Yearly Archives: 2010

The Game-Maker Archive—Part 19: Presents and Protocol

  • Reading time:3 mins read

There were three main ways that Game-Maker users communicated. Either they knew each other in person, which was nothing unusual but could lead to larger and more nuanced projects than an individual could tackle, they communicated through the post, which was slow but both mysterious and intimate, or there were the BBSes.

Before the Web caught on (or even existed), the big deal was local dial-up boards. Most of them were text-based, and most were fairly slow. You would connect, check your personal messages, see if anyone had posted any new discussion topics or responses, perhaps fiddle with a multiplayer door game or two — and then you would head to the file area.

Most boards had a ratio: you can download so many bytes for so many bytes you upload. A bad ratio was close to 1:1. Somewhere between a 2:1 and 4:1 ratio, the file area would come to life. Users would be just motivated enough to keep sharing material, yet wouldn’t feel pressed to dump just any junk on the community. This is the environment where shareware thrived; when the Web took over, the whole shareware model went into whack.

If you found the right board, BBSes were also the perfect environment to share and discuss Game-Maker games. Mark Janelle ran the Frontline BBS with RSD’s semi-official blessing. Other users ran their own boards or carved out corners of existing communities.

A problem with BBSes was their dial-up nature. Unless the board was very local, you were in immediate danger of old-school long distance phone charges. If the board was in the same state but not in the same county, you were particularly screwed. So despite Janelle’s and RSD’s efforts there was never a unified Game-Maker community. Rather, the community consisted of countless islands of independent development, that would occasionally cross paths and trade ideas.

Although it was located in the middle of nowhere — specifically Kennebunkport, Maine — which must have made a daunting long-distance charge for most users, the Frontline BBS was the most prominent place for these paths to cross. That makes sense; it was the only board referenced in the Game-Maker box. The board therefore carried some valuable artifacts of shared Game-Maker culture. Whether or not those artifacts are in themselves excellent is sort of beyond the point. What’s important is that they are formative and sort of iconic to the Game-Maker experience.

These four games, by two authors, are amongst the first Game-Maker games that many users will have played, aside from RSD’s demo games and those users’ own creations. Unfortunately not all of them still exist in precisely their original form, but one takes what one can get.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

The Game-Maker Archive—Part 18: Call and Response

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Back in July we unearthed two previously unknown Game-Maker games, Roland Ludlam’s space racer Hurdles and Matthew Groves’ free-roaming space shooter Space Cadet. We then tracked down and interviewed those two authors. Roland Ludlam is currently working on a WiiWare project and Matthew Groves is considering Android development; each was generous with his time and memories, and with some prodding each was generous enough to find and forward some other long-neglected projects for us to record and archive. The former scrounged around on an old backup of a backup, and the latter mailed us a collection of 5-1/4″ floppies to extract.

From each party we received two games: one fully developed and substantial, and one experimental or unusual. We’ll start with the “big” games, and then once we’re primed we’ll turn to the really interesting stuff.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

Zombieland

  • Reading time:2 mins read

You can tell this is the filmmakers’ first major project after film school.

I too often confuse Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera. They’ve got the same hair, same build, same facial expressions, and they’re cast in similar roles. So it is that when the film freezes and spells out Eisenberg’s personal (postmodern ironic film-hip) tips and techniques for zombie survival, the mind travels to Scott Pilgrim. Similar conceit. Not the same kid. Whereas Pilgrim takes the conceit further than sense dictates, and thereby elevates itself beyond the conceit in much the way that the mind stops processing Tarantino’s violence as violence, Zombieland is content to lurk in the hipster fog beneath the glowing neon signs. So it’s not transcendent, and therefore the affectations do end up feeling a little gratuitous.

But oh, I’m speaking in absolute terms here. Zombieland ain’t bad. A bunch of kids wanted to make an ironic zombie movie and they got some high-profile talent involved. You’ve got Woody Harrelson. You’ve got Bill Murray. You have a script by someone who watched a little too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You have good cinematography and effects work. It’s a noble effort, and it’s got a good spirit to it.

You’d think the kids would know that there is no way Jesse Eisenberg’s character could afford that apartment, though. Who do they think he is, Mark Zuckerberg?

