the blog quebecois

I have a good excuse for not posting the last couple of days -- they finally released Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City (actually two separate games, but similar enough that I'll treat them as one) for the Xbox, and I was obliged to study the game in depth so that I could report on it here. Pretty darned generous on my part, yes?

It's very impressive; smart and stylish. I hadn't seen it before, apart from the clips played on TV, tut-tutting its violence and misogyny.

Well, I suppose that violence is part of the job description of becoming a young up-and-coming street thug. And I am pleased to report that the female characters are every bit as vicious as the males. You've come a long way, baby.

Indeed, the protagonist's backstory includes being doublecrossed and shot by his female accomplice after a bank robbery.

The game was also criticized as encouraging attacks on police. This must have been the viewpoint of someone who hadn't ever played the game, because in it, as in real life, killing cops turns up the heat real fast. You occasionally have to do it, but it's a high-risk/low-reward strategy, if you value your virtual life, anyway.

As a stand-up comic once remarked: "Never mess with the police. Not only do they have sticks and guns -- they've got a secret phone number they can call to bring more people with sticks and guns."

Anyone who gets the message that attacking police is fun and without consequence is probably too stupid to continue in the gene pool, anyway.

Also, on your first mission, to pick up "Luigi's" girl at the hospital, it's a bad idea to miss the turnoff and crash into the police station instead.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to do some more research...

Now here's a time-waster par excellence for those long draggy Friday afternoons at the office.

We assume that as computers get better, they are going to pull away from us, beating us more and more easily, particularly in such circumscribed logical exercises as chess. Not so. Since 1997 machines have gotten so much stronger that even off-the-shelf ones now routinely massacre the ordinary player. But the great players are learning to adapt. Genius is keeping up.

An interesting column by Charles Krauthammer on computer chess, specifically the recent Kasparov/X3D Fritz match. He's wrong, though, about Moore's Law (the rule-of-thumb that computers generally double in power every eighteen months ) being determinative on the progress of computer chess. The software is much more important. One of the strongest commercially-available packages, Fritz 8 (X3D's baby brother), which I have, will run on a Win 98 machine with 32 megs of RAM and maybe 1GB of diskspace if you install the largest opening databases.

But he's spot-on with his analysis of human strategy versus the computer's infallible tactical ability. The (very) few times I've beaten Fritz came out of static, locked-down positions like Krauthammer describes.

Anyway, it's worth reading if you're into this kind of stuff.

First-time readers of this blog: Welcome, and ignore the rest of this message. Click directly on the Continue reading "The Chess Wing" link. Thank you, and do feel free to drop by again.

To my long-time loyal readers: I'm getting desperate. I've got 10 votes in the Wizbang poll, and it looks like it might not be enough. Considering that the leaders are outpolling me 3:1.

So I have decided to cheat. Fridays and Saturdays are usually not good times for me to write, and this weekend is no different. So instead of knocking out a well-crafted, witty, 1500-word meditation on the events of the day, I shall reach deep into the musty archives, pull out a Blog Quebecois Klassic™ and attempt to pass it off as though my fingers had been merrily dancing on the keyboard all afternoon.

I feel cheap and dirty doing this . . . no, I feel cheap and dirty anyway, so I might as well do this; my conscience be damned.

I probably won't sleep well tonight, unless I drink a lot of beer, in which case I should sleep fine.

Thank you for your time, and remember: You never saw this message.

Yes, it's Games Night, which means I couldn't think of anything to write about.

From the mysterious to the sublime, then:

This is some Japanese (ignore the offer to install the language font, it probably won't help much) thing. Click on the rotating icon in the centre of the "tree" and move your mouse around and branches sprout, birds flock, a big eyedropper materializes . . . the ways of the Orient are inscrutable indeed.

(Via She Who Will Be Obeyed.)

I'd probably enjoy this more if I didn't have the mechanical aptitude of a cabbage.

(Courtesy of Ghost Of A Flea.)

These are simple little arcade games, but they're imaginative and the graphics are gorgeous.

