Let me preface this by covering a few key points.  First, I will be posting SPOILERS so don’t read past the SPOILER tag below if you don’t want SPOILERS.  Second, yes I did know what I was walking into and had a fairly good time because I knew it would be bad.  Third, don’t expect a video here.  I originally considered making a “reaction” video review like so many other people do these days… but I really felt that this movie didn’t deserve the effort.

The short and spoiler free review of the film is as follows:

It started well enough with sufficiently realistic video effects.  You could let yourself believe the videos had been recorded on 1973/4 film with 1973/4 cameras.  It felt fairly well done and for a moment I was slightly impressed.

I say “a moment” because that is about all it was.  The opening of the film feels tremendously rushed and I couldn’t help but notice this point as the mission is explained quickly with exposition and then slung into space and then the lunar module is on the moon.  Character development was sparse at best and the effects suddenly weakened.

Then the mission on the moon took precedence and the atmosphere of the film completely broke down.  The mission completes as you would expect from a movie like this and as I told KingCobra the other day, “there are too many ways they can mess this up.”

Bottom line, this movie is great riff fodder and I would consider making a rifftracks entry with some of my BWL Team members some day, but if you want a creepy movie or a cool sci fi… look elsewhere.  This movie is a cheap rental at best and not really worth the cost of a theater seat unless you can organize a large group specifically for “riffing” in a week or two when the legitimate audience will be nearly completely gone.

To give you an idea of the quality of this movie, consider that the population of the showing I attended was relatively small to begin with.  That’s on a Friday night at a brand new movie.  Then consider that there were people that got up and left before the end of the movie including one couple which could be heard declaring “what a waste of money”.

Then consider that the remaining audience consisting of the “target” audience for such a film booed the film as they stood up to leave.

I had fun, but admittedly felt as though I had been sitting in my seat for too long.  And keep in mind that I did know what to expect and was mentally riffing the movie throughout.  Perhaps Master Pancake Theater will consider riffing this movie for next year’s QuakeCon or something.  That would legitimately be the best way to watch this one.

It’s short, has some nice big plot holes, misses the opportunity to create mystery and atmosphere, loads up on exposition at certain key points rather then show us the events, feels contrived and poorly executed in general, and very much feels unfinished.

[ SPOILERS BEGIN HERE ]

The showing I attended was scheduled for 9:15 pm.  So I arrived thirty minutes early.

Disappointed to find that hot dogs were individually priced at $4 despite the photo of two hot dogs, I ordered a small popcorn and a large coke.  At the last moment I thought to add a boxed candy… Reese’s Pieces.

My reasoning was that I like said candy and I thought, ‘surely this movie will be bad and this candy will be a fitting addition to my own mental riffs.  ET jokes and all that.”

My popcorn freshly buttered and salted and my ticket torn, I found out that the screen this film would be shown on was ALLLLL the way in the back.

‘Uh oh.’

Entering the room, I found a small group of patrons already seated.  Oddly enough, I had expected more movie goers to be present.

With better then 20 minutes left until showtime, I ate my popcorn and watched the same advertisement slides cycle over and over on the screen.

Did you know that Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts have been in movies before?  Why together even!

Oh, there’s Ryan Reynolds as Ryan Reynolds in “The Change Up: featuring Ryan Reynolds as Ryan Reynolds playing Mitch… the funny one… Ryan Reynolds.”

Hmm… Sprint wants me to be quiet.  Not if the movie gets too bad and I find myself alone in here.

Finally, 9:15 rolled by.  Then 9:16, 9:17, and 9:18.  I sort of forgot that I keep my watch 3 minutes fast.

At last, the lights dimmed and the advertisements started.  Most of the time, you can estimate 20 minutes worth of advertisements will play before the movie starts.  I don’t know in this case, as I didn’t check, but it did feel more like 10 to 15 minutes instead.

The highlight was probably the teaser trailer for the Dark Knight Rises.  The same one I’ve seen several times already.  The one that lifts most of it’s footage from Batman Begins, a pinch of The Dark Knight, and adds just a sprinkle of new footage of Comissioner Gordon in the hospital talking to Batman off screen and possibly in Bruce Wayne form.

Then Bane walks up to Batman somewhere in the city before a jump cut kills them both with falling derbies in Bat-Symbol Plaza where all the buildings are arranged to make a giant Bat-Symbol in the skyline.

And in case you haven’t caught on I am wasting time here because the movie itself was so short and bland.  Length isn’t a problem in a well crafted narrative, but this was in no way a well crafted narrative.

While waiting for the movie, the theater slowly filled to about 75% capacity.  Not bad considering that this is Texas and Friday night at the start of the high-school football season.

The movie finally began with the introductive title card.  In short, it said that Apollo 17 was the last official mission to the moon.  In 2011 a website, lunartruth.com leaked the thematic found footage of the mission and the movie was edited together from that footage.  [NOTE: I can't seem to view lunartruth.com despite the site address being displayed prominently at the beginning and end of the movie.  This means that it was either taken down or is registering with my ad-blocker as nothing but pure 100% advertisement.]

We are introduced to the cast of three astronauts via pre-mission interviews ripe with exposition.  It seems the Apollo missions really were canceled after Apollo 17.  But the DOD wants to put sensors on the moon to spy on the Russians and is funding Apollo 18.

The launch is a night time launch under the disguise of being a satellite launch.

Now, remember, I am a big believer in the “show don’t tell” school of story telling.  Exposition as handled here is therefore excessive and rushed.  To the point that it feels forced at times.

Even so, I sort of ignore that since they seem to be making this plausible in terms of “here’s some footage edited for time”.  It more or less made sense, but the movie would have benefited from a better launch scene and less exposition up front.

Anyway, the astronauts do split up correctly with one remaining in orbit of the moon and the other two landing.  I had worried about that point prior to the movie.

The landing was rushed of course.  But worse, some of the effects shots felt incomplete.  Some lunar surfaces as shown during the landing sequence felt like cheap CG.  This could be because they applied filters to help stock or recreation footage match the movie, or because they used cheap CG.  Either way, it looked odd to me.

In orbit we see a guy… floating around… and talking to the radio.

On the moon we see, the other two astronauts setting up camp for a two day mission… apparently.  And the effects again start to break down as some of the camera footage inside the Lunar Module seems too clear.  It felt digital and artificial.

We also get one of the better jump scares of the movie as it feels more real.  Why?  Because one of the astronauts fake sleeps and his partner starts to record this to prove that he snores.  He basically says boo to the camera.  That scene felt more real then any other.  And naturally, it and almost every other [there are 3 or so] good jump scare is shown in the trailers for this movie.

In the course of all of these sequences, the action is broken up by still images and stuttering video to indicate some of the more damaged footage.  As the astronauts begin setting up the first DOD sensor and collecting moon rock samples, these effects begin to become bothersome and a bit annoying.

We also get the first ‘paranormal activity’ moment.  A rock moves.  Of course, it was kind enough to stand in a spot light for us.

Seriously.

Okay, yes I know it was meant to be like so much documentary footage that shows items in the background by highlighting them, but this felt really out of place.

Our astronauts talk a bit.  The astronaut in the command module talks and floats around.  And nothing else really happens.

Sure there is this strange radio interference that seems to be popping up, but honestly these sounds aren’t as creepy as they are intended.  I really had hoped to hear something similar to Jupiter’s sounds or the audio of the Northern Lights or other decidedly creepy “actual” sounds of various sorts.  You can even drive out in the desert away from radio signals tuned in to random static on the AM band and pick up unique static and EM sounds that are creepy.

All of that in a quiet moment can be really spooky.  Instead, we got a fair bit of noise with what basically sounded like a brief static signal and some flickering lights.

Cameras, they were given dozens apparently which didn’t help the believability in the slightest.  Worse, much of the footage apparently was recorded on their end and appeared not to be transmitted to earth.  Which left me wondering how the video would be recovered in the end.

Again mimicking the Paranormal Activity movies, we see cameras record moving rocks closer to the LM and the moon rover get’s knocked over.

