death isn't permanent—but it does cause you to drop all your stuff and potentially lose it. If you've spent a long time collecting things, this can be a real pain, especially if you were exploring a long way from your home spot. Then there's the fact that the game's most notorious enemies, the "Creepers", explode when they get near you. Not only does this cause significant damage to you, it also blows big holes in the things you've built.

But rather than being frustrating, most players simply take this as a sign that they need to defend their homes a little better. Perhaps they should make them harder to get to, or plant some cacti to put off enemies, or build some weapons and armour.

The possibilities are pretty extensive, and I'm looking forward to exploring the game further—and seeing where Notch takes it in the future. The game comes out of beta on the 11th of November this year, so if you want to pick it up for its current reduced price (25% off the full price) then get over there now.

#oneaday Day 98: Inappropriate Soundtracks

Music's a powerful tool for emotional manipulation. You can use it to make people laugh, cry, jump, be scared, be excited and get tingly feelings in those hairs on the back of their neck.

You can also misuse it, with varied results, such as this video I made more to test the iPhone's ability to upload directly to YouTube more than anything — hence the crappy picture and sound quality.

Yes, that is indeed Crackdown 2 featuring the Lazy Town soundtrack, a choice which both confused and delighted the YouTube community and has meant that I still get random, sporadic comments on this video to this day.

It… kind of works, though, doesn't it? Happy, bouncy music for a happy, bouncy agent leaping around collecting shiny orbs. Of course, it completely changes the character of the game — but then Crackdown 2 is a game that isn't particularly strong on the narrative front anyway. If anything, it encourages this sort of messing around.

There's certain genres I won't touch with custom soundtracks. RPGs, for example. While RPGs often have repetitive soundtracks that you listen to on repeat for 40-100 hours, for the most part I like to experience them the way the composer intended. It's like a movie; you wouldn't replace the soundtrack from Shawshank Redemption with Kylie Minogue, would you? It would completely undermine the experience. As RPGs tend to be story-heavy, I prefer not to undermine the experience with a custom soundtrack — many of them are more than capable of undermining themselves with ridiculous plot twists, of course.

But driving games are another matter. Ever since the original Xbox launched the custom soundtracks feature, it's pretty rare that I'll play a driving game with the music included on the disc. (This is at least partly because the vast majority of driving game soundtracks are complete garbage, but that's a little beside the point.) I wrote the other day that I wished for a bit more "drama" in my driving games, and that no-one seemed keen to follow through on the idea. What I can do, though, is put ludicrously overdramatic soundtracks over my driving games, producing results like this. Much more epic, I'm sure you'll agree.

Okay, I shamelessly stole the idea to use the Plunkett and Macleane soundtrack from Top Gear, but they used it because it works. Also recommended: Neodämmerung and/or Navras from The Matrix Revolutions, anything from the Shadow of the Colossus soundtrack, anything from the Castlevania soundtracks since Symphony of the Night and… well, anything epic, really.

I suggest you try it next time you fire up a racing game. You'll have much more fun and your races will carry that much more "weight". You can imagine that you're racing to survive or something. (Obviously if you're playing Split/Second, which already has an excellent cinematic soundtrack, you literally are racing to survive in many cases.) You can imagine your own reason for driving shiny cars very fast. If you're the sort of person like me who enjoys driving shiny cars very fast but would prefer it very much if there was a reason beyond "to win", then this approach will sort you right out.

Any recommendations for other games with inappropriate soundtracks? I'm all — wait for it — ears.

#oneaday Day 97: The Grindstone

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently writing daily for GamePro. This is, of course, awesome and I'm both happy and honoured to be able to do so, even if it means having to remember how all you Americans spell things and the fact that companies are singular nouns, not plurals.

Having been out of full-time (well, pretty much any work) for the best part of a year, coming back to actually having to do stuff in the daytime is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a system shock. Not in a bad way, though. On the contrary, it's nice to be able to get up and know that I have Things To Do. I don't know if you (yes, you, reading this) have ever experienced unemployment, but while it sounds like the best thing ever in many ways—just not having to commute is heavenly—after a while it does get both annoying and demoralising.

Which is why returning to work—even if it's work from home at curious, PST-friendly hours like I'm currently doing—can sometimes be a surprise. Having had entire days of nothingness to fill with any combination of sitting on the Internet, watching TV, trawling your DVD collection, playing video games or even—shock—going out—having a healthy chunk of your day taken up by Stuff You Have To Do means that you have to rethink things somewhat.

