After another hiatus we have another show! It’s got some Grand Theft Auto IV, Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metriod Prime Hunters, as well as a bit of Planescape Torment, Supreme Commander and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan tracks. A good variety of upbeat tunes (and some lowbeat ones) for the start of summer.
Download the show in MP3 (86MB, 128Kbps) or Ogg (121MB, Q6) formats, and catch the playlist and notes on the shows page.
It might not be true academic AI, but I know it’d fool someone not in the know 
Those rules do kick ass in almost all of my tests 
It was really interesting working with a non-virtual problem of AI, since it let me know that one major area non-virtual projects have trouble with is accurate data gathering which is interpreted correctly, which took the major part of my time to implement. At least I wasn’t working in 3D, whew!
If I get anything good going, I’ll post more on it. I prefer some personality rather then milking routes with a ton of vehicles doing the same thing. I’ll have to keep up with builds however, since it’s not a complete API yet, sadly, and there will be complexity abound with players and AI’s being able to build across routes, and alter terrain as parts of a route is built.
Not a work of Shakespeare, and frankly I could have done with more proofreading. However, I can’t change it now, I just hope it states what I did well enough. 
The project itself is meant to achieve the aim of having a remote control car race around a track (as seen in the picture). I didn’t really do “AI” as such, but instead some simple rules to choose an action every second or so. The limitations of the hardware, it being a 1 core P4 machine with 512MB RAM meant that the 2 years of previously completed projects used enough resources anyway! Adding learning AI would have been tough.
The rules system worked fine however, the illusion of AI is there It also took a lot longer to bring the parts of the system that were required to gather information - image processing and analysis (to find the car and it’s direction), and route planning using waypoints (to find where to go next) - then it took to write rules to navigate around accurately. It got 10 laps completed easily, so I am pleased enough.
I’ll get back to my radio show for the rest of the semester now, and I might put up a page on my project with the code and so forth. Also, Never Mind The Polygons is on tonight, which I might have had to miss if my project was still being worked on
No VGMS this week (project work instead!). However, I stumbled upon an old bookmark, Rabbit and Mouse. Enjoyable random nonsense (and one I didn’t see before, updated around 6 months ago) which might hit a nerve or be quite funny
It overlapped, of course, with the advent of me playing videogames, and would you know it the prevalence of the same creation and destruction theme present in Lego is in many exceedingly good games? It can’t be by chance!
A prime example of creation-based games, and the earliest one I remember myself, is Sim City 2000. This really set a high standard personally for those games which you can build and personalise, making them your own. The newspapers especially were a great touch, since your expanding city always had it’s own (pretty randomised) tale to tell. Oh, Miss Sim, how you tease me so!
Second to this, and one that entices me still today, is Transport Tycoon, allowing you to build a transport empire on a huge map against AI opponents. I note this because it’s still seriously played today, in the form of Open Transport Tycoon. Give it a shot if you want an idea about a totally creation-based game!
In many games there are also at least the theme of creation in the story or setting, such as creating a barrier against evil, or creating some powerful artefact to do good. A plot hook could be creating a potion to heal the deadly disease conflicting the kings daughter, for instance, and this can crop up in tons of games regardless of the overall theme.
There are of course countless other construction and creation games, created well after 1994 (and many before of course…but I’m too young to know a lot about them ). A whole realm of Sim-tagged games generally relies on creating or constructing a world of some kind. I must note however, many do contain destruction. All the Sim City games have natural and unnatural disasters, which can be toggled by the player if they want to go on the path of destruction, and all the games need a nice destruction tool to correct mistakes! But of course, these are limited, and there is not a lot of wholesale destruction which is much fun, especially since you are destroying what you created.
So, what about games based solely around destruction? There are plenty that have it as a theme. Most games with a sole antagonist, which includes the majority of roleplaying and shooting, and fighting games, is entirely about self-preservation (usually of health or lives) and the destruction of enemies, leading up to the final destruction of the final boss (which, funnily enough, in many games is followed by the base exploding. Do we see a pattern here?). Many more contain the main aim is to destroy some artefact of power - it’s a staple of videogame stories!
Destruction based games have basically been around since the very early game Spacewar!, which was based on destroying asteroids, or even a second player. They’ve evolved, and are a common theme amongst many games which include a way to harm others. Some do contain minor creation elements - perhaps the customisation of equipment (or creation of spells or equipment), to outfit yourself. Generally, it’s more a case of shoot everything that moves.
I personally do enjoy the theme of destruction as long as I generally feel the destruction is warranted. There’s a reason I usually play the moral character in games, and usually never play as pure chaotic evil, since the destruction for the sake of it is utterly unappealing. I usually say chaotic evil, that is, evil that is out to destroy everything and tries to break all the laws, is stupid evil. I will be willing to play a megalomaniac supervillain, but only if he is a clever one who doesn’t indiscriminately kill of course!