An addictive yet annoying "Capture The Flag" game for your gaming pleasure, or frustration, as the case may be.

Full Spectrum Warrior is based on a game commissioned by the U.S. Army to train light Infantry troops in urban combat situations. Soldiers are placed in a tense, hostile, and claustrophobic environment where they must complete a variety of military objectives.

Players act as the Squad Leader, providing direction to Alpha and Bravo fire teams. The successful Squad Leader effectively uses cover in the environment and moves his fire teams in a coordinated fashion so they can protect themselves from possible attacks that could come from any direction. Full Spectrum Warrior puts you in the dirt with your men, where danger lurks around every corner.

Knock on wood, I've never been in a war, but one question haunts me: Would I be the leader of men that I was born to be?

Or would I be the guy hiding behind the burning truck, trying to dig a tunnel to China? Dunno. It's a pick 'em.

I've managed to acquit myself quite honorably in this terrific new game for the Xbox, though, at least in the sense that I go grimly chugging forward until I've completely failed the mission yet again.

It uses the same engine as the Army's version (which you can also play by entering a cheat code), but with a bit more chrome -- improved lighting, cutscenes, music, and backstories for your "soldiers."

As the above blurb indicates, you control two 4-man fireteams, each composed of a team leader, a rifleman, a machinegunner and a grenadier. Except for throwing grenades or firing RPG, you don't do any shooting; but you assign firesectors for each team (and occasionally split fires, with the machinegunner taking on one target and the rest of the team another) and direct the type of fire (overwatching, bounding, or suppression). In some scenarios you can dialup a mortar barrage, which is a beautiful thing to see, especially when it's landing on enemy armor.

This wasn't the military's first foray into video games -- back in the 90's the Marines experimented with Doom, modding up the monsters in it to look like enemy soldiers. (This was the basis of former Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman's phony claim that the Pentagon was using computer simulations to desensitize troops to killing. I think I fairly debunked that theory here.)

But Marine Doom didn't work too well -- the artificial intelligence of those early versions of Doom wasn't very good at emulating soldiers, who tend not to come running out of the shadows straight at you, yelling gibberish. Well, apart from the Al-Sadr Militia , which might explain why U.S. forces enjoy rather impressive kill ratios (30:1? 50:1? 100:1?) against it.

I digress. If you have an Xbox and an interest in small-unit tactics, buy this game. If you don't have an Xbox (a PC version will be coming out in the fall -- no word on a Playstation release) then buy an Xbox and then buy this game. If you don't really like tactics or wargames or Xboxes one way or the other, then you can check out the post below for a fascinating link.

Good thing cars aren't steered with cursor keys (spacebar for brake).

Drive (Pun not intended [Pun actually was intended, but blogiquette requires plausible deniability of such intent.].) yourself nuts with this.

Then you can try the same thing, but with a trailer.

If worst comes to worst and you find yourself dangling over a cliff, here's what to do.

Last two links via The Presurfer

whisper in my ear
kicka pooka mok a wa wahini
are the words I long to hear

-- john prine

One of the great joys of my misspent youth was typing dirty words into various text-driven games (like King's Quest or Adventure) to see how the computer would respond.

(Hey, I told you it was a misspent youth.)

Anyway, here's a kindred spirit, who did the same thing with a lot of games; and better, got screen caps of them. (There are about five full pages -- click on "East" at the bottom of the page to display the next one.)

Work safe, assuming nobody looks at your screen too closely.

Via boingboing

An interesting review of the new Kennedy assassination game in Slate:

After playing JFK Reloaded for a couple of hours, I have to give Traffic credit for the game's unbelievably precise physics. Every bullet bounces around with a super-realistic trajectory, behaving in the incredibly complicated way that bullets do. Sometimes I'd hit the back of the limo and the bullet would careen forward, smashing the glass; other times it would embed itself in the metal. After each round, the game lets you view the scene in a dozen different ways, including the classic Zapruder film angle or even from the perspective of a camera mounted on the limo. Then you get a 3-D model of the limo that you can rotate however you want, with the bullet trajectories traced in freeze-frame. As a physics simulation, it's remarkable.

