Sierra Kilo

I had a quick idea about a possibly cool game. Back in the day, the best Nintendo games were side-scrollers: Metroid, Bionic Commando, Strider, MegaMan, etc. I had a thought as I was working (my brain is funny that way) about a side-scroller. I might plant this seed in my brother’s head, since he’s going to the Guildhall school for games as an artist.

The idea I had was a game that mixed Metroid, Bionic Commando, Strider, a PC game called Abuse, and Lode Runner. The first four are fairly straightforward platformers, but Lode Runner had a bit more puzzle solving. You had to collect gold and make it to the exit on each level. The cool part about it was that you had a kind of acid gun that could melt through the floor in front of you, allowing you to drop down or block paths. It was kind of cool because each level was a puzzle. I’m not sure if that would fit very well in this design, but the puzzles aren’t what I would use. I would use the graphics layout. Your character was small and you could see alot of the environment. The other platformers I listed only showed you what was about 10-20ft. around your character. Seeing more of the environment would be important in my game.

I would take the bionic arm from Bionic Commando, spinning jumps and wall jumping from Metroid, and the sword from Strider. Here’s how it would work: You control the character using the mouse. This is the scheme from Abuse. Your mouse pointer is a target reticle and your character looks and aims wherever your cursor is. The right mouse button makes your character fire his bionic arm to where the cursor is pointing. The left mouse button fires your weapon to where the cursor is pointing. The A and D keys (or the Left and Right cursor keys) move you to the left and right. The space bar jumps.

With that control scheme, imagine running to the right, firing behind you as you’re running. Now imagine a pit of spikes on the floor in front of you and a wall beyond that. A shaft leads up. You jump over the spikes, fire your bionic arm, grab the wall and pull yourself against the wall. Then, you jump up, away from the wall toward the opposite wall in the shaft and fire your arm to pull yourself against it. You keep doing that until you’ve effectively climbed the shaft. The shaft leads up to another room. To get out of the shaft, you have to fire your arm to the ceiling of that room, then swing out. This room is a chemical storage room. There are vats of chemicals that you have to swing across to get out. You swing, disengage your arm, fire the arm at the ceiling ahead of you, and Tarzan it to the other side. Now that’s fun and challenging.

With a good physics model, good 2d animations, and good level design, that would be a great game. It may even be easy to control using console controllers (XBox 360, PS2/3, etc). I’d love to see it on XBox arcade like the game “Wik and the Fable of Souls”. Put a good storyline with it (like Metroid) and several save points to make it easy to play for a short time, and you’ve got a great game.

What Microsoft needs is a skunkworks. They need a team that operates outside the rules and regulations of the rest of the company to develop the next OS. Let’s face facts…Vista is going to be one of the worst Windows yet (I never tried ME, though).

Microsoft needs a skunkworks team to do what the Macintosh team did for Apple. Fly a pirate flag, innovate, and create a fresh OS that is not dragged down by backward compatability. Create the OS, create basic built-in applications (web browser, email client, news reader, IM client, file browser, media player, etc), and create tools to allow the community to easily create more applications.

Mac OS X is not dragged down by backward compatibility. Sure, they have it in the form of Rosetta (a kind of emulator) and Classic mode (emulator for older apps), but it doesn’t drag the OS down with it.

Mac OS X also makes the development tools available for free. This allows John Q. User to contribute to the community without a large cost (whereas Visual Studio is up near $3,000).

This skunkworks team needs to look 10-15 years ahead and make that OS a reality with current hardware. Build a stable foundation, a clean, easy to use interface, and let the community add to your product. Don’t spend years re-hashing old ideas, spend years making the foundation solid. Give up on backward compatability. Force users to move on past Win32 executables, but empower the community to create compatible software quickly, easily, and for a realistic amount of money. Grass roots is where it’s at nowadays. See Digg.com and Revision3. See Google. See Firefox.

Give me a totally new OS from the ground up. Something I can be proud to have on my PC. Something that is easy for normal users and powerful for power users. Move forward, cut the chains, and focus on quality, stability, speed, and the future.

