As of late I have been suffering from some pretty significant pain in my hands while operating a keyboard and mouse. As my career requires me to be on a PC pretty much all day, I have had to find ways to play games without these traditional PC inputs while at home. My solution was to purchase a XBox 360 controller along with a wireless dongle that allows it to connect to a Windows PC. Fortunately, there are a number of applications that support joypads and the 360 controller specifically without any additional effort. The most notable of these would be pretty much every Valve game based on the Source engine such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Half-Life 2. However, a lot of games do NOT support this by default and that is where things begin to get fuzzy. I did some research as to what can be done to play games without gamepad or controller support using my XBox 360 controller and to my surprise, there were quite a few solutions. There are number of applications that allow you to map keyboard and mouse movements and button presses to an alternate controller. The three most popular are listed below:
Pinnacle Game Profiler
Homepage – http://pinnaclegameprofiler.com/
Cost – $19.95
Joy2Key
Homepage – http://www.electracode.com/4/joy2key/JoyToKey%20English%20Version.htm
Cost – Free
XPadder
Homepage – http://www.xpadder.com/
Cost - $10.00
If someone were to ask me what I hated most about the society that I lived in, my number one answer would be Competitive Eating. In a world where many are starving, even in our own backyards, we think it is acceptable to watch people gorge themselves not because they hungry or because they need sustenance but because it is considered entertainment. On November 8th, 2008, Patrick Bertoletti ate 47 slices of pizza in only ten minutes and set a Major League Eating record. On February 11th, 2006, Sonya Thomas ate 8 lbs of chili cheese fries in ten minutes to do the same. Don Lerman even once ate seven quarter pound sticks of butter in five minutes. Just sticks of butter. Why man, why? Last I checked, the food that these individuals devoured for the sake of fun was enough to feed a small African town for upwards of three years! Imagine all the kids sitting around starving to death when they could instead be eating Chili Cheese Fry Buttered Pizza(tm) and living a happy, fat life? Seriously though, it is fucking disgusting and arrogant that we even allow such leagues to even exist. Also, I have copyrighted the idea for Chili Cheese Fry Buttered Pizza(tm) and have submitted it to Jimmy Dean for consideration. Wish me luck.
After competitive eating, if someone were to ask me what I hated second most about the society that I lived in, I would say it is driving and dealing with other drivers on the road. Social norms, consideration for other human beings and any level of politeness goes right out the window the instant someone steps into and begins piloting a motor vehicle. Individuals who are rational and with common sense seem to completely forget that they are driving a ton of metal, hurtling along at 80 miles an hour down a packed highway where a small mistake could kill or main. People are willing to risk an enormous financial investment, their safety and the safety of those around them so that they can get to their destination a good five seconds earlier. It is a perfect example that John Gabriel’s Internet Fuckwad Theory is alive and well not only on the internet but in real life as well.
I live in the greater Philadelphia area. I don’t live in the city itself but I do live in a populated area that is not too far outside of it. The traffic and behavior of drivers is pretty atrocious but taken in small doses, I can handle it by closing my eyes and pretending that I am actually in a hot tub with Christina Hendricks. Unfortunately, my job sometimes calls for me to have to commute from one side of the city to the other in a manner that pretty much guarantees I have to drive within the actual city limits. It is only about twenty-five miles each way but that number will seem like light-years while sitting in stopped traffic along with a million other cocksuckers who care nothing about anyone on the road but themselves. The other day while returning from work, I was stuck in such a jam. After nearly two hours of travel and with still a few more minutes to go, I went to exit from a major highway and I began to drive around an off-ramp curve. As I slowed down to an acceptable speed for a curvy exit ramp, I looked into my rear view mirror and realized that someone was behind me. Right behind me. Close enough that I began to feel personally violated and concerned for the virginity of my anus. Unhappy with his distance from my car, I slowed even further to send the message that he needed to back the fuck off. Instead of taking my advice, he sped up and passed me dangerously on the ride side of my car, in the middle of an exit ramp, by using a narrow shoulder lane. At that point, something snapped. Two hours of pent up rage and anger at being stuck in traffic suddenly reached its boiling point and I broke like I have never broke before.