But as an experience? It's nauseating.

Like the writer, I don't have a problem with shoot-'em-ups (apart from being generally lousy at playing them) but I think I'll be passing on this one.

Via Waxy.org

you load sixteen tons and what do you get?
another day older and deeper in debt
saint peter, don't you call me 'cause i can't go
i owe my soul to the company store

-- merle travis

This is sort of like an arcade version of the old computer game Transport Tycoon.

OK, not really, but it was the first thing to come to mind. A factory pumps out different colored boxes and you click on arrows on conveyor belts to route them to the correct type of shipping. The site's in German, but you shouldn't have any problem figuring it out.

Via A Welsh View

Game maker Electronic Arts has released a couple of photos showing the graphical detail capable with the next generation Xbox and Playstation, due out probably in time for Christmas 2005. The above shot is from the racing sim Need For Speed.

Here's an even more impressive frame from the upcoming John Madden football game.

Via Fazed

Some video of the infamous "Hot Coffee" mod from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

It's obviously not safe for work, but not as explicit as some of the more hysterical press accounts have it.

but when you love the greenback dollar
sorrow’s always bound to follow
reno dreams fade into neon amber

dolly parton

Wired:

It's late one Wednesday afternoon, and CptPokr is logged on to PartyPoker.com and ready to play. Onscreen, the captain exudes a certain brash charisma - broad shoulders, immaculate brown hair, restless animatronic eyes. He looks like he should be playing synth in Kraftwerk. Instead, he is seated at a virtual table with nine other avatars, wagering on limit Texas hold 'em. [. . .]

CptPokr is a robot. Unlike the other icons at the table, there is no human placing his bets and playing his cards. He is controlled by WinHoldEm, the first commercially available autoplaying poker software. Seat him at the table and he will apply strategy gleaned from decades of research. While carbon-based players munch Ding Dongs, yawn, guzzle beer, reply to email, take phone calls, and chat on IM, CptPokr (a pseudonym) is running the numbers so it will know, statistically, when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

As Momma always warned me, never play poker against a man named Doc, or a bot named Doc 3.0168 (build 5.7).

There's a similar problem in online chess, where people often use bots or chess software against opponents. The difference being that there's (at least on any of the servers I've used) no money on the table, just bragging rights.

This is a troubling (if predictable) development for the commercial poker sites, which employ hundreds of people to try and detect the bots. It's quite the technological arms race.

The article mentions one of the world's leading researchers on computer poker, the University of Alberta's Jonathan Schaeffer:

Other bots are appearing on the scene - including some that were never intended for online play. For the past 14 years, computer scientists at the University of Alberta Games Group have been building the poker version of Deep Blue: a program that can beat a top player, just as IBM's bot trumped Garry Kasparov in chess. "I'd love to be there when the computer raises the stakes by $100,000," says UA's Jonathan Schaeffer. "I want to see the bead of perspiration going down the human opponent's forehead. That's my dream."

Prof. Schaeffer's research project, Poki (you can download a free demo for Windows, MacOSX or Linux) is here.

While Poki is kicking your butt, you might as well look like a pro:

With enough practice you should be able to absentmindedly shuffle and cut a deck of cards with one hand while sorting your chips with the other. It's also a useful flourish for those interested in card tricks, and just generally for those interested in manual dexterity games.

At least it isn't called Paul Martin Forever. Another 21 days of him will do me just fine.

For the political junkies out there (you know who you are), here's probably the most detailed simulation of the upcoming election you're likely to find. You control one (or more) candidates and manage all aspects of the campaign, from policy to ad buys to spin control and dirty tricks.

I was fooling around with it yesterday afternoon and it looks quite well done. Of course, it depends on what weight the designers give to intangibles like "leadership" and "integrity," but that problem is common to all strategy games. You can download the demo from the CBC website, and get a coupon for 20% off the $18.95 price if you purchase it that way.

The demo allows you to play out only the 2006 election, and you can't vary the computer players' strength. The full version covers elections dating back to 1993, allows you to edit or run alternate candidates (including yourself, if you like), and has a scenario editor that can model situations from ancient Rome to the futuristic.

