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Saturday, 09:41 am, 08 May 2004 From Butta to Game Development I've been putting the extra hours into the Beats for Butta project. It is coming to a hand-over stage and I spent a large part of yesterday evening remixing and syncing the beat for the final on-air version. Initial feedback from Prof Groove is the track is too dissonant. He ain't heard nothing yet! As the plan requires a final live assembly on WeFunk there are a number of things I have no control over. The ability to wash one's hands with a creative project is quite difficult. Creativity and development are quite emotionally intensive enterprises but as I get older, I find myself forcing the line. I have been thinking quite critically about game development methodology. At GDC this year I saw the term AAA title used for the first time and I thought to myself, is this an ISO accreditation for the games industry? Could it be? It turns out, it is nothing of the sort. AAA title means 'a lot of money went into this project'. That is all it seems to mean. Some sites referenced it as 'best in breed'. But most weren't as friendly to the definition as this. I subscribe to the crash-and-burn view of commercial game development currently. The industry is in a downward spiral. For me, it comes back to versioning. No other software industry produces one hit products. You don't get a single release of a browser or a text editor and never another one. The games industry has tried to recreate the film industry and I don't think it works. Software is very good at handling versioning and maintenance. It isn't too costly and it produces loyalty. So my thoughts are it's too expensive to produce a single title and with the blind leading the blind there is no chance of success. The idea that the industry now rates titles, not on their success, but on how much money was put into the production, seems crazy. Another Fred Reed or Two... Some more classic paint jobs from my man Fred...  My wife and I explored the Macclesfield Mall yesterday. It's an interesting combination of traditional British Mall (ie open air), a closely packed Mall corridor and an undercover market. I thought it was the best of a number of world. Nice to be able to go and buy real meat a couple of doors down from Games Workshop. Yet Another GW Narrative... I bought four items at GW. Two army books, the Vampire Counts (undead to those of us of a more traditional disposition) and the Skaven (again ratmen), the Infantry primer ('a bit of fun' as the store manager said), and the new Fanatic magazine. GW makes sufficiently good quality products that I do enjoy about 60-80% of what they produce, even though I don't play their games. Currently, with the development of Noble Warfare, I have been thinking about public domain fantasy information. Where do orcs riding wolves come from? It is Tolkien originally? Prior to Tolkien? There is clearly some subset of fantasy that is proprietary but the creation of modern fantasy has large elements that are in the public domain. GW has copyrighted certain elements. The new Tolkien industries have copyrighted certain elements. I am sure TSR/Wizards of the Coast have some copyrighted elements. But there is a collective group of fantasy information that is the public domain. This is what I have been thinking on. The two army books from GW were pretty weak. The best army book I have purchased in recent months has been 'Hordes of Chaos' which details information aside from narrative. I am interested in ideas, not stories, in army books. The infantry primer was amusing and of a really high print and bind quality but let me down in the ideas stakes. It felt like something that had been dreamt up at a management meeting and not something of intrinsic quality or history which so much of GW products have. GW represents a legacy of investment in intellectual property rights terms. The Fanatic magazine was pure rubbish. White Dwarf is a hard magazine to beat. The Citadel journal had a great market. But the new Fanatic magazine appears to be sub CJ style articles written by overworked staff. WD 294's blurb went online on Friday and they didn't mention Fred Reed at all. I suspect Fred is getting the less desirable position of being listed along a lot of other painters. Life moves on. Good morning. Wednesday, 07:38 pm, 05 May 2004 So You Have a Licence, But No-One Follows It? I've hit a typically Barbalettic paradox. I'm in the process of reworking the Noble Ape Open Source Licence. The existing one is a little stuffy and fails on a number of levels. The main sticking point I have is; 6. Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following acknowledgment: 'This product includes software developed by Tom Barbalet for Noble Ape.' Apple Computer redistributes the source code and I have never seen anything that acknowledges me through Apple's installation procedure. So, do I email the folk at Apple and see if they will amend their installer or do I change the license. How do you make a corporation listen? With the same view... Spam Is Okay... If You Get Paid... Regular readers of the Log will know my love of spammers. Not just spammers but the whole industry of making money from spam. ISPs, Microsoft, everyone along the food chain would like to make a buck on the five seconds a day I spend deleting my spam tray. Now Microsoft has signed up these crooks; http://www.bondedsender.com/ Here's how it works. You are a spammer and you are tired of Microsoft users blocking your spam. So you pay the crooks a nominal amount. The crooks pay Microsoft and Microsoft lets your spam through. It's a tax on spam basically but the end user won't see a penny. Criminal. Cheshire -> Montreal -> Cheshire I am taking t'row afternoon off to work on the beats for Butta project. The plan has gone through a number of twists since I last wrote about it on the Log. Mainly because I haven't been involved too heavily in the planning. I have heard most of the information via Prof Groove and Butta seems to be driving the project. But I am chill about the whole thing. My feeling is some freestyling on WeFunk with a Barbalet beat. Who can complain? The project now seems to be focusing on mixing something together for a live performance on WeFunk. Not sure when. But the sooner I get the beat together... I don't have a translation for the Spanish track yet either. I had/have a translator in Las Vegas, but their email is bouncing and the whole language part of the project is getting a little surreal. But I'm sure it will all come together. Good night. [ Previous Log ]
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