We also have a scene in which one of the moon rock samples is found on the floor instead of in its storage bag.  Yes, they have been collecting moon rock samples and one of the astronauts has even gone out of his way to say that one sample feels different from others somehow.

And by that point I started mentally repeating to myself, ‘please tell me they aren’t making the moon rocks the monster.’

Paranormal Activity has a decided advantage of an effectively invisible entity.  Here, we see the alien life fairly early and in disappointing fashion.  We’re told that they find these rocks near apparent impact craters on the moon.

So they apparently travel through space and collide with our moon to make a new life there free from atmospheres, liquid water, and any form of food other then cannibalism.  Yea moon rocks!

Alien… moon rocks!

The astronauts find space boot prints that are not there own.  Following them, they find a Russian craft.  It is empty and damaged on the inside.  There is blood from a first aid treament and no sign of any cosmonauts.

This leads to further space tracking into a crater that they say never sees the light of the sun.  That sounded sort of strange to me.  But then again, some of the science gets a little fuzzy at times.

For instance, during a sleeping scene one of the space helmets falls from a shelf onto an astronaut and appears to do so with normal earth gravity.  Everything inside the LM seems to happen at normal earth gravity for some reason.  But now I’m nitpicking.

Walking around in the dark crater after being told not too, one of the astronauts uses a flash pulse to see what is around him.  He says that the soil is different somehow and stumbles across a jump scare of the dead cosmonaut.  For a time, we are teased with the idea that the other cosmonaut may still be alive or somehow undead.

Unfortunately, this is dismissed quickly and we are flatly told that there was only one cosmonaut.  Honestly, Russian space zombies would be an awesome movie.  Why didn’t they do this?

Meanwhile, the astronaut in the command module talks to the radio… and floats… and goes to the far side of the moon so he can’t talk to anyone at all.  So he floats… and talks to the camera.  He even goes so far as to talk about how beautiful the far side of the moon is and not show us the view.  And he tells us that he feels like someone on the far side is looking back at him sometimes.

But enough of that, back to the astronauts on the moon.  After the American flag disappears and the rover is tossed around, one of the astronauts decides to go outside to try to fix the damaged [conveniently enough] radio equipment.  He suddenly says something is in his suit and we get an unnaturally clear view of his face from the LM window so we can see a space spider thing crawling on his face.

He space panics and space knocks himself out or something and dislocates his oxygen hose.  This is the commander by the way.  A commander that didn’t notice a space spider thing the size of his own hand inside his space suit and that panics and space knocks himself out, space etc.

His partner goes outside and rescues him and they talk about the space spider thing but he now denies any knowledge of the event.  The commander is shown to be bleeding and has a cut above one of his ribs.  The other astronaut says there is something under the skin and cuts out one of his space rock samples.

Which seems to space explode in a jump scare.  Although, to be fair, they sort of indicate that it actually just transformed and jumped out of view.  Though that doesn’t make much sense because the astronauts just ignore it after that and say something about it contaminating the entire LM.

But if it exploded, why did it do so?  It’s one of those plot holes popping up.

Anyway, the commander is apparently space infected and slowly develops space pink eye and palladium poisoning like Iron Man did in Iron Man 2.  After this, he starts to loose his mind and even warns the other astronaut that he will go mad the way the cosmonaut apparently did.

Despite this, his partner refuses to let the commander leave the LM.  This goes well.

So the oxygen is running out and the commander is getting worse, even space staring at his partner while he sleeps and a space spider thing moves across the camera that is watching him.  He then space freaks out and starts smashing cameras and the like.

Meanwhile the astronaut in the command module is still floating.  He starts talking to the radio again, now trying to talk to the LM.  NASA also has started trying to talk to the LM and notes that they cannot hear the LM but the LM can hear NASA.

Apparently the space spider things only disabled the microphones or something.  But of course, mission control has been silent for some time and cannot really offer any information except in the occasional exposition dump.

The astronauts leave the LM and we are told that they will be taking the tapes with them.  The commander again warns that he should be left behind.  And again this advice is ignored and he has another space freak out during the drive on the lunar rover.   The rover subsequently crashes into a crater.

During this scene, there are flashing moments where you get a glimpse of bolder sized space rock spider things and we begin to see that they actually sort of resemble crabs.

That’s right.

…

The moon has space crabs.

…

The commander disappears and the other astronaut wakes up alone.  He finds and follows the commander’s tracks to another big crater and promptly begins spouting cliched lines about not leaving the commander and making it safely back home.

The commander stands by the edge of the crater and turns his back to it so he can be space dragged into the darkness by an unseen threat… which we have already been shown is space rock spider crab things.  So it’s kind of a weak attempt at a jump scare and an even weaker excuse for his partner to wander into the crater using his flash pulse for flashing lighting effects.

As the remaining astronaut moves along, we see the space rocks opening to reveal their space crab form.  Yet we never again see the bolder sized variety.

After a pitifully long period of the astronaut walking around the crater with more and more space crabs swarming around him, he gives up and runs for his life.

He nearly runs out of air, but the tension is non-existent.  I just wanted the bolder sized space crabs to attack him.  But that didn’t space happen.

The astronaut enters the Russian LK and tries to radio for help.  Only to finally be patched to the DOD by the Russians.

Wait… during the cold war?

Were the Russians in on this or did they not care that we were placing sensors to spy on them on the moon?  Oh… wait… that’s right… the astronauts speculated that the DOD knew the moon had space crabs and were using the supposed sensors to attract them to the astronauts and block the astronauts radio signals.

That makes perfect sense.

Especially since the film makes it perfectly clear that the deaths of these astronauts prevented us from ever returning to the moon.  Basically, the DOD either developed a conscience or completely lost interest in the space crabs.  I don’t know.  It’s kind of a plot hole or space sequel baiting or something.

Anyway, the astronaut sits alone in his Russian LK and listens to a tape recording of his wife and son.  And he does this for a fairly lengthy time until the command module makes contact and the two remaining astronauts plan an escape including piloting the LK and entering orbit near each other and then space walking.

I thought this was leading up to something.

But it didn’t.

The launch of the LK begins and the commander knocks on the space door.  Where he came from is not clear.  But a psychic connection with the space crabs is implied throughout the movie.

He insists that he be let in, but his partner refuses saying that he is infected.  Obviously, he was infected before when his partner promised he would get home.  However the DOD said he was infected so that makes it worse… somehow.

The commander takes it well and starts trying to break in through the window which somehow holds him off.  We then get another close up of his face as the space crabs have turned into space spider things again and are scurrying around inside the commander’s helmet.

Seriously.  Dozens of the things all over the man’s face without him reacting or even causing the fabric parts of his space suit to move or anything.  Finally they break out through his face plate and splatter blood on the window.

Yea!

Wait…

How did they get in the suit without puncturing it?

Whatever… the LK starts flying toward the command module.  Inside the command module the third astronaut is floating and now talking to the DOD representative.  He is told that the other two astronauts are infected and that he will be cut off from re-entry data if he doesn’t abort his rescue attempt.

That third astronaut then goes space crazy and starts talking to himself and the other astronaut about how they will go home.

Returning to the astronaut in the LK we are shown that he too has space pink eye and possibly palladium poisoning like Iron Man in Iron Man 2.  And there are several moon rocks floating around him.

And they are actually space crabs which attack him.

On the command module, the DOD representative can still be heard trying to reason with crazy astronaut #3.  And we hear crazy astronaut #2 screaming on the radio and some loud noises.  Crazy astronaut #3 is still telling the radio that they will be okay.

He then tells dead crazy astronaut #2 to slow down that he is ascending too quickly.  And we see that the LK has apparently turned into a space cardboard cutout.  At least, that’s what it looked like to me.  The ending of this movie easily looked the least finished.

And so the space cardboard cutout of the LK crashes into the command module and kills everyone except the space crabs most likely.  We aren’t told how the videos were recovered.  I had thought that perhaps an after the credits sequence might show another mission performing a space walk to collect the tapes, but I didn’t wait for the credits to end.