Lost in Space with Matthew D. Groves

  • Reading time:1 mins read

A few months ago we detailed some search methods for discovering unknown Game-Maker games in the wild Web; as examples we detailed two games: Roland Ludlam’s rather wonderful Hurdles, and Matthew Groves’ modestly charming Space Cadet. Since our interview with the one author went so well, we now turn our sights on the second, Web developer and aspiring Android coder Matthew D. Groves.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

The Brussels Spout (Book 2)

  • Reading time:2 mins read

The Martins and their burgeoning demo group known as PPP Team seized Recreational Software Designs’ Game-Maker with a ferocity and a measured European flavor of design. Over two or three years they assembled upwards of 24 games, each more ambitious than the last. Since they were developing with an unlicensed copy of Game-Maker, most of those games were strictly for their own entertainment — which may to some extent explain the energy that went into them.

There are three branches of PPP Team software. In our previous article we discussed their one-off, often experimental titles. These games tend to be both character driven and strongly inspired by Commodore and shareware design sensibilities. One of those games, Blork Carnage, introduces a character named Jack Booster. This game and this character serve as the roots for the second of PPP Team’s branches — their defining franchises.

If the one-off games housed a wealth of interesting whims, it’s PPP Team’s series that received the bulk of their effort and originality. Of those, both the most significant and the most varied series are spun off from the Duke Nukem styled Blork Carnage. A third, early series also showed itself during the team’s Game-Maker era, to further build off one of those spin-offs. We’ll start with the series that more or less equates with PPP Team, in terms both of iconography and of their design sensibility.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

Toy Story

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Two things now stand out to me about Toy Story. Although it comes from 1995 — just two years after Jurassic Park, four years after Terminator 2, and the same year that the original PlayStation and Sega Saturn hit the shelves, ushering in the first wave of mainstream 3D game hardware — the movie still looks and feels current.

The goal was never photo-realism; the animators set certain stylistic boundaries and worked within them. So with the exception of a few organic characters — the boys, the dogs — the animation holds up perfectly well. And since the movie isn’t so much about toys or contemporary culture as it is about self-awareness and change, its story only grows more effective as one ages and comes to appreciate all the levels of Buzz and Woody’s emotional problems.

The only other comment I’ve got right now is about Pixar’s weird form of social commentary. Time and again the writers play nonhuman characters against humanity. Pixar’s humans are callous as a rule, oblivious at best, and at worst a malevolent force. They take the form, I suppose, of your typical Greek gods. Familiar human characteristics are instead assigned to non-human characters — toys, animals, robots, creatures.

You see it in the Toy Story movies, where humans are revered as gods and devils. You see it in Finding Nemo, where they’re a natural force like the wind and rain. Wall-E is all about working against Man’s callous nature. Monsters, Inc comes from another angle and positions them as a natural resource.

So thematically, Toy Story is the template for nearly every Pixar movie to follow. Yet somehow, going back to it after all these years, it avoids feeling generic or overly familiar. I guess that’s the talent at show over there in Alameda. Pixar may have a standard formula, but they put in enough detail and nuance that each product stands as an original, genuine story. That’s some good craft, there.

The Waters of Mars

  • Reading time:4 mins read

David Tennant’s penultimate story is probably one of the three to five best episodes since Doctor Who‘s revival in 2005, and just possibly one of the best since the show began in 1963. Structurally there’s nothing new or particularly interesting at play. Yet “The Waters of Mars” is one of the only stories in the history of the series to take that familiar base-under-siege format and use it as a canvas for larger things.

As a sketch, “The Waters of Mars” sounds exactly like the 2007 episode “42”. In “42” a small space vessel is overtaken by a living sun. One crew member after another is infected and begins to leak fire from every orifice, as the sun particles try to make their way back home. In “The Waters of Mars” a small Mars base is overtaken by a sort of intelligent water. One after another, the crew members get infected and begin to drip water from every orifice as the water tries to make its way to Earth.

“42” is content to assume that its premise is interesting in and of itself — as if none of us have seen The Thing, Night of the Living Dead, or fully 75% of the classic series of Doctor Who. The episode relishes in the familiar, not only retreading the format for its own sake but filling its empty spaces with pop culture references. The writer tossed in a trivia machine as a plot device, hoping to involve and distract the audience with $200 Jeopardy questions in place of genuine character or thematic development. Even the title is a reference to a certain US drama series. The episode takes place over 42 minutes, you see.