The company also has versions for American, British, Australian and German elections, all for Windows 98 through XP (they'll also run under Virtual PC for Macs).

mary, mary, quite contrary
how does your garden grow?
with silver bells and cockle shells
and pretty maids all in a row

This garden requires no green thumb; just a twitchy right index finger.

Hmmm. This I did not know:

The Mary alluded to in this traditional English nursery rhyme is reputed to be Mary Tudor, or Bloody Mary, who was the daughter of King Henry VIII. Queen Mary was a staunch Catholic and the garden referred to is an allusion to graveyards which were increasing in size with those who dared to continue to adhere to the Protestant faith - Protestant martyrs.

The silver bells and cockle shells referred to in the Nursery Rhyme were colloquialisms for instruments of torture. The 'silver bells' were thumbscrews which crushed of the thumb between two hard surfaces by the tightening a screw. The 'cockleshells' were believed to be instruments of torture which were attached to the genitals!

No wonder I've always hated gardening.

i'm looking for me
you're looking for you
we're looking in at each other
and we don't know what to do

the who

I knew what I didn't want to do, and that was link to "The Streak", that dreadful 70s novelty song by Ray Stevens. See, there's only a few letters difference in the title of the Who song, although I suppose everybody's going to notice now that I've brought it to your attention.

Ahem. Anyhoo, a few days ago a U.K. mobile phone company put up on its site "The Beautiful Game," in which you play a female streaker trying to dash across the pitch, dodging cops and players. There wasn't anything obscene about it and it was kind of fun but someone apparently thought elsewise, because it was gone when I returned tonight (for research purposes only).

Because my readers demand quality streaker-based entertainment, I've gone "the extra mile," and rounded up pretty well all the quality (and non-quality) streaker-based entertainment out there.

Warning: These are pretty innocuous, but probably NSFW. All three have music and sfx and you might want to watch (figuratively speaking) the banners on the last one.

I got nothin' tonight. Well, I do got this. (Warning: Some sfx.)

I got nothin' tonight.

Via Ursi's Blóg

Macworld:

Among those inconvenienced by the shortage has been Steve Ballmer, Microsoft�s chief executive officer. Ballmer said last week that his children had yet to get an Xbox 360 because he hadn�t been able to buy one and Sarbanes-Oxley rules prevented him from getting a free console.

�He�s right, he�s a section 16 officer that operates under Sarbanes-Oxley,� said [Microsoft�s home and entertainment division v.p. Peter] Moore. �I can�t give him one, even if I had one, because he can�t accept it and I don�t think he pre-ordered it from our local BestBuy, which he lives pretty close to, so Steve is [out of luck] right now.�

Mind you, this was from Dec. 12 of last year. I think it's probably likely that Ballmer somehow got his hands on one, Sarbanes-Oxley be damned.

Me, no such luck. Future Shop and BestBuy don't anticipate a steady supply of them until the end of the month. This had better have been worth it.

If you've ever wanted to play a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) like Everquest or World of Warcraft but balked at the cost/subscription fees -- well, have I got a deal for you.

Deicide is a free, open source MMORPG currently in beta release. The home page is here. (It returns some scripting errors -- just ignore them, as you can otherwise navigate the site with no problems [Except for the dark grey text, which is almost unreadable on my gamma-challenged monitor.].)

You can download the setup program here. (Note: It's a very large file, about 570 Megs.)

Specs:

Minimum
CPU : Intel Pentium III - 600MHz
Memory : 128M

Recommended
CPU : Intel Pentium III - 1GHz
Memory : 512M

I won't be joining your Clan, Guild or whatever. My computer time is exclusively devoted to researching and writing material for this fine blog.

No, really.

I've seen a number of articles on the strategy of Pac-Man, but never one as detailed as this:

- Learn to do "head fakes", quick jerks of the joystick which fake the ghosts into changing direction or anticipating your movement incorrectly.

