Mac Mini Game Console

I was surprised to see this article on uses of a Mac Mini completely leave out the notion of hooking it up to a TV as a gaming platform. Several blogs and forums have mentioned it, although most dismiss it when trying to compare it directly to current gen consoles. So let me take another stab at selling it.

But before rattling off some steps to making such a platform - let's remember ... the goal wouldn't be to make a device which would stampede all over the next gen Sony or Nintendo AmazingBox 3000. That's just not possible - those are specific devices with subsidized hardware intended to glut an entertainment market for years. You can't beat that game without playing the game by their rules, and nobody we know has the money to do that.

The goal would be to make a unit which still had respectable power for this generation that was easily accessible and modifiable by a community. If you consider that there is still a community homebrewing games for the Dreamcast, you could see where the demographic exists for this.

This wouldn't be about trying out the latest Unreal-powered game out with your friends while your eyes melt to amazing graphics - for that you'll need the latest video card or console. This would be about a homebrew community that doesn't have to hack into hardware and reverse engineer code to get samples running, but one that could leverage Apple's more than willing game developer assets right off the bat. While the initial cost is certainly higher (I don't think I need to comparison shop a new Mac Mini against a used Dreamcast), it would instantly eliminate the black box that "protects" every other console out there.


So what would it take?

Obviously, a Mac Mini
For the dev platform, I think someone would possibly be stuck with the lowest end model Mini. I know that probably bites, because most people will prefer the Mini with at least a little more RAM to it. However, this would help insure that whatever was developed on the Mini would run on almost any other Mini.

Means to a Television
The Mini is already built for it, though for us "regular television" folk, we'll need the adaptor above.

A pair of XBox Controllers ... and the means to use them
Someone's already written drivers to hook up some XBox controllers to your Mini. So just grab some USB love and hook it up.

Some Game Development
So you've got your mini, slapped one side to your 32" and the other to a pair of joysticks. You can't just sit there and stare at nothing, right? Here are some starting points to making your own Apple game:

Apple's Own: Out of the box, OSX doesn't sound like such a shabby framework.

Torque: The rockstar of indie engines, Torque powered Tribes 2 ... and is happy on an OSX box.

PTK: Little company called Phelios has made a starter SDK for Windows and OSX. While you still need some C++ knowledge and a compiler, Phelios is willing to do some of the heavy lifting.

BlitzMax: BlitzBasic has been around for a long time - and this version of the low entry gaming SDK is currently OSX only.



So $500 for a Mac Mini, $20 for S-Video adaptor, $50 for a pair of shiny new XBox controllers and $5 for some software to run them and about $100 for and SDK ... you get your own personal gaming console and development platform for less than $700. Remember, just a dev version of a PSP costs more than a economy car - and try to tell me it isn't a good deal.

Naturally a few technical concerns would remain. Like how easy is it to code for multiple joysticks and other console - orientated designs ... but at least the majority of the hard stuff has been eliminated.

DICE Gets It

I could rant a bit more about my trials against an evil Trojan/Worm ... I could, but I won't. That's how much I respect you.

Instead, I'll notice this:

Modifications
FZ: When Valve released Half-Life 2 last year criticism quickly arose due to the fact that they assumed people wanting to do modifications would have access to the commercial compiler and IDE Microsoft Visual C++ .NET 2003, which costs several hundreds of euros. What tools will be required to fully modify Battlefield 2 in addition to the tools that DICE will provide?(Steven Svensson)

LG: We have greatly enhanced our support for modders by giving the option to create modifications through the script language Python. This means that there will be no requirement to have access to Microsoft Visual C++ as you mentiond in your question.

from here...

That's excellent news. My biggest problem with engines like Source and Doom 3 is that they just assume you'll have a few hundred to spend on MS's IDE's. There's already much hubbub in the modding community about the basic necessity of pirating 3DS Max (which, btw, it took one of the creators of 3DS Max to jump start modding on the first BF) simply to create models. Efforts by Valve and Epic to include free versions of competing tools simply doesn't add up to Max's domination in the industry. At least with Unreal you don't have to spend a nickel to code for the thing. Doom 3 comes close, because you can do an awful lot of scripting and creating objects without having to compile a line of code - but to do the serious lifting you'll need to acquire Visual Studio.

