Friday Links!
Leading off this week, and in honor of Canada's 150th anniversary of confederation (July 1), DQ VB.Net Advisor and Life Coach Garret Rempel sent in a slew of Canadian folk songs and a short film:
Log Driver's Waltz
This Land is Your Land (Canada) (Woody Guthrie wrote the original version in reference to America, but there were several, hard-hitting verses that weren't recorded, which is an
interesting story)
Land of the Silver Birch
The Huron Carol
I'se The B'y
Riding on a Donkey
En Roulant
The Cat Came Back (HD)
This is a fascinating story:
The Ether Thief.
From Wally, and there goes the idea for my new business:
The delicious flavour with a toxic secret. These are hilarious:
10+ Times Pets Were Caught Red-Handed. This is absolutely the Badass of the Week:
Man crashes into bus, walks into pub.
From C. Lee, and this is a fascinating story:
The Great Uprising: How a Powder Revolutionized Baking. This is both amazing and beautiful:
How to polish a knife: Watch as a rusty piece of Japanese metal becomes a sharp, shiny blade.
From Brian Witte, and this is spectacular:
How I Built an AI to Sort 2 Tons of Lego Pieces.
From tremendous writer Lummox JR, and this is amazing:
These Birds Have Picked Up a Nasty Cigarette Habit to Fight Off Parasites.
Here's a useful summer link from D. F. Prosser:
We taste-tested 10 hot dogs. Here are the best..
Well, Lookie Here
I have a long, fond history with golf games, all the way back to Leaderboard on the Amiga. I've played almost all of them since then.
The modern era, for me, started with PGA Championship Golf 2000, which included a beautifully refined mouse swing and fantastic courses. I sunk many, many happy hours into that game.
In no way do I still have that kind of time, but if it's a golf game, I'm playing it.
When The Golf Club came out a few years ago, I spent a bit of time with it and really enjoyed the game. Rough around the edges, a non-optimized engine, but it was greater than the sum of its parts.
The Golf Club 2 came out on Tuesday.
I started it up, put graphics settings on Ultra, started playing--uh oh. What a terrible frame rate. Frame rate, in games with a mouse swing, is hugely important, and I was playing with pain in that regard.
Fiddled with all the settings I could, finally turning every nice graphics option off. Turned on the Steam overlay so I could get a framerate counter displayed.
That gave me a number for my pain. With v-sync off, the game was chugging along in the high 20s. Turning everything off only got me into the mid-30s, and this was on a course that wasn't even graphically demanding.
I have a pattern that has been borne out over many years. When I upgrade components, I do it for a single game.
Front Page Sports Basketball: (Amiga 500 hard drive)
Front Page Sports: Football (new system)
Mechwarrior 2 (Voodoo graphics card)
Command and Conquer (Soundblaster)
That's all from the wayback machine, but you get the picture: new systems, new graphics cards, new sound cards. Always for a specific game.
You can see where this is going.
I made a poor impulse control decision to gut my computer hardware budget for the next eight months and bought a 1080 TI (the Asus Stryx).
Installed (always takes longer than I remember), ran Firestrike: over 30,000 for the graphics sub-score. Over 2X my existing score.
Started The Golf Club 2, put the game on Ultra settings, played on the same course that was chugging along in the 20s.
Now? Locked on 60 FPS with v-sync back on. Never varied. Ludicrously powerful.
Temps? Never got above 65C. Almost dead silent.
The game needs some work (the mouse swing is pretty damned punishing, probably overly so), but it's definitely a substantial upgrade over the original game. And my PC equipment is now substantially upgraded as well.
Seething
As I've gotten older, I don't say this about people very often anymore, but Peter Molyneaux is a real shit.
He did a softball interview with
Glixel (really, it's awful, as if the interviewer was sitting at his feet while he blessed him with knowledge), and there was this jewel:
Did Bryan Henderson, the player who was supposed to become the "god of gods" in Godus for finding the inside of the Curiosity cube, ever get his prize?
