The July Hiatus

Martin · 16 years

Has it really been an entire month since I've posted here? it honestly doesn't seem like it. I've visited the blog frequently (every day), and though I've had a lot of ideas for things I've wanted to post, and have even written a fair amount of half-finished articles, I never got around to posting much of it all.

I guess I've been a bit busy. Not enough to completely excuse me from my absence here, but pretty busy. Since I feel like I owe an explanation to anyone who's been visiting the site and wondering what happened to me, I'll briefly run through everything I've been up to.

To kick things off, I got myself a new bike a little over a month ago. My girlfriend and I have enjoyed going for walks on the roads and trails near our apartment since we moved here, and we both thought it would be fun to have bikes to better take advantage of the bike paths, as well as for a simple form of local transportation. So far, it's been a lot of fun to be able to hop on a bike and jet around the area for a bit, and it's also been a good amount of exercise. So long as the weather stays reasonable, I'm sure we'll be doing this for many months to come this year (if not the entire year).

I also started putting a more serious effort into re-tooling the Reflect system/website, and though I've only been able to dig into a little bit of the core system so far, I'm happy with the way things are turning out on this front as well. Reflect has grown to include a lot of talented members of the Game Maker community, and I want to provide these developers with as much function as possible, as well as make the system more attractive to other developers who might be considering putting in an application to use it. I'll elaborate on all that later though, as I make more progress with it.

In order to help me develop the new Reflect assets, I also decided to get myself a laptop. Up until now, I've not had a laptop, and have used my desktop computer for everything. I'm still partial to my desktop, because I enjoy the power and comfort of the desk/chair, but I am happy to be able to get away from the "computer room" at my apartment, too. One of the biggest hurdles for getting started on new projects lately has been having to spend lots of time cooped up in the back room in my apartment, and now that I am free of this burden, I've been able to do a lot more.

I've also had the chance to see a few movies. My girlfriend and I have watched Public Enemies, Harry Potter and the Half blood Prince, Proposal, and a bunch of random rented flicks. My brother and I saw The Hangover as well. I enjoyed all of them, and in my opinion, it's been a pretty good summer for movies.

Last weekend, I went hiking with my girlfriend and a few members of her family down at the John Muir Woods national park. It was beautiful, and the I had a great time marching up and down the hills with everyone.

As you might have guessed at with my new bike and the hiking, I've been trying to spend a little more time exercising. I've also been trying to get in more time with my girlfriend. And since all of these things take a significant amount of time by themselves, I'm sure you can imagine how its been with it all happening at once.

I will try to update the blog more often than monthly intervals, of course. I've still got to post the editable version of my long-abandoned competition entry, as well as my animated water texture tutorial. I'll get around to those soon!

Thanks for reading and staying faithful enough to come back and find this new post! More to come soon, hopefully!

Just Beat It Already

Martin · 16 years

Almost two weeks ago, I was at work, and had gotten up from my computer to work on some stuff, and the screensaver came on after a few minutes. I prefer my screensaver to be a bit more functional than merely saving the screen, so I have my work computer set up to read the news from CNN's RSS feed and display the headlines on the screen.

After a few minutes away from the computer, I happened to glance up at the screen and see something about Michael Jackson going to the hospital, possibly in a coma. Curious, I flicked off the screensaver. CNN was reporting that Michael Jackson had been rushed off to the hospital, but that details were sketchy. A quick trip to Digg, which had sucked the story away from TMZ, confirmed what I figured must have happened: Michael Jackson was dead.

That night, all the news websites and TV stations paid tribute to Jackson by playing his music, interviewing his peers and his fans, and talking about his life. Pretty standard fare for a celebrity death. As expected, it continued for the next few days.

The problem now, is that two weeks later, it still hasn't stopped. A quick peek onto CNN's website or TV station yields article upon article covering all ranges of the Jackson saga from the smallest, most mundane details of his life to the morbid memorial service.

Seriously. I've had enough. I'm tired of hearing about Michael Jackson.

About the only thing I hate worse than this non-stop smattering of tributes is the fact that in death, Michael Jackson seems to have been excused from every questionable thing he did in his life.