Before I even really thought about what I was doing, I sped up and jumped on the ass of the guy who had just passed me. I revved my engine, waved my middle finger in the air and screamed whatever I could think of to scream. The words “fuck“, “fuckass“, “shitfucker” and “fuckdick” were uttered at least ten times each in a three second period, for certain. As we finished our merge onto the destination road, I blew into the passing lane and pulled up alongside him where I could look at him face-to-face and show him my anger. I looked over at the guy and noticed that he was a much older fellow than me. He was also obviously scared out of his mind as he would not even turn to look out his window at me, the psycho who was driving insanely, honking, revving and screaming. I rolled down my window and prepared to give this guy the tongue lashing of a lifetime. I took a deep breath and I screamed:
“EAT A GIANT BAG OF DICKS!”
I rolled up my window and drove off, adrenaline pumping and rage finally subsiding. I noticed a few miles down the road that while I was now in the right lane and the dickhead I had dealt with on the offramp was in the left, he refused to pull up alongside or pass me until he was certain there was no way we would wind up within eye contact range again. I had apparently scared the living shit out of him. That thought probably should have satisfied me as it was my intention at the time but instead I felt embarassed. I had let anger take a hold of me and cloud my good judgement. Even during that few seconds of road rage driving, I could have hurt myself, the dickhead, or other around us. Worst of all, the best I had been able to come up with when finally getting a chance to tell him off was to eat a bag of dicks.
What in the hell does that even mean?
I spent the past 15 minutes searching through Google Video and YouTube trying to find a TV trailer for Avatar that I have seen several times in which it states in between flashing scenes that it is THE BEST MOVIE EVER. That’s right. A movie with the balls to declare to us that every movie ever made can go fuck itself because this one trumps them all. I was half expecting the DVD to have trouble fitting into my Xbox due to giant testicles hanging off the side of disc, but somehow I managed to get it into the tray without any unexpected male genitalia getting in the way. Anyhow, after searching through thirty different TV commercials and about seven-thousand other Avatar related videos, it was fairly impossible for me to find the commercial I was looking for so you’ll all have to take my word on it. Or, turn on your TV right now and there is a one-in-three chance that it will already be playing along with its subliminal message that convinces you that watching Avatar cures cancer and grows your boobs by a full cup in only three weeks.
It wasn’t until I was handed someone else’s copy of the movie that I had to pay nothing for that I decided to give it a chance. Sure it looked generic and the commercials were so incredibly arrogant, but everyone kept telling me it was awesome. How can I not trust the opinion of people? People that I know. People that I trust! So we sat down for 162 minutes in front of a large plasma screen TV…
Premise
It’s hard to believe that anyone in the world that can be accessed via television, movies, newspapers, magazines, the internet, blimps, smoke signals or carrier pidgeons hasn’t already heard about Avatar and seen most of its best scenes via trailers or advertisements. I am pretty sure that if James Cameron had been given permission, he would have burned a giant Avatar logo into the moon so that we would be reminded every night that we should go see it. Nothing wrong with that idea. Why shouldn’t we create a monument to the self-proclaimed BEST MOVIE EVER on the moon? However, just in case you have been frozen in ice in a glacier since prehistoric times and you just woke up fifteeen minutes ago and decided to read this as your very first method of getting reacquainted with society:
Avatar is a movie about a planet far from Earth. Many alien species live there but the most intelligent of which appears to be the Na’vi. Replacing the term “Na’vi” with “Tall Blue Native Americans” will probably work just as well so feel free to do it for the rest of this article if so inclined. A large human company is excavating resources from the planet. Specifically, a metal called unobtanium. No really, that is the best name they could come up with. In predictable fashion, the Na’vi are living in a giant tree that is situated on top of the most profitable area to mine this metal and the evil humans and their evil corporation will do anything to move them out of the way, even create bioengineered Avatars that look and move like the Na’vi but are actually controlled by humans. Put it all together and hi-jinks ensue. For two-and-a-half-hours.