- Read the ghosts eyes: The ghosts eyes give away which direction they are going to turn next, they always look which way they'll go slightly before turning.

- You are faster on a clear road: If on the run, chose paths which have been cleared already to gain more speed advantage over your pursuers.

- The Escape Routes: The two exits above the ghost house and above the Pac-Man start position can only be travelled downwards by the ghosts, never upwards unless they are blue and on the run. Good to know this when you are being chased! (Thanks to Simon for this tip :))

- The hiding place: There is one safe spot in the maze. Reach it when none of the ghosts are looking at you and you can stay there safely for as long as you like. The ghosts will not find you.

Learn these lessons well, gwashoppah, and you, too, will someday be rewarded with the scene at the left, showing Pac-Man when the program breaks, at the 255th level. Assuming you've got five or six free hours to devote to the attempt.

You are no doubt champing at the bit to try out these new tactics. These online versions (Warning: sfx in both), one in Flash and the other in Java, seem to be pretty accurate renditions (though I haven't played the game for some time now, so I might be mistaken).

To get a perfect copy of the original, you'll have to install an emulator, of which the best known is MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). This duplicates as closely as possible thousands of arcade (and console -- Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision, etc.) games.

However, MAME, because of copyright reasons, doesn't distribute the ROM image files that are necessary to play the games.

Being a law-abiding citizen, you of course wouldn't think of doing a search for "ROM images" or "ROM sets." Nor would you dream of clicking on a link such as this, which might contain Pac-Man (and Ms. Pac-Man) ROMs.

A very clever remake of Space Invaders using people as pixels.

Warning: Your standard video game beeps and boops, but you'll want the full game experience, yes?

There's a page (in French) with some details about the project here.

The American Prospect:

"Put another Japanese student on the phone," I said.

She found a guy named Yuki, who’d been in the States six years and spoke lovely English.

"Codebreaking?" he replied. "In Japanese, that’s kaidoku."

The race to find the next Sudoku, and why crossword puzzle-makers are rather miffed about it.

Via Waxy.org

. . . here's a shoot-'em-up. I at first thought that the object was to break all the bottles. This is what happens when you don't read the instructions.

What you're trying to do is shoot the caps off the bottles. So you see, it's not mindless violence. It's a contest of skill.

Unlike this way of opening bottles, which, frankly, is insane.

Warning: Both links have sounds, etc.

Reuters:

Chess's world governing body will introduce dope testing at the Asian Games this week, although the sport's top official in Doha said he had no idea how drugs could enhance chess performance.

"I would not know which drug could possibly help a chess player to improve his game," competition manager Yousuf Ahmad Ali said.

Me either. But maybe someone should have tested world champion Vladimir Kramnik before he played a game against the formidable Deep Fritz program a few days ago in Germany (via Colby Cosh):

The diagram shows Kramnik's (playing Black) disastrous 34th move, Qe3. To which Fritz responded, 35. Qh7 mate.

Far be it from me to second-guess a Grandmaster, but I think I know what happened. Most commentators thought the position was at best a draw, but Kramnik was aiming to exchange Queens, to eliminate the most troublesome White piece. From there, his superior Pawn structure (and Bishop vs. Knight on an open board) would have given him a victory in the endgame.

So in search of that goal, he fell victim to something that bites (I am happy to see) even the best players from time to time: Getting so narrowly focused on the immediate tactical situation that you become oblivious to the striking power of the Queen or Bishop on a long diagonal.

You wouldn't think it's easy to lose track of pieces on a 64-square board, but it does happen. (It afflicts players the other way, too -- forgetting that you have a devastating weapon in a far corner.)

Against human players, at least these mistakes will average out over time. Not against machines. They never miss the obvious. *

---

* T'was not always thus. In 1977 or thereabouts the first commercially-available chess computer, the Fidelity Chess Challenger, came out. I was in Africa at the time, and two of the stronger players there were two Marines at the US embassy. Let me amend that somewhat. One guy, Dom Caruso from New York, was good. The other, John Hathaway from Texas, was unquestionably the best natural talent I've ever encountered. As I repeatedly nagged reminded him, he easily could qualify as a Master (a designation you earn by playing in officially-rated tournaments) with a bit of work on his opening theory. He would laugh, and then kick my ass all over the board with his deeply flawed opening theory.