And I'm not saying that to take away from the man's accomplishments. The guy was an incredibly talented entertainer - there's no question about that. In his prime, back in the 80's and 90's, Michael Jackson simply couldn't be beat. But I don't think that, just because the guy died, we should forget about the many allegations of child abuse that were made against him. Or the horrendous mess he made of his face with excessive plastic surgery. Or even the whole baby-dangling-out-of-the-window thing.

We should acknowledge that Michael Jackson was a talented, troubled man, and that to some he will be missed. Now let's move on.

The Father’s Day Blitz

Martin · 16 years

With less than a week to go until Father's Day, the ridiculous parade of allegedly dad-focused marketing is already well upon us. On the way to work this morning, I heard a countless number of commercials trying to convince me to buy my dad a new cell phone. On TV, I've survived a constant barrage of pleas to pick up new flat-screen sets, stereo equipment, and various implementations of carpentry hardware. Online, it's been cameras, camcorders, USB memory sticks, hard drives, and all sorts of other computer gadgetry.

Each holiday it gets worse.

I'm not against the idea of getting someone a thoughtful gift, either. I think that if your dad has been pining for something for a while and you've got the means to get it for him, then maybe you should. But isn't the whole idea of the holiday lost when you're stuck in some infinite loop of trying to one-up last year's gift with something more and more expensive and outrageous?

The idea of buying someone a cell phone as a gift is utterly absurd to me. A cell phone is a personal thing that you should shop for yourself, since you're the one who's going to be using it most of the time. Not only that, but if the gift receiver doesn't have a cell phone already, he/she's going to be stuck with a new monthly bill, thanks to your thoughtfulness.

The notion of gifting a new television is just as bad. As if people need another $1,000+ added to their burgeoning credit debt.

Since when did the idea of showing your appreciation for someone include buying them a menagerie of electronic gizmos?

While retail world is busy buzzing in peoples' ears about its newest pile of shiny garbage, I'll be taking a quiet trip up to the country to my parents' house. I'll probably end up wrestling with some technology anyway; I hear my dad's been having some computer problems. But I think that he'll appreciate the help a lot more than being saddled with an unwanted new cell phone.

Unfortunately, the balance of the entire universe will be thrown off anyway - because for Mother's Day, I only sent a card this year. Sorry mom!

Suckurity

Martin · 16 years

I found myself in the local Target today, perusing the games section of the electronics department. Game releases have all but dried up over the last few months, but I always like to check in now and then, just to see if anything new came out that slipped under my radar, or to see if anything I'd been marginally interested in had been marked down.

Surprisingly enough, I found a single copy of Dead Space, which I'd wanted to try, marked down to $30 for clearance, so I decided to give it a go. I took it up to the register, and waited a few minutes for one of the clerks to notice me standing there.

Eventually one of the workers wandered over and took care of my purchase, and then I met my girlfriend up front and we continued to checkout for her stuff. We drove home, and upon arriving at our apartment, I forgot all about Dead Space and fired up some retro e instead; Wind Waker is turning out to be a great little game for me, but that is another blog post, I think.

An hour or so later, I finally remembered Dead Space, so I picked up the Target-emblazoned plastic bag it was in and brought it into our spare room. I noticed the bag was a bit heavier than a typical Xbox 360 game, so I opened up the bag and peered in, thinking there might be something else I'd bought that had completely slipped my mind. But no, there was nothing else inside the bag except for the game. Unless, of course, you count the plastic security box the game is still inside.

Yes, my new copy of Dead Space is still completely secured thanks to the Alpha Security box that houses it.

I find it odd that the alarm system in the store didn't buzz when I exited the store, because the plastic security case includes a re-usable security device that, to my knowledge, is not supposed to be disabled by the in-counter disabling device used by the clerk.

I am also disappointed that the clerk didn't take the thing off in the first place; I specifically paid for the game in the electronics department because I thought they'd be more mindful of those kinds of things.

So now I'm sitting here, staring at my brand-new copy of Dead Space, and wondering just how I'm going to get the case open without completely destroying its contents. Should I take it back and have them open it up for me? That seems like such a hassle... not to mention a great opportunity to test my own ingenuity. Okay, so it's not exactly a job for a professional safe cracker, but it should provide me with at least 15 minutes of fun. That's more fun than I've had with some of the games I've bought in the past, and this is before I've even opened the game's case!