The Good
I bet you expected me to start off by complaining and whining and saying bad things. Instead I am going to start with what I did like about the movie – it was entertaining. It can be tough for a movie of this length to hold my attention for the entire feature but at no point did I feel bored or like I was struggling through. It actually is pretty engrossing and isn’t that what movies are really supposed to be about? Additionally, the environments and characters, while still not perfectly believable or rendered, are very well done. It is rare to see such human looking emotions and movements out of computer generated characters but it works well here. The downside is that some of the scenes where live action sets and characters were interacting with animated ones, the transition is a bit obvious and tough to swallow. One scene where a naked, old Sigourney Weaver is sat down in the middle of hundreds of computer generated Na’vi under a fake computer generated tree is especially jarring.
The Bad
Well, to put it bluntly, this is the most generic and cliched movie I have ever seen. Ever. Anyone who has ever seen an action movie in their life can pretty much predict what is going to happen in each scene, what the results later in the movie will be, what many lines of dialogue are going to be and even what a character is going to develop into as the movie progresses. What? Michelle Rodrigeuz plays the tough but loyal military pilot who has gruff and tough lines? HOLY SHIT NO WAY! Here are some actual lines from the movie itself:
Col Quaritch: You are not in Kansas anymore, you are on Pandora, ladies and gentlemen, respect that fact every second of every day.
Trudy Chacon: [fires on Quaritch's Hellicopter] You’re not the only one with a gun, Bitch!
Jake Sully: Look, at first it was just orders. And then, everything changed. Okay, I fell in love. I fell in love with the, with the forest, with the Omaticaya people, with you. With you.
Jake Sully: It’s over.
Col Quaritch: Nothing’s over while I’m breathing.
Here is me converting those lines so that they fit into a new movie I’m producing called SMAVATAR – INVASION OF THE BALL GRABBERS:
Col Steve: You are not in Kansas anymore, you are on Planet Phobos, ladies and gentlemen, respect that fact every second of every day.
Jackie Bam Bam: [fires on Steve's Hellicopter] You’re not the only one with a gun, Bitch!
Molly Jackson: Look, at first it was just orders. And then, everything changed. Okay, I fell in love. I fell in love with the, with the forest, with the Ball Grabber people, with you. With you.
Molly Jackson: It’s over.
Col Steve: Nothing’s over while I’m breathing.
You could pretty much take Avatars entire script, insert some random names in the place of what is already there and have yourself another billion dollar grossing film! I can’t wait!
Final Verdict
It isn’t bad. It is entertaining and it is pretty, it’s just not original. In fact, it might be the most cliched, generic, hackneyed and predictable piece of entertainment to have ever been released. Even Reefer Madness had me in more suspense than Avatar ever did at any point. Watching Avatar wouldn’t be a mistake but you won’t be missing anything by passing it up. More importantly, I can tell you from first hand experience that despite its own claims, Avatar is not the best movie ever. Not even close.
I have been pretty obsessed with a band called The Protomen since I finally gave into all the suggestions from my friends and various websites, urging me to give them a listen. To elaborate on what makes them unique, The Protomen have two albums in which every song from each is chronologically ordered in a way that they tell a story using both instruments, lyrics and even the liner notes of their albums in combination. The story is one of a dystopian future when robots control “The City” from a central lair and everything is controlled by one evil man named Dr Wily. The story is about heroes and villians and a battle for mankind, being fought by robots. In case you didn’t already figure it out, the story is based on the characters from the Mega Man games. Regardless of the this influence, the music and story are almost completely original.
