To The IGDA: I Would Like Tim Langdell's Head On A Silver Platter, Please

Dear IGDA,

I know I haven't participated much (or at all) in IGDA events, or even posted on the IGDA boards yet. I just signed up a couple months ago and have been busy with Real Life stuff. So of course you guys have no idea who I am. (Please read the rest of this weblog to find out, if you wish.)

Anyway, thanks to Shamus Young, I have been made aware of the recent situation with the giant cockroach in human skin named Tim Langdell. That a parasite who goes around suing everyone who uses the word "Edge" in their products could be on the Board of Directors of the IGDA is a freaking joke. As Corvus puts it, Tim Langdell's actions could "result in a massive defection of the membership." Not bothering to renew my membership was certainly my first reaction to the news, though I have reconsidered and am giving the board a chance to do the right thing.

Tim Langdell hasn't even managed to produce a game in 15 years because he backstabs people who actually develop the games for him. (I would cite specific links, but I accidentally closed the tabs I was going to link to. Just look at the pages linked from the above pages I linked to and you might run across the specific ones I'm thinking about, or others I haven't seen yet.) His company is still solvent purely because litigates others, like Namco for naming their game "Soul Edge", while baiting companies he can't bully so easily by doing precisely what he accuses others of doing (Tim claims to be working on "MIRRORS a game by EDGE", for example). A quick search around Wikipedia indicates that he may simply be malignantly narcissistic rather than outright psychopathic, but I don't know him well enough to tell the difference.

I've signed the petition. I expect the IGDA to take the proper action.

P.S. I remember when "someone" sued Edge Magazine over their name. Now I finally have a name and a face to match the "someone".

See you Next Week

I've been rather busy recently, since I'm still working full time while migrating everything over to my new laptop and setting things up in preparation for doing projects & stuff. The good news is that I'll finally have something to show soon.

The bad news is: not until next week. But soon. Working on it now.

UPDATE: Did you know that the FPS tutorial actually displays everything upside-down? I guess it's not a problem unless you're trying to make a game that switches back and forth between 2D and 3D views. This is why I said "next week" instead of "in a few days".

UPDATE 2: Okay, so things didn't work out as planned with that particular idea. C'est la vie.

Insanely Good Graphics

Now I am not a graphics whore by any means. When some new version of Unreal suddenly has Bi-Polar Smoothed Quadrangles and Dynamic Phunge Sporkles so that killing d00ds online now looks even more hi-res than ever, I just yawn and and point out that I'll still have to wait until at least the following year before anyone makes a compelling game with it.

So incremental improvements in graphics to make new games look just like old games but better is not what I call good graphics. What I call good graphics (and music) are games like THIS:

Video Games | Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet | Exclusive Extended Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Oh, yes.

My New Laptop!

My new laptop finally arrived a few days ago. It's pretty exciting... except for one problem.

It's taking forever to download everything I need to it. Wifi is normally adequate for my purposes, but when you need to download dozens of gigs of stuff to your new laptop all at once, it's like trying to "chug" a gallon of beer by sipping through a straw.

On the positive side, once everything is downloaded (and I still have dozens of gigs of files to copy as well), I can finally relax and enjoy a few games and mods I wasn't able to check out before my old laptop died.

Also, I can finally finish the proof-of-concept phases of Game A and Game B to figure out which one I want to do for sure in September. Just a month and a half left...

The Terrible Danger of TVTropes.org

It's true.

Do not click on a link from this linked page or you will be there for hours: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes

You have been warned.

Adding A Bunch of Indie Links To The Sidebar

The list of weblogs on the left has expanded quite a bit. At first I wanted to add a seperate header for them, but since I'm still using the default Blogger setup there's a limited number of "gadgets" that will fit over there.

(I really need to learn Wordpress one of these days, since all the cool kids seem to be using it for their weblogs. But I digress.)

Anyway, IndieGames.com The Weblog, TIGSource, and Play This Thing are all general Indie games news sites. IndieGames.Com The Weblog and TIGSource are particularly focused on the "news" aspect, reporting interesting events as well as developments of individual games. Play This Thing is a series of game reviews that all (usually) link to the games themselves.

