Jay McGavren's Journal

There's no place like foam.

I know my opinion is going to be unpopular at the time of this writing, but I consider the average Western-style home to be a form of litter. They cover the landscape, are unsightly unless carefully maintained, and must be cleaned up when no longer needed.

So I consider the styrofoam house to be a step in the right direction. Sure, they’re not much good in a tornado, but the owner could just head for a shelter (and I wouldn’t want to be in anything else during an earthquake). Not only that, the entire dwelling could be replaced for the cost of repairs on today’s houses.

Of course, you can forget building high-rises out of the stuff (barring clever engineering?), so it still doesn’t solve the problem of urban sprawl. I think the final solution will be even more portable and disposable.

Back from John and Lacey’s wedding in Iowa. Our schedule, as usual, did not include time for sleep.

The newlyweds, being but recently out of school, had to do things on the cheap. Among other things, that meant taking care of the reception hall themselves, both setting up (we helped till 1:00 AM the night before the wedding) and cleaning up (we helped till 1:00 AM the night of the wedding). Add in the Iowa State Fair the following day (Ruth wanted to take her granddaughter), followed by a long drive back to Omaha, and you have a recipe for exhaustion. Sorry we didn’t even attempt to see Omaha friends during the trip. We knew there wasn’t gonna be time, though.

John and Lacey are pretty darn cute together. I’ve thought so throughout their four-year-long engagement, of course, but their uber-mushy vows just reaffirm it. Here’s wishing them many, many happy years together.

Another night of weird dreams...

In the first, I was an exchange student in Japan again, though certainly not the Osaka I remember. The whole place was under police lockdown, and gangs were mugging students trying to get between campus buildings.

In the second (and this is the weird one), Diana and I were among a flock of birds living on a small island. (Yeah, I know, I’ve never dreamed I was anything other than a human before.) There was a dispute with the lions (yes, lions) on the island over the produce of the various fruit trees scattered about. We wound up resolving things by agreeing to fly over to the other islands to eat, since the lions couldn’t fly.

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2...

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.

XBox 360 hard drive game installations...

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.