That was a real problem. The only thing to say is, Yes. You'll remember that Godus is a free-to-play game. And while 33,000 people are playing the game, 33,000 people aren't spending money on the game. So in terms of pure profit, actually Godus has not quite even broken even. We got Kickstarter money of about $1 million. After you're done with the pledging and all that stuff, that works out to about $400,000. But Godus cost about five times that to make. We really struggled, at times, to finish Godus. I'd love to pay Bryan money. It would be insane to do it just for a publicity stunt, because that's what it would be.
"It would be insane to do it just for a publicity stunt." Peter, your career at this point is a publicity stunt. You didn't seem to mind the publicity stunt on the front end, when it got you an insane amount of attention.
Bryan Henderson is the perfect metaphor to describe Molyneaux's games right now. He clicked and clicked and clicked and opened the cube--and there was nothing there.
Godus is a shit game that cost $2 million to make, allegedly, and wasn't nearly finished when it was abandoned. But somehow Molyneaux positions himself as the victim in all this, which is staggering.
Molyneaux has become a cover band of himself at this point--wait, that's not right. It would actually be okay if that's what he was, because he'd be churning out the same games that we loved twenty years ago. He can't even do that anymore.
He can't play the instruments.
A Schedule
I had a different schedule today.
Eli 15.11 is in Austin right now (yes, working out or on the ice every day), and Gloria flew down today. To get her to the airport for a 6 a.m. flight, we needed to leave the house at 4:40, so I got up at 4:15.
I dropped her off at the airport at 5, and I was working out at the YMCA by 5:15. Long workout, then went to hit serves about 6:15 on the way home.
I still had to wait a few minutes for Subway to open at 7.
Up here, though, it's light outside incredibly early (not much later than 5:30 it seems), so it feels totally reasonable to be working out by 6.
I just don't plan on doing it again.
I have five days alone, believe it or not, and I'm spending most of that time working on becoming familiar with Unity. Which is a much sexier engine than I ever imagined. So many things that require many hoops in WPF applications are just done automatically in Unity, and boy, I like that. Plus, on the scripting side, the work I did in learning some of the rudimentary details of C# is rewarded now.
George is snoring right now on the table next to me. Loudly.
A Kerfuffle This Way Comes (part two)
No matter the answer or reason for the loan, two more things are guaranteed to eventually happen (I'm guessing in the next year):
1. Chris Roberts will make an urgent plea for more money from the public, saying that they are in critical financial distress. This distress will be, in fact, much greater than the public could ever fix, and whatever additional crowdfunding or in-game sales they book, it will only serve to help rearrange deck chairs on the you-know-what.
2. Within six months of #1 happening, it will be tearfully declared that the game is dead, Jim.
Why am I so negative? Well, let's have a look, and before I go on, let me make clear that I have nothing against Chris Roberts. He provided me with some of my fondest gaming moments (Super Wing Commander on the 3DO was absolutely riveting), and it would make me very happy if Star Citizen was completed.
I will not, however, be very happy.
Bad metaphor time, but it will serve its purpose.
A game design is a steam train. What fills the cars of the train is the game content.
What drives the steam train forward? Steam, with heat produced by a firebox full of burning coal.
That coal is cash.
How long is the Star Citizen train? Dozens of cars long. How much coal does a train this long require? An almost incomprehensibly massive amount.
Both of these things are true:
--They have an incredible amount of coal
--They do not have enough coal
But don't worry about the size of the train, you say, because people are throwing coal at the train as it drives by, so they will have enough coal to stoke the boiler.
The problem, though, is that thrown coal is not dependable.
Look, there was an almost guaranteed successful way to get this train to town. When the initial, staggering supply of coal was finally seen, it would have been entirely prudent to say "We're going to keep at least 25% of this coal in reserve, in case loading the train takes longer than we anticipated".
Ah, tiresome metaphors. Even I'm tired of it now. Off to bed with you.
No game developer, no designer, no producer on Earth has ever brought an original project of this size to completion. Yes, there have been a handful of games that cost more to develop (COD: MW2, GTA V, and Star Wars: The Old Republic), but those all had enormous, existing companies behind them.
If, incredibly, Star Citizen were ever finished, it would take at least another 3-5 years. Their burn rate must be $2M a month--at least--given the number of employees involved (and all the outside studios).
Even with the conservative 3 year estimate, that's another $72M dollars.
I'm sorry, but it just can't happen.
