Archive for February, 2007

How to Hack a Net

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007

NetHack is a game that would have enough to write about for a few good books, but since we are blogging here I’ll try and make it short and simple.

NetHack is a Rogue-like (who even knows this day what Rogue was like?) computer roleplaying game. That’s the classic definition. More to the point it’s one presented in colored ASCII-characters, turn-based and immensely detailed. NetHack is a good example of a complex game that doesn’t swamp the player with it. In any given game the player won’t come in contact with most of the games intrigues. This means theres plenty of stuff to wonder over for years. There’s a joke about the DevTeam thinking about everything.

But that’s not where I’d like to draw the attention in NetHack. The main lessons NetHack can give any particular game enthusiast would be:

  1. Computer Games can be revised, honed, perfected indefinetely. NetHack has been in development some 20 years.
  2. NetHack isn’t imprisoned by it’s rugged apperiance but draws power from it and makes it work for it.  There are features in the game that would be practically impossible to realize without it’s ASCII-base.

Ok, is that concise enough for you? Need something elaborated? There is a thing called comment-section in this blog these days…

Posted in Computer Games, Game design | No Comments »

Who Would Ever Dream of Pinballs?

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

As a follow-up to my previous post, I here take a good look at one of my favourite games of all times and why it matters.

Pinball Dreams was released back in 1992 and was one of the last big hits for the Amiga. It came quite out of the blue, made by first-comers Digital Illusions (DI), also known in the demo scene as The Silents. Pinball Dreams is a pinball game with 4 different tables with different themes.

(more…)

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Top 5 Computer Games

Friday, February 16th, 2007

Ooh, I love catchy titles. My goal is a bit loftier than just pimping my own interests though!

There have been number of computer games in my life that have offered me certain insights into what this medium can do. These are quite often also my favourite games. My intention here is to mention a few of those games (a top five if you like) and then proceed in the coming entries to tell what they can teach to us about computer gametry. If you’re a game designer , you should pay attention! The games I have chosen are (in no particular order) [Name, Publisher, Platform]:

  • Pinball Dreams (21.st Century Entertainment, Amiga)
  • NetHack (The Devteam, all major computer platforms)
  • Populous (Electronic Arts, Amiga, with others)
  • Super Mario World 1/2 (Nintendo, SNES)
  • Half-Life (Sierra Studios, Electronic Arts, Valve, PC, with others)

Posted in Computer Games, Game design, Top 5 | No Comments »

The Essence of Game Design According to Me

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

This is for future reference.

Game idea is the Problem, designing game/realizing that idea is the process of solving that problem, solution is whatever gameprogram that is the product of that problem solving.

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All Important Weather Update

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

It appears it’s cold around here. It was around -30 centigrade this morning, although it has rapidly got warmer. This level of coldness can give you sensations that you really can’t attain any other way. Try going outside for a few minutes in less-than-adequate clothing and come back inside. The rush of blood will make you feel almost hot. The air has distinct feel at these temperatures. It’s dry and it will nip your nose when you take that first breath of air outside. And although it’s even more subjective, I feel that glogg tastes is so much more in place when you come home from the cold.

If you exist around or in Tampere, Finland, Tampere’s Yachtclub provides more detailed, more up-to-date information on local weather than that lowly Finnish Meteorological Institute.

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Sufficient Requirement for a Strongest Possible AI

Monday, February 5th, 2007

To continue with my previous post, I have thought of the practical upper limit for the strength of an AI. Mind you, this is not a practical definition in all its meanings and its definetely not without its sortiment of other problems, but I like it and at least its recursive.

The strongest possible AI is a one that can build another AI stronger than itself. How do we figure when this is the case? We ask them! Its non of our concern to wonder about the inner lives of immensely complex systems. Of course its probable that the AI that built the stronger AI uses this very definition to determine whether its AI is stronger…

This definition is practical in the meaning that a stronger AI that can build an even stronger AI is really not that important for us. The realization of an AI is fundamentally a programming problem, once this is worked out, AI’s take care of the Singularity. Easy! Simple!

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Kimmo Strong Artificial Intelligence Revisited

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

I proposed the concept of Kimmo Strong Artifical Intelligence (KSAI) awhile back. In AI research some make a distinction between strong and weak AI. Strong AI can be seen having the same qualities as human intelligence. Weak AI in contrast isn’t capable of true reasoning and problem resolving. To a keen observer it is clear that within this vague framework there are levels of distinction with KSAI offering an example of.

KSAI is in short:

“When presented with (whatever means possible) Carl Barks’ whole production of Donald Duck comics, the AI can produce an (practically) infinite number of comics which, in no discernible way, differ in style or quality from any selected one of those by Carl Barks.”

Of course, even this definition carries different levels of strength.

Probably the weakest KSAI would be one that wouldn’t produce any original graphics of it’s own but would simply recycle those by CB. CB’s style varied and evolved during his career. A slightly stonger KSAI would be able to produce it’s own graphics, the style of which would probably be a mix of CB’s overall style (being able to emulate the “overall style” is of course what makes this AI a “strong” one) or produce the style CB had at the end of his career.

A stronger KSAI would be able to emulate CB’s style from any level of his career. Slightly stronger KSAI would be able to insert a character into a style that existed before it’s first apperiance.

Even further still one can imagine a stronger KSAI that would be able to produce comics with original (main or supporting) characters.

Yet stronger KSAI would be able to produce comics that wouldn’t in any way be Donald Duck comics but would be clearly in CB’s style.

Even within this quite limited application of Ai we can see clear distinctions. All of these levels assume the input of the KSAI would be identical and wouldn’t be limited just to the exact of content of CB’s comics.

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