Stephen Cakebread >= Shigeru Miyamoto. This is not just design, this is craftsmanship. This is genius.

For starters, pickups are exactly what the game needed. Having to drop a bomb is no longer a failure, now it’s a descision, because you’ll be surrounded by pickup chips. I found myself doing so on purpose in Deadline mode for speed’s sake. You may start approaching snakes instead of fleeing, because they drop so much. Oh, and making them a multiplier instead of a flat value is another stroke of genius; you want to grab all you can at the start of the game, but toward the end you need to concentrate on killing things so you don’t waste that x1000 at the top of your screen.

Rockets, too, seem deceptively simple - what’s so ingenious about an enemy that only flies in a straight line? Well, combine that with spawn patterns and the gravitational influence of black holes, and suddenly you’ve got a whole slew of unpredictable new behaviors. Even the visuals feed into the gameplay here - the orange color demands your attention, and the elongated shape gives instant feedback on direction of movement.

I don’t think the gates quite live up to their potential - the explosion radius is too small, and reflecting bullets off them too random and ineffective. Maybe further play will reveal some technique I haven’t thought of, though, and they’re interesting regardless.

Geometry Wars was a combination of simple elements that combined to make an incredibly deep game, and each new iteration has only added seasoning. This game is a work of art, worthy to be studied, not just played.

Psst, Stephen! I know you have to be Googling your own name right now - leave a comment if you read this! Consider it an autograph for a fan.

Not too impressed with SCIV thus far… I mean seriously, ONE real new character?! (And no, I’m not counting Algol, and certainly not effing Yoda.)

My wife of course loves the elaborate dress-up mode, and I’ll enjoy online play if it works properly. But the new character designs are horrible, the 360 controls (at least) are frustratingly unresponsive, and I’m just overall unimpressed after the smorgasbord that was SCIII.

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Nope.

I think I need to add a validates_presence_of :user to the Topic and Reply models.

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 10:53 AM, [Eric] wrote:
>
> On Jul 29, 2008, at 12:26 PM, Jay McGavren wrote:
>
>> Wait, does that mean no need for a disc in the drive?  (Instant,
>> no-get-up-from-the-couch-and-eject-my-son's-Viva-Pinata-game access to
>> Halo 3 would kick ass.)
>
> Nope. Game can be played from hard drive, but you'll still need the game in
> the drive to prove that you own it.

Not surprising, but disappointing.

I still want a generic CD/DVD/Blu-Ray rack that can be wirelessly accessed by any console, PC, or player in the house. I want to purchase/burn something, drop it in a slot, and then forget I even have physical media for it. Of course, this device will never be made, because the moment neighbors started sharing media, the manufacturer would get sued by media companies.

irb(main):009:0> 1 if true unless false
=> 1
irb(main):010:0> 1 if true unless true
=> nil
irb(main):011:0> 1 if false unless false
=> nil
irb(main):012:0> 1 if false unless true
=> nil

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Yay!

E3 2008: Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 Hands-On - Xbox 360 News at GameSpot

Including… (drumroll) local 4-player co-op! I was seriously considering writing a clone via Zyps just to get this feature (not to mention hooking a PC up to the TV and acquiring multiple game pads). Now I don’t have to. (Though I still might, since it doesn’t look like they have online play.)

class Album < ActiveRecord::Base
	has_many :songs
end

>> album.songs << song
=> [#]
>> album
=> #
>> song
=> #

Note that empty album_id…

>> album.save
=> true
>> song
=> #

album_id is populated…

mysql> select * from songs;
+----+----------+-------------+--------------+
| id | album_id | name        | track_number |
+----+----------+-------------+--------------+
|  1 |        8 | First Track |            1 |
+----+----------+-------------+--------------+

And the song is saved as well. Nice to have stuff done for me for once! (Let’s see if my attitude changes when Rails volunteers to do something I didn’t want done.)

Excuse me while I indulge in unbridled futurism (bordering on science-fiction)…

Population growth is already levelling off in societies where children are more of a liability than an asset. (They can’t help you till the fields anymore, after all.) Once the overpopulation problem peaks, I could imagine it becoming the norm for teens to seek permanent contraception (reversible or not).

So then the question becomes: what sort of person would make the choice to become a “breeder”? And how will that affect the gene pool? There are already theories flying about that there may be genes that cause a predisposition toward conservatism; what if there’s a gene that causes an especially strong desire to procreate? If contraception is the norm, those without such urges would quickly (willingly?) die out.

You’ve heard before that patterns at the micro scale are repeated in the macro. Patterns in a fractal recur as you zoom in; the veins in a leaf look like the branches of a tree.

I suspect that procrastination at the individual level recurs at the societal level. We’re only moving on this global warming thing because now there are visible signs of climate change (and scientists telling us it’s already too late). We’re only developing fuel-efficient cars because gas is over $4 a gallon.

I suppose we’ll need a viral epidemic or food shortage (in a first-world country; we already have them elsewhere) to wake us up on the topic of overpopulation.