I’ve been using it for about 30 minutes now. Beta 2 Build 5384. What can I say? This is repulsing me to the point where I am about to re-image back to my XP install. Yes, I imaged my hard drive before installing this horrid OS. What does that mean? Well, it means that I can get back to the exact OS and configuration of this PC before I installed Vista. Thank God. That 13.4 GB image file is going to save my sanity. Why would my sanity be at risk? Let me tell you…

Seriously, I’ve been using it for 30 minutes. Luckily, I use PortableFirefox with the Google Browser Sync so I have yet to open IE. That, at least is keeping me from hammering my keyboard into my forehead. I have to give Vista props for the installation. It discovered my Hauppauge TV card and the USB-UIRT IR blaster (after I told it where to get the drivers). That’s not too special, though, since XP plays just as nice. Vista, though, pops 2-3 boxes up in my face asking me if it’s okay to run the installer, then if it’s okay for the installer to modify hardware, and I forgot what else. Totally counter-productive. Maybe for the “Home” version that would be okay, but there better be a “Pro” version that skips all of those nannies or this will never fly in a tech-savvy office (which is becoming more the case nowadays).

My biggest beef is Windows Explorer. I finally found out how to get to the menu (after using Help, something that I have not done since Windows 95). That finally allowed me to set the view options to what I am used to so I could browse through files. Unfortunately, getting a slight resemblance to the XP explorer means losing the Folder tree! In XP, you can just click View-Folders and you get the tree back on the left pane. Vista? You have to navigate back through your “Folder History” and treat folders like they are files (jumbled in the file view). That’s utter BS. That means that in order to go from C:\Windows\System32 to D:\Home\Downloads, you have to navigate back to “Computer” (the My has been removed), then open the Home folder, then the Downloads folder. I could go straight to it if I had a folder pane.

Next thing to try is the Media Center. That’s really why I installed Vista anyway. I’m contemplating sticking my PC down in the LR and hooking it up to the TV. Maybe this OS will do better in a different context (i.e. casual use during commercials). I doubt it.

Seriously, this new UI is WORSE than any Linux UI that I’ve worked with. Some of them are actually quite good, but I hadn’t found anything that I liked better than XP when it came to just doing what I needed to do. Explorer (and file management) is a huge part of my computing experience. I can understand the need for shortcuts, old-skool PIFs, LNK files and such, but don’t abstract the file system so much that the user cannot manipulate things on that level. To run a program in DOS, you changed directories until you got to the folder where you “installed” (read: copied the physical files) the program to, typed the EXE filename, and the program ran. I’ve found myself using more and more “portable” applications (self-contained in their own folder, no computer-specific settings needed) because they do what I tell them to and when. Don’t take power away from the user just because most users wield that power incorrectly. Instead, abstract it with another program that “sits on top of” the root system. Make “Windows Explorer Home” that has simple commands (What would you like to do today?) that, in turn, execute lower-level commands on the root system.

Microsoft really boned the advanced users on this one. Windows Vista has concreted my switch to Mac OS X (when the funds are available). Until then (and even after), Windows XP will remain my semi-faithful stand-by. Fie to thee, Microsoft.

For the multitudes who read this, I am selling my car. If you are interested, check this page: http://www.madrogue.com/bmw/. It is still a great car, but I have grown weary of the manual transmission and want to move into something with four doors. It is in pristine condition, as I tend to keep my cars clean and running smooth. All maintenance has been performed by BMW service. The pictures are from when I took delivery, but it is in almost the exact same condition. Current pictures available upon request. See the PDF on the page for contact information.

We picked up a $10 starter kit and a $4 pack of the Pirates of Davy Jones’ Curse game from Wiz-Kids.  We had L’s brother over on Saturday night, watched UFC, ate some Jalapeno Cream Tilapia, and put together the game ships.

L went to bed, but we played a quick game.  I picked the HMS Gargantuan (or something like that) with 5 masts, 5 long range cannons, and a special ability that allows it to move after it shoots.  I must say, that is a totally unfair ship.