You could argue that the tapes they referred to were computer tapes.  And you could assume that everything that was recorded on the cameras had been directly transmitted to NASA, but such was never explained and there are periods at which this would likely not be possible.

We are briefly given a space summary of the cover up story for the deaths of each of the three astronauts and reminded to visit lunartruth.com.  We are also told that lots and lots of moon rocks were brought back to earth by the many Apollo missions and that many, many moon rocks were given to dignitaries.  And of those, thousands were stolen or simply disappeared.

Which of course means…

The moon gave us space crabs.

There is then a lengthy pause while everyone in the theater stands up and several people boo.  Then the credits start to roll.

I walked outside thinking about how I had enjoyed the riff-ripe nature of the movie, but how so many other patrons had been disappointed.  And then I noticed the time.

10:45 pm.

Yes, the movie claims to be 1 hour and 26 minutes in length.  Obviously, the long pauses were accompanied by really long credits or something.  I’m pretty sure that the movie didn’t start until after 9:30 pm.

Anyway, I consider this a bad movie that could be funny with the right riffing.  Otherwise it’s just boring and incomplete.  It had much potential, but they found just about every way possible to fowl this film.

I would recommend only seeing it if you want to riff it.  Otherwise, wait for the rental and then riff it.  As a scary movie or a drama or a science fiction or whatever, this movie fails.  But with good riffing it succeeds as a comedy about space crabs and space pink eye.

If you are a member of our Steam group, then you probably have already seen the announcement and “event” that I posted last week.  In short, you know that I am attempting to set up another server for our loyal members… this time for Synergy Coop.

It’s also likely that you know I set the event date for 6:00 am CST tomorrow.  At the time, I was anticipating trouble getting the server ready with add-ons.  Regretably, I didn’t make it that far.

On the 15th of March, in the early morning hours locally, I ordered a 10-slot Synergy server.  I plan to make it public except for periods of recording a gameplay show I have planned.

The only problem was that once I joined the server, it began lagging terribly.  At times, the screen appears to jump back and forth between two positions.  At others, it appears to stutter.  And on rare occassion it appears to loose the connection and regain it.

Okay, my first thought was that maybe I had something messed up on my end.  I eventually went so far as to remove and re-install Synergy on my own machine.  But the problems continue.

Then I decided to get Syrus on the server to test it and he experienced the same lag problem.  As did a few random people that joined.   They joined because our server’s ping was in the 30′s or 40′s at it’s worst… at least locally.

It seems to be a good connection with my own ping fluctuating between 47 and 107.  But the lag is present in all things server side.

So I had basically determined that the problem was server side. I tried several more tricks to be certain and even waited a day to make sure that the problem wouldn’t resolve itself.

Then I gave in and filed a support ticket.  I explained the situation and that the game was basically unplayable.  I noted that the lag issue doesn’t seem present until NPC’s spawn.

A support technician responded to let me know they work checking the issue and when they were ready for me to try the server again.  Unfortunately, I had to go to work that night and found myself stuck with an extra 4.5 hour holdover in the morning.

I do hate holdovers.

When I returned, I tried the server once again and found the problem unresolved.  I reported this and noted the NPC’s once again.  At times, it even seems to help to move away from them.

I was then asked if I had installed any add-ons.  The answer of course was no.  I haven’t had a working server to install anything on yet.

The technician asked if I wanted to try re-installing the server and said that he wasn’t sure what the problem could be.  I agreed to the re-install and once again tested the new server.

Yet, the lag remained.  I looked at my configuration files and noted sv_maxrate 66, but wrote that off as part of the variables governing my 66 tickrate.

I could see no issue and the tech support folks [there have been three or four now by the way] suggested deleting the current server and installing on a different machine.  I agreed and tested once again.

Still the server lagged painfully.  Words cannot describe how bitterly bad this lag really is.  The game is completely unplayable.

By this point, I and Syrus both had been scouring google and bing for answers.  But no one seems to have had this particular problem.  We considered this strange, but I continued to search.

Gradually, I made my way around to the variables I had noted earlier.  Particularly that sv_maxrate 66.  Something about that setting just felt wrong.  And the more I searched, the more I found new equations for calculating sv_maxrate and setting it in the thousands.

And then I found an article about “Setting up a Standalone Dedicated Server“  on support.steampowered.com.  And it mentions sv_maxrate set to 1000 as a minimum and the default being 10000.  The article defines sv_maxrate as “…the maximum rate of bytes per second which the server is allowed to transmit…”

Wow… wait a moment.  Bytes per second?

As in, the cfg file is trying to set the server’s transmissions at a rate of 66 bytes per second?

Oh my…

Yes, it would appear that this number is my culpret.  The actual settings were sv_maxrate 66 and sv_maxupdaterate 66.

I asked a question, but not before the tech support folks had started moving my server to the Chicago location to try to fix my lag problem.  The response was that sv_maxrate can not be more then 66 on a 66 tickrate server.

Now, I’ll admit, I’ve been playing dumb with these guys.  As I explained to Syrus, I don’t really want these folks to know that I actually know a little something about computers and networking.  Networking, in particular, was not my strongest class at University [mainly because the professor was boring and read all his lectures off power point presentations *shudders*].

And I am a bit rusty in many of my subjects.  Honestly, I don’t want these tech help types assuming that I know anything… because then important steps get skipped.  And I also want to know if they try to lie to me about anything for any reason… particularly to scam extra dollars out of me.

Bottom line, I want them to think I’m just some dumb kid that doesn’t know anything.

Nonetheless, I actually do know that 66 bytes per second is abysmal and the general consensus on all gaming forums is that sv_maxrate should be in the thousands.

10000 > 66

But according to tech help, 66 was the right setting.  The transfer to the Chicago location completed while we dealt with a power outage here thanks to thunderstorms.  [seriously, I'm telling you this has been a long mess with many curveballs thrown at me.]

Once I was back on-line, I tested the new server and the lag was *gasp* still present.

I have since reported this and pointed out two very important facts regarding the sv_maxrate variable.  It is important to note that the server has been on-line and unplayable for the four days already.

First, I again politely asked about the sv_maxrate setting… though I must admit I typed sv_maxupdate in the first sentence.  [oops]  I took a moment to re-iterate the steampowered.com definition of sv_maxrate as bytes per second.  Noting that 66 bytes per second is pretty bad, I also pointed out that 1000 was the stated minimum by that article.

Second, I pointed out a different web page.  During my searching I stumbled onto a page on counter-strike.com.  This is important because the first two iterations of this server had counter-strike.com server addresses as it is apparently a part of the LowPings family.

On the page mentioned, which is dedicated to tickrates on the Counter-Strike servers, they state that a 66 tickrate server should have sv_maxupdaterate set to 66 and sv_maxrate set to 20000.

Wait… what?

Tech support said sv_maxrate couldn’t go above 66.  The page I referenced here is on THEIR BLOODY SITE.  WHAT THE HELL!?

20000 > 66

So yes, I pointed this out politely and asked if Synergy is different somehow… because you never know.  But I already know the answer.  The CORRECT answer that is.

They set up the server wrong and didn’t think to check the server.cfg file and left it to me to figure out my own problem.

I’m at this moment waiting for their answer, and am still trying to play dumb for their support ticket.  However, I DO already know the answer and am only waiting for the response before I fix the problem myself.

While I was in game the last time, I took a screenshot of the net_graph and attached that too.  Check out the choke of 189.

An effect that I had previously described to them as feeling like a bottleneck.  Now I know why.

Source Dedicated Servers override clients when it comes to transmission of data.  The server is trying to send data packets [66 packets per second] at a rate of 66 bytes of data per second.

Something about the math here doesn’t add up.

I don’t dislike LowPings or their tech support folks.  In fact, I believe the issue here is one of reading my messages too quickly and being to busy with other people’s support tickets, and not checking the most simple points first.

When you are debugging a PC hardware problem, the first step is to check all the cables and connections.  This is a basic principle, yet we with a bit of experience under our belt often forget ourselves and skip that step.

