Categories
Games Geek / Technical

50 Weirdest Moments in PC Gaming

Thanks to GameSetWatch, I learned about an article about the 50 weirdest moments in PC Gaming. It listed a number of events, real or in-game, that were just plain strange. It’s an entertaining read, and I learned about some strange situations that I thought were relegated to the NES days. I always thought that PC games had lax restrictions compared to console games. Nintendo was particularly infamous for restricting content in games. Maniac Mansion had some entertaining problems getting the game approved by Nintendo, and I remember the fight between Nintendo and Sega fanboys when Mortal Kombat lacked blood for the SNES.

Even so, apparently PC games encounter similar problems, requiring changes to the game to accommodate different markets and gatekeepers. For example, #17 refers to the game Fallout in which the killable children had to be removed for the European market…only they weren’t really gone. #36 documents the problems Shadow Warrior had in the UK, which apparently does not like ninja paraphernalia.

The video near the end about the making of Bad Mojo was…interesting. I suppose the game would be interesting as well.

I would like to see a similar list for games that aren’t specifically for the PC. I’m sure such a list would include the strange marketing campaigns of Acclaim. While this list is being made, can we do a “Where are they now” feature to find out what happened to the people named Turok? They either have to be the most popular people in school today or the most teased.

Categories
Game Design Geek / Technical

300 Game Mechanics in 300 Days

While I’ve been fairly lax in coming up with 1000 game ideas for the Thousander Club, Sean Howard has set up a great challenge for himself. Three Hundred documents his attempt each day for 300 days to write about one original game mechanic that has never been used in a commercial game.

As of this writing, he is at mechanic #23, and I’ve found them all to be enjoyable to read. I love the ideas involving negative space and time splits. I think the easiest game to implement might be idea #21, Pellet Quest, which is a Pac-man as an RPG. Heck, he even created a map of the entire game world!

Unlike my game idea challenge in which I write one-liners, he is actually fleshing out details for each mechanic. You’ll probably find plenty to think about by visiting his page during these 300 days.

Categories
Geek / Technical General

CAN HAS LOLCODE? AWSUM THX

If you have ever seen those pictures of cats with text superimposed over and if you are a programmer, you may appreciate a new language called LOLCODE.

LOLCODE is programming the LOL way. Every block starts with the keyword “HAI” and ends with “KTHXBYE”. There is a list of keywords on the website as well as some example code.

Here is the standard “HAI WORLD” program in LOLCODE:


HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE

Here is something I wrote:


HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "IM IN UR TIMEZ"
VISIBLE "STEALN UR PRODUCTIVITYZ"
KTHXBYE

The language is still being formed, and people are making suggestions for syntax and constructs to be used in the language. LOLCODE on MONORAILS might even become the standard language of web development!

By the way, if you plan on doing something important for the next few days, don’t click on that pictures of cats link above.

Categories
Geek / Technical

Learn Skills, Not Applications

I meant to write about this item months ago, but this report concludes that open source is good for the economy.

Also, it includes this little gem:

The report also recommends that technical education should be vendor neutral. Students should be taught skills, not applications, and should be encouraged to participate in open source communities.

It is what I argue whenever I complain about game development books focusing on DirectX and Win32 instead of, you know, game development. B-)

Categories
Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

Interview with Ryan “icculus” Gordon

Over at LinuxGames.com, I found Interview with the Icculus, a discussion with Ryan “icculus” Gordon on the future of game development on Gnu/Linux.

The best quote:

I guess you’re asking what Linux gaming will look like in five years and, in a roundabout way, I’m answering: whatever we make it look like.

Ryan is doing his part by putting in his efforts into the next version of libSDL, which seems to integrate more with OpenGL behind the scenes, as well as the reincarnation of the Loki Setup program, called MojoSetup.

I’m hoping that GBGames can also make a significant difference in the future of gaming on this platform.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical Marketing/Business

Copyright Not a Minefield Just for Indies

I originally talked about the dangers of working with existing protected works as an indie developer. Having the means to afford a legal team isn’t a guarantee of immunity, either.

In the Gamasutra news entry Ghost Rider Creator Files Suit Against Take-Two, Others, it seems that Gary Friedrich is literally suing Marvel, Take-Two, and others for making a bad movie based off his work. While the suit claims he has owned the exclusive rights to Ghost Rider since 2001, meaning that the movie was an infringement of his copyright, he is also accusing the defendants of “waste”.

Imagine if you owned the rights, trademarks and copyrights, regarding a popular character. Then imagine that someone makes a movie about the character, butchering parts of it, and then doing a terrible job of advertising. Now your own rights are worth less than they did before the movie was made because people associate this movie with your work. And you never gave them the rights to make the movie in the first place!

It just goes to show you what a minefield licensed properties can be. This situation reminds me of the SCO/Novell/IBM/Linux debacle.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Games Geek / Technical Marketing/Business Personal Development

Chicago Indie Game Meetup Tomorrow Night

It’s been a long time coming, but the next Chicago Indie Game Developer Meetup is here. Check that link for contact information to learn the super secret location.

It’s at Rohit’s place at 7:00 PM. That’s all I can say.

Categories
Geek / Technical General

POTM for March: WordPress

The general idea of the Project of the Month is to donate some money to an open source project and write a blog post about it. Everyone knows about the major open source projects, such as the Linux kernel or Firefox, but there are plenty of examples of open source projects that impact you in some way that might not appear on most people’s radars.

This month I donated some money to WordPress, an easy to use and quite popular blogging tool.

Yes, it is quite popular, supposedly “the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world”, but I figured that it was still not a household name and so was a valid project for the POTM.

