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charlesgoatley-blog · 9 years

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Nostalgia 64 Part 3 - Hand holding

My first handheld console wasn't a Gameboy. In fact, I didn't own a game boy until I was in my mid twenties, and by then the fad was long gone. No, it was actually a Game Gear. And more to the point, it was also the first video game console I owned.

And the reason for getting one is clear from the previous part in this series. I was in love with the SEGA games at the time and this was basically a portable Master System. More to the point, compared to the black and white ( or dark olive green and light olive green ) Gameboy , there was no contest. I did have a choice, though. Either get a Game Gear or a Mega Drive. The Mega Drive, or Genesis for those not in England, was tempting but I couldn't resist the allure of having something I could take with me to school. A Game Gear it was.

The Game Gear was a nice little handheld. It had the controls of the new Mega Drive, and also was a lot more rounded and well presented than the Master System was.

I can't remember which games I actually owned other than Mickey Mouse's Castle of Illusion. It wasn't as pretty looking as the Mega Drive version, but it still did a good job. It was colourful and fun, and when I look at it now it just makes me think how even up to the 90s Mickey Mouse was still a popular figure - and he would last for a few more platform games too. I think there's something endearing about a character who is as expressive as Mickey. I also never realized it but my two favourite platform characters' names both had the initials MM - Mickey Mouse and Mario Mario. I'm a little tempted to play the remake of Castle Of Illusion now.

Another game I remember playing was Shinobi. Now this gets a bit confusing, because I remember playing Shinobi games later on other SEGA machines and none of them were at all like the one I played on the Game Gear. I seem to recall discovering that the Game Gear version was unique, and for some people it was the better version. I remember there being an epic battle against a helicopter, and being able to play as different coloured ninjas.

Sonic was a perfect game to play on the handheld. It played smoothly and seemed more fun in its own self contained device. There's something more connective about playing that way, with the buttons either side of the screen. It feels more like you are the character you're controlling. I'm curious to see if there are any games on the Wii U that will make me feel the same way, assuming any utilise the tablet in a similar way.

There was on huge problem with the Game Gear, though. The battery. It didn't last long at all. I think it might have survived about a couple of hours if I was lucky. Plus, unlike modern devices, you couldn't know exactly when it was going to die - only that it was close. So there I'd be, about to get to the end of a level and then pfffz - game over! I ended up having to buy a power adapter, because carrying around spare batteries was useless in most cases since I don't recall ever being able to save in any of the games I played. Basically, somebody in SEGA sucked at basic arithmetic. If most games take 2 hours to complete in normal play throughs - i.e. with an average amount of deaths, continues and restarts - and the batteries last less than that, then you're never going to be able to finish a game on batteries. The adapter let me finish them, but now I had to carry something else with me and could only play where I was guaranteed a spot near a wall socket.

The Gameboy didn't suffer from this problem and that was the key to its success. I did actually play a lot of Gameboy games, just not on my own one. I remember the craze over Tetris, playing various Mario games, and playing a lot of other games I couldn't begin to remember. It didn't matter. Somehow with the worst colour palette in gaming, it had conquered the world. People quickly realized how useless the Game Gear was as an actual portable gaming machine, whereas Game Boys lasted much longer and also fitted in people's pockets.

The Gameboy would go on to last about a decade, with a few different iterations. The Game Gear would be forgotten.

The Game was over.

#nostalgia64 #sega game gear #nintendo gameboy

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charlesgoatley-blog · 9 years

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Nostalgia 64 - Part 2 : Mastering the System

The 8 bit home computers weren't the only 8 bit machines available at the time, though, and while I never owned one of the big two involved in that other Great Format War of the 1980s, I often look back at the SEGA Master System and the Nintendo Entertainment System with fond memories.

Time has been much kinder to the NES than the Master System, but I actually think I spent more time on SEGA's machine than Nintendo's, at the time at least.

I could go on for hours boring you about these old games, so I will. But I'll try to keep it quiet.

The first difference between the two machines was the box art. SEGA's box art was horrendous.

I mean, just look at it. Putting everything on a graph paper background makes me think of a mathematics lesson, which is not what a child needs to reminded of. But at least they underlined the words "Master System", because otherwise we wouldn't have known for sure.

And that was one of the better looking examples of box art. Here's another, just for comparison, that was drawn by a 5 year old.

Urrrnghh!

And yet, this ugly box art did achieve one thing. It did make it easy to spot the boxes out from the growing crowd of video games. When most people who ran electronics stores didn't know the difference between the SEGAs, Nintendos and Commodores it helped to stand out. However, it didn't help the games stand out from each other when lined up side by side.

NES box art in contrast was, well, just normal. In fairness, later Master System games did move away from the graph paper art.

