... itte mitai to omoimasen ka?
(a song)
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
the white chamber
The White Chamber is the name of two distinct games. One is a rather lackluster Flash-based one-room puzzle game by FASCO-CS; the other, and the subject of this review, is a psychological horror/adventure game by Studio Trophis.
I'm going to spoil this game, in a way: I won't reveal any plot points, imagery, or even the solutions to any puzzles, but I will discuss one of the tricks it uses to set up the atmosphere of horror, and it may ruin much of the feel of the game. The following text has therefore been ROT13'd for the casual reader's safety.
Irel rneyl ba va gur tnzr, jura lbh fbyir gur svefg chmmyr, lbh cresbez na veeribpnoyr npgvba naq ybfr npprff gb gur svefg ebbz bs gur tnzr. Gurer'f abguvat vzcbegnag yrsg va gung ebbz — ol gur gvzr lbh jnyx bhg, lbh'ir frra rirelguvat lbh cbffvoyl pna frr gurer. Ohg vg'f fhqqra, naq wneevat, naq lbh'er tvira gur vzcerffvba gung gur tnzr vf, ba gur Zarfian scale, anfgl.
Guvf vf nyzbfg ragveryl n snyfr vzcerffvba: nyzbfg rirel bgure chmmyr va gur tnzr vf npghnyyl zrepvshy. Ab 'zbir' be 'hfr' pbzznaq pna pnhfr gur tnzr gb raq be orpbzr hajvaanoyr. (Gurer vf n tbbq raqvat naq n onq raqvat, naq gur jnl gur pubvpr bs raqvat vf qrpvqrq vf Mnesvna-pehry, ohg guvf qbrfa'g nssrpg lbhe novyvgl gb trg gb gur raqvat.) Gur bayl jnl gb qvr vf gb sbbyvfuyl nafjre "Ab" gb n dhrfgvba jubfr cebcre nafjre nf "Lrf" fubhyq or boivbhf. (Naq lbh trg gb fnir orsber lbh nafjre, naljnl.)
Oh, but make sure you take the axe. Some puzzles and events seem to assume you have it; I haven't tested to see if this is actually a problem, though. [sic]
I approve of the main character's appearance for several reasons, mostly because it subtly plays with viewers' expectations. The climax and denouement make it clear that she's not what she looks like — but not in the tomato-in-the-mirror sort of way you'd expect from reading that sentence; it's just that her appearance and outfit is styled to give an impression which, in the context provided by the epilogue, is plainly false simply because said epilogue quietly and nonchalantly rebukes several assumptions most people will not even be aware of making. Unlike the above, this is not a spoiler because I am almost entirely certain you will not realize what I mean by that until you see it at the end.
The voice acting did not make me want to jab my ears out with a rusty knife, which is always a plus; I did usually interrupt her, but I am impatient and can read faster than anyone speaks. (I did find it curiously jarring that our protagonist spoke with an American accent, but was subtitled in British English.)
As for the horror aspects, I can only compare this game to Silent Hill 3 — that being the only other graphical psychological-horror game I've played (though of course it's also rather similar to many an amnesiac-protagonist IF game: Babel comes to mind). The FPS-ish elements present in SH3 (or other games referred to as "survival horror") are obviously absent. As a whole, it's not quite as creepy as SH3, but this is largely due to its much shorter length. (There's probably slightly less gore per minute, but not by very much.)
The game is actually very short — five or six hours' play, perhaps. Ten if you go slowly. There's no hunt-the-magic-pixel difficulty here — all the interactible-with objects are fairly obvious, and if you're still having trouble there's a configuration option which allows you to use Ctrl-Tab to cycle through the mouse-sensitive areas of the screen, the way you can in some Flash games. Its use takes nothing away from the game. (By contrast, FASCO-CS's rather annoying puzzle game relies almost entirely on this sort of fake difficulty, being one of the sorts that disables Flash's built-in use of Tab to cycle through sensitive areas of the screen.)
The artwork is quite good; the animation is, at worst, occasionally a little stiff, but not unforgivably so.
Altogether I can rate the game 1/1, and express some sorrow that Studio Trophis hasn't released anything else. They've supposedly been working on a game entitled For the Game — "Rest assured we are still working on this project and would like to stake our reputations that you'll finally get to try For The Game yourself before the end of 2008." ... yyyyeah. Ah well; c'est la vie.
