2007: Challenging conditions, failure, some professional success. (k3nshi)

I ended the 2006 review with a hope:

'I still feel tired and apathetic as 2006 trickles away. Here's hoping 2007 brings a lot of energy, focus and success.'

That hope spectacularly failed to materialise into any tangible gains. The first half of 2007 saw me caught in the grip of the same crushing apathy that held me in 2006. The health problems of members of my immediate family deteriorated to an all time low during the year, massively amplifying stress levels. Family life was extremely difficult right throughout most of 2007, and this would prove to be the anthem for the year.

I didn't get as much work done that I had wanted to in the first half of the year. Projects and ideas languished or failed to get to even an early alpha status. Books remained unread, desired new knowledge proved elusive. In this gloom, one project did make it to launch: Eye It Up!. Needless to say the expected, rabid audience failed to turn up unless constantly cajoled and coerced into a minimal level of participation. Despite this I think Eye It Up! is my best failure to date. I got some very positive feedback from complete strangers which is always nice. I also learnt a lot of interesting lessons, developed a fun project and beat Digg's implementation by god knows how many months.

A somewhat more successful project in some respects was alive. Always intended to be some throwaway tool which I expected almost no user interest from, I found people pestering me for new features and finding the tool useful. Ironically, I got to witness my friends use this tool to record massive, impressive and sustained improvements in their fitness whilst my own fitness went spectacularly the other way.

In times of stress I find solace in a cake, pizza and other great (bad) food. I didn't meditate all year. I barely went to the gym save a few sporadic visits. I end 2007 in the worst physical shape of my life.

2007 has not been a total write off however. In a professional capacity 2007 has been very good to me. Lucrative contract work in a specialist field, minimal interference in my work by managers, a phenomenally good client. I also made time to go to various events and conferences which were all interesting in one way or the other.

Around November, almost out of the blue the situation at home massively improved. This is a huge relief and quite literally takes a tonne of pressure off me. Yet, I am left facing 2008 feeing older, wearier and with a distinct lack of the old energy and motivation.

I recognise that I am at a critical juncture in my life with a choice of accepting an 'easier' life of compromise and wasted ambition, or facing the harder (futile?) task of reinvigorating and reinventing myself.

So 2008 approaches rapidly and presents me with an uncompromising challenge: Can I get my edge back after over a year of decline and stagnation? And beyond that: can I succeed where previously I have consistently failed?

Year End Awards 2007 (k3nshi)

The Kenshi Institute's Year End Awards 2007

• Man of the Year: Steve Jobs


• Woman of the Year: Megan Fox


• Film of the Year: The Bourne Ultimatum


• Game of the Year: Halo 3 (Xbox 360)


• Book of the Year: Batman & Son by Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert


• Food of the Year: Cake


• Feeling of the Year: Apathy


• Website of the Year: facebook.com


• Technology of the Year: iPhone


• Move of the Year: DOWN + PUNCH


• Imbecile of the Year: Schnibble


• Anti-Technology of the Year: CSS


• Blog of the Year: Scans Daily


• TV Show of the Year: 30 Rock


• Application of the Year: Quicksilver


• Shape of the Year: Villarceau circles


• Place of the Year: Checkpoint Charlie


• Colour of the Year: Rust


• Year of the Year: 2005

Games of the Year 2007 (k3nshi)

An amazing year for games, but you can only pick one:

Gamer	Game of the Year	Platform
Blueflame	Portal	Xbox 360
corps	Portal	PC - Quad Core!!!!
Franki	Space Giraffe	Xbox 360
Gwyn	TF2	PC
Kenshi	Halo 3	Xbox 360
M-P	Call of Duty 4 - on LIVE	Xbox 360
Meh	Vampire Rain	Xbox 360
Pow	Super Mario Galaxy	Nintendo Wii
qazimod	Crackdown	Xbox 360
Rayn	Super Mario Galaxy	Nintendo Wii
Schnibble	Halo 3	Xbox 360
Shimmy	Super Mario Galaxy	Nintendo Wii
Spanx	Super Mario Galaxy	Nintendo Wii
The G	Super Mario Galaxy	Nintendo Wii
Unspec	Mass Effect	Xbox 360
Vame	Halo 3	Xbox 360
Van	Call of Duty 4	Xbox 360
Wickedkit	Mass Effect	Xbox 360