Gameplay is okay.  Battles are easy and can often be deadly (especially against the Gargantuan!).  I’m down with it, but it just seems like the rules could use a bit of tweaking to offer more depth in gameplay.  We played using the basic rules, so maybe the advanced rules are more fun.  I’m going to read up on it a bit more and may buy more ships for some good 4-player piratey action.

The verdict:  6/10 based on first experience.  I think the fact that the ship I had overpowered the ship James had made things less fun, though.  A hint of roleplaying and persistence would be cool.  I.e. You control a fleet, manage the crews, spend your booty to upgrade, etc.  Putting the ships together was alot of fun and they look pretty good considering the parts are all punched out of credit cards.

Pop Tart fights back!  Today’s Pop Tart wrapper shows Pop Tart doing the crane kick against a toaster.  Looks like he’s been doing some wax-on/wax-off with Mr. Miagi in his spare time to fight against the Tartkins.  Today’s tart is of the blueberry variety.  The verdict:  Not as good as strawberry. but not bad.

I don’t get what the deal is with MySpace, but YouTube is some good stuff.  The best part of YouTube is that it streams very well and the player is embedded.  I think all you need is Flash to play them.  I’ve never had choppy playback.  There is some good content, but nothing that looks “organized.”  There are no Revision3-type productions, it’s just some people posting various videos they have.

Also, Digg version 3.0 is going to be released on Monday.  I like Digg, but I find that I don’t like going to the site much.  What’s on the front page is rarely what I’m interested in and the same story is often submitted several times.  Slashdot never had that problem because they had editors.  With Digg, the users are the editors.

The upcoming Mac OS 10.5 version is named “Leopard”.  Why?  Rumors say that Apple is planning on incorporating some kind of Windows compatability.

According to this site, Apple is pimping Parallels’ virtualization software.  This could mean that Apple is planning on buying them out and including their software in 10.5 in the hopes of getting the “I use Windows only because I have to” crowd.  There are also rumors that they’re including Boot Camp to allow native dual-boot configurations.  Either way, count me in.  When Leopard is released, I’ll be buying a Mac.  By that time, hopefully, the MacBook Pros will be in their second iteration and most of the current problems will be fixed.

Why do I want one?  For day-to-day use (email, browsing, media, etc), the Mac looks like the best choice.  Throw virtualized Windows on there so that you can skip boot times (by saving the virtual session state), have multiple virtual images (development, production, etc), and handle Windows crashes without bringing the entire machine down, and you’ve got gold.

What’s missing?  Right-click is still not a native Apple hardware function.  I love the Mighty Mouse’s scroll ball (vertical and horizontal), but the right-click still has problems.  Other than that, I’d have to let you know after I got one.  Regardless, I’m hoping that I’ll get one around January.  We’ll just have to see.

A Pop Tart genie is coming out of a toaster with a fez on his head.  Next to him is a Tartkin with a fez on his head saying, “Hey, you shop there too?”

That’s better than mouth-stomach’s bits, but it’s a step in the other direction.  Not that funny, but at least it’s not disturbing.

Blockbuster is trying to bring antitrust charges against Netflix for creating a monopoly in online rentals.  Weak.  Seriously.  Blockbuster owned the brick and mortar rental industry for so long, putting little mom and pop video rental places out of business and now they’re crying because nobody wants to drop $5 on a single rental.

Netflix is doing so well because of their business model and quality of service.  Granted, it has slipped a bit since I started, but not much.  I was mowing through movies while L-dog was on her trip.  I’d usually get a new movie 2 days after sending one out (one day for it to go, one day for the new one to come).

If Blockbuster wants to compete, they should not only adopt the same business model, but also allow pickups/returns at their brick and mortar stores.  How great would that be?  You could set a store as your primary location.  On their website, they could notify you if the video is available at your location and you could say whether you wanted it shipped to your house, or if you would just pick it up.  When returning, you could just drop it in the bin at the store and you could get your next movie as soon as the next day (by mail) or immediately if your next movie was available at that store.

That, combined with a small extra rental fee (say $.99 per extra rental) would still bring people to the stores.  I might take advantage of that once in a while.  Stock up for the weekend rather than having to stagger your returns just right or collecting your movies for the weekend.