Update: Case Open, Case Closed

The case has been cracked, as they say, and I now have my Dead Space, with only minor damages to the game's case. At first, I thought the best approach would be to hammer off the hinges. After sever futile attempts to break them off (and the minor damage to the game's case), I took the opposite approach and wedged a screwdriver into the lock casing on the other end of the box, pushed it inside and yanked it around to destroy the lock and allow the case to open. I think next time I mihgt just bring the game back to the store!

Pictured above is the demolished security case, my new copy of Dead Space, and the tools of war.

BlizzCon 2009 is Go!

Martin · 16 years

After missing out on the first round of tickets a few weeks ago, I'm happy to report that I was able to swoop in and grab a pair of BlizzCon tickets this past weekend!

My brother, Spencer, and I had been planning on attending BlizzCon this year, but during the first round of ticket sales, neither of us was able to get to a computer in time to get some tickets. I had just returned from a short vacation in Arizona and was on the road the same day for another short trip to Lake Tahoe. I had a lot of fun that weekend. Spencer had to go to work in the morning.

To fill in for our absence, we armed my dad with my brother's credit card and all the relevant information needed to make the purchase, but demand was high, and by the time he got in the ticket queue, he was about 25,000 people behind. When he got to the front of the line, the tickets were sold out.

This last weekend, Spencer was again not able to stand by for ticket-buying, but I was, so I set my alarm for 9:00 AM, got up and played around a bit, and then logged into the Blizzard Store and waited patiently for the clock to strike 10. At 9:58 I began refreshing the page every 10-15 seconds, and at exactly 10 o'clock, the drop-down box appeared for ticket purchase. I fumbled for a second, selected the wrong number of tickets, backed out and fixed the error, and proceeded to get in line. I was approximately number 250 in line.

A few seconds later, I was in front. I proceeded with the purchase, and it all went very smoothly. Much more smoothly than last year, where the store continually broke, and left a lot of unhappy people out there. I was pleased that I had remembered to log into the Blizzard Store the night before and update my credit card/contact information, so I didn't have to worry about changing it at purchase time.

Directly after I finished with everything, a friend of mine who had gotten tickets during the first round logged in just to see how long the line was; in about a minute's time, the line had grown to over 31,000 people!

So, I guess I am pretty lucky to have been able to get BlizzCon tickets again. I expected things to be a bit slower this year, with the economy and all, but I guess it's true that during hard financial times, people are always looking for entertainment – a way to escape from the troubles of life for a while.

Hopefully this year's show is just as much fun as the last. It's not until August, but If it's anything like last year, it should be worth the wait.

Man, I go away for a small vacation and I miss the next big TF2 announcement from Valve! Not a big deal, really - I did have quite a good time on my trip, so a TF2 update kinda takes a back seat in terms of awesomeness... but more on that later. Valve's got a new update page set up for the next TF2 update, and it looks like it's going to be another sweet addition to the game.

So far, they've announced The Huntsman, a bow and arrow for the Sniper that can stick enemies to walls, Payload Race, a new game mode that's kind of like a two-way Gold Rush, and another item for the Sniper, The Razorback, a back-mounted shield that keeps the Spy from stabbing him.

Oh, and speaking of the Spy, he's also snuck in for some update goodness; he'll be getting the "Dead Ringer" watch and the "Cloak and Dagger" watch, which will let him fake death and stay cloaked forever respectively.

Like the other updates Valve has brought to TF2, these will change play considerably, but also seem very well thought-out, so hope fully balance will not be hurt too much. I haven't played TF2 in a month or two and I'm pretty excited about all this... hopefully this will be the push I need to come back to the game, as it is one of the more fun experiences I've had in online gaming.

Anyway, maybe I'll see you there - and hopefully I'll see you back here soon as well, as I write a bit about my recent vacation. Thanks for reading!

Well, this isn't nearly as controversial as my recent rant about proprietary Mac hardware or the problems with piracy, but I'd like to announce that I have updated the Examples & Tutorials page and added a new example/tutorial to boot.

