2008-07-04T15:14:15Z Ian Norris icStatic Copyright 2008, Ian Norris SPHPBLOG
Normally when I post nothing for a very long time it means I've had nothing to moan about. Isn't it customary for peoples' blogs to just be big rant fests, with no real aim but to get something off their chests? Well today I thought I'd try something a little different. I'm going to blog about what’s RIGHT with my life at the moment.

So.. as you all know, I started a job a few months ago, and to report back, its going a-ok! I must say that so far I'm absolutely loving it. Interesting projects, interesting and friendly people, and a lot of good fun.
Yes folks, working can be fun. Once I get over the 'ugh, its 8am, got to get out of bed' phase, I normally bounce into work without the aid of caffeine or other stimulants. I'm sure over time it will wear off and I'll become as old and cynical as my coworkers, but until then I'll bounce away.

Working at a games company is a lot like I expected in many ways, but not in others. So far I've not been required to put in any over time, despite getting to several deadlines since my arrival. This really surprised me. I had braced myself for long hours and unrealistic deadlines, but so far that has not been the case. I am aware that by writing this I have pretty much doomed myself and the rest of the team, but meh. The work
I've been doing has been varied and interesting, I am always up for a challenge and there have been plenty of them. I look forward to what our future projects may have in store for me. My first published title is due for release in May, so stay tuned!

In other news I've had a girlfriend since January! Rachael is a med student at Warwick and we are getting along great! Things seem to be getting pretty serious but we will see where things take us. She likes House, CSI, South Park, computer games and Chinese food, so we are pretty much sorted!

I've been learning to drive! I started learning before uni, but uni work got too much for me so I put it off, and have now been attempting to learn in the evenings after work and at weekends. It seems to be going pretty well, and I recently passed my theory test.

I apologise to those of you are waiting on me to complete some secondary projects - in particular icBell my windows bell ringing client. As you can probably tell from the above I've been pretty busy with the above, and that doesn't include the stuff below! Other projects include the as yet unnamed robot strategy game which needs the multiplayer bugs ironing out, and icLogic - which needs, well, a lot. There is also another one which I am keeping the lid on until I know what I plan to do with it, but rest assured its going to be cool! The good news though is that hopefully I will come up with some sort of strategy for getting all this stuff done over the next few months, hopefully without loosing any sleep or hair!

In gaming news, I managed to acquire a Wii before Christmas and have been quite enjoying the odd game of Wii Sports and Super Monkey Ball with friends. I've also got Zelda as well, but finding the time to get through it with everything else going on around me is tough. I've also got S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to work my way through - which, after a tiff with its really really sh*te anti-'copy' protection, I've managed to actually play
and get into. The game is a bit rough around the edges but its proving to be quite fun so far. Potentially more on this later! I've also been getting into Evil Genius again. This relatively old strategy game kept me occupied a few years ago and has made a return because its relatively simple to play in short bursts, requires no real energy to play and is quite light-hearted fun.

I also treated myself to a new camera around Christmas time, a Canon EOS 400D. This has so far proved to be an absolute delight to use and I am seriously considering a set of lenses to go with it. Taking pictures of my baby cousin Zak is a lot of fun as he is turning out to be quite a little poser and seems to really enjoy being in front of a camera. I'll post some pictures at some point, but at the moment I'm far too busy trying to get them ready for printing.

Given I can't think of anything else to write about, I'll call it a day. Happy Easter to you all and I should hopefully post again in the next few months (Hey, I'm being realistic!).
]]> http://www.icstatic.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry070408-004703 2007-04-08T00:00:00Z 2007-04-08T00:00:00Z
On Monday I start work as a games programmer at FreeStyleGames in Leamington Spa.

I will be moving to Leam on Saturday, flat sharing with a jolly nice chap I met on a flat sharing website.]]> http://www.icstatic.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry061115-043918 2006-11-15T00:00:00Z 2006-11-15T00:00:00Z
Gothic 3 is like all new RPG games, big open-space worlds, tons of quests and dozens of enemies. It has some interesting new features, very nice graphics and plenty of things for you to do. It does however have a few nasty bugs to watch out for that detracts from the game play quite a bit...

The game could be considered an Oblivion wannabe, boasting big open spaces to explore and no load times, being able to walk anywhere in the game without having to watch a load bar is certainly a nice feature, but unfortunately it isn’t quite as nicely implemented as that - when moving between some areas there is a noticeable period of lag where the game caches its new data. The game also takes a very long time to load and save, which would not normally be a problem if it were not for the other bugs.

I don’t know what Piranha Bytes did to test the game, or if they did at all, but it certainly doesn’t show. This game suffers from a MAJOR memory leak causing the game to crash out while saving after a few hours of game play. I have observed the game using over 1.6 GB of RAM, considering it started with about 800 MB, this is unacceptable. So to prevent you from losing considerable progress I find the best method is save very regularly and avoid using the quick save (which overwrites the existing save file BEFORE it finishes writing the new one, hence if it crashes you lose your previous quick save as well).

Again, I don’t know if anyone ever actually play tested this game. It is extremely unbalanced. When I began exploring the world a bit I bumped into a Troll. This beast, twice my size I thought would make absolute mince meat out of me. It didn’t. I managed to kill 3 of these giant beasts in a row without dying. This is fair enough; I was level 14 at the time. The problem is that there are other beasts in the game which are significantly more lethal that shouldn’t be so. The Wild Boar for example is an absolute killing machine. It has an extremely fast attack speed, so much so that if you get hit once it can keep you on the ground without you able to get up and even hit it once and be dead in seconds. The same can be said for wolves, blood flies and other things. Surely the wildlife that you bump into at the beginning of the game should not be this lethal, especially when you can take on much harder things. My best advice here is save often and if you see a wild boar, RUN!

My next gripe is the quest system. The game essentially gives you two maps, world maps which you acquire throughout your travels, and a world overview map. The overview map does not show your current position, which is annoying, but it would also be nice if there was a way to get map indicators for quest destinations. Yes it may be unrealistic, but having no clue where to go next is just frustrating.

Another interesting issue is the update system. A box pops up when you start the game with a link to a patch. I only just installed the patch and it wants me to download a patch file with the same name again. Is this a new patch that is badly named, or does the updater not have a clue what version I am running?

I’ve also noticed quite a few other UI bugs, just little things, but annoying enough. There are also a few bad design decisions in my opinion too. Take for example the experience system. It took me a very long time to work out I could visit the shrines to ask the gods to put experience into health, Mana, spells etc. There are no markers over some objects such as camp fires, shrines and other objects that indicate that you can interact with them. So you often only discover these things completely by accident. They need some kind of way of showing you can interact with them (although I later found out it is mentioned in the manual – who honestly reads these things?).

So enough talk about the bugs, what is the game actually like? Overall I like it. Having the ability to choose 3 different paths in the game is a nice touch, certainly better than a single rigid main quest line. It makes it feel like you are actually in control rather than being led through the game.

The game world is huge. Not quite as big as Oblivion’s, nor are there as many dungeons etc to explore, but it is certainly big enough. The quests are varied and interesting; they are not all killing things, which is nice. The respect system is good, although is a little unrealistic in that you don’t lose respect for killing the characters who gave you the respect after you finish the quest (or at least I haven’t observed this yet).

The combat system is ‘interesting’. It is a little complex, having 6 different ways to attack or block using a combination of left and right mouse buttons. Some people seem to dislike it, others like it. I would prefer a simpler system, but I don’t hate it so I won’t complain.

There is a very wide range of skills for you to learn, this can mean that you can go off and make a lot of money by making potions and forging swords, but unfortunately you do not get experience from this, you have to pay to have it taught to you. I would much prefer it if you learned from the things you did as well. Also on the note of potion making, I don’t know if I’m missing something, but finding ‘water’ you need to make potions is hard to come across. If you see a water barrel and have an empty bottle can you not fill and reuse it again?

The user interface is quite nice, the quick bar is quite a nice feature, although it keeps disappearing on me and I’m not sure why.

Verdict? It’s good. Not as good as Oblivion in my honest opinion, but with a possible 3 endings there is certainly a lot of replay ability here which Oblivion lacks. Once they fix the bugs it will definitely be worth your time if you enjoy RPGs.

I’ll give it 9 out of 10 assuming they fix the bugs.]]> http://www.icstatic.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry061016-174634 2006-10-16T00:00:00Z 2006-10-16T00:00:00Z
If there’s one thing which gets me riled up its DRM (digital rights management) and copy protection. Yes artists have the right to protect their artistic property, but things are going too far. CDs which won’t play, install dangerous hacking tools and games which have copy protection so brutal there have been (unconfirmed) reports of physical damage to machines. The worst thing is, did the piracy stop? No. Copy protection JUST DOES NOT WORK.

After months of a subscription to Napster I have decided enough is enough. At the point where I couldn’t actually listen to any of the music I had downloaded or could I download new tracks, I decided the scam had already gotten too much of my money.

Napster has been getting on my nerves for some time now, but I could still listen to my music so I stuck with it. Their terms and conditions are fair, play the songs on 3 PCs and 2 MP3 players – that’s fine, I only use 3 PCs and 1 MP3 player anyway. Their methods of enforcement however are not. If DRM actually worked, I wouldn’t mind putting up with its inconvenience to some extent, but it does not. Something as simple as a driver upgrade upset Napster sufficiently that I could no longer play my tracks – a driver upgrade does not count as a new PC, nor should reinstalling Windows in fact.

To make matters worse, Napster has started to withdraw some tracks without warning or explanation – be it at the request of the artists or publisher I know not. I have heard complaints by some Napster users of tracks that they have BOUGHT being withdrawn and that they can no longer be played. If you buy a car from a dealer, would it be acceptable for them to come to your house and take it while you sleep just because they don’t want you to have it any more? No.

I don’t mind subscriptions. I pay for digital content all the time, I have even gone as far as paying for news subscriptions (www.gamespot.com). I even pay to access it all via my ISP. Information sells and it still does. I quite like the idea of paying a subscription for ‘unlimited music’, I never listen to the same artists for very long so not having to pay to hear an artist until I get bored is a plus. Add this to the fact that I hate CDs (I’ll explain later) with a passion, and you have a very good reason to subscribe to Napster.

The idea of DRM is in itself fundamentally flawed. I really do wish the big fat cats will get it into their heads that if you can watch/hear it, you can copy it. I repeat, if you can watch/hear it, you can copy it. No buts, no maybes about it. Tools to get around DRM have been around for years, like the original DeCSS tool created by some poor kid who got arrested just because he wanted to watch DVDs on Linux (in my opinion fair use). Now there are totally legal tools around which let you play and record music and videos through your PC to strip them of their DRM status. In short, DRM doesn’t work.

So, why do I hate CDs so much? I find them annoying. They are small, easy to lose, leave places, scratch, and you have to change them frequently. In my entire life I think I’ve owned less than 10 music CDs. They only hold about an hour of music, and they dictate the order and quality of the music you play. With the few CDs I do have, the very first thing I do is to convert them to MP3 format so I can arrange the tracks how I want and mix them in with whatever other tracks I want to listen to. I don’t even own a normal CD player, only the one in my PC.

I am particularly fond of an artist called Ludovico Einaudi but unfortunately a lot of his music is a recording of a live concert. This would be fine apart from the fact that they left the clapping in on the tracks, which is significantly louder than the rest of the music and over 30s long – it just means I have to get up and skip it. With a CD, I have no option but to get up and skip it, and then get up again to change the CD. The miracle that is MP3s would let me simply edit the track and remove this clapping, and let me make a playlist long enough to mean I don’t have to get up or stop what I’m doing. However DRMed tracks do not work like that. If I don’t want to listen to the clapping, I have to skip it again. Why has technology recessed rather than progressed?

Moving onto games now, the games industry at least partially understands the situation now. Copy protection very rarely works and very often annoys. For example, I go to many LAN parties, and despite the fact that I have plenty of hard disk space, I still have to lug an entire CD wallet full of games around with me to every event. Each game requires me to put a CD in the drive; some often require me to change CDs mid game. In the day and age where hard disks are getting larger, why should I need to carry so many CDs around with me? Oh yeah, did I mention I hate CDs? I still view CDs and DVDs as a method of getting data to the consumer, not as a form of copy protection which they seem to have become.

The copy protection system ‘StarForce’ is probably the best copy protection around at the moment. By best I mean it works unless you have a really determined hacker. I’ve got no idea how it works under the hood, but there seem to have been few instances of people successfully copying a game using it. Kudos to the Russian hackers (I think) who engineered it, shame it alienates the Linux users who would ordinarily be able to play the game using Wine/Cedega. I’ve also heard from a few friends who have had issues playing games protected with this under Windows too. Unfortunately, like all copy protection methods, one day it will fail entirely and will join the pile of useless copy protections methods which simply serve the purpose to annoy the consumer. All other copy system methods seem to have failed miserably from the offset, and in some cases, disastrously. I found it highly amusing when there was a copy of Doom 3 available, with a crack, available before the official UK launch date. Proof that copy protection DOES NOT WORK. So, did the existence of this illegal copy on the net (before I could actually buy it) stop me from buying the game? No. I bought it. And did it suck? Oh yes. The only thing that copy protection does is annoy. The pirates still copy the games, and the consumers are still bugged by the ‘Please insert CD’ message every time they launch a game. In some cases, the anti-piracy techniques uses are over zealous and when I attempted to patch (using the official update tool in game) my copy of Star Wars: Empire at War, it informed me that my CD was no longer in the drive. To play the game again I had to uninstall the game completely and just not patch it, why when I have legitimately bought the game must I be treated like a pirate and have official patches break the game.

CD keys are yet another stupid idea; especially given all CD keys work with all CDs. I sometimes wonder who came up with the idea. It would be like shipping a safe full of money with the combination written next to the lock. It’s quite simply retarded.

The only implementation of a delivery system which works well and is (mostly) copy proof is Steam. The games are delivered electronically and can be downloaded online without the mess of CDs or CD keys. Its copy proof because the games can only be played by logging in through an account (which is an annoyance if you happen to be at a LAN with no internet connection, but it’s still significantly better than CDs). I guess the only true copy protection system is the MMO, games where you have to pay to get access to server based game content. The consumer can copy the client all they want, but without a login on the server, it’s no use.

Another annoyance of the industry and one which gets on all consumers nerves outside the US is release dates. The industry heads were whining that piracy was at an all time high, illustrating how many copies of Doom 3 had been downloaded using BitTorrent before release. The wondering is how many of those people that downloaded the game in advance were in fact just eager fans wanting to try the game a few days early. I wonder how many of those people then went out and bought the game despite having already played it. Why companies insist on different release dates is beyond me. It just gets people in the countries with later release dates annoyed. Annoyed enough to drive normally innocent consumers to piracy? I’ve seen games that ship a whole 6 months later in Europe than in the states. That’s appalling. It’s the same with TV series. If you hear a friend telling you how great X TV show is yet you can’t actually watch it for another year, I’m pretty sure you might feel cheeky enough to go and torrent the episodes and watch them at your PC.

One thing that the industry must learn is that however many people they throw at the problem of copy protection, there are many times more people smarter and more able than them working at exactly the opposite, and often enough these people are doing it just for fun or because ‘they can’. The collective mind of the consumer is always, and will always be smarter than the aging few trying to restrict people’s rights.

Most consumers are good people at heart, and are willing to pay for content if it’s available at the right price. But the entertainment industry is increasingly pushing the consumer to their limits. Raising prices, restrictive DRM technology, and ludicrously long waits between world-wide release dates (this is especially important with the advent of the Internet). I then find it highly ironic when rather than milking the consumer dry, they then make them wait to buy the over priced DVDs of movies that just went off the cinema.

The cinema is yet another instance of an outdated technology. The cinema does have some things going for it though – big screen and real surround sound – but some homes now have kit to rival that of a small cinema. I still don’t see the attraction of watching a movie surrounded by coughing people who keep nipping to the loo, screaming children who won’t shut up, and the guy in front playing with his mobile phone. Oh, and don’t forget the chance to win a free cold or flu dose too! I really don’t understand why people have the tendency to take their girlfriends to the movies on a first date – to be honest I can’t think of anything worse to do. Surely if you have just met someone you want to get to know them a little better and talk – which is exactly what you can’t do in the cinema.

The music industry is still blaming piracy for its falls in CD sales – this is of course sales of Singles. The concept of a Single is such an outdated idea. Who wants to pay 2-3 quid for a CD with a single song on it? It’s just totally bizarre that anyone would want to in this day and age. So yes, sales of singles went down when things like the original Napster and Kazaa took off, but in case the executives didn’t notice, their sales of albums actually went up. People like to try things before they buy. I would never buy something on a name alone, just because it says ‘Bryan Adams’ on it doesn’t mean I’ll like it, and I won’t buy it on the off chance that I will. So, people go to download a track, realise they do like it and go off and buy the album. Fewer and fewer people are listening to the radio and fewer and fewer people have the chance to hear an artist first hand without actively scouting for it first.

Not so long ago I heard about an artist called ‘Perry Rose’, a not very well known singer that I would normally have overlooked. However, because I had the chance to sample some of his music on his website I decided to put in the effort to import 2 of his CDs (yes I bought a CD) from France to give as a present to a friend. I would not have bought the CDs, no matter how easy they were to get, or how much they cost, without being able to sample it first. And in many ways this points to the bizarre set of circumstances when piracy sells.

The current set of affairs with DRM is frustrating, but a look into the future of entertainment and rights management is quite simply scary. Microsoft Windows Vista has technology in it that prevents media being played if its origins cannot be traced. A friend recently tried to play a DVD in the latest Vista beta only to be told he could not because he didn’t have the right to. To play some media you will require both secure hardware and software. You will even need to buy a new monitor for your PC to play some digital media so that the path from the file to your senses is ‘secure’. As I said earlier, if you can watch it, you can copy it. If the industry is allowed to get away with this kind of enforcement, I wonder what the next stage will be. A black suited man standing behind you while you watch TV? (See Family guy episode 5e4 where the Griffin family get censored) Another worrying example on the horizon is blue ray. Rumour has it that upcoming players will report back which disks are being watched, and if an unauthorized disk is played, the player may forcibly cause the device to break itself. A worrying thought if you put a scratched disk in and it breaks your player you just spent a few hundred quid on.

Quite simply I find it horrific how the entertainment industry is treating its customers. Rather than treating its customers like criminals, perhaps it should actually start entertaining us with fresh new content and prices we are actually willing to pay. Yet another reason why people are buying less and less material in the stores is that the quality of material available is significantly less than it was. Now its just a few ‘samey’ manufactured artists doing covers of old classics, or yet another generic action film. There is very rarely any new material which makes me go ‘wow’.
The industry keeps complaining that the artists won’t work for so little money and that without protecting their investment they cannot pay the artists. This is a load of crap. Out of the cost of a CD the artist only makes a tiny fraction. A diagram from CNN shows that out of a £12 CD only about £1.50 actually goes to the artist. If we cut out the record labels, shops and other middle-men we could easily get CDs for half the price and give artists many times what they earn at present by using online distribution. The current system is bloated, slow and extremely inefficient.

Unfortunately the people in charge of running the entertainment empires do not understand how the real world works, how people think and especially not how to entertain them. The industry is a real joke, but I’m not laughing.

The following are a list of improvements which could be made to the entertainment industry (but which never will) to improve things for the consumer and the artist.

* Simultaneous release of games, TV series, films and music around the globe
* Films and music available for purchase online without DRM at a sensible price (£5 for an album if most of that goes to the artist seems fair) using systems similar to that iTunes currently uses.
* Games to be released for a maximum of £25 on all platforms without copy protection or CD keys.
* Music CDs and DVDs released without copy protection and their digital download versions included on the media to save those who want to archive their media the trouble of doing it themselves. To help with distribution costs, the physical versions of these disks should not be more than £3 more than their digital downloadable cousin (about how much it costs to ship and press a CD).

With the money saved on trying to restrict the content we do get, maybe the industries should start thinking up new ways to get us to part with our cash: full 3D cinema, fully immersive video games, interactive movies etc.

So, with lower quality content and more restrictions, the entertainment industries have a long way to go until they learn how to treat their customers well, and until they learn, we consumers will have a rough ride ahead of us. Let’s hope they learn before we get to see the live action version of 1984.

In summary, the current methods the industries have been using to enforce its intellectual property are just not working, and never will work. No matter how much money they throw at the problem they will be outsmarted and outdone by some smart hacker somewhere. It only takes one person to undo millions of dollars of research. It’s just not worth it. Instead, maybe they should invest in new ways to entertain us, pay the artists more and perhaps streamline their business models a bit so the consumer pays less on ‘overheads’.]]> http://www.icstatic.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry060618-004853 2006-06-18T00:00:00Z 2006-06-18T00:00:00Z
Admittedly this doesn't sound like an enthralling topic, but it gives you a sense of the amount of work that go into creating a compiler or interpreter which you will have used if you have ever written any code (HTML doesn't count - its not a programming language). If you haven't, a compiler is the bit that converts the programmers input into machine code (ie what the computer understands).

Since I started my revision I've had countless ideas of some projects to do after I finish my degree - most taking advantage of something I learned during my revision (because I'll be damned if I knew anything until about 2 days before the exam!).

One of the projects which sounds particularly interesting is writing a natural language utility bot. Let me ellaborate. The IRC channel that I hang around in with my friends has a bot that provides a set of features that are quite useful, even when not on IRC - for example a food timer so you never burn your pizza again. The problem is, this feature requires me to go on IRC every time I want to cook a pizza.

Now. If I wasn't a computer scientist I would just say 'screw this' and just look at my watch every 5 minutes, but I am, and as a result I feel compelled to find a solution to a problem, regardless of how small it is. If people didn't have this urge, we wouldn't have cars, sliced bread and a whole manner of other useful things - all because their inventor could not be bothered to do something.

Anyway, I'm not comparing this idea to sliced bread, but the principle is the same, invent something to solve a problem. Then I realised it could do a whole manner of things:- keep a collection of blocks of code I use regularly and paste them into my code for me, tell me when a website updates, tell me when my favorite TV shows are on, and do web searches when I need to know something. The possibilites are endless.

Of course, it would be boring to just write all these things in, I need to give it a twist, so I thought about it parsing natural language rather than code.

Let me give an example:

'remind me about pizza in 15 minutes'

The bot would contain a list of words, and recognise 'pizza' as a kind of food. The bot would associate the word 'me' to mean the user and would have a list of actions to which it could perform. In this case 'remind' would pop up a box on my screen until I acknowledged it. If I didn't acknowledge it within a minute, it would start beeping at me.

So why natural language? Why not just have the command "food 15"? Well, that would be too easy, and not much fun. The idea is not to have a working result, but to experiment and learn something in the process - even if its just not to bite off more than I can chew.

Natural language processing has always been an interesting topic to me, and now that I've done the compiler design module, I have the tools to at least attempt it. I know how difficult such a project will be and I do not thing I will finish it but it would be a good way of learning new techniques and if I get SOMETHING to work it will be worth it.

So what about my other projects?

Well, icLogic is still going, I plan to finish that over the next 6 months.

Then theres a game project I've been plotting (but this is secret for now)

We've also got Fubaru - the anime me and Bj are writing.

Oh yes, and just in case anyone was wondering icTransfer has been suspended for now until I decide what to do with it - I might get around to finishing it at some point - or at least getting rid of the remaining stabllity issues before calling it done.

It's at this point I realise that I've got far too many projects and too few time to do them. Add to this the fact that I've got an Anime Music Video lined up, a trip to germany with my girlfriend, and a 3d demo to write for my application to a games company (I'll leave them unnamed). I'm one very busy bee!

Right. I've done enough of nothing today, I'd best do some more work. TTFN.]]> http://www.icstatic.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry060522-210125 2006-05-22T00:00:00Z 2006-05-22T00:00:00Z