Pick an RTS…most any RTS!
There are plenty of games which take the two extremes of creation and destruction and really put them together well. Of course, they can do it in many different ways. Example genres of course are usually strategy games, both turn based and real time. Usually you create your army/base/city/civilization and attempt to destroy your enemies army/base/city/civilization. Of course, destruction is not always the only answer, but in many games it is.
The middle ground, of course, includes other varieties. The construction of something, then destruction of that something can be brought up in games. The best example I can think of, since I don’t know any full games which implement it, is when you construct a huge, beautiful city in Civilization, just to have it captured by the enemy…so you must destroy that what you first owned. This can also happen in some turn based games if a unit or place revolts from your rule or command, meaning you now have to fight them.
This hybrid approach is very appealing to me, allowing me to compete against rivals and usually fight it in skirmishes, or parley with small bouts of peace, all the while constructing a force that is enough to crush them, the fools! MuahaHAHA!
The themes of creation (construction) and destruction are very strong ones. Many games are based solely around the one theme, and many others use it as a secondary theme to or to provide a core aim. Since games have used this since the dawn of arcades, it’s easy to put the theme in almost any genre and have it easily understood. Just remember when something is highlighted as red; it’s bad! shoot it!
I find both themes appealing for entirely different reasons, as I’ve said, and together form one of the main themes which keep me engaged in games. Creating things is always the most fun for me since it provides a creative outlet, especially when I can make something which really works well. Destruction of stuff (and no doubt the simple power of being able to destroy things) is really appealing too, since I don’t do much demolition work in real life, nor would I want to even pick up a real gun, and if the purpose of the destruction is a good one, there is no real reason why I’d not enjoy it. These are escapist fantasies, allowing me to do things which are impossible in real life!
Finally, just like Lego, the core themes can lead to many more exciting possibilities. I’m waiting for the game where I can construct up a brilliant world in one mode, then use that to power my own adventures by leaping into the same world in avatar form! At the moment, only game modders or creators get to do this, but who knows what might appear in the future, although I might be told Second Life already is this in part. The Lego player within me demands it, so sooner or later I’ll have to try and make this game myself if no one else does!
This was part of the Blogs of the Round Table for April. There’s a ton of good ones this month, check them out!
After a four week hiatus, we have another Video Game Music Show on our hands! This week it features a large variety of music, and has a third of the show dedicated to the recently released Super Smash Bros. Brawl remix tracks of classic games. Other favourites (which are downloadable) I got to play include Cave Story music (Huzzah!), and You Have To Burn The Rope credits track “Now You’re a Hero” by Reachground. I also played some random tracks from Timesplitters 2, Warcraft II and III, Sim City 2000 and many others!
Note: The sound is incredibly loud this time and clips several times. I didn’t do a pre-check since I started late, and the computers output sound was higher then usual annoyingly. It is still pretty fine if you turn it down a bit
Download the show in MP3 (93MB, 128Kbps) or Ogg (125MB, Q6) formats, and catch the playlist and notes on the shows page.
For a various amount of reasons I won’t be doing a show this week (and the previous weeks were Easter, when the studio was locked). If you want to listen to a few tracks I’ll be playing, one will certainly be from the Cave Story soundtrack, most likely a few of the battle themes and the main theme, which is retro-inspired at it’s best. That, and of course the end song to You Have To Burn The Rope, which you can download here.
Suggestions welcome too - I’ve got several more track to play of course, should be a good show next week
(I also should really get a logo done for the show, if only my art skills went beyond merging some creative-commons licensed images )
Widescreen Monitors hate left-alignement
Way to go. Not even an option to make it “widescreen friendly” - but ho, I can have as many lines as I like! Yay, if I had a monitor that was, you know, tall! No option for width however, or to make it centred.
Anywho, I’ll look for some plugin or other, there must be something to fix this mockery. I suppose at least now it has Gravatars built in, and it forced me to update a few other things, and break other things of course, and move a lot of things around.
Note to all websites: and this until recently included BBC News, Left Alignment websites suck, even if there is no “CSS for it” or whatever, you are bad enough for making website fixed-width. Anything but centred is a tragedy on most monitors nowadays, feel ashamed!
Hooray for whining! I’ll get back to posting game related things once I get some more of my project completed.
Edit: I found Admin Big Width to help a bit with the wordpress admin panel width problem, thank goodness. Still shouldn’t need a plugin, but oh well.
If you’re reading this and haven’t already, go and play You Have To Burn the Rope. It won’t take long, and it’s fun!