It's really a ridiculous requirement in this day and age of modding. Sure, in the days of Quake and Doom it was swim at your own risk - but these days modding is a fundamental part of the industry. It adds longevity to titles, spurs innovation and helps the studios find talented help risk free. Lowering the entry requirements should be a high priority.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Python is pretty powerful, but will they extend all their objects via a scripting language? Unreal works in a similar way - allowing modders to use UnrealScript without poking directly into the C++ engine itself. Will it be fast? Will there be a compiler? Will there be Python examples to pull from (much of Unreal's actual game logic is in UnrealScript, providing a huge library of examples for coders to pull from).

In any case, this just bumped BF2 far up the potential purchase ladder for me.

Dead Day Diary

Windows hates me. It tries to leave me every chance it gets. Last night while trying to update some software for my digital camera, I let it reboot when it asked. Then it crashed. For the inexperienced of the ways of Windows going southward, here's a tip. When Safe Mode boots into an Kernal Error ... you're fscked.

The best thing Microsoft did in XP was it's wondrous repair mode - several times more effective than previous versions and has now saved my butt twice.

So yeah, sometimes I come home and work. Sometimes I come home and play. Then sometimes I wonder why one blue screen is a deeper shade of blue than another.

Regular's Return DS

Back from the Big City (like Chicago is something to sneeze at ... wait, was that a pun?) and I'm catching up up on some reading material - blogs, gaming news, my inbox of 200+ messages.

One of those was Robin Hunicke's gewgaw blog. Robin being one of those incredibly attractive, intelligent women who appears to do little but think about games or play them. In other words, she's probably not of this world. In a write up of 2004 gaming, she mentions:

And then there's the Nintendo DS – which blends all my favorite portable game features with a touch screen and ad-hoc wi-fi. I've only managed to play XX – XY: Feel the Magic so far – but it's already got me dreaming about new kinds of gameplay and interactivity.

Which made me wonder ... why don't I like the DS? I also have a fetish for touch screens (couldn't resist putting that mental image in someone's skull, sorry) and it's hard to argue against. In fact, I'm all for gaming devices trying something new or interesting. Hell, I generally insist on it.

But I don't think DS is really trying anything all that interesting. In fact, it feels terribly intrusive to me. Two screens, one being a touch screen - it's shoving Nintendo's idea of innovation right in your face. Imagine a game that didn't try to take advantage of the two screens - you'd have this big dead panel in the middle of your device.

Why doesn't the DS sport a nifty analog stick like most of the other current gen handhelds? Because Nintendo insists you use their touch screen. See what I mean? If they had one screen that was touch enabled and an analog stick, they would have given developers and gamers the best of both worlds - a touch of innovation with some tried and true evolution. As designed, the DS feels something like platform around a gimmick - and I don't want a platform that I have to wonder how each title will make use of that gimmick.

And to keep my oath of making them my underdog of the year ... it should be noted that such a handheld exists. The Zodiac uses both a touch screen and an analog, and they apparently work swimmingly.

I like Nintendo, and I like that they try new tricks with hardware. Lately though, it feels like they've just been trying too hard. I mean ... bongos? Bongos??

Maya Angelou

Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk

One paints the beginning
of a certain end.

The other, the end of a
sure beginning.

Brief Pause

I'll be incommunicado after today for almost a week. I'll be in New York. If anyone is in New York, look me up. I'll be the one without a hat.

Now isn't a good time to die, boss

I finally took a break and played on the Republic Commando demo a bit. I was probably anticipating this demo a bit more than the usual joe because Commando sounded remarkably similar to my original design goals for Unreal Defense Squad. That goal was to allow a player to think about a squad-based strategy in quick order ... in other words, allow the "squad commander" to react to the environment smoothly enough to get their squad into position.

It really seemed like Commando would be that game, which made it easier to abandon that design for the current turn based one. Now before I speak too harshly about the demo, let me say that the production values of this game are simply through the roof. Everything oozes of quality, from the models to the textures to the voice acting. The dialogue doesn't skip a bit, the HUD is easy to learn and the weapons feel really solid.

Unfortunately, that's doesn't alter how different it is from how I perceived it from the ads/previews. I really do try and ignore hype, but I can't help to think I was kinda told something different than this game offers - but I might have just romanticized it in my head. Basically the game boils down to moving your mouse around trying to find hot points to command your soldiers. That pile of barrels might be a good sniping point, or it might not be, but you won't know until an icon tells you.

If it is a good sniping point, rest assured you should use it as such. See, your magic helmet knows what is going to happen in a situation before you do, and only suggests actions which will directly aid you. There isn't so much of a choice of strategy here as simply figuring out which one the developers laid out for you to solve. Many times this seems like it will require figuring out which spot on the wall they meant you to place a charge. All the while limitless enemies spawn to rattle you.

