gdp's Comments

Michael Klucher's Blog : Silverlight and XNA Framework Game Development and Compatibility

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:54:19 +0000

It is great to hear that Silverlight and XNA are actually converging, even if there are still some ways to go. I've been thinking recently how great it would be to have Blend support for XNA games. (Imagine if Blend had an XNA target and included niceties like Title Safe Area snaps and borders.) Possibly extra ammunition in the case for Blend support for XNA (and maybe even unmanaged games): have you noticed ScaleForm yet? It's an increasingly common games middleware system, used by some of MGS' own games even, that imports Flash files for game UIs. It seems like a great product, but, again, imagine if Blend could provide a first class design experience for Game UIs and the already reusable bits of XAML/Silverlight were the middleware?

Blog | WorldMaker.net : The Django Framework Architecture | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Fri, 29 May 2009 02:28:25 +0000

Thanks, Rob. I've certainly meant to retouch upon this article, but have been busy with so many other things. I'm particularly fascinated that portions of this article have been translated to Spanish and have been deeply incorporated in the Spanish Wikipedia page for Django, thus making it perhaps my biggest Wikipedia contribution. If anything, I think that since I wrote this Django's architecture has only gotten better and more well defined. Particular things since then that probably deserve mentions include the better Forms decoupling with what seems like will always be referred to as "new forms" even after years of use, the "new" URL reverse tools, and the better decoupled Admin. I'm probably forgetting a few other things off the top of my head. Overall, I'm rather pleased that Django's core team seems to continue moving in the right directions.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : Synecdoche, New York: A Great Film About the Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse? | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Thu, 21 May 2009 18:26:54 +0000

It's one of those films that critics certainly either love or despise, with no middle ground. I find it fascinating and have been planning for a while to discuss its implications towards video games. Like I said, the zombie stuff (and much of the devastation stuff) is just my own playful interpretation of the film, particularly to better contrast it with I Am Legend. I Am Legend is a great movie up to just about where the dog dies. After that it goes off the rails in just the sort of wrong way for me to lose interest. I'm hopeful that The Road may slake some of my thirst for a better approach at what I Am Legend promises and fails to deliver.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : BSG versus Dollhouse: The Weird Car Analogy | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:10:49 +0000

With the exception of misfortunes, I don't redact my blog or commenting history. Also, I haven't even bothered to watch the finale of BSG, because just reading about their solution to the issue makes me weep. I didn't even include it as a possibility because I didn't expect anything quite that insipid. Now I can quit wasting my time trying to like BSG and watch shows that I actually find enjoyable such as the new Better Off Ted and Dollhouse. (I do believe that Ep. 6 "Man in the Street" was a "Go, Go, Gadgetmobile" moment, and I'm looking forward to more and more mind games.)

Blog | WorldMaker.net : Twittering it Old School | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:56:22 +0000

Neat work, Dan!

Blog | WorldMaker.net :

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:22:31 +0000

Thanks, I appreciate it! It's funny, but I'm a little disappointed in it so far (ah the usual creator's eye for your own product's flaws), but then I've lately been bouncing between reading Stross and classic masters like Bester and Lovecraft. I supposed its hard not to be highly critical of my own writing right now (particularly when trying for some pastiche union between Bester and Lovecraft without too much aping Stross' "The Laundry" tales or Mass Effect). But then, it doesn't have to be great writing if its good IF. Now to try to create some interactivity that better works as a game... Speaking of which, did you find/figure out the "puzzle"?

Blog | WorldMaker.net : Blogs of the Round Table: A Brief History of Games Journalism | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 18:38:28 +0000

(Then there is the controversy over a possible third "real" world created by the narrator of the first five books...)

Blog | WorldMaker.net : Blogs of the Round Table: A Brief History of Games Journalism | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 18:38:04 +0000

Spoilers: There are two main "real" worlds in the series The Courts of Chaos, controlled by the Chaos "family" and Amber, controlled by the Amber family. (Controversially, The Courts may in fact be several "real" worlds.) There are then an infinite number of shadow worlds cast by Amber (or by The Courts with Amber as a sign post; also controversial). In the game it could be that the The Courts and Amber are separate games, with many of the other worlds visited through the course of the books simply shards of them, to use modern MMO vocabulary, as in seperate content/player databases. On the other hand perhaps instead The Courts and Amber are seperate code bases (with "main" games sharing the names), with the Amber code base at least somewhat derived from The Courts, and the shadows are variations on that code base and thus entirely seperate games in themselves. If you are familiar with MU*s, the family trees of the MU*s somewhat resembles that conception. I think depending on the game technology either interpretation makes sense and I'm not sure I have a preference.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : Blogs of the Round Table: A Brief History of Games Journalism | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 18:34:20 +0000

The Amber Chronicles detail some fairly complex political machinations (assassinations, betrayals, betrothals, etc) between two large (and intricately intertwined/interbred) dynasties across a large number of worlds, and all of which is further complicated by the fact that both narrators are heavily involved and at least a little unreliable. I think the social characteristics of the series certainly call for some sort of social game (an MMO, MU*, whatever). But more likely, in my mind, than being a single game I see it as a set of semi-related games with cross-game "hacks"/super-players, the number of games depending on the relationship of worlds in the books to games... which I'll admit that I intentionally left vague.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : The Fable is Soylent | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 22:56:25 +0000