So, does the idea of a rock opera based on Mega Man sound awesome? That’s because it fucking is. Holy shit, it is. After seeing The Protomen live my first time at PAX East 2010, I knew that we had to see them again and soon. We began to plan trying to drive up to see them in either Baltimore or New York City as shows were coming up soon but imagine my joy when a few weeks ago I checked online to see that new shows had been added. The Protomen were coming to Philadelphia! We bought half a dozen tickets and a couple nights ago we went to see them perform at The Khyber.
What is The Khyber? It can only be described as a tiny little shithole of a bar. The bartender seemed angry and took an immediate dislike to us. A guy sitting at the bar next to one of my friends was talking. A lot. To himself. The bathroom had more writing on the walls than any place I had ever been and I was only slightly taken-aback when the text directly in front of my urinal said “I AM WATCHING YOU PEE“. Looking away didn’t help much as to the left was a scary looking bunny rabbit scribbled into the wall and to the right was text reading “DIAL 1-610-731-9811 FOR A BLOWJOB“. I sighed, memorized that number for later use and then continued my waiting. Finally, after the opening band had finished, we walked down to watch The Protomen set up. The pre-show was entertaining in itself as we observed them try to cram drums, at least four keyboards, several guitars, several mics, a violin, a trumpet, a giant drum and nine people onto the tiny, tiny Khyber stage. Finally they were in place and we were treated to an awesome rendition of Toto’s – Hold The Line as a warmup:
They began to play and we got to experience an entire set from the band with us in the front row of a tiny, tiny little room that couldn’t have possibly been holding more than fifty people. A totally different experience from PAX but still awesome. Pictures from the show:
Introduction
I always find it difficult to review or judge certain types of games that rely on user generated content. Recent examples of such software would include things like Little Big Planet, Garry’s Mod or Spore. “Games” like these are either very heavily dependant on the creativity of the community or in themselves are more of a tool or development environment and therein lies the confusion. Do I judge what the tool provides in itself? Do I judge based on what I am able to generate during my personal experiences? Do I judge on what the community has come up with so far? Do I judge based on what potentially could be created as the community matures? At what point do you draw the line between a tool and its creations?
Sleep Is Death is a new, independant game, developed by Jason Rohrer. At first glance, it might appear to be some sort of interface to create 8-bit RPG games or another adventure game like you played back in the 90’s. Crude, low resolution graphics. Relatively amateur art and dialogue. But when you look deeper, you realize that the goal of SiD is not to wow you with looks. Instead, SiD is to provides you some very basic tools that will allow for dynamic, impulsive coordination between two individuals in a very unique way.
What Is Sleep Is Death?
To be a bit less vague, Sleep Is Death provides the ability for two players to connect together via a LAN or a remote IP over the internet. Once connected, the host is the “controller” and the client that connected is the “player“. Starting with the host, each individual has the chance to interact with the current screen and submit their actions during their turn, in which time their changes are passed to the other player to view and react to. The player only has the option to move their character, create a single chat bubble and/or create a small box with an arrow, indicating an action they want their avatar to attempt to do. I say attempt because it is completely up to the controller to decide the results of the players input. The controller can move, modify or remove any object on the screen. They can change the background entirely, change the music being played, move the player, lock the player in place and even make any object talk or display a narrative box. In short, the player attempts to interact with the world that the controller has laid out and the controller responds in whatever way he feels necessary.
The controller can have art and musical assets premade and ready to go but he can also attempt to create them on the fly. The key point to all this is that each turn is timed. The default is thirty seconds, but it is configurable and it is this time limit that gives SiD its unique, improv feel. One other feature of the game that may not sound important but is absolutely vital to its enjoyment is the idea of the saved flip book. After you complete a game, your story is not lost. The player can browse into his SiD folder and find that every game he has ever played is saved and stored into a folder with an index HTML page. Viewing this page will show a flip book of every scene and every turn that was taken during that game. It is amazing how different a story will feel when viewed as a quick tale that takes only a minute or two to browse through as compared to the sixty-minutes it took to generate. There are already resources online that allow the uploading and viewing of these flip books and while some are of questionable quality (for example, anything I have submitted), there are others that are glorious. The ability to share and relive the moments that you generate during what is essentially an game of impromptu, quick reactions is awesome.