Thus, the solution is often the last place we would think to look and the first place that we SHOULD have looked.  In the case of this server problem, the server.cfg file should have been the first place we all looked.

I don’t blame these folks for missing this point as I obviously missed it myself.  But think of all the wasted man-hours and bandwidth now.  Four days of server issues.  This server has been re-installed, deleted, installed on a new machine, and transferred from one data center to another.  With no effect… because the cfg file is still limiting the server to sending only 66 bytes of data per second.

And then one of them tells me that 66 is the correct setting when their own website says 20000 is the correct setting.  It just saddens me a bit.  And frustrates me.

All in all it just goes to show you that I am epically awesome in every way and can solve problems that tech support cannot.

Kneel before The Wildcat and his mad server skills!

=P

// did I mention I sent my last query at 1:59 am and it is now 3:12 am without a response.

With the first notebook entry of 2011, I had planned to discuss something project related.

And then my plans changed.  Brace yourself, this is going to be a long one.

You see, I read an editorial blog post recently.  King Cobra re-tweeted a message by JD_2020 on Wednesday, 5th of January.  You might know of JD_2020 as one of the public faces of a certain Black Ops related project.

In said message, JD_2020 commented that a buddy of his had written a blog post that all gamers should read.

It was an editorial by OneOfSwords, “the social media guy for Activision”.  His article entitled “Editorial: Here are your 2011 Resolutions“, was posted on New Years Day.  Having now read the article, I can tell you that I see flaws.

Oh sure, I know what he means.  As the developer of Cat-Life, one of the slowest developed and least progressed mods in history, I’ve had more then my fair share of complaints from fans that want a released project and / or want to see the mod on THEIR favorite engine.  If anything, all the “is dead?” type of comments on ModDB have been trying at best.

I’ve even had one follower on ModDB decide to threaten to stop watching because of our plans to develop CLS.  It can be almost funny when these “overreactions” occur.  But there are more and more of them it seems – at least if you have many “fans” at all.

[ I'll explain the use of quotation marks in that last line shortly. ]

OneOfSwords points out the number of people that overreact to changes in initial plans including raised prices, engine and planning changes, and release dates.  He asks us to stop being cynical just for the sake of being cynical.  He asks us to try games before we decide if we like the product.  And he asks us [ get ready now ] to lower our expectations.

To summarize he said, “Without the soapbox, it all comes down to “Be rational.”"

That’s good advice.  And it’s also all really just the same one resolution.  Gamers overreact far too often these days – or so it seems.  The truth is a bit deeper.  People on the internet and social media networks tend to present their opinions and overreactions for attention’s sake.  It’s not only gamers, but bloggers and video makers of all sorts.

But let’s try looking at this a bit differently.  I think the best way to work on this notebook entry will be to create a set of four resolutions for gamers.  And four for developers.

First up… Gamers.

1. Be reasonable – It’s good advice and OneOfSwords raised some good points.

If you plan to lead a boycott and start a petition because you don’t like the fact that a given game is being delayed by a few months, you are probably overreacting.

Sometimes – as a fact of life and not simply game development – delays occur.  Sometimes changes are made because they honestly need to be made.  On occasion, a bug slips through beta testing unchecked and has to be fixed during an update.  That is life and some of us – indeed a fairly large number when sampling the overall population of gamers – need to mature a little and learn to understand that simple fact.

Likewise, many of us need to learn the difference between cynical commentary and honest critiques.  A game isn’t bad just because you have an opinion.  What specifically don’t you like and why?  Posting a forum message on a developer’s website slamming their latest release with witty insults does not make you a good critic.  It makes you obnoxious.

Remember that games take time to develop.  Remember that resources – all to often in short supply – must be dedicated to development and support for any given project.  And remember that developers can make mistakes too.  It isn’t fair to expect a game to be exactly what you want unless you personally make it.

In short, remember that we as gamers are already scrutinized and demonized by some people.  There is absolutely no reason to act especially angry, hateful, or insane.  Rational discussion of bugs will – under most circumstances – lead to a fix.  Thoughtful discussion of concerns and desires will help developers better understand what you as gamers really want.

And try to understand that you are one of millions of gamers that these developers are trying to please.  They simply cannot make everyone happy, nor can they create a product that is beyond their means.

2. Expect a perfect game, but be self-aware – As OneOfSwords pointed out, developers are people.  Heck, some companies have even hired mod teams to develop games for them.  And let’s not forget about  the rising number of indie studios.  This means that developers are largely gamers that were fortunate enough to be hired to make the games we play.

It also means that there will be mistakes.  There will be bugs.  There will even be *gasp* delays.  Problems are a fact of life in every aspect of this modern world.  You can’t stop all the bugs.  It is physically impossible to create the perfect game.

Nevertheless, gamers must never lower their expectations.  High expectations demand that we better ourselves.  Expecting the perfect game from a developer should make the developer strive for perfection.  They won’t attain perfection, but they should be trying.

The key here is that we must remember that we are asking the impossible.  We should certainly keep our high expectations, but we should also remember that developers can never possibly meet them all.  Just the fact of the millions of gamers and their millions of different expectations will guarantee that developers cannot truly produce the perfect game.

Defining a perfect game with hopes and dreams is a subjective pursuit.  As such, we each must remember that we are looking for the next great game that comes closest to meeting our expectations… not the literal perfect game.

3. Commit, vote with your pocket book, and stop threatening everyone – The single most disturbing issue I have seen in recent years is the trend toward gamers threatening boycotts  or worse because some aspect of the next game has been changed or dropped.

Remember all the folks that insisted they wouldn’t buy Modern Warfare 2 because of the lack of dedicated server software?

What about the boycott of Left 4 Dead 2 because it was slated to release 364 days after Left 4 Dead?  Gamers felt that they had been promised DLC and much more and that the game couldn’t possibly be improved in such a small amount of time.

Why threaten anything over a changed dynamic or an earlier then expected release date?  If you see something in a game you don’t like, such as the lack of dedicated server support in MW2, then simply don’t buy the game.  That’s what I did.  And I still haven’t bought MW2.  I don’t plan to.

Understand that threatening anyone is bad form.  And beyond boycotts we occasionally hear of someone threatening worse, such as cracking a developer’s network, other such criminal activities, or even occasionally physical harm.

WHAT THE HELL KIND OF A MESSAGE ARE YOU TRYING TO SEND!?

If you don’t like the direction a game is turning, just don’t  play it.  Commit yourself to not playing the game and don’t bloody play it!  If you really want to be internet famous, write a blog post that cleanly and clearly explains why you won’t be buying the game.  But leave the threats out of your message.

4. Communicate like an adult – This is the single most important resolution of all.  If you plan to play M-rated games, at least act like you’re over the age of 17.  If you have a complaint about a game and want to send an email to the developers or post on their forums, do so in a professional manner.

“Hello, my name is Johnny.  I’ve been playing your games for four years now and have really enjoyed them.  However, this latest title has been locking up fairly often when… and I don’t really like the new two-weapon system.  It feels forced and clumsy to me.  I’m really interested in what you think about these issues and I would much appreciate a response.”

If you write a message thoughtfully and politely – as with any encounter in life – you are much more likely to receive a positive and helpful response.

Remember, the developers are people too.  I know it’s easy to look at a twitter account or a blog and then think of the developer as that series of text messages.  But they are not.  At least try to remember that there is a person on the other side of that message, sitting at a monitor and keyboard or cell phone or whatever.

When you throw out threats, rant uncontrollably, or generally act like a spoiled 7-year-old they have to make a decision about how to react.

If you decided to walk into the nearest convenience store and start demanding service with threats and ranting,  how long would you have before you were in police custody for being mentally insane or an attempted robber.

Now with all of that said, it wouldn’t really be fair or accurate to stop with the gamers alone.  We need to look at four resolutions for developers too.

1. Be reasonable – Oh my… did I just tell the developers to be reasonable too?

Of course I did.  If you release a DLC for $10 in this economy, maybe it should have more then a few new maps.  Seriously.  Mod tools allow gamers to make new and better maps.  If you are holding back on mod tools and releasing a map pack for money, then you appear to be greedy.

A big part of being reasonable here is maintaining your relationship with the “gamers”. [ Uh oh, there are those pesky quotation marks again. ]  The appearance of impropriety can be just as harmful as actual impropriety.  When a developer releases a game and the fans immediately start complaining that it feels like a beta release and not a finished product, you probably did something wrong.

Certainly, the way your “fans” react can be frustrating… and tiring… and somehow they managed to find a bug you didn’t know existed.  But it really is – quite literally – YOUR job to find the true source of the problem.

Sometimes, it will be a simple matter of unreasonable gamers.  Unfortunately for you developers though, many times it was something that YOU did.  We payed $60 for an 8 hour SP campaign and a laggy, buggy multiplayer experience.  You didn’t know of the bugs the players found, but they were released with your “finished” game.  The best thing you can do is admit a mistake and start debugging.

And try explaining your reasons for passing the cost of that pesky DLC to the gamer.  Even though you will encounter many who won’t listen, there will always be someone who can be reasonable.  Often, those gamers will even defend you to the trolls in an effort to protect you.  Keep that kind of loyalty in mind, but remember that you aren’t a superstar or even someone really important.  For many gamers, all a developer really needs to do is be a little more humble.

2. Offer gamers what they want, not what you want – In business, you must make the most financially reasonable decisions possible.  You need to offer your product with the lowest cost and the highest profit that you can while also maintaining your relationship with gamers.  We all understand that.

Even so, you must be willing to consider what the gamers actually want from your product.  This is the era of relationship marketing.  Which means that you must think about more then just sales figures.  What features are gamers asking for?  What characters?  What type of game?  What type of story?

Dedicated servers.

Yep… I went there for an example.

Back at QuakeCon 2010, after John Carmack [ Technical Director and co-founder of id Software ] finished his key note address, there was a period of question and answer time.  During this time, one of the many gamers present asked him about his opinion of the recent trend away from dedicated server software releases with modern games including id’s own RAGE.  Carmack had previously indicated that RAGE likely would not have dedicated servers, but that was before the stink over MW2.

He said that he was “puzzled” by the issue and that he couldn’t understand why fans were so angered by developers not offering dedicated servers anymore.  I can’t begin to tell you how sad that is.

Yes, it could raise costs to spend the time developing better server software, but here’s the real trick: gamers WANT dedicated servers.  A great many of them will pay a little more to get a good dedicated server.

It doesn’t matter if you as a developer understand why a gamer wants a dedicated server.  It doesn’t matter if you think you know better.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to offer it.  It doesn’t matter if you as a developer think that we all have 20Mbs internet connections and consoles and could thus host our own listen servers or use a limited supply of your own network.

It doesn’t matter because gamers WANT dedicated servers.

Even with identical consoles, no one has identical internet connections or configurations.  I would never be able to host a game of MW2 on my own system or on a PS3 or 360.  Why?  Because I don’t have the bandwidth or the support by my ISP.

More importantly, I prefer being able to rent servers such that BWL can have our own official servers.  And when I do have higher bandwidth, better ISP support, and another rig… I want to be able to host dedicated servers for my own purposes.  I personally want dedicated server software.

Other gamers have their own reasons, but the bottom line is… gamers want dedicated servers.  Your job is to fill that and other wants and needs for a price.  If you can’t handle that, then you need to get out of business.

3. Remember that “fans” and “gamers” are actually your paying clients – And so now we come to the big explanation.  Do NOT confuse gamers with a fawning, adoring fan that would do anything for you.  We… are… your… customers.  If we bring a problem to light, you have a responsibility to seek a remedy for that problem.

Stop leaving the debugging to us.  Stop relying on us as gamers to find workarounds in order to play “your game”.  We are all paying $50 to $60 before taxes to purchase a license to “your” software and / or hardware.  We gave you our money [ directly or indirectly, it does not matter ]… now you give us the respect we deserve as your clients.

We love to be treated like you care about us.  That’s relationship marketing.  We love to chat with you folks and play your games with you.  We love to tour your studios and better understand how you make your products.  And many of us secretly hope to work with you somehow some day.

But that doesn’t make you the center of our universe and it doesn’t give you free reign to treat us as your friends or followers.  We are paying customers and we expect to receive quality products and services for our money.

Until such a day as you personally go around to the houses of all of your “fans” and start spending time just hanging out with them, you DO NOT get the right to ignore our criticisms.  You do not have the right to get angry with us for expecting “too much”.  You do not have the right to treat us like your close personal friend, or your personal minions that will play whatever game you want to make.

WE PAY FOR YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.

They aren’t YOUR games.  Yes, we buy a license for the game and you retain the rights for the copyright material, but you didn’t make the game just to have a copyright.  You made the game to make some money.  You offer a product or service via license agreement to your customers.  And we as your customers WILL guide your decision making.

4. Communicate like an adult – Oops.  I did it again.

All of the previous resolutions come together for this one.  You as developers need to learn to communicate with gamers.  Nothing is sadder then when I learn of a series of tweets in which a group of developers are seeing a bunch of gamer overreactions and then respond by overreacting themselves.

You as the developer should be above that.  I know how frustrating some gamers can be.  I know that many of them act like 7-year-olds.  But that is a by-product of the internet and the perceived anonymity it brings.  In fact, some of them actually ARE 7-year-olds.  *gasp*

Developers should be well above responding to complaints by complaining about not being respected.  Developers should be able to show a bit of maturity and recognize a troll when they see one.  Developers should know better.

Don’t forget about franchise fans and their questions either.  Yes, you must keep many details of your plot secret until the release date… that’s part of the fun of playing a campaign for the first time.  However, when fans start growing irate about some element of your project, be prepared to sit down and give interviews about what you improved.

It isn’t enough to just say “we made a better game”.  Tell us about it.  Did you increase some of your engine’s abilities?  Did you improve your particle effects?  Did you re-write net code?  Why did you need to make a design change?  What happened?

Giving your customer the silent treatment like they are somehow your enemy will make them your enemy.

With all of that said, and my own soapbox standing several times larger then OneOfSwords’, I will freely admit that I believe I could stand to use both of these sets of resolutions.  I am not a professional developer, but I want BWL to be a respectable institution and I have found myself not properly representing it in the past.

It is very easy to react negatively.  But it is much harder to repair the damages of your reaction.  Developer and gamer alike need to improve their communication skills.  This is the only way to prevent the extraordinary degree of negativity we are all seeing.

OneOfSwords called gaming an experiential hobby and asked us to try games before deciding that we hate them.  [ Price is of no consequence to us after all. ]  And he asked us to admit that we don’t know what we’re talking about.

But that is a problem in his reasoning.  You see, many of us do know.

Such a comment is reflective of the error many developers and publishers are making.  They assume we know nothing of how games are made, nothing of how to tell a good story, nothing of what a good on-line game should be, nothing of the technology, and nothing of the games they are preparing to release.  No other assumption could be more misguided.

I don’t have to play a game to know that I won’t like it.  I can look at the information available and see that it isn’t my preferred style, or that my system can’t handle it, or that I wouldn’t be able to play it online.

Some of us have worked in technology industries, and some of us have much more important software or hardware jobs then you developers do.  [ Not me personally mind you, my real job sucks. ]

It is very much true to say that some gamers speak out of turn.  But some don’t and more importantly, some make their issues with a given project perfectly clear.  The question is, will developers actually listen?

Communication is about more then just you telling your side of the story.

OneOfSwords said, “Gaming evolves every year. Let 2011 be the year that gamers evolve.”  But that isn’t fair to gamers.  It is a statement that blames gamers for not being satisfied by developers.

Gaming does indeed change, but not always for the best.  And gamers do need to grow up a little.  But the same can be said of developers that seem to view gamers as nothing more then a debugging tool or servant or test subject that dispenses money every so often.

Instead of hanging the responsibility on gamers, let’s make 2011 a year of maturity and growth for everyone.

Hal-Con was this past weekend. It was the first year for this convention, and considering the amount of people who attended it looks like it has a bright future. It was originally, I believe, envisioned as a simple, perhaps small convention, with maybe 500 people at the most. What they got was a frothing mass of at least a thousand, probably more. The hotel it took place at (The Lord Nelson, located in downtown Halifax. Very nice hotel,) was not ready for the amount of people it got. It was crowded, it was busy, and it was awesome.

Now, to be perfectly honest with you, I didn’t attend a whole lot of panels or anything. I mostly played games or had fun with the group I was there with, people I’ve known online for a while now. But there were some interesting things I went to see.

Firstly; There were two previews. One for Tron 2, and one for the TV series the Walking Dead.

I’ve never seen the original Tron, so I can only comment on how the new one looks on it’s own merits. It definitely catches my interest. The style is colourful (As you’d expect,) and the story (while a bit on the cliche side,) strikes me as, if not completely interesting, than at least fun.

Now, the Walking Dead. It’s a TV series, based on a comic-book series of the same name. A story and character-driven zombie series. It looks fucking brilliant! There was a Halloween preview on AMC (Which I missed, not having AMC in Canada, nor satellite TV.) It looks like everyone involved is having a great time, and that definitely means something. Plus, the author of the comics signed off on it completely. “This isn’t a version of the comic. It’s not an alternate telling. This /is/ the comic, as close as you’re going to get to it.” he said (Or something similar.) Everyone has enthusiasm, and I’m sure that will show in the finished product.

The costumes were amazing. There was an amazing looking Master Chief, a Boba Fett with working voice modulator, at least four amazing looking tuskan raiders.. Jokers, Batmen, the Doctors Who. I felt out of place not wearing a costume. I’ll finish this brief rambling foray into the best 3 days I’ve had this year with a simple link.

Take a look! There’s a lot of awesome stuff in here.

http://tinyurl.com/2bagdju

Edit: On reading this, it’s not a very good summary. Sorry about that. I’m tired.

Last year, we offered a fair amount of coverage of E3 despite lacking the resources to attend in person.  We provided links and summaries and commentary in one gigantic news post.

This year… Nothing.

Why?

It’s actually quite simple.  If you look at our E3 post last year, you’ll notice that we covered mostly the PC related topics and only really looked at the consoles for their next big upgrades or to see games that would have at least a PC port.

This year… the upgrades have names.  And that’s about it.

Okay, that isn’t totally fair, but it is a serious issue for me.  We now know that project natal will be called “Kinect”.  The urge to steal a joke from Atop the Fourth Wall is incredible here, but I’ll resist.  We also know it will be bundled with XBox 360 Slim.

That’s right, no next generation consoles were revealed here.  Just a “slim” version of the original that can completely destroy your disk if you move the system while it is spinning.

The PS3 Move and Eye thing looks decent.  But really, it is still just a Wii rip-off.  It should work better, but then again, so should the Wii by now.

So what did Nintendo announce?  The 3DS of course.  Built in 3D, this is a great idea and I am honestly most likely to pick up one of these some day.  But seriously, where’s the new controller or console?

More importantly for me, where’s the PC advancements and announcements?

Well… basically, they’re all in with the consoles.  Yes, we can expect a lot of console ports in the coming year.

Don’t get me wrong, Fallout New Vegas looks nice and Portal 2 is good news.  But really, we’re looking at ports of Medal of Honor, CoD Black Ops, and other games.

Oh, and a BFBC 2 add-on pack.

…

yea…

…

Announced for PC in 1997

The simple truth is, I still pine of the days of Duke Nukem 3D and Tomb Raider games.  Back in those days, there would be countless photos and news posts.  Huge game announcements would be made there.  The entire event was one massive spectacle.  The consoles had big news.  The PC had big news.  The hardware had big news.  It was all huge.

E3 1997 gave us Half-Life, Unreal, SiN, Quake II, and Metal Gear Solid.

On a side note, can you believe Alan Wake was debuted in 2005?

E3 took a nose dive toward the end of its public run and was restructured as closed door meetings for 2007 and 2008 with around 15,000 in attendance total.  Compare that to the 2005 estimate of 70,000.

Max Payne Gameplay first shown at E3 in 1998

The key here was that so many “outsiders”… read that as gamers, bloggers, and effectively the entire customer base… had started attending to make reports.  The scaled back shows were limited to “industry professionals”.

I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong THAT idea was, but it happened.

In the end, I feel that the 2000′s in general brought a bit of a change to E3′s nature, dragging the presentations into a purely console focus and more or less dumping anything else.

Don’t get me wrong, PC developers and hardware groups may still be there… but when was the last time you saw them given top billing.

“but that just reflects the market,” some of you say.  Sure.  Consoles are nice because they come equipped for your games.  No maintaining an expensive computer system here.  And lovely extras like movies and blueray players also help.

My point isn’t that PC is better then everything… that’s a given…

No, I’m simply disappointed that more time and space isn’t given to PC, software companies, hardware, etc.

I can sort of understand the focus on PS3 this year for Portal 2 simply because PS3 had been completely abandoned since the orange box.  Knowing people with the PS3, I’m certainly glad VALVe finally gave them the attention they deserved as paying customers… even if it did require MicroSoft demanding money from free DLC to finally change Gabe’s mind.

*sigh*  I digress.  I’ve gotten very far off topic.

We didn’t cover E3 as heavily this year because I didn’t have the time to sift through all of the news to find the few genuinely good announcements.  For what it’s worth, E3 has drastically improved in the past two – once again open to the public… sort of – years.

Even so, I don’t see any reason to report on E3 again until the show improves further, and especially when the developers come up with new consoles and games as opposed to Wii rip-offs, “Slim” products, and a hearty supply of sequels.

Seriously…

When E3 revives its glory days or betters them, we’ll pay more attention.  Need I point out that I question whether we would even be able to attend such an expo… even if we did have the needed funding… even in the current “open” format of the show?

What do they consider “credentials” anyway?  Driver License?  Web Site Receipts?  A really big role of one dollar bills?

I’d rather stick with QuakeCon, A-Kon, and other conventions that really focus on the most important people… the customers.

Visit the Pernumbra: Black Plague Walkthrough page to view all 16 parts.  Or watch the first part below.  I suggest watching in full screen.

In trying to write tonight, I’ve had to consider various topics and found most just needless.  Finally, after constantly returning to the same idea of addressing some of the criticisms Cat-Life has received, I decided to give in and make that entry.

No, I’m not going to simply argue with critics or anything so juvenile.  Rather I want to again reinforce a few points.

First, the mod has done exactly what the team set out to do.  That is, to please the fans of our mod.  Honestly, if you expect to like every mod you ever play, you’re lying to yourself.  Mods often fall to a specific target audiance and ours has been happy with our demo.

Moreover, I expect that the fans will be fairly happy with the cleaned up code and debugged maps when the mod is ready for a beta update.

But all of that brings me to the second point.  This mod is NOT for everyone.  Let me give you some examples.  Rock Paper Shotgun wrote a short news item about Cat-Life when the demo finally released.  Their take was that the mod felt too much like a mini-Gordon and not enough like a cat.  Specifically, the reviewer felt that a cat would not attempt some of the dangerous jumps and such.

His loyal commenters mostly agreed… which is to be expected.

Meanwhile, Philip of planetphilip has sort of jokeingly said that he needs the cat to have major upgraded abilities and has used a chainsaw and a grapling hook as examples.

And, let us speak only briefly of Redfox’s Hitler-Jesus cat with head mountable laser which Emanuel from Podcast17 has indicated would have been more enjoyable and funny.

Let’s think about this for a moment.  Hitler-Jesus cat with head mountable laser, chainsaw, grappling hook, and that acts like a real cat and not an action hero.  It would be great if we could pull that business off, but… no… just no.

We can’t be all things to every player.  It simply isn’t possible without painful and destructive compromises in concept.  Ultimately, we either make ten different mods and tie them all together in one package [a prospect that would likely take decades to develop], or we make one project and see it through to the finish.

For the people that have been following us from the beginning, it’s only fair that we finish the original concept.  They were the ones that saw us through thick and thin.  They are the fans that have waited seven years for a demo release.  And, as of that demo release, they are the ones that speak of how much they enjoy it.

Third, the mod is not perfect.  I have said this enough times already.  I don’t really care to continue repeating that point.  We are a mod team, not an indie team.  Nor a game studio proper.  A mod.  And most mods never get this far.  It was the sheer tenacity of a few loyal people that kept this mod alive so long.

By 2007, when development resumed after years of downtime, the original project was basically gone.  It’s source version was gone.  We had nothing but BiGToM’s desire to see the project finished.  And he was doing all the work by himself.

Thankfully, additional team members joined, but we still suffer from our old problems.  Often a member joins because they want the fame that accompanies the project.  They want to see their name in a magazine or something.  They produce quality work samples to prove their skills, but then never do anything.

They don’t even contact the team to talk about the project.

When we are asked what is happening with the mod right now, all I can say is that bluefire from In Development is working on the cat code and BiGToM is debugging the maps.  I’m not sure any of the other team members are still active.

And THAT brings us to the fourth point.  I am not the Team Leader.  BiGToM is.  I have said before that I am the Gabe Newell of BWL.  And honestly, that’s an accurate principle.  I am the site administrator and make the big decisions.  Team Cat-Life is only a portion of the site and BiGToM is Team leader.

I trust him to make the project.  My role in Cat-Life has been mostly hands off.  I try not to get too involved in the development and handle the press releases as several folks have trusted my use of English more then their own.  That started with FG offering me a news job and Special Forces Team recruiting me to be their public relations as well.

When I knew that Cat-Life was going to be released without custom code, I rushed to make some code.  Since then, I haven’t done anything else except work on public relations and stay in communication with bluefire.

Fifth, we DO indeed know what a story is and how to use it.  Unfortunately, there are limitations to what we can do with GoldSource.  The project as it stands will be a basic story that we have continuously stated we would not be discussing publicly.  I don’t expect the story to be very deep or emotional… this isn’t Dear Esther.  It’s a story about a pet cat trying not to die.

I can’t even begin to go into detail about the story because I haven’t read it all myself.  And let me add that the Cat-Life prologue I have pointed to more then once now as proof of concept is a “fan prologue”.  I have said this many times and yet I still get questions regularly.

It isn’t even the bloody mod story, let alone the mods back story.  That was made before BiGToM even took over the project.

So then, what does all of this mean for Cat-Life?  Is it a bad mod?  Is BiGToM a bad leader?

No… none of the above.  BiGToM has done an excellent job and deserves to be commended for doing so much of the work by himself and of his own initiative.  And Cat-Life will be a fun mod about a cat trapped in Black Mesa.  Yes it will be buggy, but… you could always make something to improve the mod.

Do you make models, maps, or know how to program?  Then why not make something.  Do some of the work yourself and be a part of a very unique mod.

As for Cat-Life Source, well… that is a different matter entirely.  Given the shortfalls of the GoldSource engine, I feel that Cat-Life will not be as great a game as I would have liked.  I think Source would be a better platform and had I been administrator back in 2005 or earlier, I probably would have insisted on use of Source.

That said, now that we have a mostly completed project, we can start looking to future projects and what we want to do.  If you want to see a better plot for the original Cat-Life, get started.  BiGToM has previously stated that he would like to make our materials open source when the project is finished so that community content for the mod can be made.  He would like to see someone develop a deathmatch game.

But the Source project is different.  I am taking the lead on that game because I want to see something wonderful.  :SysOp: has tried to offer explanations of how to develop mods on multiple occasions and sadly, through difficulties in translation, his comments have sometimes felt insulting.

Though he means well… we know how to develop a mod.  We just don’t have the most important role, as is the case with many mods, a coder.  Thankfully bluefire has stepped in for the GoldSource project and I want you to tell him “thank you” for his service when you get the chance.

dimitri is helping with the source version, but I fear that time issues may have broken him away from the project.  It has been a while since he last contacted me so I don’t really know what he may have finished from our to-do list.

If you can code for source and want to help, let me know.  It would be great to have more help here.  I’m not doing much further until the code is ready.

But what have I said about this project so far?

Not much.  Cat-Life: Source will be the same idea we made with GoldSource, but using a better engine.  Additionally, the story will be changed for one that I have in mind.

That being the case, if you have read any of the links I posted on ModDB back during the demo release, then you will know how grand in scheme this mod will be.  I have very big plans in mind and a darker story with some amusing secrets.  We have a few gags already lined up, but the plot will not be as humorous.

Honestly, I think many will want to know what is different about the story.

Everything.

Expect to begin the game in a kitty litter box for instance.  Expect to learn about why you are smarter then other cats.  Expect to see some important parts of the original game as they finally meet their end… for example…

Wait what?

oh… alright.

Just one.

Expect to have options in certain parts of the game.  Though linear in nature, you will be able to choose between two paths to reach the same goal in some places.  At one such place, if you take the vent shaft on the left it will lead you to a collapse in the vent.

Crawling through a crack in the wall will bring you into the Sector C test chamber in it’s last moments of existence.  The crack and vent behind you collapses and traps you inside.  The main blast doors have fallen and the entrance is now blocked by debris from the ceiling.  The blast window is unreachable as it is too high and the walls are made of metal.

A grinding sound draws your attention to the center of the room.  Suddenly, the massive anti-mass spectrometer’s main column crashes to the ground, smashing the scanner below and shaking the room violently.  A cloud of dust fills the chamber and you can see and hear the column teetering for a moment before it tumbles onto it’s side.

Then a cascade of debris and rock begins to rain down as the ceiling begins falling apart.  Chunks of rock and concrete the size of small trucks begin to tumble into the room.  You’re only hope is to scramble across the room before you are crushed and scurry down into the delivery system.

Of course, this is all some distance in our future now.  We still need some source code and I have some more writing and design work to do.  Also, we have several other mod projects to consider.

This week I have worked to clean up the forums to better match our new intentions to focus more on creativity and development.  Thanks to that, some of my other projects are visible.  We have at least three other mod ideas we want to make eventually, not including Cat-Life: Source or the sequel I also plan to make in Cat-Life 2.

And with four or five machinima projects in the works, plus custom content for those, and the list of stories that spans several more topics, we have plenty to work on.  I am openly looking for a Source modeler, mapper, sound designer, etc… but not just for Cat-Life Source.  I need many of these items for my stories and the new machinima shows we have planned.

The new project forums will all be updated as I think of more items to add.  So make sure you stop by the forums from time to time.

I’ve made some fairly small changes to the site over the past few weeks.  Most notably, I removed the Team Blog forum.  Since our site is using WordPress again, I see no reason to continue making journal posts in the forums.

Thus, I am creating a new category here… the Journals.  My own little feature is “From The Wildcat’s Notebook”.

With that explanation out of the way we really should get started with this entry.

For close to a month now, I have spent my spare time working on the Cat-Life code specifically trying to edit the player POV.  :SysOp: from ModDB was helpful and offered up the location of the hull definitions.

And I also, only a day or so ago, discovered an old tutorial by omega and Corvidae regarding player scaling in GoldSource.

All of this new information has been helpful and I think everyone involved.  With that said, none of this help has been exactly what we need for Cat-Life.  Valve’s prediction system tends to trash the constant vectors we set for our hulls and defaults back to the standard 72 unit height.

I posted a thread in the forums showing off the easily controlled POV [ Link ] back on the 22th of October.  At that point, I had spent only a few hours on the idea.  It was after that post, and with a few more hours of work in my free time, that I learned the useless nature of hull definitions.

In short, they made a cat with an invisible six foot clearance.  Toying with the code, I learned that setting the variables could affect what the game rendered, but did little else.  The collision system itself is a part of the aforementioned predictions.  So… I need to override prediction without learning every tiny detail of the Half-Life source code… right?