The new addition, an example/tutorial (perhaps an 'examporial'? 'tutample'? okay, I'll stop) shows how to create a somewhat realistic fire effect using Game Maker's particle system, and takes you through the entire process, from sprite creation to tweaking the final effect for perfection. You can check out the write-up and download the example files here.

And as mentioned above, I've also re-tooled the Examples/Tutorials page, so all the ugly boxes are gone, and everything is much cleaner and better organized. You'll also find a partially re-written tutorial for 3D model importing/UV mapping in there, though I'd like to completely re-write this in the future, as my methods have changed a bit since I wrote the original. I'll probably be adding my completely unfinished competition project to the open source/abandoned section soon, too.

If you have any suggestions for other examples you'd like me to make, sound off in the comments!

Swashbuckling Under Pressure

Martin · 16 years

I'll admit it - I am a former pirate.

Back in high school and college, I traded MP3's with friends. We burned each other copies of games. I was not a stranger to the occasional DVD copy. And I ran an illegal OS with illegal software for years.

Much has changed since those days, however. When I fire up my computer today, I'm pleased to see a completely legal copy of Windows XP appear on the screen. Every piece of software and every game I run on my machine has been paid for. And even though a few remnants of my freebooter past resurface now and then in my MP3 collection, the vast majority of the music I listen to was purchased from iTunes, Amazon, or ripped from a CD I bought.

It makes me feel good. But now, I seem to find myself on the opposite side of the fence from many of my fellow internet users.

Recently, the crew behind The Pirate Bay website was put on trial and subsequently convicted of "assisting in making copyright content available," with a total of $3,620,000 in fines, and each member of the team facing a one-year prison sentence. It's hard to say whether or not the verdict was just. On the one hand, The Pirate Bay is brazenly obvious about the purpose of its site. The pirate theme has been taken on in name and symbol, it organizes torrent files by media type (music, movies, programs, etc.), and a cursory search of the site will reveal that the vast majority of the content being traded among users is not legal. But on the other hand, The Pirate Bay doesn't explicitly host any of the files in question; they merely house the torrent files users download to find peers in their BitTorrent client. So, it could be argued that it is the site's users who are in performing the illegal activity, and not the site itself (dubbed the "King Kong defense").

I happened to read this news on Digg, and many people there disagreed with the verdict. What disturbed me though, was that the majority of these people didn't care about the legal intricacies or implications of the matter. They seemed only to think that piracy should be legal, and that it was in the best interest of everyone to continue pirating movies and music in protest.

Here's a few excerpts from the comments section of the submission I read:

Let's all stop going to the cinema for one year!

Truly a sad day...I'm gonna watch a torrented movie now :'(

95% of teenagers generation uses file sharing; they will be the ones in a few years who can vote and be in power.

The majority of people in power at the moment have more than likely never truely used the Internet; for them it's just about profits.

Stopping bullshit.

If you release an album of music, have all the songs good. There is no point in having an album with one good song and the other 50 tracks full of useless songs for padding.

Same with copy-paste Hollywood blockbusters and Video Games.

A real torrent user with pay for anything that is worth of value. Half-Life 2, Super Mario Galaxy, The Dark Knight, these were barely affected by piracy because they were...you know...actually GOOD so people bought them.

So basically, the MPAA and the RIAA are pissed because they will have to get the Entertainment Industry to work harder and actually make a majority good content, which is the exact opposite of their business plan of "take a dump in a bag and net one billion dollars."

And that is exactly the problem with the RIAA MPAA and this witch hunt. All they are trying to do is protect their ability to get money for producing steaming piles of bullshit! Period.

Surely I couldn't be the only person who reads comments like this and just shakes his head in disgust.

First of all, just because something isn't good by your count, doesn't mean that you are entitled to take it for free. In fact, I personally don't understand why you would go to the trouble of taking it for free if it's not good to begin with. But one of the best things about MP3 stores like Amazon is that you can almost always buy individual songs and leave the rest of the album behind, if you so choose. Under most circumstances, that'll only set you back a buck, too.