Anyway, John ordered one of the machines from the States, and we all eagerly got together when it arrived a few weeks later. John was first to play (well, he did pay for it) and it tidily defeated him. Much nervous laughter. We weren't used to seeing John lose at the chessboard. Dom's up next, with the same result. So it was left to me to reclaim man's honor.

I was about a dozen moves into a standard King-side attack when I got a hunch. I made a move that didn't really make any sense. It didn't damage my position, apart from losing a bit of tempo. (The advantage the White player has by moving first, with the subsequent pressure on Black.) The computer whirred and clicked away for a full minute and then spat out a spectacularly-stupid reply. John and Dom and I looked at the move, then we looked at each other, then we looked at the move again. I checkmated it about four or five turns later.

When I got back to Canada, I immediately bought a Chess Challenger and tried the same stunt. Whoops. It was version 2.0 by then; they'd fixed that bug: It proceeded to stomp me but good.

But six years later, the Sky Dancer was grounded. When spun aloft, the wings -- which felt so soft and cushy in the aisles of Toys "R" Us -- turned into steely-hard child manglers. In 2000, the CPSC announced that over 150 children fell prey to Sky Dancer's helicopter-blade arms and erratic "Oh-Jesus-it's-chasing-me!" flying patterns. Injuries included scratched corneas and temporary blindness, mild concussions, broken ribs and teeth, and facial lacerations that required stitches. Nearly nine million Sky Dancers were eventually recalled, leaving aspiring ballerinas to earn their battle scars the old fashioned way, with an eating disorder.

A funny* look at the worst toys of all time, just in time for those last-minute Xmas purchases.

* "Funny" being a relative term. Several of the toys caused deaths or serious injuries; we, however, will take our funny where we find it.

It's a long story, but I was trying to install an embedded game. Needless to say it wasn't this stupid puzzle, but it's what showed up, so deal with it.

You remove pegs by jumping over them. If you get down to one peg, you win. Sounds exciting, huh?

Well, it isn't. But it's all I got tonight.

Update: If this wasn't embarrassing enough, the "Reset Puzzle" button doesn't work. You'll have to reload or refresh the page.

OTOH, this could boost my page views.

Thank you. I'll be here all week. Please do not steal the flatware. Thank you.

There's a beta game site that's popped up recently that's available by invitation only; it so happens I have three invites to give away. (I understand that they're replenished quickly, so despair not if you're not one of the first three. I'll send it along as soon as I can.) If you'd like one, leave your name and email address in the comments.

It's a bit much to explain it all, so I'll let Moola do the work:

Moola's patented tournament model allows millions of people to attempt to win anywhere up to $10,000,000 playing exciting, nearly addictive games against one another, for free. How? Players start by receiving 1¢ from sponsors. In order to receive this penny, one may be required to read or watch an ad and then answer some kind of trivia (or "AdverTrivia") question to prove that attention has been paid.

With penny in hand, users may begin ascending the Moola Tower: The progressive level system at the heart of the tournament model. On level 1, a player will be matched in a 2-player game against another player who also has 1 penny. Players may choose from a variety of existing games, and Moola will regularly offer new titles to choose from. The winner of this game will emerge with the other's penny, for a total of 2¢, and have the opportunity to continue climbing to the next double or nothing level.

On level 2, a player will be matched in a game of choice against an opponent who also has 2¢. The winner will emerge with 4¢ and continue to climb the Moola Tower. At each new level, a player will select a game of choice and be matched against another opponent with equal financial interest, whereby the winner will emerge with twice the account balance he/she had previously. Players may choose to cash out at any time, in which case Moola will pay out real money to that player via mailed check in local currency, or save account balances and return later for continued play.