It's a lot more difficult to find the time to go out running, for example. I could go in the mornings if I woke up a bit earlier, of course, but still operating on a slightly-skewed body clock means that doesn't always (ever) happen. There's the weekends too, of course—but then weekends get filled up with socialising and doing things you don't have time to do in the week. You start to understand the expression "not enough hours in the day" all too well.

Don't get the impression I'm complaining—I'm really enjoying the work I'm doing and I hope that shows in what I produce. I like what I do and people who read it seem to like it, too. So that's all good. I just find it quite amusing that when you have the time to do everything you might want to do, you don't have the means to. And when you do have the means to, you don't have the time! Craziness.

I couldn't tell you for sure if things are going to stay exactly this way, but it's certainly better than the way things have been. It's been a long, difficult and not particularly pleasant road to get here, but it's entirely possible that the destination's in sight. What that destination is? No idea.

We'll find out, I guess. Watch this space.

#oneaday Day 96: Don't Take It Personally, Babe

The thing I like about games that are a bit off the beaten track is the fact that they're not afraid to break with every gaming convention under the sun in order to try something a bit different. Objectively, sometimes they're not great "games" in the traditional sense, but they are definitely worthwhile experiences that explore interesting new ways of telling stories.

One "author" who produces such games is Christine Love, who is fond of creating ren'ai titles. For the uninitiated, ren'ai games have strong plot elements of romantic love. They're not necessarily dating sims or hentai games—though some are—but all of them have a narrative which explores love and emotions. Final Fantasy VIII, for example, is regarded as a ren'ai game. Stretching the definition somewhat, you could even argue Silent Hill 2 has elements of the genre.

The appropriately-named Love's titles, however, are much more up-front about their intentions. Digital: A Love Story and the oddly-named Don't Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story are two games which go about telling a ren'ai tale in similar, though markedly different fashions. Both of them revolve heavily around the use of technology and its role in interpersonal relations.

I'll resist spoiling either of them, but I think they're well worth exploring for anyone interested in the "visual novel" genre—anyone who liked games such as the Ace Attorney series, 999 or Hotel Dusk, for example.

Digital: A Love Story sits you at the desk of an Amiga (or rather, a non-copyright infringing equivalent) five minutes into the future of 1988. Purely by interacting with your computer and dialling up a number of virtual BBS systems, a genuinely compelling tale is told without any graphics whatsoever. You don't "break character" for a single instant in the game, and it's this gameplay "hook" that keeps you playing to see what's going on. I'll say nothing else, as that would spoil it. But it's excellent—if only for nostalgia value. It happens to tell a good story, too.

Don't Take It Personally… is a little different. Taking a more Japanese style to its art, it looks like a dating game, though it isn't one. Casting players in the role of John Rook, a 38-year old double divorcee who came to high school teaching in 2027 as part of a mid-life crisis, it tells a tale which explores interpersonal and social issues that you don't generally see in games. It's a relatively simplistic visual novel in terms of gameplay, with only a few choices to make, but like Digital, it's the story that matters. And it's told in a very interesting way through three different "layers". There's the face-to-face action, where the player, as John, sees and hears what's going on in front of him. John also has access to his students' Facebook-like social network, though, and is able to read any of his students' communications—even the private ones—giving an ethically-questionable insight into what they're thinking and what is really going on behind the dramas that unfold. And thirdly, this game features possibly the only time you'll ever see 4chan (sorry, "12channel") being used as a Greek chorus.

Both games have a "message" and while Don't Take It Personally in particular is a little heavy-handed with it towards the end, it's cool to see games trying to say something a little more than the usual melodrama.

So check 'em out. They take, like, two hours at most each. And they're free. You love free stuff, right?

#oneaday Day 95: Car Pee Gee

There's a ton of things that people haven't tried in the world of video games—mostly because of certain assumptions that are made about the people who play them, or more specifically, the demographics of who plays what.

Let's take the racing game genre as an example. It's generally assumed that racing games will be played by petrolheads of varying degrees. The überhardcore petrolheads who actually know what a limited slip differential is rather than just treating it as a powerup will be into the Forza Motorsports and Gran Turismos of the world. Those who just enjoy flinging cars around corners are built for the Ridge Racers, Need for Speeds and Project Gothams of the world.

And that, it seems, is the limit of what the market assumes to be "people who like racing games". But I like racing games, and I wouldn't describe myself as a particular petrolhead as such. I also like other genres, and I would pay good money for a game that fused together some different genres and gave racing games a bit of personality. Because let's face it, however good the driving action is, the in-between races bit of most racing games is about as interesting as a spreadsheet. Sure, it might have a soundtrack by Junkie XL or The Prodigy, but it's still dull as ditchwater and completely character-free.