My blog uses WordPress, and I have been pleased with how easy it is to use, update, and modify. While the default theme was pretty ugly when I started my blog in 2005, there were plenty of themes created by the WordPress community, which is great because I didn’t want to spend a lot of time creating my own theme.

There are a number of plugins for WordPress, and some of them are very useful. From blocking spam to adding special links easily on your blog, there are plugins for any number of purposes.

Relatively recently, WordPress.com was launched, which allows you to run a blog without needing to maintain your own host. While installation is incredibly easy, you may not want the hassle of maintaining your own website’s security just to run a blog. If you already have a blog using another system, WordPress has plenty of import options. You can import LiveJournal and TypePad, or even use an RSS feed as the source, among other options.

The community is great. I had to figure out how to get an RSS feed to Larry for just the POTM entries, and the IRC channel was a great source of friendly assistance. I don’t know if I have ever felt lost using WordPress since there is almost always someone around to explain something to me.

Thank you, WordPress community!

Categories
Game Design Game Development Games Geek / Technical General Marketing/Business Politics/Government

Zorro, the Public Domain, and Derivative Works

The other day I was thinking about Zorro. Frankly, I love stories about Zorro and The Three Musketeers. I have only recently started playing Dungeons and Dragons, and when I created my character, I decided that he should be a fighter with high dexterity and speed. He also gets a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. B-)

Anyway, I was thinking about the possibility of making a game based on Zorro. If Zorro was created recently, then the copyright might prevent me from making such a game, but if it was an old creation, then it might be in the public domain, which means that I would be perfectly within my rights to create a game based on the stories of the masked legend.

So I searched online and found out that the earliest copyright date for Zorro was 1919 for the pulp fiction serial called The Curse of Capistrano. Shortly afterwards, a movie adaptation followed, and the successful silent film The Mark of Zorro brought the hero to the big screen for the first time. That link will take you to a page that will let you watch the film as it is in the public domain.

So the original story and the first movie are definitely in the public domain. So, anyone has the right to make a movie, video game, or story based on Zorro, right? I would think so, but apparently I might be wrong. I found a post at derivative work which linked to a BBC News report that Sony sent a cease & desist letter to Sobini Films for trying to make a movie about Zorro. Sobini sued and I haven’t been able to find anything about it being resolved, although imdb.com does list Zorro 2110 as being in production.

And I would totally go see it, too. It would probably be like seeing the remake of Planet of the Apes for my birthday…shut up.

Anyway, the point is, how does Sony think that it has the right to tell someone NOT to make a film based on a public domain work? And where does Sobini Films get off talking as if it has aquired the rights to a book in the public domain? EVERYONE has aquired those rights. That’s what the public domain means!

But is Zorro in the public domain? Is there anything about Zorro that isn’t?

I’m not the only one who has these questions. You can’t just trust that Wikipedia has it right, but Zorro is on the list of public domain characters. But what exactly does it mean that Zorro is in the public domain, especially when Zorro Productions exists solely to license the trademarks and copyrights in the name, visual likeness, and character? How can this group exist when Zorro is in the public domain?

I learned that the character of Zorro may have been inspired by people or stories that ARE in the public domain. The Scarlet Pimpernel is an older story that pretty much set the stage for the super hero genre. The hero was a rich person hiding his true identity with disguises. Zorro, Batman, and a number of other characters, especially in comic books, would follow this archetype.

But history also has some influence on the character of Zorro. Joaquin Murrieta was considered the Robin Hood (another legendary hero in the public domain) of Mexico, and “the fictional character of Zorro was in part inspired by the stories about Murrieta”. Now, Murrieta the person may have existed, but the legend surrounding him may be more fiction than fact. His story resembles Batman’s in that circumstances in his life charge him with fighting back against what he considered evil and protecting others from those same evils.

Can I create a game based on the original story of Zorro which is known to be in the public domain? I obviously can’t make a game that was inspired with recently created films, but couldn’t I make my own interpretation of the original story? Couldn’t Sobini Films create a Zorro of the future without a Sony coming after them? Why does Sony believe it has this ability, or specifically why does Zorro Productions believe it has exclusive rights to Zorro?

I did find this San Francisco Business Times article detailing the family behind Zorro Productions. It seems that if they control nothing else other than the trademarks for merchandising, movies, books, games, slot machines, etc, then they pretty much control new creations based on Zorro, even if the copyright status of older works has expired. I had emailed the company, and President and CEO John Gertz responded to say that even if some works are public domain in the United States, the copyright may still be valid in other nations. Interestingly, I learned that a number of the trademarks for things such as video games, board games, role playing games, candy, and all sorts of merchandising were registered fairly recently. Some trademarks have expired, but others have apparently replaced them. Trademark searches are definitely not for those with weak hearts.

So, what’s the status of Zorro? Is he in the public domain, or does some company actually have the exclusive rights to him? It seems that an indie game developer might be taking on a lot of legal liability by trying to make a game based on Zorro. Besides the existing trademarks, the copyright status in the country of a customer might turn that sale into an infringement that costs you big. Unless you are prepared to discuss the matter with a lawyer (and pay for such a discussion!), it might be easier creating your own characters and building up a following. I imagine it might be possible to create your own version of a character like Zorro, but then you would have to step around trademarks that simply use the text “ZORRO” on a video game. Batman is pretty much a Zorro-like character, but he is different enough that he can become his own trademark. No one really owns Robin Hood as far as I know. And there are plenty of other famous legends that are probably not locked away from the public through exclusive rights such as copyright and trademark.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical General

Engraved Note to Self

If you are a tourist in the Mazes of Menace, and you find a shopkeeper, do NOT, under any circumstances, take his picture with your camera. He doesn’t like it very much, and he has a problem with overreacting.

*sigh* YASD.