Well, no actually.  I simply needed to find the tutorial by omega and Corvidae.  With it, I could basically override the hull reset using a simple module and a custom hull file for compiling.  But that’s where this matter again becomes tricky.

The tutorial is for scaling the game in full… not simply the player.  So I’ve had to make a few truly ugly hacks and some of the stupidest… silliest… worst use of hard-coding I have ever done.  Why?  Because, as I said before, I don’t have time to really study the code.  That’s precisely why we want a coder specifically and BiGToM was willing to offer a reward for that coder.

More specifically, using the custom hull and hacks shrank the player while basically maintaining the other monsters in full size.  But… their origins are now lower.  This means that they seem to sink waist deep into the ground.  To fix this, I am simply modifying their individual hull settings.  Of course, I’m not finished with this and the dead bodies still fall under the ground so I have some more work in my future.

Honestly, this really is a poor coding job on my part.  It works just fine… I’ve even managed to turn a bug into a fun little feature… the monsters can effectively step on the player and hold them in place while attacking.  It’s not perfect and really is just a bug, but it’s pretty fun.  You’d better not let them get too close now. XD

Once I finish this ugly mess with the hulls, I still plan to make a secondary fire bite attack and possibly work some clones into the code for Cat-Zombies, Juvenile headcrabs, and military dogs into the code.  I also do plan to try to add wall jumping, sprinting, and DarkVision to the game.  Nevertheless, I’m making no promises as this has already taken up more of my time then I would have liked.

Seriously, we need a full coder and not just me toying with the code in my spare time.  I have a number of other projects to work on besides this code and once I’m done with my part, I’m sure there will be bugs that will need cleaning up.

Outside of Cat-Life, I’ve been re-assigned at work again.

Another false accusation that a client made while half-asleep and angry that he couldn’t eat during the night due to diabetes.  Long story short, I should have been cleared by now.  The client recanted on his accusation the next day.  The state investigator cleared us that same day and by the end of the weekend the investigation was back in our facility’s hands.

This also was over in a day.  I was a float… which means I was working on a different home then the one I am actually assigned.  And I was only working on that other home for 2.5 hours, never worked with any of the clients, and never really did anything.  I was reassigned because the client wanted to report all of the on-duty staff at that time for a false abuse allegation.

I really don’t understand why I am still reassigned.  I’ve learned that the two men that I worked with didn’t properly document all of the client’s behaviors that night, and that is the only reason I am still working in the campus laundry.  They wanted to basically punish us for not writing all of the client’s behaviors down.

Shameful isn’t strong enough a word to describe this facility and it’s parent government organization.  Politics is too important to these people.  Enough so that they ignore their employee’s rights.  Is this supposed to be a long and disgracefully stretched-out investigation?  Are they really supposed to punish us without conviction?  Should I even be included in any of this?

Of course not!  This business is, for lack of a better word, retarded!

This is a big part of the reason I’m taking so long to make the Cat-Life code… I don’t feel like working on it most days of the week.  And when I do, I have a very short time to do so.

This madness gives me limitless stress, physical strains (as I stand all day long on a conveyor belt digging through soiled linens and clothing ),  a disrupted sleep schedule, and prevents me from maintaining my daily lifestyle (exercise, proper eating, sleep, etc).

Nevertheless, I have been looking at some changes to make on the site.  I have four video projects planned and Syrus, Radu, and BiGToM have all already volunteered.  I will go into more detail on those projects in a video update soon.

I am archiving the GargArena mod.  I will be archiving the old “Friendly Garg’s site” stories as well.  They’ll still be available to view, but will be in an archive area instead of the main story pages.

These and some other changes are directed at moving the site forward.  I want BWL Development to stand on it’s own instead of relying on FG’s old content.  We have several stories now from the BWL era and I want to help shift the site focus more toward creativity, gaming, and so forth because I feel the site is a bit mired in the old days as a Half-Life fan site.  We’re more then that.  And I believe that its time we started to act like more then a fan site.

I still have two pages of Operation: Save the Friendly Garg to color and assemble, and I plan to make that more of a series.  Yes it’s a half-life fan-fiction of sorts, but it’s a good project and is intended to be a series of sorts.

I also plan to continue An Average Citizen.

However, Errant Pixels will move away from Half-Life and become more about our active members.

I also have a possible story/comic/mod concept in mind for my Trinegate Universe (Mature rated Sonic The Hedgehog storyline – It’s considerably more grown up).  Also, I plan a Duke Nukem project due to the failure of 3D Realms to produce Duke Nukem Forever.  All of this is the subject for a different entry though.  A few companies and their projects have provoked me now and my pen is ready to show them how it’s done.

Of course, I have some completely original works too.  As I make progress on them, I think I’ll offer samples in the VIP section of the forums and eventually even the main site.  Once those original stories are finished, I’ll offer the full product for sale in book form eventually.

I’ll be looking into BWL, Cat-Life, and Ambition & Honor T-Shirts much sooner.

And the Ambition & Honor Forum RP will be prepared as time allows.  The A&H comic will also eventually be properly posted and as issues are finished, I’ll consider selling printed copies of that too.

Back on the Half-Life front, all four of the upcoming machinima projects will be made with GMod.  One is a mock trailer for “The Most Epic Game Ever Made”.  Two of the projects will be on-going series concepts with one based around “The Source” and our active forum members in an action-adventure format.  The second series will be more of a clip show… but… well, I can’t say much but it will be different from everything you’ve watched on YouTube in that format.

The fourth project doesn’t have a forum in the Studio Offices yet, but it does have a name.  “Team Play” will be a running series of videos based around the Half-Life 2 story-line.  The details are both complicated and secret… so… moving on.

I’m still working on the second of “The Source” stories, The Corrupted.  That series is turning decidedly more serious, but without forgetting to have fun.  I’ve completed some 39 pages so far and have a number more already shot.  They simply need assembly.  The rest of the story will be completed and the entire project posted when I have the time.

VIP’s can check out the first 30-pages of that story in the VIP Lounge forum.

After The Corrupted, I plan to continue that series, but first I plan to make my new version of Barney Time.  This is a project I sort of quietly announced some time ago.  FG and I discussed it briefly on deviantArt, but I’ve kept it quiet.

I’ll be “re-imagining” the Barney Time series rather then continuing FG’s stories.  You may recall that the Barney Time Source stories were short and a little limited given the age of the original series and the drastic changes of events between HL and HL2.  You can thank Valve for ruining that series. =P

My re-imagining will be a new story based roughly on the old.  Written in a marginally more serious light yet incredibly outlandish in concept, the story will incorporate the HL2 series of games from the start and will likely be easier to follow then the original.  This story won’t be a series though… it will be one stand alone “epic”.

Conundrum, my “novel” crossover fan-fic, will be completed over time.  I must apologize for the amount of time this story is taking, but I only work on it one chapter at a time in its own turn.  With all of these other projects, it takes a while for the line to circle around again.

The forum RP threads are moving pretty slow now.  I restarted “Downfall” some time ago, but it has yet to see any interested players… which is just as well.  I’m a little busy at the moment and wouldn’t get around to updating very often.

Such is the case with Cataclysm.  That RP has been much slower as I have deliberately waited for the “do nothing” responses from each player.  Basically, that has been an excuse to put that game aside while I work on other projects.

I’ll update it again pretty soon weather Syrus posts his move or not.  The story is about to take a fairly dramatic turn and we’re about to enter the build up for the climactic battle.

My, but that is a lot of text.  Since you’ve probably all stopped reading this already… let me just say that the first “tl;dr” comment will receive a quick and painless (mostly) death.

I think I’ve spoken enough about the current goings on as I have a number of future posts that will address these matters in better… more focused detail.  Hopefully, the business with work will turn around and/or I will find a better employment option.  I certainly hope to get more project work done soon such that we can start having some regular new content that expands on this site’s true purpose.

Until next time… see ya.