Platform	Number of GOTY votes
Xbox 360	11
Nintendo Wii	5
PC	1
PC - Quad Core!!!!	1

Any more? Let me know...

VF5 ATE MY WEEKEND! (k3nshi)

Well a sizeable chunk of it anyway.

And I still havent completed Halo 3.

Halo 3 Experience (k3nshi)

Wait for ages. Hear about scratched discs and worry. Get game (with scratches on disc). Try it anyway. It works. Play on Heroic. Game proceeds to kick my ass almost immediately (ok, ok - no almost about it). Struggle in the first couple of levels - kind of underwhelming. Play in co-op and get past those levels...

Halo moments arrive.

OMG WTF HALO3 IS THE BOMB.

Micro-Gaming (k3nshi)

Haven't been playing any games for a loooong time really. Until the other weekend. When I switched on the 360 and downloaded a few games and demos from LIVE. The Darkness demo was ok, but not enough to make me want to buy the game. Instead I ended up playing Pacman CE for ages, and this is the game that is consuming 100% of the limited time I make for gaming.

It feels kind of silly having a £300+ games console that is primarily used to play little LIVE Arcade games like Pacman CE.

Micro-Gaming FTW. Now can someone do an amazing Pacman CE port to: Google IG, PSP, Mac, Windows, Linux, mobile phone and *?

THANKS.

Gaming Inbox (k3nshi)

God of War 2.

After waiting all this time for it to come out, I'm not quite in the mood to play it yet.

still.... HURRY KRATOS

This is a number... (k3nshi)

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0


Can numbers be copyrighted?

You cant stop the signal mal!

Uwink: Pizza + Game (k3nshi)

Nolan Bushnell returns.

Sony Playstation 3 (Steve)

I stumped up a small fortune for a new PS3, along with Motorstorm and Resistance:FOM last weekend. I've had a few days with the beast now and feel compelled to air my thoughts so far*

First impressions are very good. It's a very slick looking machine, and feels sturdy and expensive (which it is). It comes with a whole host of cables to get you up and running, but NO HDMI cable, which I find unforgivable given Sony's continual blathering about HD. Alas the quality feel of the product does not extend to the controller, or the SIXAXIS as they insist on calling it. It feels cheap, light, and it still has crappy analogue sticks. The new analogue triggers also feel very flimsy and are poorly positioned. I've only had limited time with the 360 controller, but the general consensus is that it is a far superior pad.

The games are a joy though. Motorstorm is absolutely stunning to look at, huge fun to play and has a cracking 12-player online mode that never gets dull. Resistance is also a great hit. It's no Halo beater, but the single player game is absorbing and the online modes are expansive, with a good number of levels, FORTY-player online matches and a great set of weapons.

The online stuff is not bad so far. It doesn't match up to what I've heard about Live on the 360 - it's probably closer to Live on the original Xbox at the moment, but with the ability to download smaller games, game demos and movie trailers, all in HD glory. And on that point, the video output of the PS3 through HDMI on my Panasonic plasma is STUNNING. Truly gorgeous. Both games and Blu-Ray movies look the business.

Chuck in a load of extra connnectivity (USB, multiple memory card/stick ports, ethernet, wifi, all sorts of video/audio outputs) and this does seem to be the ultimate living room hub. It's certainly a neater solution than the 360, and much quieter (and less unreliable so far, but time will tell). The cost is going to be the killer if anything - £425 gets you a lot, but are the extra features worthwhile for everyone?

