Ray Harryhausen, 1920-2013

Posted on May 7, 2013 by

When I was a kid, the Sunday Morning Movie was must-see TV. It was your delivery system for old horror and adventure movies. It’s where I first got scared of The Crawling Eye, Fiend Without a Face, Black Sabbath, and that thing with the people getting turned into underwater creatures. (I was an easily-scared kid; Crawling Eye and Fiend Without a Face were both razzed by Mystery Science Theater 3000.)

But it’s also where I saw Jason and the Argonauts, and that was an absolute must-see movie every time it came on. Non-stop action with all kinds of amazing scenes: Talos, the harpies, the hydra, and of course, the skeletons.

It all came to life through the skills of Ray Harryhausen, who was responsible for special effects in that movie and hundreds of others throughout his long career. His talent and imagination brought things to life that riveted us in our seats. Harryhausen died today at the age of 92, but he leaves behind not only an incredible body of work but all of the people he inspired through his career.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything in a movie that made me really wonder, “how did they do that?” I have to admit, when I used to watch Jason and the Argonauts, I also didn’t think that. What I thought was, “How is Jason going to defeat this thing?”

Posted in Movies | Tagged

Electronic Games Sunday: The Myth of the “Software Mugger”

Posted on May 5, 2013 by

From an article called, “Menace of the Software Pirates” in the May ’85 issue:

I knew a fair number of hackers, crackers, phreakers, and pirates, and never once heard the term “software mugger”. A Google search calls into question that anyone ever used this term. In fact, such a search brings up this ancient Usenet post from 1985, no doubt translated from the Sumerian:

I have never, repeat, NEVER heard this term ‘software mugger’ used before. Is
it the habit of your magazine to invent silly new buzzwords to make something
old and commonplace sound new and interesting? The pirates I know who do
nothing but copy things using Essential Data Duplicator or Copy ][ Plus are
still called the same thing: pirates. ‘Software mugger’, indeed! I am proud
to say that I have NEVER mugged a piece of software, or even a human being.

More like “Software Muggles, AM I RIGHT?” (I am wrong.)

—
ANSWERS TO POP QUIZ, PART TWO:
Joust: Left
Moon Patrol: Left
Vanguard: Left
Centipede: Right
Galaxian: Left

Posted in Games | Tagged ,

This Delicious Week

Posted on May 4, 2013 by


Shared bookmarks for delicious user
legomancer

Posted in Delicious

Catching Up With Atomic Robo

Posted on May 3, 2013 by

Back in the halcyon days of 2007, I had this to say about the first issue of Atomic Robo.

Since then, comics (particularly monthly comics) and I have had a general parting of ways, though I still order stuff regularly. As a result, after a few Atomic Robo trades, I sort of lost track of the character.

Last week, thanks to Comixology, I addressed that. I already had bought or re-bought the first four trades digitally, so I read through them and then bought the remaining trades and read through those as well.

This series is an absolute joy. It’s fun without being stupid. All-ages without being cloying. Funny without being “funny”. It mentions Nikolai Tesla without me wanting to punch it. It’s pretty much the platonic ideal of fun action comics.

The idea is simple: Atomic Robo was invented by Nikolai Tesla. He’s a strong, smart, and sassy robot with a heart of gold and possibly uranium. Along with the action scientists of Tesladyne, he adventures and fights evil and does research in the name of SCIENCE!

If there’s one criticism of Atomic Robo it’s probably the lack of a really strong supporting cast. There’s an obvious parallel to Hellboy in the material, even though the two books and characters are doing very different things in very different ways, but Atomic Robo would do well to be a little more informed by the other characters in the BPRD books. Atomic Robo has a few named Tesladyne scientists, but they don’t really stand out or give evidence that they could hold interest if Robo wasn’t there as well. (That said, Robo’s rogues gallery is pretty nice, especially the hilarious Dr. Dinosaur.)

There are seven Atomic Robo trades to date and one trade of the new series, Real Science Adventures (which I haven’t read yet). All of them are completely stand-alone! Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener are the main creators behind Atomic Robo, but other folks have chipped in as well, including John Broglia on the new series. They’re published by Red 5 Comics.

This is an apropos subject because tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. I don’t really do FCBD anymore, but for the past few years there has been an Atomic Robo offering and it’s always been fantastic (they’re also available — for free — on Comixology). If you’re heading out to a comic store for el comics gratis tomorrow, be sure and pick up the Atomic Robo book (and also you should buy something while you’re there, since the comics aren’t free for the store.)

Posted in Comics | Tagged ,

Dave’s Bitching About Nerds Again, So Your Hot Pocket Is Done

Posted on May 2, 2013 by

There’s a video making the rounds where nerd icon Wil Wheaton tells the audience why being a nerd is awesome. I’m not going to link it because there’s no need to; it’s all over the place and you can imagine what the answer is. Being a nerd is awesome because nerds are intelligent and want to understand the world, not just disinterestedly ride the planet through space. It’s got people all teary-eyed and flutter-hearted over the joy and wonder of being a nerd.

My stance on this kind of stuff

If You Want a Vision Of The Future, Imagine a Steampunk Boot Photoshopping a Fez on Batman — Forever

Waiter, This Awesomesauce Has Gone Sour

Scenes From the Class Struggle in Mos Eisley

A Holodeck of One’s Own

is pretty well known, so I don’t really need to go into too much detail here (some would say I don’t need to go into any detail at all, we get it) but boy, I always love the idea that people who aren’t nerds just shuffle morosely through life wishing they too could like stuff. I mean, they say they’re into gardening or carpentry or sports or eye surgery or hiking or TV shows but they don’t have any t-shirts or action figures or amusing headwear about it, so they can’t really be enjoying anything. We all know that what Wil means by “liking” things is “liking liking things”.

It’s also nice to hear about how intellectually curious nerds are, unlike everyone else. This is especially good coming at the beginning of the summer movie season, when we’ll hear time and again, “CAN’T YOU JUST TURN YOUR BRAIN OFF AND ENJOY THE RIDE?” Movies about superheroes and robots and robot superheroes will abound, but you’ll find the intellectually curious nerds instead watching documentaries in art houses.

Once more, let me make it clear that if you dig on this stuff, that’s great! You have a great time! But let’s not give ourselves too many pats on the back for watching box-office smashing genre films and buying branded merchandise. If you enjoy watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” then hey, so did I, but that doesn’t make either of us some kind of brainy seeker of the mysteries of life. You don’t really get to dump on anyone who doesn’t like “Doctor Who” or play boardgames if your primary intake of media is shouting “AWESOME” every time your amygdala fires for 3 seconds because you saw something from when you were a kid.

My beef with Team Nerd remains the same: let’s just be into things without having to be into being into things.

Posted in Geek Stuff | Tagged ,

It’s May Day

Posted on May 1, 2013 by

In other countries, workers are marching and protesting bullshit austerity policies.

In America, blue-collar workers support a party that wants to gut their few remaining businesses and give their bosses tax breaks.

Posted in Politics | Tagged ,

My Best Things

Posted on April 30, 2013 by

Posted in Images | Tagged ,

Game Design Status Report #8: Cranking the Dial

Posted on April 29, 2013 by

Say hello to prototype #2!

You can click on that image to make it bigger. Got all that? Now say goodbye to prototype #2. By the time you read this it will have begun its transformation into prototype #3.

Earlier this month I hooked up with a bunch of game designers who meet fairly regularly up in Northampton. In preparation for that meeting, I created prototype #2, in case someone was up for some playtesting. It didn’t get playtested, but I did a bit of explanation to the folks and got some great feedback and suggestions. Most of the people there were working on RPGs but the majority had some familiarity with current boardgames, and my references to Merchants and Marauders, Galaxy Trucker, Race for the Galaxy, and such were understood.

One of the best things I heard there was someone (I’m terrible with names, sorry!) recounting the wisdom of an RPG designer who said that if you’re in a situation where, say, you think a monster doesn’t have enough hit points, but you’re not sure how many it should have, double them. Or halve them if your problem lies in the other direction. In other words, don’t waste time with fiddly little incremental changes. Twist the dial far in the other direction and that will give you a better sense of where it should be than nudging it over and over.

That kind of minor knob-twiddling was exactly what I’d been doing with the dice and such, and as soon as I realized that I knew that prototype 2 was not going to work.

Still, this weekend Becky sat down and gave it a shot. We didn’t play all the way through because one of the problems is that it moves too slowly. However, there was this exchange:

“We can stop now. There’s no need to play all the way through.”

“But I’m winning!”

Some of the misgivings I’d had about prototype #2 were confirmed. Some new problems were found. But the good news is, I think most aspects of the game are falling in line now, and prototype #3 should be the sort of “crank the dial” kind of broad adjustment I need to make.

Here are the notes from the game design group and playtest #2:

Also, I can make a lot of the changes I want to make without having to re-do a lot of my work, which is nice.

Incidentally, in these blog entries I’ve sort of avoided saying too much about how the game works. That’s not because it’s any kind of company secret, just because I’m still making changes to that. But if prototype #3 goes the way I want, I’ll be explaining how the game is played before too long.

Posted in Games | Tagged , ,