It's very easy to see how this game can't be completed. What's impossible, though, is to take the other side, and argue how it CAN be completed.
Prediction: this game gets developed until it has to ship (because there's no money left). It will be shipped and called complete.
Please let me be wrong.
A Kerfuffle This Way Comes
This weekend, an article about Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games taking out a loan set the Interwebs ablaze.
If you want to play along from the beginning, go read this
NeoGAF thread (or rather, the first couple of pages).
No one knows the acutal amount of the loan. No one really understands why they took out the loan. It seemed off, though, that a company with $150M+ in funding for a game was taking out loans.
To help sort through what's/what's not, I turned to you guys.
Management consultant "Ricky S" (who gave me additional details establishing his bona fides) looked over the documents and sent back this:
I've gone through to the companies house site and looked directly at the charge notice and can pull out the following points:
--Coutts is a pretty respectable bank - they're the rich man's/private investment arm of National Westminster (NatWest) - one of the biggest banks in the UK and no loan shark.
--Those 'charge' notices are essentially the same as a mortgage - but for a company. A bank is unlikely to loan a small, new company millions of pounds without some form of security. This is just the same as them not loaning hundreds of thousands of pounds to people without a charge on the house they're buying.
--The bank doesn't own the company/rights etc (just like they wouldn't technically own your home when you have a mortgage) but will get first rights to the named assets if the company becomes unable to pay its loan. If it comes to this the company is already pretty much dead, and these charges are there to soften the blow for the bank.
--The rights to a game aren't very useful unless that game is actually published. So the bank has a shared interest to see the game progressing and published.
--As to why the developers have had to get a loan - that is a more difficult question and any answer I gave would just be speculation.
--For the Kickstarter backers - there are a few scenarios:
Scenario A - the game gets published, money comes in from more sales. The developers pay their loan and everyone is happy.
Scenario B - further delays in development mean that the publisher goes bust:
With the loan - the bank takes the assets, tries to sell them on for cash (banks don't want to be stuck with intangible assets)
Without the loan - the assets may try and get sold on by the receiver for cash to pay any other creditors.
Note that either way it isn't much different for the Kickstarter backers who get nothing if the game fails to get released. There isn't any guarantee that another company buying the rights to the game will honour the Kickstarter agreement (although that would be the honourable thing to do).
I hope this helps.
It certainly does, Ricky. Thanks.
This became enough of an instant controversy that Cloud Imperium released this statement to clarify:
We have noticed the speculations created by a posting on the website of UK’s Company House with respect to Coutt’s security for our UK Tax Rebate advance, and we would like to provide you with the following insight to help prevent some of the misinformation we have seen.
Our UK companies are entitled to a Government Game tax credit rebate which we earn every month on the Squadron 42 development. These rebates are payable by the UK Government in the fall of the next following year when we file our tax returns. Foundry 42 and its parent company Cloud Imperium Games UK Ltd. have elected to partner with Coutts, a highly regarded, very selective, and specialized UK banking institution, to obtain a regular advance against this rebate, which will allow us to avoid converting unnecessarily other currencies into GBP. We obviously incur a significant part of our expenditures in GBP while our collections are mostly in USD and EUR. Given today's low interest rates versus the ongoing and uncertain currency fluctuations, this is simply a smart money management move, which we implemented upon recommendation of our financial advisors.
The collateral granted in connection with this discounting loan is absolutely standard and pertains to our UK operation only, which develops Squadron 42. As a careful review of the security will show and contrary to some irresponsible and misleading reports, the collateral specifically excludes “Star Citizen.” The UK Government rebate entitlement, which is audited and certified by our outside auditors on a quarterly basis, is the prime collateral. Per standard procedure in banking, our UK companies of course stand behind the loan and guarantee repayment which, however, given the reliability of the discounted asset (a UK Government payment) is a formality and nothing else. This security does not affect our UK companies’ ownership and control of their assets. Obviously, the UK Government will not default on its rebate obligations which will be used for repayment, and even then the UK companies have ample assets to repay the loan, even in such an eventuality which is of course unthinkable. Well, that's that, then, isn't it?
Not exactly.
Tomorrow, I'll explain why.
Question
I'm looking for someone who can analyze financial/loan documents. Bonus points if you're familiar with the UK in this regard. Please email me if you could take a quick look at something. Thank you.
Friday Links!
EDIT: Well, this posted a little early, but not too much.
From DQ Reader My Wife, and this is stunning:
A 100-Year-Old Church in Spain Transformed into a Skate Park Covered in Murals by Okuda San Miguel.
From Wally, and this is cuteness overload:
This is What Happens When You Teach an AI to Name Guinea Pigs. This is an interesting read:
One Award-Winning Chef--and His Surprisingly Cheap Eating Habits.
David Sedaris is a very, very funny man:
Leviathan: Ways to have fun at the beach.
From Steven Davis, and this is very funny as well:
Making a Marriage Magically Tidy. This is a fantastic video:
Pictorial Webster's Inspiration to Completion.
From Jeremy Harder, and this is fascinating:
Killer whales are stalking boats and stealing their fish.
From DQ VB.Net Advisor Garret Rempel, and this is an utterly incredible story:
Freak snowstorm doesn't stop 4 who complete Yukon-Alaska bike relay — by unicycle.
From Meg McReynolds, and these are adorable:
Disney Illustrator Imagines A Life With A Pet Octopus.
From Chris Meadowcraft, and this is amazing:
Japanese robot sumo wresting is incredibly fast.
GameTek
This is from Geoff Engelstein, longtime DQ reader and outstanding game designer:
I do a segment on The Dice Tower podcast called 'GameTek', linking games, math, science, and psychology.
2017 is, incredibly, the tenth anniversary of GameTek, so to commemorate that I've put together a 300 page book with my favorite essays. I think that you, as well as DQ readers, would enjoy it.
If you'd like to check it out:
GameTek: The Book.
I'm in.
Another Observation
Handling this new phone is like trying to wrangle a small seal at a fish rodeo.
Observation
Based entirely on a one-afternoon survey, every salesman in America wears shorts and offices at Panera Bread.
The March of Time
Efficiency at 26: going out with two women on the same day.
Efficiency at 56: icing your elbow while you mow the lawn.
Stuff and Other Stuff
I was serving at the YMCA today and there was a very tiny person (under five) tennis class going on two courts down. While they were picking up the large red and yellow balls, I heard one kid shout "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!", and three other boys, with absolutely no hesitation, started running like mad.
When you're four, that phrase apparently requires no fact-checking.
***
Gloria's new bag has a face.
I may have added the eye.
***
There are a few foods here that terrify me. I draw your attention to the following offering:
When I see the words "fish" and "dip" together, I'm reminded of two other words: "human" and "suffering".
***
It was 78 yesterday (sorry, Phoenix!), and while I took this picture a few weeks ago, it still looks the same: a lovely day in Grand Rapids.
Also, I activated my phone today and it appears to be working fine.
The Limbo Phone
I've had my Droid Turbo for almost three years, and I've written about it (positively) several times. It's a terrific phone with an absolutely massive battery.
Now, though, it's really been showing its age, and what was cutting edge is now driving in the slow lane. Plus, I've been having trouble transferring videos over to my PC, and since those are almost all video footage of Eli 15.11 in goal that he wants to review, that's a dealbreaker.
I've looked around for a phone for at least six months, maybe longer, but couldn't find anything that felt right in my hand. Nothing.
Last week, though, I bought the HTC U11.
It's fantastic, and the camera (according to DxOMark) is the best cellphone camera they've ever tested. Snapdragon 835 processor, etc. Killer specs, and it feels great to hold.
It's been almost a week and I haven't activated it yet.
The phone is an unlocked version, but it's certified to work with Verizon (according to both HTC and Verizon), so there shouldn't be a problem, with the operative word being "shouldn't". Verizon is notoriously awful about unlocked phones, though, and this is no exception.
[An aside: phones should never be locked to a particular carrier, and kudos to Canada for ending all that nonsense. Consumer protection: not actually available in this country.]
People trying to activate their phone on Verizon's network have reported a litany of troubles, and while some of them have been sorted out in the last few days, I want the damn phone to work with no problems when I activate it, so I'm still waiting.
The Manhattan Project (of tennis) #2
A month ago, I wrote about how, after forty years of failure, I was going to finally learn a proper tennis serve.
So I've gotten instruction and hit serves. Maybe not every day, but 28 out of the last 31. In winds that have been utterly ridiculous, doubling as soon as I get out of my car. My instructor knows I've showed up for a lesson when the trees start bending.
My elbow hurts. My arm hurts in general. I have to warm my arm up for 5-10 minutes to even be able to serve.
Still, I serve.
50-100 serves, day after day. I go about a week between lessons, locking the motion in, but getting feedback before I develop bad habits.
How much can 2,000 serves change your service motion? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
I still have a hitch in my motion, but it's much smaller than it used to be. All kinds of other issues have disappeared entirely. I hit grooves where I serve 10 balls in a row and they're all the same--same motion, same contact point, same landing point.
Eli's coach told him last week that he's hitting about 115 MPH on his first serve now. His serve is like trying to return a flaming meteor. But if I keep improving, maybe I can still win matches for a few more months.
There's an Elizabeth Kubler-Ross process I'm going through, sort of the Three Stages of Tennis Death. Stage one: he's never beaten me. Stage two: I can still beat him. Stage three: I used to beat him.
Flint
I haven't written about Flint and the water crisis, because I get so mad about it I can't even write coherently, but if you want to see a bunch of people who should go to prison, here you go:
A Guide to the 15 Powerful People Charged With Poisoning Flint.
Ugh-Oafmatch pricing error (mine)
Good grief. Operating at well below capacity yesterday--apparently--I put in the wrong price for Oafmatch. It's $5.99, and quite a bargain.
Friday Links!
From Meg McReynolds, and this is just amazing:
Patek Philippe Pocket Watch, ca. 1914. And a follow-up:
Patek Philippe complicated pocket watch.
From Steven Davis, and this is just nuts:
A 19 year old freerunner takes on the ‘World’s Largest Parkour Course. It's large:
Bigger Than T. Rex: Spinosaurussave. This is amazing:
Gaudí’s First Built House Opens to the Public for the First Time in its 130-Year-Old History. This is remarkably clever:
The Roman Empire’s 250,000 Miles of Roadways Imagined as a Subway Transit Map. Quite random:
Sandwich Bag Fire Starter.
From Wally, and it's quite interesting:
Why All of Upstate New York Grew Up Eating the Same Barbecue Chicken. The last one is classic:
20 of the Worst PC Setups – May 2017.
From C. Lee, and this is not encouraging:
What Gets Stolen From Restaurants? Everything. This is a fascinating perspective to understand world population:
What Would the World Look Like if There Were Only 100 People? This is discouraging:
The Konami exodus.
From Lummox JR, and this is brilliant:
MIT Has Developed Colour-Changing Tattoo Ink That Monitors Your Health in Real Time.
From Tim Lesnick, and this is stunning:
Bird caught in amber 100 million years ago is best ever found.
From Brian Witte, and this is mind-blowing:
Scientists got an image of a person’s face just by scanning a monkey’s brain. This images are just stunning:
Every summer, men head into the Siberian wilderness to hunt for mammoth tusks.
From Eric Higgins-Freese, and it's very clever (as a revenue stream for the company who makes them):
Japan’s Bizarre Anti-Crime Orange Balls – A Unique Way to Stop Crime.
Undiscovered, Unappreciated, Unknown
I have a strange affinity for match-three games.
I don't know why, other than that Puzzle Quest was a unique, highly entertaining piece of work when it was released. So I like these games now, and occasionally run across one (like
Ironcast) that turns into an unstoppable compulsion for a few days (or weeks).
Right now, it's a game called
Oafmatch.
It's a pretty standard mix of battles, monsters, spells, and equipment, but boy, it does all of them well. The battles have a substantial amount of strategy to them, and the entire package is just extremely well done.
It's also a good example of how difficult it is for solid games to get publicity on Steam. Game gets released, game is on the front page for a few hours, game disappears without a trace. Tough environment.
Enhanced Steam says the game has sold between 2-3k copies in the month since launch. It deserves much better.
Here, check out a couple of screenshots:
Nice right? The visual style is both amusing and very pleasing, and the music is almost disturbingly catchy.
So if you like match-three games, this is a good one to try. $5.99, but with the Steam Summer Sale coming up late next week, you might be able to score a copy for a bit less.
It's a Hot One
I've never been so hot in my life.
First off, there's this:
Grand Rapids beat Syracuse 4-3 and won the Calder Cup.
What I'll remember the game for, though, is not the Calder Cup. I will remember that I have never felt so hot in my life.
As soon as we walked in, I was struck by how warm it was. I just had on regular jeans and a short sleeve shirt, and I sweated during the game. At length. Not kidding, it had to be mid eighties or higher. Plus the humidity was off the charts.
I've been in high school gyms in summer that felt cooler.
Grand Rapids had a high temperature of 93 on Monday and it was almost 90 on Tuesday, and I'm sure there's no kind of cooling capacity for those temps.
I can only guess that it was probably the worst ice in history. Ice can't be hard in those temperatures, and soft ice is a disaster for skilled players.
Remember the Celtics-Lakers series in the mid 80s? Boston Garden wasn't air conditioned, and I remember one Finals series in particular when it was over 90 in Boston.
It was 97 degrees inside Boston Garden at tipoff. One referee didn't make it past halftime, a victim of dehydration. Everyone had leg cramps.
At least I didn't cramp up.
Tuesday Chaos
Eli thought we had tickets to game seven of the Calder Cup on Wednesday (he handled getting them), but what we actually have are tickets to game six tonight.
We're at the rink right now, won't be home until 5:30, and the game starts at seven. So it's going to be a little crazy.
Grand Rapids Griffins versus Syracuse Crunch, with Grand Rapids leading 3-2 in the series.
Maybe the Best Trailer in History
Nintendo won E3 with this single trailer, as far as I'm concerned:
Super Mario Odyssey trailer
It's impeccably bonkers.
Mario can throw his hat this time, and if the hat lands on an enemy, Mario becomes that creature. Game changer.
The open world looks terrific, there are all kinds of wacky moments in the trailer, and it's exactly what I wanted to play as soon as I saw it.
Maybe the Worst Trailer in History
Let me get this out of the way first: I like Terry Crews.
His first few Old Spice commercials were absolutely hilarious, and he parlayed that into a role on Brooklyn Nine Nine, where he's genuinely funny.
So when I found Crews was going to be in Crackdown 3 as Commander Jaxon, I thought it was a good move. And maybe it is, but the E3 trailer is absolutely awful.
Have a look:
Crackdown 3 Trailer.
Yeah, that's crap.
What I loved about Crackdown is there was a realistic sense of physicality. You did superhero things, but somehow it never looked stupid.
In this trailer, though, guys are flying all over the place in ways that don't even make sense. It just looks like a bunch of random stuff thrown together, then called a game.
I hope I'm wrong, because the original Crackdown was a top five game on the Xbox 360, and one of my favorites. Not looking good, though.
Release date: November 7.
An Alarming Similarity
We went to a graduation party on Saturday.
The graduate is the brother of one of Eli 15.11 teammates, and he's taking a gap year to (hopefully) play in the BC. He's shot on Eli during goalie lessons, and he's a terrific kid.
Graduation parties, though, can be pretty awkward. Grandparents, extended family, hockey friends, school friends--it's a unique mashing together of people.
We did play cornhole, though.
We stayed for about an hour and a half. On the way back to the car, I said, "Well, that was a bit awkward, but I'm glad we came."
Eli said, "Me, too."
"There's only one other event I can think of where everyone has to attend," I said. "Graduation parties are just extended funerals with cornhole."
Friday Links!
From Steven Davis, and this brings back some memories:
Territorial History of the USA: Every Month for 400 Years. Next, and this is quite amazing, it's
The Amazing Triple Spiral (15,000 dominoes). Next, and she's remarkable, it's
Lily Hevesh, the number 1 domino artist in the world. This is fascinating:
Why knights fought snails in medieval art. This is an excellent read:
St. Monday and the Sharing Economy. This is remarkable:
With No One Left to Defeat, Go AI Retires to Solve the World’s Problems and Play Itself. This is excellent:
How zip codes helped organize America. Last one, and it's very powerful:
A social board game.
From Theo Halloran, and Eli 15.11 read this:
Reid Duke: Letter To Prospects Attending The NHL Combine.
Some of these are very, very funny:
What Are Your Favorite News Bloopers?
From C. Lee, and this is remarkable:
This Amazing 17th Century Lock Has a Few Clever Mechanical Tricks.
From Wally, and this is a very deep rabbit hole:
Interactive Scottish Clan Battlefield Map.
From Rob, and it's fascinating:
Sorting Algorithms Animations.
Sidebar
LeBron James is the best basketball player I've ever seen.
He played 45:31 last night out of 48 minutes in an incredibly high-paced game. The Cavs were +7 with him.
He was out of the game for 2:29. The Cavs were -12 without him.
There's a very good case to be made for the Golden State Warriors being the greatest single-season team in history. They're also one of the best defensive teams in the league this year.
They also haven't lost since March.
In three playoff games against them, James is averaging 32 points, 12 rebounds, and 10 assists. Oh, and he's also shooting 55% from the field.
Last year, in seven playoff games against them, he averaged 30-11-10.
I know: Michael Jordan. And I know Jordan never lost in the Finals, while James is about to lose for the fourth time in seven consecutive trips.
In fairness, though, the first time James took Cleveland to the finals (before he went to Miami), it was with the worst supporting cast that had ever made it to the NBA Finals. That team was absolutely wretched. Remember this cast of future Not-Hall-of-Famers?
Zydrunas Ilgauskas
Drew Gooden
Larry Hughes
Sasha Pavlovic
Daniel Gibson
Anderson Varejao
Donyell Marshall
Eric Snow
Damon Jones
Shannon Brown
Ira Newble
Scot Pollard
Yeah, that's awful.
His last two losses in the finals have been to the Warriors, a team that would have easily beat any team the Bulls ever faced. Jordan could score 40 every game against this year's Warriors and his Bulls still wouldn't have beaten them.
Jordan was a brilliant, incredible player. He's the second best player I've ever seen. But LeBron keeps every player on his team involved, and he can do absolutely anything and everything.
Guard anyone on the floor. Shoot threes. Drive the lane. Post up at the elbow. Post up on the low block. Make consistently ridiculous passes. Rebound. Block. Steal.
It's an incredible package, really, and I've been fortunate to watch both his and Jordan's careers in their entirety.
I've also been very fortunate to see Golden State in their prime. The Showtime Lakers were all kinds of fun, but they were nothing like this. Every minute is a highlight reel with the Warriors.
This is the best the NBA has ever been, for me. And I don't even have time to watch many games, but the best teams have a level of skill that is absolutely staggering.
You People
Suggestions from yesterday's blockade post (not mentioning names, because I want to protect their personal lives and employment).
1. No need for water. It's still a "navel blockade", because cats have navels.
2. Use an orange in the picture instead of water and it would still be a "navel" blockade.
3. Aren't catamarans more stable?
So much groaning.
Indeed
"Did you see that there's a playing card in the front yard?" Gloria asked. "That's strange."
"And then the murders began," I said.
A Second Career
I found my second career. Computer programming was just a head fake.
I was serving this morning and there was a couple two courts down who looked like they were in their eighties (and moving pretty damn well, too). I finished serving and walked back to the car, but forget my jacket on the court. I walked back and picked it up, and when I was walking back out, the old guy said, 'You're too young to be forgetting things.' "
"I'm not too young," I said, "but as soon as I forget something, I don't want it anymore. As soon as I realized I had to walk back and get it, I told myself 'Eh, I have other jackets. I never even really liked that jacket. Maybe I should just leave it.' "
He was laughing so hard I thought he was going to fall and break a hip.
So there you go. Octogenarian comedy. I'll be going on the assisted living circuit within weeks.
Blockade
I only wished I had put a cup of water beside him. Then it would have been a naval blockade.
President, General, Spy #4
I was working on starting values for all the countries in the test scenario (Central America) when I realized that the CIA Fact Book had a huge amount of information.
I looked at government type for all countries and realized that I could just take the information directly from the fact book.
Then I slapped myself in the face. Hard.
