Here comes a brand new flava in ya ear. Time for new flava in ya ear. I'm kickin' new flava in ya ear, Trigames' the new flava in ya ok enough of that. Today is reasonably light with the prepared content and nice n' heavy with the reader mail. Al also brings back Craig Mack on an unannounced name-drop. Pick that name up, Al. We've also got some good potential topics for future casts from our mailbag: in this day and age, do games need multiplayer to be great? What games that were horrible would we improve, and what would we do to improve them? What is our favorite game feature in a game we like? All these answered, and less, in Episode Six Oh. If you don't listen, your head might implode in a fit of ineptitude. So get to it.

Steak Break Down

0:00:18 - Intro and Ethan and Tony ain't hurr
0:10:04 - News
* Free Ad-Supported full-version PC Games from Ubisoft
* Manhunt 2 to be released on Halloween...
* ...and the following ESRB ****-Storm from Leland Yee...
* ...and why Julian Eggbrecht finds the ESRB loony
* Plus, a special guest appearance from Fitty and Craig Mack. Uh, yeah.
0:23:23 - The Bag of **** / Deuce / Poopie
0:28:24 - Chupon Goes on an Unplanned, unrelated Rant About Native English-Speaking People Who Can't Spell
0:32:49 - Healthy Mailbag!

Download here.
Runtime: 1:23:08
File Size: 39.9 MB

Please - digg us, review us on iTunes, and don't forget - hit the mailbag with your Questions and Reader Bags of **** You can get previous episodes at our Podcast Homepage.

+'s and -'s.

+ Sun!

- Sunburn. My shoulder blades hurt for a good 3 days (but they're fine now).

+ Snorkeling amidst a school of about 50 fish trying to gobble up food dropped by a nearby party boat.

- Seeing one of those fish take a nasty, yellow, stringy dump right in the water. (That's when I got back onto the boat.)

+ This awesome water slide by a sweet hotel pool that I cannon-balled down maybe 17 times.

- The gash I got on my hand from trying to avoid idiot little kids that weren't smart enough to realize that you shouldn't be playing IN FRONT of where the goddamn slide meets the pool.

+ Learning what it looks like when spiders - um - mate, thanks to my spider connoisseur sister who pointed the hot spider action out to the rest of us.

- Spiders freak me out.

+ Feeding a raccoon by the kayaking canopy. There isn't a hint of rabies in the Bahamas.

- My sister and I trying to keep our parents under control due to the bickering that resulted from their lopsided kayaking.

+ Time by the beach = swimming, the occasional hot tamale, and Picross DS time.

- No Bioshock.

+ Excellent fish to eat.

- Getting eaten by bedbugs.

P.S. - Anyone who wanted that LogoWriter Mortal Kombat abomination, I'll upload it soon. I just want to make a TXT file first on how it works, since it sucks so hard.

Before I split for the Bahamas with my family, here's how I won Bioshock. Many thanks to Gamespot user mclazyj, Richard Windsor and the folks over at aeropause.com for the opportunity!

http://www.aeropause.com/archives/2007/08/this_toy_is_rat.php

So, um, here's that video I alluded to in my last blog post. It doesn't quite show off the limitations of CPU polling that I mentioned there, but it shows how ... well ... ridiculous it is, as an 11-year-old nitwit, to try and program a digitized 2D fighter with a clunky piece of software that's meant for drawing. I could make another video later showing how the lack of CPU polling results in a "feature" of my game whereby you can press the jump key and remain in the air indefinitely because it's waiting for you to press another key to either kick, punch or land from your fall. Yep, it's that lame!

[video=didlxTvw5b8IvzLb]

So, yeah. As an 11 year old, I programmed my own version of Mortal Kombat. It was epic. Gripping. Genius. Incredible.

None of that was true.

What I programmed was a bastardized version of a poor man's vomit of something that resembled something that resembled something that could be confused for something resembling Mortal Kombat if you slathered the screen with Vaseline and pretended that the game came out for the Atari 2600.

I was using this program called LogoWriter 2.0, which was basically a tool for drawing and animating very, very simple shapes. It had some very fundamental code logic behind it, which introduced me to the concept of variables and looping statements. It even had 90 open slots for you to create your own 10x10 sprites with. Obviously, not much to make a nice picture, but good enough to make something that resembles something that looks like something that could be mistaken fo- you get the idea.

So, while my video uploads, let me just explain why I suck so much. LogoWriter 2.0 was obviously not created to make 2D fighting games with. You can create a nice game of Hangman, sure... but MK? Pah. Me being a dumb 11 year old, I didn't care. Anyway, any action game I made and would have made later with the thing is inherently broken. With normal stuff, the CPU cycles through constantly and polls for input. In other words, if you slowed it down a LOT, you'd basically imagine the CPU doing this:

1 second has passed. Are any buttons being pressed? No? K, keep going.

Another second has passed. Are there any buttons being pressed? No? K, keep going.

Another second has passed. Any buttons pre- oh what's this, Player 1 pushed his joystick right. Player 2 pressed punch. Ok, figure out what position his sprite is in and move him accordingly - meaning, put on a block animation on Player 1 if he is moving "away" since we know that Player 2 has just initiated an attack animation.

Et cetera.

This is what LogoWriter did, or at least, it's the only thing I knew how to make it do. I couldn't program it to constantly poll and proceed. Instead, depending on which keys were pressed, a keystroke from a subsequent tree of available actions was the ONLY thing that would make the game proceed. The software didn't make the CPU poll - it made the CPU completely stop and wait:

I am waiting for Player 1 to do something. Player 2 cannot do jack squat yet.

1 second has passed. Are there any buttons being pressed? No? K... keep WAITING.

I'm still waiting.

30 seconds have passed, and I'm still waiting for input.

Ok finally Player 1 pressed down. This means that if he presses High Punch or Low Punch next, he will uppercut. Player 2 will have to wait more.

Still waiting. Ok, he pressed low punch. Initiate UPPERCUT! Cool, ok. NOW Player 2 can go.

I am waiting for Player 2 to do something. Meanwhile Player 1 can't do jack squat.

Et cetera.

There are other limitations just as heinous as this. Hell, it's not really a heinous limitation because Mortal Kombat ain't what LogoWriter was meant for, but whatever. With this knowledge, prepare to be amazed at how completely incredible my video will be later this afternoon. I'm awesome. (Movie still has 41 minutes to go with encoding, and it's 3:50AM and I'm tired.)

MISTER Bubbles, however, is a rhinoceros. Of sorts.

I just downloaded the BioShock demo for PC, and besides the fact that it actually runs really well with everything spec'ed at max detail with 1280x1024 resolution (me no have teh widescreen minotaur :() , the atmosphere is just so ... well ... rich. Aesthetically, it's incredible. Gameplay wise, so far it's not pants-wettingly revolutionary - but it's a frickin' demo so I'm not necessarily worried. It's polished, it's fun, it's quick, it's brutal, and I'm sure it'll be inventive for the retail product considering all the things that you can do as mentioned in the teaser that plays after the demo.

I'm just really happy that I can play it with a mouse and keyboard, because for a second there I thought my computer would be too weaksauce to run it at a consistent 30 per - which is what it runs at (with minor dips with a barf-ton of enemies on-screen and slight smoothing out for low-detail frames). I'm pissed, though, that I missed out on the limited edition. I had looked at pre-ordering it online as late as the second half of last week and GamEBstop had both the 360 and PC LE's on order. I didn't jump at the preorder, though, and the next day when I resolved to get it the thing was all out of stock for the PC version. Oh well. I just want the game now; I can get the rest by other (legal) means, even if it entails extra $crilla.

I'm thinking more about the sound design than the visuals at the moment, because of the fact that my feet are still tingling from all the subwoofer action it pumped through my PC. I mean damn - it's crunchy for sure.

For PC gamers, please note: according to some people there is a problem with the widescreen where, instead of adding graphical content, it substracts graphical content. I don't know if this is restricted to the demo, or if it applies to the retail product - but just letting ya know.

Everyone and their mother's bathroom sink has a blog about BioShock so I'm just going to end it here and say listen to episode 59 of der podcasten.

...into the hallowed ranks of game journalism! I woke up briefly to check mail before going back to sleep and was notified about it. I can't say who and where, except that it's not anyone of us from Trigames - but chances are you'll know soon. (If you already do, please refrain from commenting. Nothing is signed yet and I don't want to get him/her in trouble.) You'll all know soon enough, but suffice it to say, it's exciting to know that one of my Gamespot friends will be writing about games professionally. Be sure to save up some congratulations for him/her when it's revealed.

Update: he has blogged, so now you know who!