By comparison, “The Waters of Mars” hardly cares about the monsters, or the threat, or the fact that the crew members are getting picked off like so many randy babysitters. Oh, it takes the material seriously; it has to be amongst the scariest episodes of Who ever produced, and at times approaches a flat-out horror show like Supernatural. The tone is stark and somber, and — given that it’s set on Mars, about 50 years in the future — fairly realistic. Characters act rationally, and use all the tools and information available to them. Relationships and emotions are understated yet clear. Yet the episode isn’t about any of that. Rather, it’s about what all of that means.

There are a few things going on here, all intertwined. The events on the Mars base are important not just because they’re happening and we’re watching them; they’re important because, as established right up front, this is a critical moment in time. Within the first five minutes we know what’s supposed to happen, and we know that it will happen. The action, therefore, plays out as a tragedy. Since we know how these plots work, the next hour is consciously about seeing how the inevitable plays out, and growing to appreciate the characters’ vain, yet so very noble, struggles against their fate.

And then there’s the Doctor. For a show about time travel, Doctor Who is very seldom about time travel. Even less often does it address not just the logistical but the ethical and practical consequences of time travel. Here, for much of the episode the Doctor is as much a spectator as the audience. He has stumbled into a historical event, and however horrible it may be he knows what will happen if he interferes. The events then also become a catalyst for serious character work, as the Doctor struggles against his own impulses, wobbling between curiosity and guilt; self-respect and impotence. Ultimately, it’s a matter of pride. The Doctor never walks away from other people’s problems; he only walks away from his own. That’s the only way he can live with himself. And he lived for so many years.

Eventually the Doctor makes his decisions, and he reaps the consequences. And in the last few minutes the episode transcends probably everything else ever done with the show.

“The Waters of Mars” is about responsibility — big decisions with big, real consequences. In this case those decisions happen to involve monsters in a space base. You could plug in any threat, any plot; as well-told as it is here, it’s all beside the point. The Doctor isn’t the only character whose decisions matter, either; everyone makes his or her choices, and they all do the best they can under the circumstances. But when you get into something as complicated as time travel, and you think there are any easy answers, you’re one step away from becoming the problem yourself.

HECHO EN PUERTO RICO !!!

  • Reading time:1 mins read

News bulletin. Angelo Felix named his game Shanna after his daughter. No wonder the game is so adorable.

Underworld

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Browsing through my reviews, any hardcore Who fan would likely assume I’m playing the contrarian. X story is popular, so it must be rubbish. Y story is unpopular, so clearly it’s an hidden gem. No, that’s just my taste at work. I notice that fans of anything tend to be concerned with consistency. They became fans because of a static list of features; whatever fails to meet enough of those features is garbage, and whatever meets them all is perfect. There may be a small gray area in the middle. Usually not.

Me, I’m more interested in what could be than in what is. By nature the most interesting ideas tend to veer far from, or otherwise ignore, the status quo, so they’re rarely popular. By nature the closer you hew to the status quo, the more tedious you get as there’s nothing new to learn. On this basis I think I agree with the consensus about Underworld, but for the opposite of the usual reasons.

Underworld is a plodding mid-era Tom Baker four-parter by the writing team who dreamed up the Doctor’s robotic dog K-9, Bob Baker and Dave Martin. The common line is that the story fails because the special effects look awful, the sets look cheap, and a disturbing amount of humor has begun to creep into the show. If there’s a redeeming feature, it’s that the story is drowning in references to classical mythology and therefore can pretend to be educated.

Indeed the story is a bit of a failure, but I’d say that largely rests in Baker and Martin’s decision to truss up the myth of Jason and the Argonauts with some sci-fi trappings instead of taking a simple idea — such as the regeneration pods that have kept the crew alive for 100,000 years — and extrapolating it. For a small crew that has lived longer than most human civilizations, they all seem oddly… normal. We’re introduced to plot devices like a ray that makes people docile, and then the story never explains or explores them — what part they play in life, what their ramifications or consequences might be. Instead, we have an ancient plot to churn through and familiar symbols to quote so that the educated yet unimaginative can feel they got their license fee’s worth. Every time the story checks another box, I feel my eyes roll back into my head. Oh, look! The golden fleece! Sort of!

The serial has its points of interest, though — most notably those unconvincing special effects. By the time the story went into production, the ferocious continual inflation of the pound meant the budget was devalued and they no longer had money for sets. Cue ingenuity; for one of the first times ever, the story was substantially shot against bluescreen, with the actors layered on top of scale models.

The effect rarely fools the eye, but so what. This is ingenious stuff, here. Decades before George Lucas shot his Star Wars prequels almost entirely against blue curtains, we get a prototype of the same idea — and done reasonably well, under the circumstances. We do have depth, and layers. Actors walk out from behind matted bits of the scenery, and then around to the front again. Someone meticulously planned their walk paths, and lined up real surfaces whenever the actors needed to touch something. The effect is a bit like those sections in Final Fantasy VII where you’ve got polygonal characters running around on top of a bitmapped picture. You know the elements don’t fit, but it works well enough to get the message across.

So that’s kind of neat. The modelwork and much of the acting is rather nice as well, at least considering what they were given. Tom Baker straddles the line between reading the lines as written and doing his own personal comedy routine, as he would later devolve into. You can tell he’s bored, but I think he has every right to be. His small larks do inject a bit of life into the dust, helping to carry the attention through.

Underworld is probably amongst the least necessary Who serials ever, but it’s no no means horrible. Tedious in some respects; technically interesting in some others. It’s just so very nothing. I always forget which story this is, and almost immediately after watching it I forget again.

The King’s Demons

  • Reading time:4 mins read

In retrospect people describe season 20 of Doctor Who as a huge flashback. They make pains to point out how every story features a returning character from the show’s history. In reality I only think two or three reappearances are worth noting. You’ve got the Black Guardian back for a three-serial arc, for the first time in four years. That counts as one, so far as I’m concerned. Then you’ve got Omega back from the 10th anniversary special, to lead off the season. That one’s pretty overt. And finally the season ends with The Five Doctors, which is sort of a menagerie of all the show’s history.

Other serials are a little more dubious. In one story we have the long-awaited return of a villain introduced just the previous season. And then we have The King’s Demons. Considering that the Master has been a semi-regular feature of the show since his reintroduction in season 18, and will continue to appear about once a season throughout the 1980s, I don’t see how he alone counts as a blast from the past. It’s more like business as usual, really.

I think I’m prevaricating to avoid the actual topic of this review. It’s not that there’s anything specially wrong with The King’s Demons. It’s more that there’s very little of note about it. It’s a short, two-episode pseudo-historical that seems to drag on for twice its length. The TARDIS crew touches down in medieval England, for no particular reason. They exit the ship into the middle of a jousting match, overseen by the figure of King John himself, on his way to sign the Magna Carta.

If this were a David Whitaker script, maybe we’d be onto something — a sensitive exploration of a cultural context that we tend to blur into stereotype. Indeed some of the disc’s special features adequately explain the situation that birthed the Magna Carta, and dwell on the daily lives of the various factions involved in the treaty. This is good stuff, and might well have been the focus of the story.

Instead, as in Terence Dudley’s earlier Black Orchid, the characters mostly stand, occasionally skulk, around and avoid talking about anything in particular, expressing any opinions or perspectives, or accomplishing much of anything. If you like, here’s the full story: our heroes get alternately accused and praised for various things not of their doing, and then one of the characters is revealed as the Master. The Master accuses our heroes of various things not of their doing, and then another of the characters is revealed as a shape-shifting android. Our heroes lock the Master in his TARDIS (I think) and then leave, the android in tow. The end.

This android is of course Kamelion, an ineffectual prop that the writers promptly forget about until they choose to kill him off about a season later, in Planet of Fire. The only comment I can offer is that their eventual solution to the Kamelion problem — substituting a man with silver face paint for the original prop — was actually rather elegant, and that if they had hit on that idea earlier they could easily have used Kamelion as a regular character. In that sense he was perhaps a bold missed opportunity. Given his actual on-screen use, however, the widespread tendency, amongst those even aware of the character, is to consciously forget that Kamelion even existed.

Given that the Kamelion’s introduction is perhaps the only memorable detail of The King’s Demons, you can see my hesitancy to get to the point. I guess the point is simple enough, though. You’re safe in skipping this one.

The DVD is fairly solid, though. As I said, the special features add wealth to a dreary production. The commentary, led by Peter Davison, is jovial as ever. The actual serial is also beautifully restored. I’m used to this serial looking like blurry, over-exposed mud. As tedious as it may be, at least now there’s plenty of production detail to distract the eye.

Run For Your Life

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Run for Your Life is a documentary of two halves, one more interesting and less developed than the other. It begins as a story of the New York City Marathon — how it came about, how its growth affected the city and paralleled other social movements of the early 1970s, and how it grew into the cultural monolith that we know today. Then somewhere around the half-hour mark, the film meanders into the personal life of marathon founder Fred Lebow.

Lewbow is a fascinating guy in his own right; he never knew how to have a personal life, and so he just kept running — both metaphorically and literally. There was always something new, somewhere new, someone new to chase after. The only thing that he never ran from was an idea. He was a brilliant guy, able to see to the center of complex problems and successfully argue for a solution before the problems were even on the radar of most people. More than brilliant, he was faithful to his ideas and principles to an extent that few people are. He came off as crazy, arrogant, and then visionary.

So his story is interesting, and rather inspirational, just on the basis of his personality. Yet that story fairly well consumes the latter two-thirds of the movie, leaving several intriguing questions about the marathon itself to dangle in the wind. The film toys with the social effects of the marathon on the city, both in terms of its general reputation and in the practical effects on specific neighborhoods. Were the effects permanent? How did the residents of those neighborhoods feel? Are there any statistics on crime and demographics, or any representative anecdotes about the change in tone?

How did the route evolve over time? Why has it stayed the same basic shape since the start? Has it come into any criticism? If the marathon grew out of a Bronx running club, why is the route based mostly in Brooklyn, with only a few minutes each in the Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens?

How has the public perception of running changed? The documentary states that back in the early ’70s no one thought of running as a serious sport. Let’s have some more details about the changes — some milestone moments that mark its cultural evolution. It also says that back then, running was all about going fast. So how has the science changed, and how has the marathon tied into that? Back then, some experts advised that women should never run more than a mile. Explain that, and explain some of the adversity that women had to face before the cultural and scientific mainstream accepted them as athletes. Lebow is supposed to have been a major catalyst in addressing all of this, so great. Address it.

The editing is dynamic and clear, which helps to power through exciting sequences like the history that makes up the first half-hour. When the film slows down to dwell on Lebow’s life, the constant cutting and animation begins to feel overly busy and distracting, making the slow portions feel all the slower.

The film gives a fair glimpse at a remarkable mind that thrived off of and in turn enriched a remarkable cultural context. For my money I want a little more of that context in the mix.

Psych

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Well. I can see why Netflix recommended this on the basis of Better Off Ted. I’m still not sure what to make of it, so let’s see what materializes as I type.

Psych is written, shot, and performed with a smug, self-consciously clever tone. Characters quip, smirk, make ironic observations about the nature of their current situation. They’re all conscious of the fictional conceits that they embody, and they carry out those conceits with a wink. “We know that you know what we’re supposed to say and do in a situation like this, in a show like this. And okay, we’ll play along. But we’ll be very wry about it, because maybe we’ve got something special up our sleeves to surprise you. Or maybe we don’t! You never know!”

Joss Whedon can get away with that, sometimes. In small doses. A show like Arrested Development is written brilliantly enough to transcend self-consciousness. Yet this is ground that a show has to tread with a caution that kind of negates the gonzo spirit of such a tone.

I guess… Think of it this way. There are actors who are naturally eccentric. They’re fascinating or hilarious precisely because they don’t know how odd or awkward they are. Then there are people who make a show of behaving eccentrically. They soon become tiresome, because you can feel the effort and after a while the effort feels like desperation.

Based on the pilot, em>Psych doesn’t exactly feel desperate. More… unctuous, perhaps. I can feel it trying to endear itself to me, like a con man. Maybe the desperation comes out later, when its first few passes miss the mark.

It is shot well, though, and some of the actors are very well-cast. The premise — a guy with eidetic memory poses as a psychic in order to solve crimes — is derivative but serviceable. At least at the beginning the show does a decent job of selling his gift, both empirically and logistically, without over-explaining it.

There’s all the potential for this show to settle into itself and become more than a tangle of autocongratulation and technical polish. It’s not particularly cynical. It’s smart enough. I just kept waiting for it to stop flirting and get on with whatever it really has to say. It didn’t within the first hour, and that’s the end of my patience. At least for the moment.

Xferplay

  • Reading time:2 mins read

You may have noticed a large number of articles over the past few months devoted to Recreational Software Designs’ Game-Maker. I’m not sure why, after all this time, I hit on the topic, but with this one-track mind of mine it’s a thread I’m compelled to follow as far as it will go. First we’ve got the individual articles on DIYGamer, which tend to take a few games or a sub-topic and spin a message out of them. Then, for the sake of organization, I crack apart the articles and distribute the elements around my wiki (usually rewritten a bit). The wiki began as a way for me to keep track of what I’ve written about what, and has begun to develop some substance of its own.

As part of the process, I’ve also begun a bit of detective work. I have tracked down and contacted about half of the Game-Maker users that I’m aware of, and have leads on a few more. Sometimes the trail has led me to previews of new Wii games; sometimes to complex worlds of fiction. Mostly, it has led me to a wall of bewilderment. And the odd new game to add to the list.

Although I’ve still a bunch of authors to find, I think my shortlist consists of The Descent author David Barras, Shanna author Angelo Felix, Paper Airplane author Matt Bell (with whom I did exchange some letters in the mid-1990s), Firefall author Firefall Softwarez (whoever that may be), Woman Warrior author Sheldon Chase, and Flying Guts author Marty Valenti. I don’t know how wide or deep these posts go, but if anyone knows how to get in touch with one or more of these people, drop me a line.

Likewise, if anyone has, or knows where to find, a copy of any of these games, I’m sure that their authors would be as appreciative as I.

And hey, maybe future generations will appreciate the conservation. Or maybe not. Darned kids.

Roland Ludlam on Liight and the Hurdles of Game-Making

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Following our interview with Orb author Joshua Turcotte, we turn our information thresher to another isolated game, the closest that Game-Maker ever got to a respectable scrolling shooter, Hurdles. The game is short on presentation and deep in ingenuity; it does what it sets out to, and then moves on. To contrast with that focus, its author Roland Ludlam is something of a polymath: hacker, musician, illustrator, photographer, poet.

Most recently, Ludlam has co-founded a small game design company, Studio Walljump, with the aim of producing a new puzzle-music game for WiiWare. We caught him with a dual-edged interview; come for the moldy game, and get a preview for the bargain.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

The Game-Maker Archive: The Brussels Spout (Book 1)

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I had known for a while of Sylvain “Pypein” Martin’s blog. It muses in depth on Game-Maker’s file formats, and tracks a project to port one or more Game-Maker games to the Nintendo DS. My problem was that the site is mostly in French, and seems to presuppose some understanding of its topics. I bookmarked the site and filed it away, and turned to more immediate problems. It turns out that all this time I had been overlooking a cornucopia of Game-Maker games and utilities.

Martin, his brother Pierre, and associate Pierrick Hansen form the core of a mid-’90s Belgian demogroup called PPP Team. Later on they would release some tracker music and projects coded in assembler. It seems, though, that they got their start with RSD’s Game-Maker.

I’m not sure how many games they worked on; many are unfinished, and some appear lost to time and computer failure. Depending on how you count, maybe 17 or 18 games still survive in some form. The games touch several genres, but mostly focus on and toy with the side-scrolling platformer mold. They include a few long-running or frequently referenced series, several one-off games, and a fair number of tributes or pastiches.

Though the earliest games freely borrow sprites and backgrounds from existing sources, the group soon graduates to completely original elements. Even within a series the sprites are rarely duplicated from one game to the next. By the time they start to import graphics from Deluxe Paint, PPP Team seems to have total control over its resource pipeline.

At this point it’s the areas without that control — for instance the music — which glare the most.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )