November 21, 2011

A Nice Weekend

I've had a pretty nice weekend. On Friday MLG Orlando began and I've been staying up to 2 and sleeping until at least 10 the last days. My inner night-owl is very happy about it, my early-rising girlfriend perhaps not as much, but I think she's a bit understanding?

On Saturday we cleaned the house for Christmas and hung up a star and stuff like that. It was brutally hard work (laugh if you like) but I pulled through without dying too much. Saturday night was full of StarCraft again though so it's fine!

What about Sunday then? Even more StarCraft of course!! IPL had some grand tournament, which Stephano won of course, and MLG had it's final day. In the middle there somewhere we had some taekwon-do and I did some laundry. With that done I sat and shouted at my chosen ones in the tournament and they did do okay, not like I had hoped but still. Leenock managed to win MLG which is pretty damn awesome.

Now I need to adapt to a normal life again, with school and Ludum Dare coming up.

November 20, 2011

The Decline of FPS Games

I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time I actually enjoyed an FPS game? I installed old Deus Ex a while ago but it's what 12 years old? Team Fortress was okay, the one or two times I tried it, but I can't say I truly enjoyed it, hell I never even played it apart from trying it at a friends pc. Well I bought Duke Nukem Forever but I haven't even completed it, it's best server collecting dust at the bookshelf now. No the truly last FPS I enjoyed was CSS. How is this possible?

CSS: my one favorite FPS game.

I am not a big FPS fan and I get sick of modern FPS almost directly. It feels like they are all the same, I don't even want to try them anymore. The biggest upset was actually Duke Nukem Forever lately. It had totally linear levels, you could only use two weapons at a time and it just felt boring and uninspiring. Why is it that FPS games are considered good if the graphics is good? Or have an advanced physics engine? It's good of course but there has to be more to a game than that. Games feel so shallow nowadays.

But I never did think about FPS games when I read the article no I thought about RTS and construction games. The main point the article wanted to put forward is that game designers today, especially big ones, don't want to take big risks so they do the same thing as everyone else. This is what happened a decade or go or something when we got a bunch of very similar RTS games. I remember that there were a lot of very similar construtor games before that too. But where are they now? I don't want a million similar titles, but the basic ideas behind those games were great - and I miss them.

Where is Evil Genius 2 for example? It's one of the best games ever but there's nothing similar, only a bunch of similar games trying to steal the popularity of other, probably better, games in the same style.

We need to stop imitating and start innovating, but we also need to bring back the ideas of the classics.

Anno 1602, one of many classic constructor games. But where are they now?

November 9, 2011

Swelling with New Shiny Books

So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course... So I ran away and ordered some new books, and they just arrived today. Yay!

First off I ordered Introduction to Algorithms which is the de facto book about algorithms and it seemed like a fitting thing to do as I won it by doing algorithm assignments.

Secondly I've been wanting to grab Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs for a while and I finally did. It's one of the classical computer books you have to read once in your life (or so they say).

I wasn't going to get a third book, but on adlibris where I got the vouchers you couldn't pay with two vouchers on one order. So I had to split it up and it felt kinda dumb to not use it all... So I ordered a third book. I had no idea what book to get though, but stackoverflow came to the rescue! It's a bunch of answers to the question "What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?" and is like a top X list for programming books.

Incidentally I've got a few of those already, and the two I've already decided on was there (SICP is 3rd, Introduction to Algorithms 5th). Of course I wanted to get either the 1st or 2nd and I ended up choosing the 2nd one, The Pragmatic Programmer just because it seemed a bit easier to read. I've got a ton of fairly hardcore programming books I need to plow through so something a bit easier to digest should be welcome.

Go go programming books!

November 5, 2011

Done this, done that. What now?

Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn't quite go as intended) and starting some new courses in school. I'm liking my choice of Computer Science more and more. Data structures and Algorithms was a super fun course, I actually ordered a new book about the subject just yesterday. Linear Algebra is really fun now as we're getting deeper into it and we're looking into assembly and processor structures now too. Awesome. I can't believe I considered doing physics or electronics when I could take these courses. Now if I only could do operating systems, compiler construction and language design...

In the meantime I've finished Design for Hackers and it was a really nice book to be honest. I never knew there was so much about design and now I keep noticing funky stuff like what font a particular website is using, what colors and how they direct the reader. I also see a lot of inadequate stuff on my page and I have a few things I'd like to try.

I also read Watchmen, the comic, and it was absolutely wonderful. Sadly I saw the movie before but, naturally, the comic was a lot better. So wonderfully dark and ah... Simply awesome.