I want a racer with a plot. I'm not talking about half-assed efforts like Need for Speed Underground or Ridge Racer Type 4. I'm talking about a game where the unfolding storyline is just as important as throwing a BMW M5 around a 90-degree corner. It's been tried once before with TOCA Race Driver, but to my knowledge, never again since. There's also Square's Racing Lagoon, but good luck finding a copy of that ever.

No; what I envision is something along the lines of the old Wing Commander games, where there's an unfolding story and some good character interaction punctuated by, in this case, racing rather than space-shooty-bang-bang action. If your character has been talking to a rival racer and talking smack to them in these interstitial "plot" sequences, it's going to make you feel all the more inclined to do your very best against them when you see their name flash up over the top of their car in the middle of a race. Perhaps you could have a co-driver sitting in the car with you talking to you and making comments as you race as well as helping you out by warning you of upcoming corners and hazards.

Unfortunately, I doubt it's ever going to happen, because most racing games these days are treated as triple-A titles, which means that they get tightly focus-grouped and marketed at a specific demographic: the petrolhead.

I want to play the racing game for the RPG fan, the interactive movie fan, the adventure game fan. There's no reason why either side of the experience has to be compromised—just replace the battles from a JRPG with races. Why shouldn't it work?

Oh well. I can dream on.

#oneaday Day 94: Darkness Falls

It's been quite some time since I blogged at this hour. Last year, it was a semi-regular occurrence, thanks either to my buggered-up body clock, failing to blog until the late evening (or in some cases, until after I'd gone out and come back again) but for the most part, this year the datestamps on my work have been for the correct day. Tonight I've been recording a podcast, though, and I didn't think to write something earlier, largely 'cause I was working.

I like night-time. I've often thought that night-time is the period in which my brain works best. Well, I'm not sure about "best" because I doubt if I wanted to do anything which could be called "work" right now that I'd do it to the best of my ability, but my brain certainly is at its most creative.

This is both a blessing and a curse; it means that the imagination can run wild, allowing you to picture wild and fantastic scenes as you attempt to lull yourself to sleep, but it also means that you can worry about things like taxes, cancer and alien invasions. It's strange that the time of day at which you should theoretically be most exhausted is actually the time at which your brain seems most keen to get up, jump around and keep tapping you on the shoulder.

Perhaps it's the fact that there's no other distractions. By the time it gets to this hour, hopefully you have no "commitments" to worry about, no work to do, nothing you absolutely must do right now. As such, your brain decides that it's playtime and starts wandering around looking for things to do when in fact all your body wants to do is get to sleep.

Sitting in darkness with a total lack of distractions is a good time to get things sorted in your mind. Given that we live in a world where we are surrounded by devices, websites, pets, siblings, partners, family members and various other things which all demand our attention to varying degrees, the opportunity to sit in the darkness and be, for once, alone with your thoughts is something which should be welcomed and cherished. You don't necessarily have to come to any conclusions or make any big decisions—but the simple act of taking a moment to listen to what your brain is telling you is often enough to make you feel better about something.

And remember, whatever your brain might be telling you at 2AM, the eventual outcome will never be as bad as you're expecting. So in many senses, those anxieties that you might find yourself feeling at stupid o' clock in the morning may, in fact, just be setting you up for a pleasant surprise a little way down the road.

Now I'm going to go to sleep before I babble on about any more crap.

#oneaday Day 93: The Language of Barbers

I do not know how to talk to hairdressers or barbers. I'm not even convinced I know the difference, aside from the fact that hairdressers are assumed by Jeremy Clarkson to be somewhat effeminate and drive girly convertibles like the Mazda MX-5 before charging you three hundred quid to make the tips of your haircut a little bit lighter, whereas barbers, in my experience, tend to be blokey blokes armed with scissors and clippers who will shear your mane for ten quid.

Regardless of whether I'm talking to a hairdresser or a barber, though, as soon as I get in that chair, I don't know what to say. I have a couple of "backup haircuts" that I can consistently ask for — "number [x] all over" if I want people to see what the shape of my head is all over, or "number [x] at the sides and back, short on top" if I want the back of my head to feel like Fuzzy Felt whilst having enough on top to do weird things with "product" if necessary.

But I'm still not sure of the etiquette. The idea of walking into a barbers' shop and saying "do something with my hair that doesn't make me look like a penis" seems a little… odd. I mean, I'm sure people who cut hair are suitably trained in the art of not making people look like penises (or at least, not unless they ask them to) and have plenty of creativity of their own, but when I sit in that chair, it feels like I should know what I'm asking for.