I'm going to spoil this game, in a way: I won't reveal any plot points, imagery, or even the solutions to any puzzles, but I will discuss one of the tricks it uses to set up the atmosphere of horror, and it may ruin much of the feel of the game. The following text has therefore been ROT13'd for the casual reader's safety.
Irel rneyl ba va gur tnzr, jura lbh fbyir gur svefg chmmyr, lbh cresbez na veeribpnoyr npgvba naq ybfr npprff gb gur svefg ebbz bs gur tnzr. Gurer'f abguvat vzcbegnag yrsg va gung ebbz — ol gur gvzr lbh jnyx bhg, lbh'ir frra rirelguvat lbh cbffvoyl pna frr gurer. Ohg vg'f fhqqra, naq wneevat, naq lbh'er tvira gur vzcerffvba gung gur tnzr vf, ba gur Zarfian scale, anfgl.
Guvf vf nyzbfg ragveryl n snyfr vzcerffvba: nyzbfg rirel bgure chmmyr va gur tnzr vf npghnyyl zrepvshy. Ab 'zbir' be 'hfr' pbzznaq pna pnhfr gur tnzr gb raq be orpbzr hajvaanoyr. (Gurer vf n tbbq raqvat naq n onq raqvat, naq gur jnl gur pubvpr bs raqvat vf qrpvqrq vf Mnesvna-pehry, ohg guvf qbrfa'g nssrpg lbhe novyvgl gb trg gb gur raqvat.) Gur bayl jnl gb qvr vf gb sbbyvfuyl nafjre "Ab" gb n dhrfgvba jubfr cebcre nafjre nf "Lrf" fubhyq or boivbhf. (Naq lbh trg gb fnir orsber lbh nafjre, naljnl.)
Oh, but make sure you take the axe. Some puzzles and events seem to assume you have it; I haven't tested to see if this is actually a problem, though. [sic]
I approve of the main character's appearance for several reasons, mostly because it subtly plays with viewers' expectations. The climax and denouement make it clear that she's not what she looks like — but not in the tomato-in-the-mirror sort of way you'd expect from reading that sentence; it's just that her appearance and outfit is styled to give an impression which, in the context provided by the epilogue, is plainly false simply because said epilogue quietly and nonchalantly rebukes several assumptions most people will not even be aware of making. Unlike the above, this is not a spoiler because I am almost entirely certain you will not realize what I mean by that until you see it at the end.
The voice acting did not make me want to jab my ears out with a rusty knife, which is always a plus; I did usually interrupt her, but I am impatient and can read faster than anyone speaks. (I did find it curiously jarring that our protagonist spoke with an American accent, but was subtitled in British English.)
As for the horror aspects, I can only compare this game to Silent Hill 3 — that being the only other graphical psychological-horror game I've played (though of course it's also rather similar to many an amnesiac-protagonist IF game: Babel comes to mind). The FPS-ish elements present in SH3 (or other games referred to as "survival horror") are obviously absent. As a whole, it's not quite as creepy as SH3, but this is largely due to its much shorter length. (There's probably slightly less gore per minute, but not by very much.)
The game is actually very short — five or six hours' play, perhaps. Ten if you go slowly. There's no hunt-the-magic-pixel difficulty here — all the interactible-with objects are fairly obvious, and if you're still having trouble there's a configuration option which allows you to use Ctrl-Tab to cycle through the mouse-sensitive areas of the screen, the way you can in some Flash games. Its use takes nothing away from the game. (By contrast, FASCO-CS's rather annoying puzzle game relies almost entirely on this sort of fake difficulty, being one of the sorts that disables Flash's built-in use of Tab to cycle through sensitive areas of the screen.)
The artwork is quite good; the animation is, at worst, occasionally a little stiff, but not unforgivably so.
Altogether I can rate the game 1/1, and express some sorrow that Studio Trophis hasn't released anything else. They've supposedly been working on a game entitled For the Game — "Rest assured we are still working on this project and would like to stake our reputations that you'll finally get to try For The Game yourself before the end of 2008." ... yyyyeah. Ah well; c'est la vie.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Programming jokes
I've been saving up a few random programming jokes. Since I no longer care about post lengths, I shall post them now! Warning: they are all horrible, vile puns.
1. “... and, since the language was essentially a combination of Perl and Haskell, we of course decided to call it Blaise.”
2. The following four (?) lines of code are potentially legal (if probably useless) C++, even in the absence of preprocessor defines. (Writing a prologue to actually make it compilable and executable is left as an exercise for the reader.)