Weirder still is that your squad seems to have limitless amounts of bacta to revive a player, but not to heal when they're simply limping around. This means once you're down, you're probably going to do down again. You can't even be proactive about bandaging.

This might sound damning, but it's really not. I think Commando will be a good game in the long run. I'm glad to see a developer change up the basic ratmaze shooter design with some clever interactivity. I think if the player is willing to play along, the game would be very enjoyable.

It's just hard for me to play along when I'm pointing at the rubble the mercs are using as cover and thinking ... if you'd just place a charge there, we'd have a way out AND a lot of dead mercs.

But I guess your way works too.

Well, that's disappointing

Just scanned through the IGN review of Cops 2170, a turn-based strategy that just got released. It's not particularly flattering to say the least. Apparently the interface sucks, the mechanics suck, it's not much fun and the production quality is cheap. The reviewer offers a few forced plus points in the music category and pats the developer on the head for not having too many typos. Ouch.

It's pretty scary to read such a thing while developing a turn-based mod for Unreal. I like to think the mechanics are coming together, but it's easy to get narrow minded about that sort of thing. It's the same reason why you let someone else read your essay before turning it in. You've written this thing, stared a this thing and lived with this thing. You know it like you know your girlfriend - and not the one night stand type of girl, but the shares your toothbrush because she knows you won't mind kind of girl.

I don't understand how turn based games keep managing to get it so wrong when they have relatively good examples to steal from. Between Fallout and X-Com, a lot of the bases are covered in terms of what works and what doesn't work. Of course as I say that, Unreal Defense Squad isn't following that mold exactly either. Part of this isn't my choice - there are limitations to taking an engine for a first person shooter and chopping it into time units. Part of them are my opinion, like the feeling that turn based games needlessly hide under complicated menus and interfaces. I'm trying to make a turn based tactics game that still has a bit of shooter's soul to it. One that you can pick up quickly and play quickly.

But it's also disappointing to see this because turn based games have gotten such a bad rap for so long. Real time is just so darned trendy and it's easy to think of it as the natural evolution of Turn Based Strategy, but they're really completely different fish. I'm not going weigh one against the other - but I've played both and they don't feel like playing an advancement over the other. They seem like completely different games to me. TBS has room to advance in many ways that have nothing to do with throwing out turns themselves, but as long as we keep getting titles like this, it will continue to be the ugly stepchild of strategy gaming.

Jonathan Swift

cummings

!

Tapwave versus the Man. That man being Sony.

Call it kismet, but shortly after my desire for a portable and social gaming platform that I could develop for without taking out a loan of my house (which would be interesting to say the least, since I don't own it and only pay rent for the first floor), I have an online discussion with someone about some C++ functionality. Knowing most people only via Unrealscript, I asked what he was doing - and he was developing for the Tapwave Zodiac.

I remember the Zodiac coming out and I kinda remember thinking about getting one. Then it sorta came and I never heard about it and through pure lack of peer pressure I more or less forgot about it. I'm a bad boy. I ended up getting a Game Boy Advance. Seriously, I suck.

If you think I'm being overly dramatic go do some googling on the product. Words like impressive are bandied about like pez and reviewers seem to just get sucked into the device. It's far more functional than the GBASP or Nintendo DS, with robust MP3 and internet apps right out of the box. It's more of a PDA than the PSP will ever try to be, built right on top of Palm OS (and for anyone who remembers the old Palm Fansite Hijacked ... that was me, so you know I feel about Palm devices). It's got two ... count em two SD slots which will allow you to massively upgrade the thing. It might not have the graphics of the PSP, but it's definately no slouch - the ATI chip nestled inside seems to be able to pull off graphics edging to the DS level of nifty. You might be afraid that a PDA you'd never heard of had zero games for it - but you'd be wrong. Duke Nukem, DooM, Tony Hawk - they've all made appearances. And if you do get a hankering to develop for it - Tapwave seems more than friendly about helping you out ... and it won't cost you the purported $15,000 for a PSP SDK.

I'm seriously contemplating getting one. But it will be a shame to see Sony come in and crush it like so many grapes.

The Zodiac costs over $250, over $300 for the high end version. See, Tapwave is a company of just a few joes and they don't have a diversified multinational corporation to subsidize their hardware. I'm sure if they could jam the power of an XBox into your fist and only charge $50 for it, they would - but my guess is that the only banks that would fund such a venture have direct ties to offshores and sharks.