Perhaps it's the "bloke thing" that Bill Bailey discusses towards the end of this clip:

Namely, the fact that "blokes" assume that they should know what they're talking about; the haircut equivalent of not walking into a garage, bursting into tears and saying "it's broken!" whilst pointing in the general direction of your car. You can't point at your hair, say "it's shit!" and get them to do something with it. For one, that's putting a lot of trust in someone you don't necessarily know to do something to your appearance that you have to live with every day.

What makes it worse is the fact that any time I have genuinely asked anyone else what I should do with my hair, I have never got a straight answer. This leads me to believe that no-one knows what to say to barberdressers, and that everyone is in fact fooling each other by talking about highlights, lowlights, split ends and pro-vitamin B5.

And don't even get me started on the range of "product" out there. What, pray, is the difference between hair gel, wax, putty, goop, spunk, glue and splart?

#oneaday Day 92: Dream On

Discussing dreams is regarded by many as self-indulgent, but then so is blogging, so to the people who whinge and moan about everything I say "RASPBERRIES, GOOD SIR" and bare my bum at them. (Maybe not the bum bit.)

But anyway. Dreams. Weird, aren't they? A statement that surely qualifies for the "Captain Obvious Award 2011", yes, but it's true — which is why it's obvious, obviously. I have, however, come to the conclusion recently that the most vivid and bizarre dreams seem to come not during your big long sleep that you (hopefully) have throughout the whole night, but instead in those brief "snooze" periods you have between alarm clock harassment in the morning. Assuming you use an alarm clock. If not, it's those brief snooze periods you have between waking up and deciding you can't be arsed to get out of bed just yet.

Anyway. Regardless of when those brief snooze periods happen, that's when your brain suddenly decides that the most interesting and/or fucked-up dreams really need to happen. Because, as everyone knows, the brain works best under pressure. Ask any student or journalist with a deadline coming up.

Take this morning. I woke on an airbed on my friend's floor (I do know how I got there, I hasten to add) and considered getting up but wasn't sure if it was a good idea because my phone battery had gone flat and I wasn't wearing a watch. And this being the digital age, of course there were no clocks anywhere to be seen that weren't on mobile phones or on TV-connected things that made noise and would wake up my sleeping companion (who was on a different air bed, I hasten to add, and sleeping off an enormous amount of alcohol that he had consumed over the course of the whole day in celebration of both digits of his age changing) so basically, I couldn't tell if it was late enough to wake up in a suitably sociable manner. You get me? Good.

Now we've established that, I can explain; following the above, I established that it probably was too early to wake up, so I promptly fell asleep again. (Oddly enough, I find it enormously difficult to fall asleep at actual normal bedtime, but have absolutely no problem dropping off again in the morning. Somewhat frustrating and a little impractical.) My brain decided that this would be an appropriate time to imagine going to the fridge, taking out a 4-pint bottle of milk to take a refreshing cold swig from and discovering that it was actually full of egg-fried rice.

"Hmm, seems a bit ricey," I said. The people in the kitchen at the time (whom I didn't see) found this hilarious and we all had a good giggle about it. Then I woke up. Cool story bro.

If dreams are supposed to be some sort of "message", then I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what that was trying to tell me. I drink too much milk? I really fancy a chinese? I'm going to die? I have no idea, but I guess it's no weirder than the time I dreamed about navigating a field made entirely of strawberry mousse.

#oneaday Day 91: Boozehound

It's a curious thing, alcohol. Some people enjoy it, others don't. One thing we seem to be afflicted with a bit in this country is the assumption that alcohol is somehow necessary to have a good time, like it unlocks a magical gateway to some nether realm of ultimate happiness.

But does it, though? It certainly lowers inhibitions and makes people more open to the idea of acting like a dickhead — and, by extension, amusing everyone else. This certainly leads to lots of memorable evenings — it occurred to me last time I was out with a bunch of people that a lot of stories start with "there was this time we were all really drunk" and end with someone being sick or falling over or hurting themselves.

Good nights don't necessarily need alcohol to be good. You just need something to happen to be memorable. This depends a lot on the chemistry between the people you're with. With the right people, you can have a thoroughly silly night without the need to get a sick bucket afterwards.

The people I was out with tonight are some of my oldest friends; people I've known since high school. While our nights out often involve a bit of drinking, we certainly don't need drinks to act like dicks and yell "COCK" at each other.

Which is, you know, nice.

I have a lovely weekend ahead of me so I will say goodnight for now. Stay frosty.