I don't need fifty different types of government in the game, and even if I did, I wouldn't need it now. There's a development stage plan, and I'm sticking to it. Here it is:
1. Board game rules
2. Board game AI
3. Government types and personalities
4. Internal political stability
5. Geographic influence
6. Event layer
7. International or regional assemblies
Basically, stages one and two will be very rigid, just to get a simple prototype working. The rules will be simple and absolute. The AI will be the same (think blackjack for the dealer).
Stage three will start to add nuance. Different kinds of governments, along with different personalities leading those governments (stabilizer, destabilizer, opportunist), will lead to different behavior. Stage four will add the possibility of coups and insurrections, which will further affect how the leaders behave. Stage five will add onto stage four, because political stability is influenced by geography, and this will also make regional scenarios feel more individual.
As I work through these stages, the rules originally laid down in stages one and two will become less rigid and more probability based, with existing statuses both inside and outside the country having large effects. So the AI will go from being rigid to being dynamic.
The event layer--stage six--is what what will hopefully make the game feel alive. There will be hundreds of possible events that must be responded to, and responding to these one-offs will deeply influence the course of the game. This is also a way to make regional scenarios feel very custom, as events will be drawn from that historical era--not the exact event, necessarily, but if a leader (or a few) was assassinated in that era, the chances of someone being assassinated will go way, way up.
The last layer is the United Nations layer, basically. At the end of the year, all nations in the scenario will come together for an assembly. This will have a very different feel than the regular turns, with a different set of outcomes possible, because it's the only time countries will come together as a body.
That was a long aside when I was talking about government types, but my point was that I tend to bury myself in detail and go down very deep rabbit holes. Can't do that this time.
Also, to avoid the rabbit holes, I'm trying to use the rule of five, which is an entirely imaginary thing I made up over the weekend.
Types of government? Limited to five. Types of actions a President could take? Limited to five. The same for General and Spy. Five possible actions each.
The reason I'm doing this is that I've realized part of creating is working with constraints. The constraints themselves feed creativity. I need those constraints to work against. It both helps me to control scope and forces me to make decisions about what's important.
All right, tomorrow I'll discuss the rule set I have for actions and ask you for feedback. I'm not going to write about the game this much as we go on, but as I'm just getting off the deck, it's a regular subject for a few weeks.
Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Customers
Well, the mushroom cloud is on its way.
Shroud of the Avatar has consumed 20M+ in development funds, the game is nowhere near completion, and they're trying to attract more capital.
"papajoker" on
Reddit did an excellent job of analyzing the Seed Invest pitch for relevant excerpts, and here are a few:
--as of May 17th our current cash position is $528k
--we require approximately $230,000 a month to sustain operations.
--we have a contract with a Russian company that has already paid us a license fee as an advance against additional future royalties.
--Episode 2-5 will be on console and mobile
--The software is currently in development and expected to launch in July 2017
--The Company is a business that has not generated profits in recent years, has sustained net losses of $3,068,579 and $3,048,110 during the years ended December 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively, and has an accumulated deficit of $18,089,082 and $15,020,503 as of December 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively.
Here's a translation:
1. We're broke
2. We've already borrowed against future royalties to get more money, because we're broke.
3. We're whoring this thing out on every platform, because we're broke.
4. The game launches in two months, because we're broke.
The consensus is that the game is presently in an alpha state, at best. So why are they releasing it in two months? Mostly, because they're broke. Also, though, it's clearly because
they have no idea when it could feasibly be completed.
I worked at a computer company once, and the manufacturing director was once asked how long they QC'd a system. "Right up until it ships," he said.
Same mentality.
This isn't even a game, or, at least, that's not the #1 priority. The #1 priority is to create a revenue stream.
There was no reason to ever expect this would turn out well, really. I wish it had, but we all knew this was going to happen.
I do think I'm seeing a pattern, though.
Let's say people give you $5 million to make a game. Do you want to be successful? Create a budget for a $4 million game. Manage to that budget each year. Allow a 10% overage.
Design what you can actually deliver.
That would have been a good ending. Instead, this project is in flames and going off the cliff.
Sit Down, Bus Driver
A common retort for high school coaches (who also drive the team bus) when they stand up and start yelling at the officials during a game.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler’s response to man’s ‘sexist’ comments goes viral
I'll just leave this here:
