Determinance screenshot

Archive for May, 2008

GTA4 is, again, an 8/10 game

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

Giving GTA4 10 is objectively wrong – it’s flaws are too numerous and obvious.  But the worst thing about it is “run” being on a different button.  YOU HAVE AN ANALOGUE STICK.

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The Feel of Steel

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

We’ve been working on the Novint Falcon port of Determinance for quite some time now, and it was released yesterday.  The Falcon port is called “The Feel Of Steel” to emphasize its haptic nature!

I haven’t talked about the Falcon before because we’ve been under NDA, but I’m not lying when I tell you it’s the coolest gaming peripheral I’ve ever played with.  Determinance has a massive extra dimension using it and I’m actually kind of optimistic that the Falcon community are going to like it.  Those readers who actually know us in real life should get down to the office to play with it.

I want to talk more about TFOS when I’m not, er, so damn hungover.  But I am willing to promise you that if you order a Falcon you won’t be disapointed.  Especially if you’re an indie developer – the SDK is free and there’s a downloadable Torque integration (which was also done by me).  Oh, and I did the Falcon port of Arctic Stud Poker Run.

Getting paid to work with something as cool and new as the Falcon is one of the biggest perks I’ve had since setting up Mode 7.

Other than that, I’m playing through Oblivion Gotee on the PS3, and enjoying it very much.

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Badly designed games

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

There is one incredibly popular incredibly badly designed game out there.

I’m sure you’re talking about I mean World of Warcraft. But I’m not.

I’m talking about Soccer.

I really personally despise soccer on almost every level, but one of them is a level I think is almost objective. I think soccer is an incredibly badly designed game.

(and no, I did not watch the UEFA game last night, but I cackled with glee to see the result this morning. Some team from the North 1 : Sports fans ZERO)

Ok, here’re the things that are wrong with Soccer.

1. Scoring probability every drive is ridiculously low

I’m going to go through this with Thomas (who was in Russia last night) to get my numbers straight – these are all pretty big approximations. But I’m thinking you probably have about one “drive” every minute in soccer, so that’s 90 drives a game for both teams. The average number of goals per game (and this is where I could do with Tom’s help) I’m going to take as 3.

So, in soccer, the scoring percentage per drive (SPPD) is (very roughly) 3.3%

Or: one goal makes an absolutely massive different, and is very unlikely. So luck plays a huge part, because it only takes one piece of luck to give you a huge advantage. Or one lapse of concentration for the defense, or, yes, one incredible play.

I fully understand that this is what people love about soccer – the incredibly feeling of tension when the ball is near the goal. But it’s meaningless, like winning the lottery.

I’m guessing a lot of people won’t see my point with this SPPD thing, so I’ll just state it: it is my hypothesis that the further SPPD is from 50% (in either direction) the more luck plays a factor and the less skill plays a factor in a game.

2. The players lie all the time, and it makes a difference to the result

I don’t like lying. I don’t like seeing people lie. But beyond all that I sure as hell don’t want to see THE RESULT OF A SPORTS MATCH decided by how good someone is at lying.

When soccer players fake injuries (dive) they are lying, and a large amount of the time they get a payoff for it. Soccer is a game which is impossible to officiate properly. And so subjective calls give advantages.

This is then massively compounded by SPPD. Because soccer is so random there is only one way to give a team an actual advantage – give them an almost certain chance of scoring. Penalty scoring percentage is I believe around 80%.

So when an offical thinks he saw someone fowl in the penalty zone – ie mess up one drive for Team A – he then gives Team A a reward equivalent to twenty four drives. Twenty four. It’s ridiculous.

3. Penalty shoot-outs

I don’t need to write about this really, no one likes them. But I love the irony of taking a game which is far too random in nature already because the SPPD is so low, and then making the result depend on a completely different game which is too random because the SPPD is so high.

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The joy of programming

Thursday, May 8th, 2008


I love Beer.  But I do not make Beer.  I have not trained in beer-making or bought the equiment for brewing and I do not maintain a Beer farm on my property.

I don’t need to.  Beer is easy to get and affordable.  Youngs is good at making it and I’m happy for them to continue making it for me.

The same is largely true for Scotch, cheese, and Boston Legal.  I do not need to produce these things myself, they’re readily available.

I am not a Brewer or a Cheeser or an, um, Shatner-handler.  What I am is a coder.

And maybe now we’re getting to my point.  While Beer and cheese are readily available coding is not.  Coding is difficult and the people who are able to do the kind of hardcore remote database game server coding I’m doing this week are extremely expensive.  The reason I’m a coder is so that I can make my designs happen.  Art is easier to buy than coding and there isn’t an art-code equivalent of programmer-art.

The stuff I’m doing is immensly hard and boring.  A lot of coding is fun; this is not.  But it’s a means to a very exciting end; something I think people are going to like a lot.

The joy of programming is being able to do something that not many people can do well, and the joy of transforming your ideas into reality.  It’s like building except the materials are free and it’s not restricted by gravity or stress-forces or planning permission.  Obey the speed of light and everything else is possible.

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