With the game in hand and a basic understanding of how to play, I jumped onto SiDTube.com and took part in a couple of games with random folks on the internet…
My Experiences So Far
Really there is nothing I can say that won’t be best explained by viewing the results of the games themselves. Here are my first experiences as that of a player in Sleep Is Death:
As much as I wanted to play a few more games like this, the demand for games on SiDTube is enormous so I decided instead to make the scary jump into being a controller. I had never done it and all I had to work with was the assets that the game came with or assets that I had taken from other controllers. The first several games as a controller went like so:
- Totally Random and Vulgar
- An Adventurer’s Quest
- Mentally Insane
- A Murder Mystery
- All Stars VS Giant Woman
All of these were done using assets that I had not created and had no pre-planning.
The Good
- Turn Time Limits – Pushing the player and the controller to make decisions with limited time is key. It is certainly possible for the entire story of any game to be something that is scripted and “on rails” but it would seem to defeat one of SiD’s greatest strengths. Quick and on-the-fly decisions lead to the most potentially interesting and fun interactions that occur and is much of what makes Sleep is Death work.
- Shared Resources – The capability to share assets is great. Not only can you easily download and install packs that are created by other players to use in your own games, but it is actually automatic in the cases where you are the player in someone elses hosted game. Did you like the assets from the last game you played in? Good. It was already downloaded into your own Sleep Is Death installation and you can begin using it immediately. Stellar.
- Flipbooks - There isn’t much I can say here that I didn’t already elaborate on above. Being able to relive your old SiD games and share them with others is one of the biggest benefits to its enjoyment.
- Freedom – Sleep Is Death gives you freedom. You can do anything you want with it and the possibilities are quite nearly endless.
The Bad
- Limited By The Controller – The player-controller level of power can feel a bit skewed. Sure you expect the individual named THE CONTROLLER to have a large say in what occurs but the inability for a player to even move from a room unless the controller allows it can lead to situations where scenarios feel forced or on-rails.
- Interface - The interface isn’t too hard to grasp at first. However, being able to execute advanced, complex or numerous actions as a controller while under a time limit can sometimes be severely frustrating due to the front ends quirks. Finding and utilizing assets can also be a major pain if you don’t spend time beforehand making sure that they are organized and you know how to search for them. Additionally, there are very limited options and the interface provides poor indicators when attempting to connect to other players. This is understandable considering the game was designed with LAN and not internet play in mind, but can still be frustrating.
- Flipbook - With the good, there is also some bad. The current flipbook implementation only provides the player with a flipbook which leaves the controller at the whim of the player to post or send him the files. The flipbook also seems to simply take screen captures of the players screen which leads to some absolutely huge images if you use a custom resolution.
Conclusion
Simply enough, SiD is a great idea and a very unique experience. To those that have ever played a tabletop game like Dungeons & Dragons, you will immediately grasp the potential for shaping and controlling a world for others to enjoy. Despite a few shortcomings and quirks, it is hard not to recommend Sleep is Death if you have at least one friend interested in the idea. At $7 each (or $14 for two copies) you don’t really have much to lose and the potential for at least a few very memorable experiences is totally worth it.
Additional Resources
This is a blog. In many ways it is a continuation of another blog that I started in April 2008 that was specific to the MMORPG of Eve-Online. At times I struggled to keep that previous blog focused inside of its niche, often going off on tangents about general gaming topics, candy bars, short stories and even salad. With my Eve-Online days numbered and my desire to write silly shit still growing, I have decided to start again with this new site. Enjoy!
…or don’t. I don’t really give a fuck.