And if that's not good enough for you, then look at piracy figures for games like World of Goo or Demigod. Both games have gotten good reviews, and both were released without anti-piracy measures in place. At last count, World of Goo had an estimated piracy rate of 90%, while Demigod, after only being out for a week, had hit about 85%. I'm no fan of heavy-handed copy protection measures, but if you think that good content doesn't get pirated, you might just be an idiot.

Secondly, I find it absurd that some people think that music, movies, and art in general should be a free service provided to everyone else. Yes, many artists (myself included) produce work purely for others to see and share with each other. But we also ought to be able to make money from our work, and if the legal system doesn't help protect us, then what incentive do we have to do work? If your passion is carpentry, should I expect you to build me a house pro bono just because you like doing it?

But let's take this idea to the extreme for a moment - imagine that the judicial system has decided that music, movies, and other artistic works should be free for the public to copy and share. Essentially intellectual property, patents, copyrights, etc. would be no more.

Creative work would be pointless, because anyone would be able to take anything you made and reproduce it without consequence. By an ironic twist of fate, large companies, being in the best position to market and sell media, would benefit the most from this arrangement; they would be able to take any idea they spotted among independents and replicate, package, and sell it without giving a cent to the original creator. Where is the logic in that?

Don't get me wrong here; I'm not siding with big business on this issue. I'm no proponent of the DRM schemes they've tried to use to protect their content, typically to the detriment of paying customers. But when I see the ridiculous sense of entitlement people have towards media, coupled with the outrageous piracy rates of games like World of Goo, I can't help but think that there must be some kind of "happy medium" between producers and consumers. And there is, by means of systems like Steam, which seem to be getting things mostly right so far. But we've got a long way to go. It's important to me that we arrive at that destination though, because I am an artist and a creative person, and I want my work to be protected, like everyone else.

For now, I'm just happy to report that despite my years aboard the massive vessel of media piracy, I'm no longer part of the problem.

And it feels good to be a landlubber.

A Notch Below the Rest

Martin · 16 years

The other day at work, I wanted to move around some of the items we have sitting on a table at the back of the room I work in. This included a monitor, a small printer, and a large flatbed scanner. The monitor and the printer were easy to move, but the scanner had run out of USB cord length, so I couldn't move it any farther away from the computer it was attached to. Thinking I had remembered seeing a USB extension cord floating around the office somewhere, I got out our box of random computer parts and started digging through it in hopes of finding something useful.

After only a minute or two, I came up victorious: one of our Macs had come with a USB extension cord for the keyboard that was about two feet long; perfect for moving the scanner. I put the box of junk away and dove under the table to add the extension cord to the mix of wires coming out of the back of the computer.

The male end of the extension plugged into the back of the computer alright, but then when I tried to attach the female end to the scanner's USB cable, I found that they wouldn't connect to each other.

I checked to make sure the connectors were the same size; they were. I flipped one end of the cable around, thinking I might have just made the mistake of trying to plug them in upside-down, but this didn't work either. Slightly frustrated, I pulled the cable out of the computer and brought it back into the light where I could examine it more closely.

And that's when I saw it. The female end of this otherwise normal USB cord had a small raised notch right down the center of one end.

This slight change to the connector does not exist for any functional reason – it was placed there solely to prevent the end user from using the cable for anything other than what Apple had intended it for. I unplugged the keyboard from my computer and checked the male end of its USB connector, and sure enough, there was the matching groove for the extension cord's notch.

What utter horse shit.

Forget, if you will, that Macs typically cost hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars more than their PC counterparts. Forget that none of my games will run in Mac OS. Forget that Macs have a somewhat limited library of software compared to Windows. Forget the throngs of imbeciles known as Mac fanboys. And, if possible, try to forget all those annoying and factually deficient Jason Long commercials.

This is why I will never get a Mac.

You'd think that a company who charges such a ridiculous premium for their computers would have the common courtesy to at least include a USB extension that follows industry standards and works with other devices, but no. After all is said and done, Apple sticks to its guns, follows the same path it always has, and makes a no-stop trip straight into proprietary hell. At this point, I'm honestly surprised that they haven't started releasing their keyboard/mouse with custom triangular USB plugs, to prevent people from using them on non-Apple computers.