But just because it isn't the most powerful gaming handheld on the market doesn't mean it might not be the best. Sony might have the slicker, meatier product - but they also hold all the cards with it. You have to go through Sony to develop for it. PSP has custom OS with a more or less clean slate ... unlike Palm's massive library. The Zodiac sounds far more rugged - no flying discs here. Zodiac has a slick bluetooth implentation. Oh heck, I could go on forever. Basically the Zodiac sounds superior in nearly everyway but three. 1) It's more expensive. 2) The graphics aren't quite as robust. 3) It doesn't have the massive juggernaught which is Sony behind it.

So right here and now these guys get my vote as underdog of the year.

I Have A Daydream. Maybe a mini one.

It's not a big dream, or a glorified fantasy, or anything along those lines. It's just something I'd really like to be able to do some day. Developing games as a hobby instead of a profession certainly has a lot of disadvantages. Like no salary and very few people will ever even acknowledge that you ever accomplished anything. Course, there are lots of advantages - like not having to worry about budget or deadlines and being able to brag to your friends.

Sadly not a lot of my friends actually play the things I write. Mostly working with the Unreal engine and not many of them really adhere to it much. In fact, ironically the people I know the least are probably the ones who play the things I develop the most.

It would be nice to reverse that. In my daydream, I'm able to code and design on one box. Once it's running, I'm able to put it on another box, jam some controllers in it, hook it up to my TV and sit down on the couch and play the game with my girlfriend. In fact, in this daydream I spend half the day coding, part of the day drinking beer, and part of the day playing a game I made with a girl. I don't think there is a geek on Earth that wouldn't agree - that's a good day.

But is it crazy? I'm not sure. The chokepoint is this mythical box that can run PC code without alteration on a television ... with joystick support. There are few options. A modded XBox might work, for instance. A PC with a TV tuner/card is another choice. And then there's that Mac Mini that was just released.

The XBox is a hard choice because I don't like having to hack into someone's hardware just to do what I want. If Microsoft wanted me to be able to code for the XBox without knowing the secret handshake, they wouldn't have a secret handshake. The PCTV is a distinct possibility, provided a form factor that made sense could be negotiated. I don't really want a tower box to contend with. There is the advantage to the Mini - it's pretty much the perfect form factor. Problem there is that all my dev right now is on Windows.

Who knows, who knows. I'm likely to try by the end of the year though.

Poorly Crafted List of Gaming Demands

New Year. New Goals. New Demands.

Release X-Com for the Game Boy Advance I mean, it's only the best game ever made for one of the most popular platforms of all time. Do the math. Firaxis, Atari, I'm looking at you.

It's the AI, stupid Sorry, couldn't resist. But seriously, we get orders of magnitude better on everything else in gaming - graphics, sounds, controls, mechanics ... but 90% of the AI out there is still no smarter than we saw in Quake.

Release a new X-Com for the PC Yeah, there might be a trend here. Laser Squad Nemesis is great but limited, the new UFO series is from a different planet, and that leaves us with a WWII tactics game that apparently features giant Nazi robots. How is that I can stumble over ten different Tetris clones on the way to work, but I have to compile an decent emulator just to get back to this game?

If you're going Hollywood, do it right Fine, I can understand the big studios whoring out the tried and true, franchise orientated, innovation-bereft titles to fill the coffers ... but if gaming is going big studio, then let's take a page from the movie industry. Do one for the money, and then do one for the art.

Release a new X-Com for a console Told ya about that trend. The twist here is that making this for one to four players would be killer. Could still be turn based, where each players control different squads or responsibilities ... or it could work like X-Men: Legends. See, I'm flexible.

Stop with the slave labor It's time the industry started respecting itself a bit more. I don't think I really need to elaborate here.

Don't tease us, it's mean Anyone else tired of hype campaigns which begin a year before a title is released, often talking to length about features which haven't gotten a line of code to them? I'm guessing yes.

Nintendo and Sega: feel the love You're possibly the world's most innovative hardware company for games and possibly the world's most innovative software company for games. We've seen a bit of the magic on the DS. Make it work and keep it up.

Replayability, Replayability, Replayability The concept of PC titles having vast replayability seems to only be remembered in the RTS genre. It's been replaced in other genres, notably shooters, with modding - and we all know I love me mods. But that's doesn't excuse any genre from figuring out ways to games feel like permanent editions to our library again, instead of extended movie experiences.