3. Loosely related to the above: one of the things I love about working with computer graphics is the fact that I'm working specifically with 3D graphics. This means I get far too many opportunities to write the following:
4. “So this guy walks into a pipe...”
1. “... and, since the language was essentially a combination of Perl and Haskell, we of course decided to call it Blaise.”
2. The following four (?) lines of code are potentially legal (if probably useless) C++, even in the absence of preprocessor defines. (Writing a prologue to actually make it compilable and executable is left as an exercise for the reader.)
o.o ^_^x <_< n_n >_> z_z ;_; ~_~ -_- *_*
<(o_o)>~~~ o_O; x.x <3 +_+ 9.9 >_<!!!
(T.T )( T.T) ._. H_H ^o^ '_' %_% x_X;3. Loosely related to the above: one of the things I love about working with computer graphics is the fact that I'm working specifically with 3D graphics. This means I get far too many opportunities to write the following:
for (size_t i = 0; i<3u; i++) { ... }4. “So this guy walks into a pipe...”
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Okay, that's enough.
No, really. The towel is thrown in, and I am done, thank you.
It's not that I absolutely can't continue. If nothing else, I think, I've shown that I can consistently keep writing; the second half-year woludn't be any more difficult than the first in that regard. It may seem like I've been scraping the bottom of the barrel recently, but if I'm honest about it, it never was all that much better.
The fact that it doesn't seem to be any better now, though, that bothers me.
The biggest problem was that the original goal I set myself — to write more quickly — has been a complete failure: the time it takes me to compose a post is, frankly, absurd. I doubt a single one has taken me less than a full hour, and far more often they take two to three. (This post was no exception.) I've never had more than a day's buffer of scheduled posts, and I've never had that even that much buffer for more than a day.
Doing this (and, worse, avoiding doing this) basically eats up all of my time, and gives nothing back. (Most people do it for the joy of feedback; but if I had a million followers, it wouldn't matter — that was never the point.)
I bought a copy of Soul Calibur IV just before I started this nonsense. I've played it all of twice. I haven't seen a single episode of Fushigi no Umi no Nadia since November. I haven't gotten any farther in Eternal Sonata. (I was in the bonus dungeon — I still have the GameFAQs page for it open in Firefox!) The last time I studied music theory was at SIGGRAPH, when I brought along a book for the plane trip and airport wait. Never mind kanji practice or type-theory papers or looking into vocal lessons.
So yeah. No more daily posts, no more post restrictions, no more anything else but random whimsy. If I come up with something to post, I'll post it; but it'll be as long or as short as it needs to be, and not measured.
But tomorrow — tomorrow, there will be no post, and no explanation nor apology for it.
It's not that I absolutely can't continue. If nothing else, I think, I've shown that I can consistently keep writing; the second half-year woludn't be any more difficult than the first in that regard. It may seem like I've been scraping the bottom of the barrel recently, but if I'm honest about it, it never was all that much better.
The fact that it doesn't seem to be any better now, though, that bothers me.
The biggest problem was that the original goal I set myself — to write more quickly — has been a complete failure: the time it takes me to compose a post is, frankly, absurd. I doubt a single one has taken me less than a full hour, and far more often they take two to three. (This post was no exception.) I've never had more than a day's buffer of scheduled posts, and I've never had that even that much buffer for more than a day.
Doing this (and, worse, avoiding doing this) basically eats up all of my time, and gives nothing back. (Most people do it for the joy of feedback; but if I had a million followers, it wouldn't matter — that was never the point.)
I bought a copy of Soul Calibur IV just before I started this nonsense. I've played it all of twice. I haven't seen a single episode of Fushigi no Umi no Nadia since November. I haven't gotten any farther in Eternal Sonata. (I was in the bonus dungeon — I still have the GameFAQs page for it open in Firefox!) The last time I studied music theory was at SIGGRAPH, when I brought along a book for the plane trip and airport wait. Never mind kanji practice or type-theory papers or looking into vocal lessons.
So yeah. No more daily posts, no more post restrictions, no more anything else but random whimsy. If I come up with something to post, I'll post it; but it'll be as long or as short as it needs to be, and not measured.
But tomorrow — tomorrow, there will be no post, and no explanation nor apology for it.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
De lupis
(I am so, so sorry.)
