『 Exclusively Multiplatform 』

Today, while at work, I was doing some thinking and it occured to me that Microsoft obviously doesn't know what does the word "exclusive" mean. To start on a correct note, let us make sure about the meaning of the word before we proceed [we're only interested in the adjective, or course].



"Not divided or shared with others / not shared" I'd say that about sums it up. In other words, if let's say, Microsoft, was to publish a game and label it "Only on Xbox", that would mean the game is an exclusive Xbox title and you shouldn't even try looking for it elsewhere.

There are plenty of games released on Xbox that wear this exclusive label proudly. Among them you'll find "Ninja Gaiden", "Dead or Alive" and "Gotham Racing". And that's just fine. But among "Only on Xbox" titles you'll also find "Halo" and "Chronicles of Riddick". While it is possible that a PC port of the first title wasn't planned at the time of its Xbox release, I read about the PC version of "CoR" within a month of game's premiere date. Now honestly, being a developer, would you not know that you were about to port the game and release it just six months later? In Europe, Riddick came out on Xbox in August. In December it came out on PC. Strangely enough, Halo's european launch was in March of 2003. In September it came out for the PC.



It's just an observation and it doesn't bother me that much really, but if you mark something as being exclusive or dedicated to one specific platform, you should know better. On top of that, what is "exclusive" in the world of video games? There's a fair chance that a succesfull title will get ported sooner or later. On top of that, does an arcade title ported to a home platform count as an exclusive? When "OutRun 2" came out on Xbox, it also had the distinctive mark of "Only on Xbox". But if the game itself is already a port or an arcade title, how exclusive it really is?



I guess Nintendo understands this a bit better. Their "Only For (GameCube)" marking really stands for what it says, and you won't see an exclusive GameCube title being ported to some other system. As an example of how careful Nintendo is in this matter you can look at "Resident Evil 4" release. Even though the PlayStation 2 port didn't appear untill eight months later, the original GameCube release wasn't labeled as exclusive. In fact, not one Resident Evil game, including the "Resident Evil Zero", was labeled as exclusive.



I guess the definition of a dedicated, single platform title would have to be "Fighters Megamix". Developed for Sega Saturn, labeled as an exclusive, and that was that.



Untill the Game.com version came out. The End.



If you'd like to share your thoughts on the subject of games' exclusive status and how inacurate these labels can be, feel free to comment

『 Sam & Max Hit the Road - Again 』

Sam & Max game finally got the long awaited sequel. It's no news to people who haven't yet lost their interest in point and click adventure games, but it's news in here, so either read on, or go away [please, do read on, or you'll hurt my feelings].

As you may, or may not know, Lucas Arts are a bunch of old farts and nowdays their sole interest is to publish more and more titles based in the ever so exciting Star Wars universe. Which sucks ass.

The good old days of publishing excellent adventure games are long since gone, and forgotten. By Lucas Arts that is. They were going to publish a sequel to Full Throttle [in both 2000, and 2003], they didn't. They were going to release another Sam & Max game, they didn't. Not to mention no Monkey Island 5, unless someone pays Lucas off. Instead they released a massive flood of Star Wars games, since the big "G" Lucas himself owns the rights and doesn't have to spend his precious dollars, of which he has so few, on worthless peasants souch as Steve Purcell or Tim Schafer.

Sequel to Sam & Max game was originally announced in the August of 2002, but was later cancelled, most likely due to being a non Star Wars game.

Alot of time and effort was put into the new Sam & Max projest, so a number of pissed Lucas Arts employees decided to leave the Lucas' Star Wars heaven and start their own company. That's how Telltale Games was born. Company formed in the middle of year 2004, and finally published first Sam & Max episode in 2006.

It seems like episodic content delivery is getting more popular by the minute. At least this time we don't have to take Valve's crap and spend hours validating installations through Steam. Thank God for that [depending on your religious beliefs, insert a proper god name instead of previously mentioned God].

Three episodes were released thus far. I've already tried the demo versions of the first two and I have to say I was both pleasantly surprised, and somewhat dissapointed at the same time. If that's even possible.

First of all, the demo versions DO NOT support any kind of save feature, which means you either play them, or you don't. I guess a good thing is, they're pretty short. Or extremly short, in case of the first episode demo.

The game's peculiar humour stayed intact, and that's the main aspect of the game I was worried about. Another one was the 3D graphics, which seem to work very well after all. The weirdest thing in the new game wasn't the updated looks though. It was the voices. I played through the original "Hit the Road" game at least 30 times and over 20 of them was the "talkie" version. I'm not sure why original voice actors couldn't make it this time around, but both Sam and Max sound different. A minor detail maybe, and you can call me weird, but I somehow feel as if someone else was trying to mimic the original voices and can't get comfortable with the new dubbing.

But even before I managed to boot the first demo, smething else showed its tiny little head. And it manifested itself through the following message [click to enlarge]:



Yep. The main game executable is protected by Armadillo, which doesn't like system debuggers, memory dumpers, disassemblers and other tools that may help you unpack the program. This caused a minor delay, but after I disabled the debugger, I was ready to play.



As you can see, the game offers you an upgrade to a full version at an incredibly low price of $8.95. This will buy you a download of course. No CD / DVD release is planned untill more episodes come out. I'll wait for my disc version, thank you. But if you just can't wait, you are but two clicks away from the activation menu. After you cough up $8.95, the episode is yours to enjoy.



The new Sam & Max looks are sharp, and so is the humor. I won't go into detail and spoil it for you but as a one Sam & Max fan to another, I highly recommend the episodes. This type of game is a rarity in the year 2007 and you should grab it immediately, as it will probably be the only decent point and click game you will play this year. On top of that, it's really good, so you won't need any other titles to satisfy yout pointing and clicking needs. Just grab the episodes as they come out, or wait for the disc version.

『 I hate Steam! 』

Think of the most moronic, stupid, unpractical and underdeveloped system of digital game distribution. What comes to your mind? Well, I have no idea what comes to YOUR mind, but I know what comes to mine, and it spell something like:

S T E A M

You all know Valve, right? Half Life, Half Life 2... You'd have to be blind and deaf at the same time to miss them. As you probably know, Valve invented this neat digital distribution / DRM thing called Steam. You can become a member, create an account, pay for games and download them without the unnecessary trip to the nearest game store. Great idea and lots of fun for everyone.

I had nothing against Steam let's say... two years ago. I always liked good protections and Steam sure seemed to be one of them. Before it came out that is.

Steam has some nice features, like popup news you don't want to read and Steam friends list, even though I'm sure most of us don't have any Steam friends to add to that list. I know I don't.

But the main feature of Steam is of course protection. At least I understand it that way. The only problem is, in my case, Steam protected the games from a person who actually bought them. When I got Half Life 2 I didn't have an internet connection at my place and I didn't read the fine print on the box [since I ordered it online and the jpeg they give you to look at was too smal even for the medium print to be readable.]. As I found out later, each and every single game that uses Steam, requires you to go online and register the product. As if the CD key and the fact that you actually bought it wasn't enough.

I had access to internet at work though, so I checked a few things only to find out that there's no way in hell you can get the game running without connecting to the internet. There are no cracks, fixes, programs that make your 4.XX gigabyte of data you just installed on your HD into a working game.

No cracks and no fixes. No way around it. One hell of a protection I thought. But what's with the fully functional Half Life 2 and other Steam games on torrents and other P2P? Wait. Doesn't that mean you actually can crack this protection and make the game into a fully functional product in all of its pirated glory? Some brainiacs registered a game, got the unlocked files and then made the thing into a full package. Working on every computer. No internet connection required. The only thing you'll miss out on are the news popups and your essential Steam friend list.

I emailed Valve several times about their Steam. Among other things, I asked them what will a game owner do in say ten years time, when Steam activation may not be avalable. I got no more and no less than zero replies. I would actually be happy if I got less than zero replies, since that's impossible and Valve is an expert on impossible things. Untill I came in contact with them, I thought it was impossible to protect the game against a legitimate user.

Steam. A protection already bypassed with every Steam game already out there for everyone to illegally download. A protection that may render the software useless in the future. A protection that protected the game content from me. In several cases. Half Life 2, Half Life Anthology, Half Life 2: Episode 1, SiN Episodes: Emergence...

I have internet at my place now and guess what. It took me 6 hours to get the Half Life 2: Episode 1 game running. Why? Because the game, besides decrypting the files, has to download some additional ones, and this takes time, when the download constantly stops or runs at 1.XX KB/s.

I really hope that all the upcoming Steam titles will be cracked and Valve will realise that it's just not worth it. Time and effort goes into their Steam engine and not much comes out.

I bought Quake 4, I bought F.E.A.R. Both games had just a simple CD Key. I installed them, played them and that was that. Recently I got Psychonauts. The game doesn't even have the CD key. It just wants the disc to be in the drive. I guess some people understand that if the game scores high, there's no protection on earth that will guarantee it won't be illegally distributed.

Screw you Valve. You and your Steam.

I guess the only way to make sure you will be able to play the games you paid for in say, 10 years time, is to download the illegal cracked copies. They work just fine without Steam and I somehow can't imagine Valve releasing some kind of fix if their precious solution would someday be offline [because, even though good programmers, they're a bunch of assholes. I mean they must be. They were the ones who invented the Steam crap].

Just take a look at my pile of Steaming games. These are the titles I had to spend a DAY AND A HALF installing. And I'm not done with all of them yet. As you can see, CSS is still downloading some crap, and the list is about 60% complete, since I haven't "Steam activated" some of the games I own [and wasn't able to play untill now] yet.



If you really want to play Half Life 2, you can always get a copy for the regular Xbox. HL2 came out for the Xbox some time ago, and concidering the console hardware limitations, the port is remarkably good. So now I'm stuck with Steam whether I like it or not. At least the servers for online play are good and you get the constant updates for your games [basically whether you like it, or not. Steam just updates "itself" and you can't do a single thing about it]. This further confirms that Steam sucks. And while others run around and play, I sit and contemplate [This is an actual screen of my Half Life 2: Deathmatch gameplay].

『 QR Code Monday Madness 』

It's monday yet again and I'm back at the usual spot in front of the computer. Why, oh why is the weekend so short? I really could use just one more day to get some proper rest, but no. I have to go to work. Oh well. No work no pay. In some of my spare time this saturday I've decided to examin the QR code a little bit closer to check what it can and cannot handle. Since the code must be able to handle some distortion, I checked out how much distortion would it take to make the code unreadable. Let's take a look at the source code that I used.



This is your normal code which is automatically generated by any QR application. I always use the lowest possible density for short messages. This one contains one word only.

After generating the base image, I started removing the pixels from it one by one, checking which can be removed and which cannot. This is what I got. You can't remove a single pixel from this one and still read it. This is the lowest pixel count version that is still recognisable by the QR readers.



As you can see, alot of information was removed and it still works. I don't know if it works with all the readers, but it worked with mine. Now if the code can handle removal of the pixels, it should also handle additional pixels, right? I checked that aswell and this is the result.



Now this is cool. You will certainly be able to see the amount of black pixels added and the code still works. Add a single pixel to what you can see right now and it breaks, which means this is the maximum amount of additional pixels this particular code can handle.

This would only mean that the codes contain additional data to make ensure the visibility of the message. If a reader can't make out the information, it has the additional pointers to help it. Those were either removed or blacked out in both tests.

As you may, or may not know, there are password protected QR codes. Your reader will ask you for the password before you can read the message hidden inside. I think I'll play around a bit with those during the next weekend, so if you're curious, stay tuned.

『 Thank God it's Friday! 』

Friday at last! My day at work has just begun, and I'm already pretty excited about the weekend. Not that I have planned something in particular. I'm just bored out of my mind when I sit in front of the computer for hours on end. Not doing that is enough to do in these couple of days.

Days are just too short. You come home, you shower, grab something to eat, relax for a minute and it's already dark outside. Recently I didn't even get the chance to play anything for more than fifteen minutes. That's just no good.

Just before I went to bed yesterday, I took some pictures of things on my window. Mainly my friendly lamp, The Eerie Orange Cat, and his clay buddy, Garlic Pot. Click the images to open the 640 x 480 versions in a separate window.