Don't release Duke Nukem Forever Because honestly, that joke will never get old unless you do. Don't rob us of that.

Remember X-Com Seriously.

Ok, that's it for now. I might have more later.

I Heart Mercenaries

Well, love is such a strong word. I really like it though. This game pulls off emergence so effortlessly you don't entirely realize it's there. And they combined it with blowing the hell out of things, which every gamer keeps true to their heart.

It's passing the girlfriend test, though by the skin of it's teeth. Without the ability to wander around setting hookers on fire a la GTA, it's harder for her to burn off the frustration of the occasionally difficult combat system. Still, being able to wander around the countryside and play factions against each other, all the while lighting the place up in style - well, it's easy to get accustomed to that.

At the same time, there's a few frustrations. I don't really feel like my merc is capable of building anything as opposed to being this constant lone wolf. I miss the trend GTA was moving into of getting a house, owning a car, etc. I'm not saying a white picket fence would be appropiate, but it would be nice to have a carport to store that tank in. I can see why they went this route for balancing reasons, easier to keep the player a bit in check if they can't amass their own personal army, but it still feels a bit vacant in that category.

Most impressively is somehow you can still tell that this is from the guys who did Desert Strike, Jungle Strike, etc. There's this wonderful marriage between that classic gameplay and the fresh start of GTA-like wanderlust.

Well played, Pandemic. Looking forward to Destroy all Humans!

Battle Royale: UT2004 versus MMOs

There are lots of things I don't understand about gaming these days, but the latest must be the zeal in which Massively Multiplayer gamers are willing to subsidize for what the average gamer wouldn't even stand for if it was free. And what's really odd is that these are often the same people.

It's like lots of people love to hate Doom 3. But if id had only made it possible for a thousand people to wander around hell and upgrade their Plasma Gun Craftsmanship, all would have been forgiven. Even if not everyone could actually log into hell. See? It doesn't have to work, you see, it just has to promise to work massively when it does.

And if that makes any sense to you, please let me know how. So, how do these two things compare? Let's look.

	Unreal Tournament 2004	Typical MMO
Retail Price	About $50.00	About $50.00
Monthly Price	None	$10.00-$15.00
Online features	32 player max, hundreds of different servers.	Thousands of players online concurrently
Online Stability	Rock Solid	Usually flimsy
Online Security	Decent, few problems	Varies. Some have zero problems, others suffer from common problems inventory cloning, leveling scripts and character hacking.
Upgrades	Free bonus packs, free patches	Free patches, "non-mandatory" content packs costing $20-$50.
User modifications	At least a handful of high quality mods, hundreds of user based projects, completely free tools to develop out of the box.	Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Never will happen. Unless that MMO is Second Life.

OK, one could read that and say that I place an undue weight on user modifications - but I look at the wealth of gaming the UT2004 offers for free, which is itself limited really only to the energy of the user base playing it ... against the rather random ability to play the core game while still paying for it every day ... and I simply scratch my head.

I hope Guild Wars is successful, because right now I'm thinking the only reason MMO's are an attractive business model is for companies to trick gamers into digging into their pockets again and again and again and again.

I would also argue that there are things about an MMO that I'm going soft on. For instance, when Sony decided that PlanetSide was working the way "intended", they changed the core gameplay. And then they changed it again. And then again. Now that means that when someone reads a review of the game and decides to buy it - they could be buying something completely different. Sony could decide PlanetSide is just a rally race, and the gamers would just have to suck it down.

And when security goes wrong in your typical FPS, it can ruin a server, or in really grand cases effect the whole online community. But private servers and LAN games would still be fine. Security goes awry in an MMO, that could be it. The fat lady has sung, and took that fourty hours of level grinding with her.

I'm not saying MMO's are evil or inherently wrong. I think it's an interesting genre that I hope expands and evolves. I just think that if gamers assume that a) We will always pay a monthly few, because of server costs and b) These games will always be technical infeasible that the genre will have little reason to evolve. The problem with a) is that many companies work after market and don't charge a monthly fee for it (as shown by bonus packs, new modes, levels, etc.) and b) is self-defeating because some MMO's have been capable of stability.

An online chum and I were thinking of what it would take to do Minimal Massively Multiplayer, or an MMO network that ran off a normal MO framework. Maybe if we got that running, and Epic included the UT2004RPG mutator in every box ... they could just start charging a ten spot every thirty days?