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what they were going for with the cross-dressing, insane Hobbe friend. It seems like there was an attempt to make it something of a silly joke, but it seems almost mean and almost out of place. The gender stuff is pretty interesting. Most of the consequences are at least relegated to social interactions/consequences, at least, rather than any attempt to give them "morality" consequences. It is interesting that the game associates +humor and -attractiveness with cross-dressing in either gender. It is interesting that there don't seem to be many consequences of the late game gender change quest. But on the other hand with regards to things like bigamy and homosexuality the game is nearly silent (at least if everyone loves or hates you enough) and in that respects its well ahead of the Sim's remaining focus on the classic nuclear family... I don't envy Lionhead having to make the decisions on how and when gender affects the game systems... To some extent no matter what they decided people will be unhappy or in disagreement.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : I decided that today was D2-Day | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:30:45 +0000

Greetings Gour! I've got a few small things for Darcsforge in the works, but mostly they are taking a back seat to my graduate work (I'm working very hard to graduate in December with my Masters). You might notice that my Code section is down right now. I'm running this website on a very small VM and so all of my blog code plus all of the Darcsforge-based sites I was running got to be a bit much for the one VM, so I've bought a new VM for a Darcsforge-specific server and I'm in the process of slowly setting it up. I decided it was time to update the models for Django 1.0, and I had a list of small model tweaks that I wanted to accomplish so I think I'm going to get those done first. Also, I should probably point out that even though my code websites are done my public repositories themselves are still available. For example: darcs get http://repos.worldmaker.net/darcsforge/main/ Also, the current Darcsforge documentation is still available.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : My Unfinished Norse Project | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:09:31 +0000

I remembered my plan for Jormungand, the Midgaard Serpent: the idea was that Jormungand was a part of the Midgaard terraforming process, a giant "shield" around the planet acting as a defense platform after terraforming, and also as a side effect obscuring the immense Yggdrasil from view of Midgaard. (I figured that even with a bunch of new-ish technology there was still a wish to provide for and protect good old "base model" Homo sapiens.) Also, I wasn't surprised by Too Human making Odin a machine intelligence, but in my plan I believe it was Loki that was the machine intelligence rather than Odin, or perhaps it was both.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : Blogs of the Round Table: Indiana Jones and the Quest for a Great Film Adaptation | Blog | WorldMake

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:54:16 +0000

Here's an "official" blog update on the subject: http://blog.worldmaker.net/2008/sep/11/banshee-ma...

Blog | WorldMaker.net : Blogs of the Round Table: Indiana Jones and the Quest for a Great Film Adaptation | Blog | WorldMake

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:53:29 +0000

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, sometimes referred to as Indy4 (and in my opinion a better story than the actual fourth film, KOTCS), is this month's game in Mixnmojo's Secret History series and it was reading it this week that reminded me that Last Crusade was actually a good film adaptation to video game. (FOA "Talkie" was my first LucasArts adventure game, it was on a Macintosh double feature CD with Secret of Monkey Island in one of the labs in elementary school...) LucasArts eventually produced Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, neither of which have I played but most call them "meh" and a few like/love them. They were basically Tomb Raider rip-offs with Indiana Jones. Last Crusade and Fate of Atlantis are the two adventure games and definitely classics, though.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : The Power Outage Adventure | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:52:25 +0000

Power back on at 2 this morning, still waiting on AT&T/BellSouth for the DSL to work.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : PAX Day 1 | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:39:27 +0000

Freezepop has been great live, both times I saw them. This time they
were in full force, though, with The Duke and a new (to me) drummer.
I'd recommend it if you do get the chance.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : My View for the Next Batman | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:01:11 +0000

I wasn't aware of the Huntress, but the Helena Bertinelli version actually sounds like it could work pretty well in the series... She would also fit the mob through line, as I mentioned in my C Plot and contrast well with Scarface, too.

Blog | WorldMaker.net : Darcs Workflow: Completely Distributed Pull-Only Workflow | Blog | WorldMaker.net

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:37:58 +0000

If one developer is lost you end up doing basically the same thing as in a centralized workflow: If it is all corporate infrastructure you can walk to the other side of the office and grab their system and maybe get a little bit more information from their working repository. If if it were a remote development system, theoretically if their public server is a hosted one it will probably out-survive the developer and so you'll still have access to what's left of the developer's public patches that you hadn't already grabbed... Then you just re-route around the hole. If you lose an entire office, that may be unfortunate, but you haven't lost nearly as much data as you seem to think (and as would happen in the case that fabjan pointed out where there was a central server in that office in which you could actually lose everything)... Theoretically devj should still have a buildable repository and even though there may be man-hours of lost work, there's a pretty good possibility of rebuilding entirely from devj's repository (he doesn't need write access to any other repository than his own). But, even what is lost in this case is still going to be potentially smaller than what you imagine: it's mostly going to be work in progress data (wasn't ready to be publicly exposed) or "side-branch" data outside of the main line of development that needed more work before devj would have integrated it into his own copies of the repositories. ...and that's before you even get into the world of back-ups. Theoretically, devj's office would set up a server to auto-get clones of every public repository in the other office, first because it would speed up devj's workflow if he can ping a local server for updates rather than a number of remote servers individually, and second because that means that devj's office could have entire local backups of remote activity. Ultimately it's easier to argue that the decentralized case will survive better than the centralized case every time, because in a decentralized world a smart enough "code organism" is going to be multiply redundant and adaptable as circumstances change.

Socialist Software : A simple Django life stream - Socialist Software

Thu, 3 Jul 2008 21:01:08 +0000

I could see a use for a middle-ground... The hang-up for tumblelogs of n-feeds is you generally need n-feed-APIs and so a central service like FriendFeed or similar might be a great way to bootstrap with 1-API-to-n-feeds to a StreamItem+FriendFeed database. As you want more specific data from feeds you could then slowly add in the other feeds on your own, dropping them from your "FeedFriend pull" as you add in your own particular code... This may end up somewhat along the lines of what I eventually do.