By playing double or nothing, player account balances multiply extremely quickly, producing exponential gains as high as $1000 by level 17, $10,000 by level 20, or $10,000,000 by level 30. However, players may also choose to compete on any lower levels which they can afford, thereby reducing their risk and reward. And, new players or anyone losing their entire balance at any time may start over for free, and get their first penny from Moola and/or its sponsors once again.

A note on Moola's advertising: Throughout the game play experience, players will be required to watch periodic ads and occasionally answer trivia (or "AdverTrivia") questions about the ads being watched. These ads appear before each game, and when a user receives his/her "Starting Penny." The purpose of these ads, or "AdverChallenges" are designed to assure advertisers that their messages are being watched by target audiences. This, in turn, gives advertisers greater confidence and willingness to continually sponsor the Moola tournament model, allowing users to continually vie for serious cash prizes. The result is an advertiser/audience harmony, in which advertisers enjoy certainty that their messages are not being "skipped over," and audiences, for the first time, enjoy thrilling monetary and entertainment benefits from their willingness to watch intermittent ads.

They've paid out over $3 million so far, and I see no reason to doubt that: The advertisers are brand-name (the ads are short and unobtrusive) and the site is well-designed, with the exception of not supporting my usual (Mozilla) browser. You'll have to use Internet Explorer 5+, Netscape 6+ or Firefox 1+.

I've only played with it briefly, but I think I'm well on my way to multimillionairehood. I'm tempted to cash out and invest in some blue-chip stock. Anybody know how many shares of Google I can get for four cents?

Worse Than Failure:

Another fun bug caused the enemy AI to do your work for you. A rogue enemy plane would suddenly reject his mother country and start shooting down his own teammates. That is, until his wings fell off the plane since he was firing his guns. Then he'd kamikaze his plane into the ground, which would launch the plane into outer space that the MicroProse executives probably didn't find nearly as funny as I do.

Brand would stress out about defending the game at the weekly meetings, but that didn't mean that he thought concerns about European Air War's progress were unfounded. Facing a mountain of bugs and a project ready for the chopping block, he was relieved when another developer was added to the team, effectively halving the abuse Brand would have to deal with on a weekly basis. We'll call the new developer "Tim."

Tim knew what he was getting into when he came aboard the project. He knew about the bugs, about the budget, and about the impending cancellation of the whole thing. And with the major issues, you'd figure he'd start with any one of them. Maybe the one with the wings falling off whenever guns were fired. Especially considering the game is called "European Air War." If the wings ("air") and guns ("war") come off the plane, the game title should just be reduced to "European," or perhaps "European Wingless Plane Amidst Nazi Battle Simulator." You could start up a game and watch Nazis shoot each others' planes down until yours crashed.

A very funny piece on the development of a PC game, European Air War. (The comments, many by other game programmers, are worth reading too.)

I've played a lot of MicroProse games, but not this one. To my surprise, it's still being sold on Amazon for $20 new, which is pretty amazing for a game released in 1998. There's also a fairly substantial webring for it, with plenty of amateur developers offering skins and scenery add-ons, etc, so I assume they eventually ironed out the bugs.

I'd still like to try it, but not for 20 bucks. This sounds like a mission for Kazaa or eMule.

Via Gadgetopia

Tips on beating common carnival games:

Coin Toss Game:

The object is to toss a coin onto a plate without the coin bouncing off. There are a few tricks to increasing the odds of winning this game:

1. Use a very high arc, with as little spin as possible when tossing the coin. You can even try tossing the coin right up into the hanging stuffed animals above.

2. Covertly cover the coin with spit before tossing it.

I've been thinking of getting a copy of Red Dead Redemption, from Rockstar Games, the people behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise. The reviews I've read have been very positive and it looks quite immersive. Compared to GTA, though, there seem a fairly large number of glitches in the code. Usually these involve errors in collision detection or pathfinding, leading to characters getting stuck behind simple obstacles or just walking clean through them.

But there are some so elaborate that you suspect that they are "Easter Eggs," deliberately placed by programmers. Such is probably the case with "Donkey Woman" (above) or "Bird People." (Warning: SFX and commentary/music). There are plenty of others on the right side of the second link.