In case anybody’s using VectorStorm for their own stuff, I wanted to make a quick comment about an upcoming change to the texture API. I’ve made this change inside the Lord codebase, and will be migrating it back into trunk as soon as it’s definitely stable.
In the previous API, to get a texture you called “vsTextureManager::Instance()->LoadTexture(“filename”);“, and when you were finished with the texture, you let it leak. In the new API, you just call “new vsTexture(“filename”);“, and delete the object normally when you’re finished with it. The new system still reference-counts textures internally (so if the texture is already loaded, you won’t end up with a second copy clogging up your video card’s memory or anything), but will now throw assertions if you don’t clean up your textures properly when your game shuts down. This makes textures work the same way as other objects within VectorStorm.
(wow.. nothing for two weeks, and then three posts in two days! It never rains but it pours!)
So the fine folks over at TIGSource have announced the start of a new competition. This latest one is the “Cockpit Competition”, focusing on games with a cockpit. Deadline is midnight on March 29th (though as there are no real prizes for winners, TIGSource competitions tend to be pretty laid-back about the enforcement of their deadlines). Further details can be found here.
Version 1.0 of MMORPG Tycoon was my entry into TIGSource’s “Procedural Generation” competition last year, and I haven’t entered either of their competitions since then.. though I really wanted to enter the Halloween competition! Sadly, between work and things backing up on VectorStorm, I probably won’t have time to enter this competition either.. though I’m having fun thinking about what sort of entry I might make.
I usually try not to do “day to day life” updates in this space, but it’s been so long since I posted an update that I felt like I really needed to explain why stuff has come to a standstill, recently.
The short version is that paying work is really quite busy at the moment, and when I get home in the evening (or occasionally, the extremely early morning), the last thing I’m wanting to do is to look at code (in fact, going fishing in World of Warcraft for fifteen minutes before going to bed is usually about the limit of what I’m feeling competent to do). For the past two weeks, I’ve been working straight through the weekend, and it’s likely to continue that way for at least the next week, and possibly longer than that.
On the plus side, all of this non-development time has given me time to reflect on what’s been going wrong with Lord, on what work needs to be done on the VectorStorm API, and where I want to go next. Most notably, it’s led me to a couple major questions about MMORPG Tycoon 2.0, which I’ll be asking about over on the forums, eventually (probably post-Lord).
So yes, I’m still alive. Just kind of incommunicado for at least one more week, and possibly for as much as two or three more weeks. Apologies!
While walking home from work, I realized that the Toyota Prius no longer appears weird to me.
This concerns me.
While reading a web forum a few years ago, I came across a posting which was allegedly by a professional screenwriter. I don’t remember the forum or the particular thread or I’d provide a link, but the gist of the comment was a criticism of a particular plot point in the storytelling of The Incredibles.
Just as a reminder, the basic premise of The Incredibles is that super-heroes have had to go into hiding; conceal their super powers and act as though they were normal citizens. According to the self-proclaimed screenwriter writing the criticism, his issue with the storyline was that after going underground, Mr. Incredible’s day job was to be an insurance salesman. He called it a “screenwriter’s shorthand”; that it was basically laziness on the part of the screenwriter, because the ‘insurance sales’ job by itself automatically implied a lot of things (sleazy boss, being unhappy with the job, etc) without the screenwriter ever having to actually construct any scenes or write any dialogue to show that or to explicitly elicit sympathy from the audience. There was just a smash cut from life before to Mr. Incredible in his cubicle, and the whole story was automatic in the eyes of the viewers.
At the time, I thought the complaint was silly. Of course it was a shorthand, but there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with shorthands. If it gets the idea across to the audience in less screen time, it means that you can keep moving along with the plot, without having to spend so much time explaining character motivations to the audience. It served its function perfectly adequately. I mean, at the end of the day, The Incredibles really was not about Mr. Incredible’s mundane job; that was merely a necessary plot point needed to thrust him into the main storyline.
I still hold that opinion, and I still think that that the screenwriter’s complaint against The Incredibles was a bit silly. But I’m taking it a little more seriously today, because I realise that I’m making essentially the same argument against video game design shorthands today.
More of me being a hypocrite beneath the fold.
Continue reading “The Incredibles, and Lazy Game Design”