Werewolves, of course, can't generally support themselves in the Muggle world. Finding steady employment that allows for full moons off isn't easy in the best of times; finding a job that pays enough for a sturdy cage and repairs to it — let alone for Wolfsbane! — is essentially impossible. The few werewolves that are forced out into the Muggle world typically turn to a life of crime almost immediately, and rarely last a full month: either circumstances are mysterious, and the Ministry of Magic intervenes; or circumstances are not mysterious, in which case the Muggle police typically have no problem catching someone who doesn't know what fingerprints are, much less closed-circuit television.
Remus Lupin considered himself very lucky in this regard. Unpleasant as it was, he hadn't actually been forced out of the magical world after James and Lily's death. He was quite able to support himself well enough to afford a cage, and even the occasional dose of quietly-purchased Wolfsbane. In the unlikely event that the Ministry cared enough to know where he was and what he was doing, they couldn't legally do a thing to him as long as he didn't use magic —
— click —
— and, he thought to himself as the safe swung open, the Yard were unlikely to have the resources to catch him. Assuming they even realize, he thought as he cheerfully removed stacks of fifty-pound notes from the safe; that I'm not cousin Arsène.
Werewolves, of course, can't generally support themselves in the Muggle world. Finding steady employment that allows for full moons off isn't easy in the best of times; finding a job that pays enough for a sturdy cage and repairs to it — let alone for Wolfsbane! — is essentially impossible. The few werewolves that are forced out into the Muggle world typically turn to a life of crime almost immediately, and rarely last a full month: either circumstances are mysterious, and the Ministry of Magic intervenes; or circumstances are not mysterious, in which case the Muggle police typically have no problem catching someone who doesn't know what fingerprints are, much less closed-circuit television.
Remus Lupin considered himself very lucky in this regard. Unpleasant as it was, he hadn't actually been forced out of the magical world after James and Lily's death. He was quite able to support himself well enough to afford a cage, and even the occasional dose of quietly-purchased Wolfsbane. In the unlikely event that the Ministry cared enough to know where he was and what he was doing, they couldn't legally do a thing to him as long as he didn't use magic —
— and, he thought to himself as the safe swung open, the Yard were unlikely to have the resources to catch him. Assuming they even realize, he thought as he cheerfully removed stacks of fifty-pound notes from the safe; that I'm not cousin Arsène.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
So let me talk about cell phones for a moment.
The Motorola [motorola.com] company was founded in 1928 by Paul and Joseph Galvin, as the Galvin Manufacturing Company. It was renamed to Motorola, a portmanteau of motor and Victrola, when the company began to manufacture radios for automobiles in 1930. Later, it —
Wait, roll back. Let me talk about cell phones in movies.
The thing that sticks out most in my mind about Journey to the Center of the Earth — I make no apologies for spoilers; the movie was awful, 3D or no 3D — was the scene where the kid's cell phone rings while he's in the middle of the sea in bad weather and uncounted miles below the surface of the earth.
Conversely, Hoshi no Koe — or by its English name, the equally poetic* Voices from a Distant Star — revolves around a not-technically-impossible text-message "conversation", but a decidedly implausible one. (I suppose the Lysithea could have acted as a relay.) Since this really is the central plot device of the movie, it and its associated concepts get a free pass as the one unicorn in the garden.
The cell-phone bit in Battle of the Smithsonian, on the other hand, was completely arbitrary, utterly gratuitous, and yet managed not to worry me in the least. (The movie is about figures in a museum coming to life due to ancient Egyptian magic. The premise easily subsumes a multitude of lesser sins.)
The rest of the movie was also largely hilarious, especially the sequence where the three monkeys essentially acted out a Three Stooges skit. I have spoiled nothing.
Downside: the reference to π grated on my historical and mathematical sensibilities, for multiple reasons — here, have a link. (Sure, I'd have used π, but I'd have gone a lot farther than a lousy eight digits; you can go 32 before you hit a zero. Oh, and it's terribly convenient that the numbers happened to be in telephone arrangement, rather than (say) boustrophedonically... I should really just relax, shouldn't I.)
Other downside: the romantic subplot. It was fine for most of the movie (the putti notwithstanding), usually adding directly to the comedy, but the last bit was kind of depressing, really. No, after that; the bit that the movie closed on.
Still, it didn't exactly pretend to be high art, nor educational; and unlike your average so-called "romantic comedy" or the abomination they've made out of Land of the Lost, it was genuinely funny. It gets a 1/1, and a lack of impassioned rant.
