You know how you know that you've spent too much time on TV Tropes? It's not when you wonder when the sun came up... again. It's not when you get fired. It's not when you start having a taste for human flesh. It's when you realize that not only does your favorite game's architecture come straight out of the signage guidelines for ten-thousand-year nuclear disposal sites, . . . [more]. . .

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/24/eveningnews/main4751431.shtml http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-bullets1009feb10,0,2201778.story http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/16/obama-driving-surge-gun-sales-firearms-groups-say/ http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-02-03-voa31-68765982.html?CFTOKEN=88529062&jsessionid=de302deff31cb0a2380e115065233125d7b6&CFID=325020958. . . [more]. . .

A lot of folks, when explaining/describing an FPS, will try to do so by comparing it to another FPS. You might say "it's like Wolfenstein meets Unreal Tournament" or something like that. While those games have very similar mechanics, a lot of games are more about context, flow, and narrative rather than mechanics so doing so would be an injustice to both the games being compared. With that . . . [more]. . .

Lemme tell you. This last couple days has been sheer madness. Being something of a new-found .NET kool-aid drinker, I've started to get my hands dirty in a lot of the newfangled MSFT junk. I'm actually enjoying it. Few years ago, I inherited some C# code that talked to a SOAP API interface. Being mostly allergic to trying new things, I wrote a Python wrapper for it and, because I was . . . [more]. . .

Okay, I saw a video the No Russian mission of Modern Warfare 2. Be warned: If you're a story-oriented gamer (unlike me), you may be annoyed that there are spoilers in this little post. Stop reading now if you care about that. Let the spoilers commence The mission begins with a briefing from "your" (the player's) superior, speaking in the cliche, "I AM TEH SOLJUR!" scratchy, old, wa. . . [more]. . .

Just finished watching an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's episode from Season 3 titled "A Matter of Perspective." In it Riker is accused of murdering a Tanugan scientist while on an away mission. Go watch it now if you haven't already. Otherwise this won't make sense. If you're a freak who hasn't watched TNG and yet somehow care about the fact that ther. . . [more]. . .

My late friend and hero, Byeard Maggott, was a fan of the Unity engine. It's a pity he didn't live to see this! Quoth Gamasutra: The Unity engine is becoming even more affordable to independent and hobbyist developers, as Unity Technologies has retired the $200 "Unity Indie" offering and replaced it with a free license, simply called Unity. Developer Unity Technologies is keeping the ful. . . [more]. . .

Out of love/respect for the GM who spawned this term, I am not going to tell you who did this. But I am going to tell you that it happened. It's perfectly understandable that some GM's, when they get a mighty campaign worked together, a sophisticated plot, and go through all the effort of crafting and breathing souls/life into their NPC's, sometimes get their heads stuck to an idea. . . [more]. . .

Transcript of a conversation I've been having on Cluttered Twitter. I'm really glad I copied it down 'cause Facebook started eating posts right 'n' left just after the conversation got compelling. FOR POSTERITY: Ishpeck: I don't like Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality bills are market controls imposed by the government. It's an effort to legislatively force an ISP to tr. . . [more]. . .

About half of the people who read this web site are not programmers. They've always been as welcome as everyone else but sometimes, they feel left-out 'cause I post code from time to time. Sometimes, they feel threatened or annoyed when I try to explain what's happening but I never intend for that to be the case. This is NOT a programming post. I promise. Parsing XML in .NET 2.0 i. . . [more]. . .