This is the kind of bogus practice that will eventually hurt Apple's reputation with consumers, and they deserve every bit of criticism for it.

And don't even get me started on the new iPod Shuffle, which requires proprietary headphones to work.

Have you ever suffered from the so-called Tetris Effect?

If you've ever played Tetris for a prolonged amount of time, I bet you have. Don't worry, it's okay to admit it – you're in good company, as I am also a Tetris Effect survivor.

I actually found it quite funny that there's a name and an entry for the Tetris Effect (which is attributed to repetitive stress, whatever that is) on Wikipedia. I always thought it was just me who, after a long Tetris session, couldn't stop seeing the falling pieces and thinking about how to make good fits whenever I closed my eyes!

Anyway, I was recently going through some old stuff of mine up at my parents' house, and I came across an old watch I used to have as a kid – a Tetris game watch, to be more specific. It got me thinking about how much I love Tetris, so I thought it'd be interesting to reminisce a bit and figure out just how many different versions of Tetris I've played/acquired over the years. All in chronological order!

Tetris (NES)

One of the first games I ever played, Tetris on the NES served to kick off my life-long love for the game. I remember playing the game with my brother and dad, with each of us trying to out-do each other's high score. Much excitement occurred whenever one of us finished and we were treated to one of the rocket launch "congratulations" screens.

Tetris (watch)

This was the watch I mentioned above. The playing field was smaller than standard, there was no color, and the buttons were hard to press fast enough for later levels, but this was still a fun toy to have for long road trips. My grandparents got one of these for both my brother and I, if I remember correctly.

Tetris (Game Boy)

I was late to arrive to the Game Boy scene (my first Game Boy was a clearance Game Boy Pocket), so I didn't play Tetris on a true handheld until much later than most fans of the game. I enjoyed this version nonetheless, as it introduced me to one of the best things ever: Game Boy during bathroom breaks.

Tetris Worlds (GBA)

When I picked up Tetris Worlds for a measly $20, I figured that even if the game was slightly bad, as long as it stuck to the roots of Tetris, it couldn't be that bad. It turned out I was half right – the game wasn't all bad, but it lacked a lot of things that I expected from a Tetris title, and it introduced "Easy Spin," which let you keep a piece alive as long as you continued to rotate it where it landed. This feature doesn't break Tetris entirely for me, but in Tetris Worlds, it was implemented in such a way that made it almost impossible to lose.

Tetris (iPod)

Upon hearing about Tetris making an appearance on my 5th generation iPod, I was excited, but controlling Tetris with a click wheel sounded incredibly difficult and stupid. Well guess what? It is.

Tetris DS (Nintendo DS)

This is probably my favorite version of Tetris thus far. It's got many different play modes, local and online multiplayer, global ranks, it saves your high scores, and it contains loads of sweet Nintendo-oriented stuff – all wrapped up to go as a DS cart. The one thing I don't like hate about Tetris DS is that the only people who play online seem to be grand masters at Tetris, so despite my being a pretty fast/decent player, playing online (and winning) is more often than not a slightly frustrating experience, unless I'm playing with friends.

Tetris (Cell Phone)

Chalk this one up to an impulse buy. Thanks to the tiny buttons on my LG Chocolate 2, it's only slightly more controllable than the iPod version I mentioned above, but it is handy to have when I'm out and about, and bored. I haven't played this much since I got Pictocross Mobile, however.

Tetris Splash (Xbox 360)

Though one could probably make the argument that Tetris Splash doesn't really push the envelope as far as new features is concerned, it's still a solid game, and I've had a few good hours with it. The fish/aquarium stuff is utterly useless, other than to provide a pretty backdrop for the main game, but with decent multiplayer and a few good single player modes, Tetris Splash isn't all bad. And hey, getting Xbox Achievements for playing one of my favorite games of all time doesn't hurt either.

Looking back on my list, I think my obsession with Tetris might go beyond the Tetris Effect, huh? To hell with mental illness! It's a fun game, and I'm going to continue playing it in every way possible!

Title image courtesy of tetris-gollum, Tetris watch image courtesy of Wonderland, Tetris DS image courtesy of GameZone