The Experimental Gameplay Project is a site run by The World of Goo Guys for game developers to show off their quickly-developed prototypes. Some actually play well, and pretty much all of them are interesting. The site recently came back from a hiatus, and they've started a new contest for people to submit their shoot-em-ups.

Classic Lucasarts Games on Steam! AHAHAHAHA!

YEAH! Lucasarts is releasing their Classic PC Adventure games on Steam as well as The Secret of Monkey Island remake! It's about time. I mean: what does one have to do? I bought most of them at full price back in the day, I bought a bunch of the Telltale stuff (those are "the bomb", take it from me), and was even considering buying the allegedly awful* Staff of Kings just to get The Fate of Atlantis again.

I was originally hoping they'd go for Good Old Games, since GOG specializes in bringing classic Win/DOS games to XP/Vista. But Steam? Oh HECK YES, just as good.

I hope they get Grim Fandango and Outlaws on Steam soon too, but really, I just want ALL of the classic non-Star Wars Lucasarts adventures on Steam. And maybe a few of the Star Wars ones too.

*Metacritic does fail some times, but is usually mostly reliable. Thus the "allegedly".

The Ultimate Food

After seven years (with the occasional multi-month break in there) of working at Subway, I've come up with some pretty creative stuff. Yesterday I tried something radical, even for me, and it exceeded expectations, but I decided to refine it slightly today and managed to achieve transcending deliciousness. I have come up with the recipe for The Ultimate Food, with both American/Carnivore and Indian/Vegetarian variants:

The Ultimate Food (Meat Eater Version)

1) Place flatbread onto a deli paper sheet. Pour at least two ladle-fuls of marinara sauce onto it.

2) Place a tray of Philly cheesesteak (minus cheese, but we'll get to that) into the microwave. Set it to a low setting or short time: you don't want it too hot yet. Substitute a chicken patty or something else if you're being cheap.

3) When the steak is done, put it on the flat bread. Sprinkle a few red onion slices over the steak.
4) Take a Cool Ranch Doritos packet, open it and dump the Doritos on top of the steak.

5) Pour one or two more ladle-fuls of marinara sauce, sprinkle green peppers and olives, and sprinkle cheddar and mozzarella cheese, all on top of the Doritos.

6) Top off with Chipotle Southwest, Ranch, and Buffalo sauce, in a cris-crossing pattern.

7) Stick it in a Subway Toaster on the 6" Patty setting. The outlying Doritos should be slightly crisp and the cheese and sauces melted throughout the whole concoction.

8) Serve with drink of choice (beer or wine if you're super-super lucky/careful, unsweetened iced tea if the store has it, or just soda).

The Ultimate Food (vegetarian version)

As the meat eater version, but substitute veggie patty for cheese steak, and substitute (or add) yellow peppers and jalapenos for the olives and green peppers.

Now if you think I'm being arrogant to label this as the "Ultimate Food" of every food there has ever been so far, think of it this way: I have successfully combined nachos with cheesesteak. It's technically just a Cheesesteak Flatbread Meal Deal prepared in a very esoteric way, which means it's feasible to actually order it at a Subway, except they won't be able to wrap it.

Beware of adding bacon to The Ultimate Food. Current string theory hypothesises that adding the Ultimate Ingredient to what is already the Ultimate Food will collapse the concoction, the Subway store, and everything in a five-mile-radius into a 9th dimensional hyper-tunnel leading to another universe. Also: bacon is extra.

Prime Numbers & Such

I should have known better than to read a book titled "Music of the Primes" before bedtime. Now I'm obsessed with pursuing a particular prime-related number sequence and can't sleep.

I wonder if other mathemeticians have stumbled upon the sequence I discovered. The annoying thing about it is that suddenly prime numbers have started showing up within the sequence, which means it's quite possibly useless for predicting primes, even if I come up with a simple formula for it. In any case mathematicians probably have known about it for centuries, but I just was never taught it.