It's a good machine, and there's a lot more to come. PS Home, Little Big Planet, and a lot of exclusive games. It gets a big spanx thumbs up.

*Sucker Kenshi in to buying one

Blu-Ray wishlist (Steve)

Aliens
Bullit
The Last Waltz - The Band
Star Wars - Original Trilogy
Superman 2
Terminator 1 & 2
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Blade Runner
2001: A Space Odyssey

Next month please

List of HD DVD's that I want (Wickedkitten)

Children of Men
Nine Inch Nails: Beside you in Time
The Mummy
The Mummy Returns
The Scorpion King
The Departed
The Prestige
The Deer Hunter
Superman: The Movie
V For Vendetta
Batman Begins
Unforgiven
The Last Samurai
Dawn of the Dead
Seven

Planet Earth
The Road Warrior
Blade
Conan the Barbarian

What happened to Peter Moore @ GDC? (k3nshi)

So yeah Eurogamer et al reported how Reggie was at the Sony announcement, and how Phil Harrison was there for the Miyamoto keynote.

Which kind of makes me wonder, where was the MS 360 figurehead person?

I'm sure MS sent their spies.

New Nintendo Console... (k3nshi)

...a higher spec Wii, with 100% backwards compatibility and gfx horsepower simillar to the 360 and PS3.

Within 3 years.

Carmack speaks (k3nshi)

Carmack:

Like Prey, there's a lesson to be learned, something a lot of companies don't really ever learn. You hear it from the fan base a lot. "Do it right. We'll still be here. We'll wait," and it's tempting to just let things slip. But that's really not OK. If you're doing something cutting edge, you're making fundamental decisions about your architecture, and if you let it slide for a year or two, then it's just not the right decision anymore. Even if you pile on all these extras, it's not optimal. It's not targeted at what you're doing. So I have some concerns about Prey coming out this late.

Source

God of War coming to PSP (k3nshi)

Damn

Why I don't want a PS3 quite yet. (Steve)

She'd kill me. The wife that is.

£425. For a games console. It's insanity isn't it?

Sony. Call me when it's £299. I might have a chance.

Excitetruck. Wins (Steve)

Excitetruck is one of those games that had completely fallen off my radar. "OMG THE GFX ARE CRAP". "OMG IT'S SO SHORT". "OMG OMG OMG" or some thing else like that. That's what it was like after the US launch. Oh well, I thought, shame. Next.

Still, it came out here a couple of weeks back. I'd had a bad day and wanted to buy something. This seemed to fit the bill.

Annnyyway... it's bloody brilliant. Surprisingly brilliant given the hatred. The graphics are actually very good - a bit plain, but very solid and with an enormous draw distance. The steering controls with the remote are initially jarring, but kick in after a couple of races. Then you realise it's not really a racing game but in fact an exercise in making huge jumps, taking risky shortcuts and doing tricks to score points, where you incidentally get some extra points at the end if you finish first. It's a proper arcade game and enormously good fun. Still, it's definitely a game that needs a sequel. Online racing would be great, some more depth to the tricks system, a bit of a tart up on the graphics wouldn't hurt, and the music. Oh the music has to go.

I love it. It's the best Wii game I've played aside from Wii Sports

8/10

Wii. The bad stuff (Steve)

OK. Everyone know the Wii is AN AMAZING SUCCESS, and rightly so. It gets a lot right. Small, quiet, great controller, some nice games and some interesting features.

BUT. All is not well in the world of Wii. Nagging doubts hinder my initial joy.

1. The Wii Remote is superb. But it doesn't work properly all the time. The sensor in the remote that detects its position in relation to the "sensor bar" cannot cope with a third source of infra-red... the F**KING SUN! Alas my living room back wall is a huge great sheet of glass. Afternoon gaming on a sunny day (if you require the pointing features of the remote) is out.

2. The Virtual Console is flawed. The shop itself is slow and clunky - it needs to be a proper client application rather than web-based. And it is overpriced. Heinously.

3. The games aren't fulfilling the potential of the controller, yet. Wii Sports is genius, and possibly the most important launch game since Halo, but that aside we're not really seeing much that feels really new. This is probably a short term problem, but disappointing nontheless

4. The online stuff is crap. Friend codes, no online games (again, yet), poor support for online gaming. It feels tacked on. An afterthought. I still don't think Nintendo care.

5. Zelda needs a refresh. Seriously, I've had enough now.


However, to countenance the misery, these are reasons why I think the Wii rocks. It's beautifully designed, Wii Sports is amazing, the Remote is a joy to use, Zelda is still a great great game despite it's... reluctance to move on. I'm glad Nintendo did their own thing (not that they really had a choice). I certainly can't see me buying the broken one or the gimped one just yet.

Backwards Thinking: You've been GIMPED. (k3nshi)

Ho hum. I cancelled my PS3 preorder, due to the Backwards Comaptibility farce being played out by Sony with the European models of the PS3.

Do I really care that much about backwards compatibility? No.

Do I care about paying a lot more money for less capable hardware? Yes.

And many other gamers, feel the same way judging by the reaction to on the "semi-official blog" of the PS3: Three Speech. Making things so, so much worse is the insane PR policy Sony is adopting to deal with the fans. Because lets face it, if you are considering paying £425 to get a PS3 at launch, you are a BELIEVER in what the PS3 is meant to represent (state of the art gaming hardware).

This whole thing could have been handled so, so much better.

This Is Living (k3nshi)

OMG MEGATON

PS3 Pre-order placed with Amazon.

...

Crackdown Demo on XBOX LIVE (k3nshi)

So I downloaded the 1.something GIGABYTE Crackdown demo and gave it a whirl on single player mode. It's pretty much GTA meets Demolition Man, with nice 360 visuals of the environment. So that's progress at least. Meanwhile I found the gameplay pretty unsubstantial. The AI is rubbish - I mean you play the part of some kind of supercop, and yet gangbangers decide to get out of their vehicles and fight it out with you? Please.

As far as I'm concerned the best rendition of a city environment in a game is still Syndicate Wars.

So everyone's talking about the Pope and how apparently he said games are perverted.
But at the same time, everyone is quoting this:

"Any trend to produce programs and products -- including animated films and video games -- which in the name of entertainment exalt violence and portray anti-social behavior or the trivialization of human sexuality is a perversion,"

which is in fact, completely reasonable and very true. It's stuff like this that makes me thinks games journalists are either malicious rabble-rousers, or just complete thickos.

MS Points are rubbish... (k3nshi)

Prices should be in pounds.

Sony's PR Saviour... (k3nshi)

...and perhaps the most refreshingly honest commentator in gaming today. David Jaffe interview over at 1UP. Show.

Blast From the Past (k3nshi)

I was clearing out some files in Kenshi HQ, when I came across some old print outs of articles from various websites. Amongst a load of programming related articles, I found a gaming one from a great games website from back in the day. A games website which I had almost completely forgotten about. The site is still up with archives of all its former issues.

So without further ado, please point your browsers at www.loonygames.com and take a little trip back in time.

Golf War was beginning... (Sir Clean of Hands)

Inspired by another of Meh's bizarre utterances, and driven forward by a caffeine rush and team spirit, I decided I wanted to make a game starting only with the title being set in stone - GOLF WAR.

Meh, Kenshi, Corps, and I basically sat in #edge talking rubbish about what the game could be, and together managed to thrash out some kind of general plan (though reading up it looks more like rambled nonsense).

First off, I wanted to make a game and not care if it's any good. As long as it ends up finished, then I'll be happy - shite or not. No idea who has time to work on it besides me but am not caring at the moment - as long as all of #edge can give an opinion and tell me when stuff is pointless or stupid or rubbish then that's totally enough.

Kenshi suggested it be done in either Java or Flash... no reason not to use either really, though Kenshi probably just wants to be able to play it on his Mac which is alright by me (no reason for anything to be XP-only in this day and age). Blitz is pretty easy to use to make stuff like this as well, and that's pretty universal so far as I know.

At first my idea was for it to be either top-down like Cannon Fodder, or side-on like Metal Slug, and Corps voted in favour of top-down, contributing some ideas on how combat could work. I voiced my desire to make it a tag-team style affair (i.e. Golfer & Caddy characters working seperately and together with different abilities) and possibly an isometric Head-Over-Heels like design. At this point Corps started being spacky and talking bollocks and it got a bit hard to follow, but we clarified our mission to keep it simple and not to worry about it looking less than professional.

Corps said he could do some music. He's quite busy so probably won't, but hopefully he can give advice on how music is actually 'done'.

Meh chipped in with the idea of it being like a shooter with the golfer hitting projectiles back at the enemies, which we all liked the sound of. I suggested that the golfer have a block so you don't immediately die when trapped by a bullet wall, but everyone laughed at me and called me gay. Corps then had a genius moment - using the Caddy to catch the bullets as a combined shield/ammo charger, like the white/black of Ikaruga in two halves. As far as I can tell this is the game everyone wants for now, and it sounds well within my meagre abilities as an artist and coder.

I don't really WANT to be making it by myself mind, so if any of you fannies don't mind doing tiny bits here and there when you're bored then that would be awesome. We don't have a deadline, and the bare minimum is good enough.

Let's make something!

Scratch (k3nshi)

MIT releases Scratch:

Scratch is a new programming language that lets you create your own interactive stories, games, music, and art.

Scratch is now available as a free download!

Coming in February: an all-new Scratch website where you can share projects.

More info here. Could be useful for games development?

fl0w: February, honest guv... (k3nshi)

IGN get told by Sony that fl0w is coming out in February.

Next Up... (k3nshi)

Shadow of the Collosus is on order. Sold out at most places, Amazon claim they'll be able to get it in 2-4 weeks. We'll see...

Gears of War... (k3nshi)

...dusted. I got bored of the last boss battle in Hardcore mode, so I switched it to Casual to complete it properly. I did actually kill the boss on Hardcore - grenade tagged him, but I blew up as well. So I got the achievement of killing him, but NOT the end of game ending. Anyway its over. Cant say I thought it was a particularly good game, but it was ok.

Kudos to Epic for letting you switch difficulty levels midway through the campaign though. And on-line co-op should be mandatory on simillar titles.

And more importantly its the first game I've completed in 2007. Next up: Tomb Raider: Legend.

LOLCANO (k3nshi)

More over at Manifesto Games' site.

Carmack says... (k3nshi)

Carmack:

The scope of what we have to do in a modern game is too much now for one person to do everything. But any time you break past the point where one person can manage all aspects of it, there's this incredible cliff you fall off in terms of average effectiveness and productivity. As soon as you need to divide a project, everybody is less efficient than the one person originally doing it. Plus you have the parasitic management overhead on top of all of it."
Carmack refuses to take on the role of manager -- he'd rather program. "The sad part is, I could probably do, effectively, at least half or two-thirds" of the programming for a modern game single-handedly, he says.

Read the rest over at Wired.

Manifesto Games - Costikyan follows through (k3nshi)

"We're here to create for games what indie music and film provide: an audience and market for creativity and individual vision, defying the big publishers' mediocrity and hype. Join the indie games revolution today!"


Manifesto Games - Greg Costikyan's implementation of his Scrathware Manifesto. Nice to see someone with the balls to put their money where their mouth is. Some nice things I've noticed whilst looking at the site for 2 mins:

• They have the Zork games playable in the browser, with links to downloadable versions


• They have listings for games on Mac and Linux too

This has great potential.

Quake 2 Love (k3nshi)

GoW can't touch this.

EA Innovation (k3nshi)

Over at GamaSutra, EA drone Alain Tascan said:

"I mean, we just did Superman Returns and all the sports, but we feel that we are now ready to take big bets on new IP, and not bet the farm on the established titles. And we think this is something that people are going to react well to, because EA is not known for this.

"I mean, if you look at the comments of people on some of the things I've said and they say, 'how can you dare talk about innovation?' And that's what we want to prove that as a company we can do it."

I am of course just messing. EA used to have a real reputation for innovation in the early days. And whilst most of their output these days is somewhat lacking, they still do some really nice stuff. As for Tascan, anyone who is prepared to go out against the hype and point out that Gear of War lacks innovation, is fine by me.

EA FTW.

Why isnt there... (k3nshi)

...an open Xbox LIVE profile thing available for indie/shareware/freeware games?

Or is there?

Cause for concern? (k3nshi)

The Bungie Weekly Update sayeth:

We realize this latest announcement will spur a lot of questions, most of which we simply don’t have the answers to. While Bungie is obviously involved in the development of the beta and game itself, we don’t make the decisions regarding when, where and how the game content ultimately ends up in your hands. It’s really cool that our fans have the opportunity to share in our game early and in some ways actually help us polish the final product but ultimately we’re just developers – the business and consumer side of things are left up to our partners at MGS. As we get additional info and answers to your questions we will pass them along in future updates.

Lets hope Microsoft strategizing isnt going to fuck up Halo 3, the Halo 3 multiplayer experience and especially not the single player experience.

Take us to Defcon 3.

Doom, Quake and Apple (k3nshi)

John Romero:

Why do I care so much about NeXT computers? Because we at id Software developed the groundbreaking titles DOOM and Quake on the NeXTSTEP 3.3 OS running on a variety of hardware for about 4 years. I still remember the wonderful time I had coding DoomEd and QuakeEd in Objective-C; there was nothing like it before and there still is no environment quite like it even today.

When id Software was stationed in Madison, Wisconsin during the winter of 1991, most of us were gone for the Christmas holiday - except John Carmack. John's present, which he bought with $11,000 of his own money, procured by walking through the snow and ice to remove from the bank, arrived during the holiday and he spent the whole time learning as much as he could about the computer and started working on vector quantization algorithms for compressing graphics. His test graphic was a 256-color screen from King's Quest 5. After his research was done it was agreed that the entire company needed to develop our next game on NeXTSTEP.

Romero, writing on how NeXT technology (the basis of Mac OSX) was pivotal to the development of Doom and Quake.

Certainly helps with the the motivation to learn Objective-C.

Don't look back in anger... (k3nshi)

Over at Salon, a Looking Glass article (it's not new):

"We ended up ... spending the company's sanity and morale by throwing together this thing so [Eidos] could have a product in that quarter, when Ion Storm hadn't shipped a product in all that time. While Daikatana was busy not shipping, and while they were writing blank checks to John Romero to do Daikatana ... they told us basically to ship [Thief II] by their fiscal quarter or die."

Meanwhile another article on Salon, reviews the book "Masters of Doom" and slams the author of the book, id Software and Doom:

No: while gamers were scraping the floor with "Wayne's World" bleats of "We're not worthy!" whenever Romero swaggered by them at game conventions, the industry's real Nirvana, Blue Sky Studios (which later became Looking Glass) was holed up in a New England studio, quietly putting out its genuinely innovative games in relative obscurity. Blue Sky could have overthrown the status quo. But for many reasons, most of which have little to do with talent, id would always overshadow its betters. Instead of advancing the medium, id's Texas smack talking rude boys obscured and impeded gaming's potential by spawning needless controversy and inspiring an oncoming slew of mediocre imitators.

And now, with "Masters of Doom", it looks like they'll get to help rewrite history, too.

Let's hope BioShock keeps the faith, otherwise I suspect someone at Salon is going to be pissed.