* I mean this quite literally: "Hoshi no Koe" is potentially the first line of a haiku, while "Voices from a Distant Star" fits nicely into either iambic or trochaic pentameter. (And no, I don't care that the official translation uses of in the title rather than from.)
The Motorola [motorola.com] company was founded in 1928 by Paul and Joseph Galvin, as the Galvin Manufacturing Company. It was renamed to Motorola, a portmanteau of motor and Victrola, when the company began to manufacture radios for automobiles in 1930. Later, it —
Wait, roll back. Let me talk about cell phones in movies.
The thing that sticks out most in my mind about Journey to the Center of the Earth — I make no apologies for spoilers; the movie was awful, 3D or no 3D — was the scene where the kid's cell phone rings while he's in the middle of the sea in bad weather and uncounted miles below the surface of the earth.
Conversely, Hoshi no Koe — or by its English name, the equally poetic* Voices from a Distant Star — revolves around a not-technically-impossible text-message "conversation", but a decidedly implausible one. (I suppose the Lysithea could have acted as a relay.) Since this really is the central plot device of the movie, it and its associated concepts get a free pass as the one unicorn in the garden.
The cell-phone bit in Battle of the Smithsonian, on the other hand, was completely arbitrary, utterly gratuitous, and yet managed not to worry me in the least. (The movie is about figures in a museum coming to life due to ancient Egyptian magic. The premise easily subsumes a multitude of lesser sins.)
The rest of the movie was also largely hilarious, especially the sequence where the three monkeys essentially acted out a Three Stooges skit. I have spoiled nothing.
Downside: the reference to π grated on my historical and mathematical sensibilities, for multiple reasons — here, have a link. (Sure, I'd have used π, but I'd have gone a lot farther than a lousy eight digits; you can go 32 before you hit a zero. Oh, and it's terribly convenient that the numbers happened to be in telephone arrangement, rather than (say) boustrophedonically... I should really just relax, shouldn't I.)
Other downside: the romantic subplot. It was fine for most of the movie (the putti notwithstanding), usually adding directly to the comedy, but the last bit was kind of depressing, really. No, after that; the bit that the movie closed on.
Still, it didn't exactly pretend to be high art, nor educational; and unlike your average so-called "romantic comedy" or the abomination they've made out of Land of the Lost, it was genuinely funny. It gets a 1/1, and a lack of impassioned rant.
* I mean this quite literally: "Hoshi no Koe" is potentially the first line of a haiku, while "Voices from a Distant Star" fits nicely into either iambic or trochaic pentameter. (And no, I don't care that the official translation uses of in the title rather than from.)
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Random things on the Internet (Issue 2)
An Essay on Criticism II, by Alexander Pope er, Geoff Nunberg; being a lamentation on the state of the language.
Inaugural Embedding, some notes on the language of the state. (And similar.)
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Gakuen Datenroku. Apparently Gainax has been reduced to selling alternate-universe doujinshi. (I just might get the first volume anyway; it sounds at least vaguely interesting, and I could use the practice.)
...of course, they do sell stranger things.
An advertisement-video for a Twitter application on the iPhone. It should be noted that I care nothing for the iPhone, and indeed have nothing but antipathy towards Twitter: I just want to know what that music in the background is. It sounds familiar — I could swear I'd heard it in a PC game of ages past, or possibly as a .MOD file, but I can't place it.
One of the worst puns ever to grace RPG.net (and I can assure you that that's saying something.)
A music video for a popular-ish song. Not even a fan-creation — the author's original. I mention it only because it (the video) is clever, and because the melody has been running through my head off and on for the past week.
Inaugural Embedding, some notes on the language of the state. (And similar.)
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Gakuen Datenroku. Apparently Gainax has been reduced to selling alternate-universe doujinshi. (I just might get the first volume anyway; it sounds at least vaguely interesting, and I could use the practice.)
...of course, they do sell stranger things.
An advertisement-video for a Twitter application on the iPhone. It should be noted that I care nothing for the iPhone, and indeed have nothing but antipathy towards Twitter: I just want to know what that music in the background is. It sounds familiar — I could swear I'd heard it in a PC game of ages past, or possibly as a .MOD file, but I can't place it.
One of the worst puns ever to grace RPG.net (and I can assure you that that's saying something.)
A music video for a popular-ish song. Not even a fan-creation — the author's original. I mention it only because it (the video) is clever, and because the melody has been running through my head off and on for the past week.
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