Then there was the controller. Everyone knows the iconic NES controller, and for good reason. The Master System's gamepad had no sense of style at all (they'd correct that with the Mega Drive/Genesis)

At the time, since I didn't own any of these machines and as far as I recall neither did any of my friends, I only got to play the games in the electronics store. Games were still a specialty thing, and most shops were more interested in selling big TVs, which at the time were as deep as they were wide, so took up a lot of store space. Still, some stores realized you could sell two things at once if you put the game on the TV.

The store I remember going to most was at a retail park just out of town. There was the big supermarket and then in another building was the electronics store. My mum would go shopping in the supermarket and I'd go to the store and just play games for an hour. I have this memory of the manager not minding that I was playing the games for ages and telling my mum that it helped show off the games.

Since I had no control over what games to try out, I just played whatever was on the machine at the time.

I played a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog on Master System, which at the time was a huge technical accomplishment. The fact that it could update the screen so quickly isn't to be taken lightly, when you consider that most other games were still on flip screen.

Of course, Sonic was the exception to the norm. Most games were much slower.

I also recall playing a silly game called Alex Kidd In Miracle World. There was some elf-boy, or maybe he was just a normal human with big ugly ears, which explained why he would escape into these fantasy worlds. Come to think of it, I had big ears as a child... Anyway, Alex Kidd had none of the visual flair of Sonic, but it was challenging enough.

For NES games, I recall them having Punch Out and Super Mario Bros, who I always pronounced Bros instead of Brothers, thinking they were part of the all male pop group. They might have had Duck Hunt with the light gun too, because it showed off how cool and futuristic the games could be.

Mario was, and still is, a lot of fun. But I was still enthralled by the sense of speed and possibility that Sonic provided. He was super fast, a slow hedgehog who defied the conventions of his own kind, and he was the epitome of cool. At that point I declared the console wars over, won. Sonic would rule all and the SEGA machines would succeed for many generations to come.

#nostalgia64 #sega master system #nintendo entertainment system #nes #8 bit

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charlesgoatley-blog · 9 years

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Nostalgia 64 - Part 1 b : Code was like Lego to me.

I was going to go straight into Part 2, but I thought there were a few things left unsaid about the Sinclair Spectrum, and also the C64. Namely, the fact that they came with a built in programming language. So I thought I'd digress and write a small piece about that.

Now, most people have never programmed in their life. You look at all this software and websites and games and it just looks so daunting. Plus, why would anyone want to program anyway?

When I got my first computer, programming wasn't the first thing on my mind. Like modern children, I just wanted to play the games. However, almost every child who had one of those home computers experimented with a little code. Children love to explore the limits of interactions. Usually, that's with toys, and my childhood was the same, but with programming it was no different. I would arrange my lines of if and print and input in so many ways and never make that much, but then I never exactly made the Statue of Liberty in Lego either.

After those 8 bit years, home computers stopped being bundled with programming languages. Or at least, they weren't so in your face as they were back then. I think the last time I saw a programming language in a computer was on the Playstation 2. There was a C64 emulator, but it was sort of hidden away so you had to find it. Still, the thought was nice.

These days you have things like the Raspberry Pi, and lots of tools online aimed at kids that sort of do visual programming, but there's something missing. Again, they're great at what they do, but you have to hunt them down. It's not the same as turning on your computer screen and being presented with a little prompt and deciding to write a small program instead of just typing Run.

I actually think Minecraft has done more for introducing children to programming than anything else in the last two decades. It opened up their possibilities and scripting is only a small step away. Just seeing my nephews try and create things with that is fascinating.

I just think that if programming was as in your face on every console the way it was on those old home computers we might all open our minds creatively a bit more.

Anyway, to end my rant, if I were to wish for one impossible thing, it would be that all the big console manufacturers would include a programming language tool, even if it's silly old BASIC, built in, easily accessible and visible, right from the start. When you're done playing the latest games, and you are looking for something new, maybe you would click that big button on your start screen and maybe you would discover how much fun programming can be. And maybe you just might make something wonderful from it.

Just look at it... It's begging you to type something. Anything... How about printing your name all over the screen in multi-coloured letters? That would be a nice start!

And now for the disclaimer: in truth, out of all the kids I knew who had 8 bit programmable home computers I'm quite possibly the only one who kept up with it and made it my career. So, take my rant with a pinch of salt, but if experimenting with code was like experimenting with Lego... well, not all kids become architects or builders but at least they had fun imagining the possibilities, and it's the creativity that drives them as they grow older.

#rant #programming #sinclair spectrum #c64 #nostalgia64

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charlesgoatley-blog · 9 years

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Nostalgia 64 - Part 1 : 8 bits and less.

It`s been a long time since I posted anything on tumblr, and since I`ve recently experienced a wave of nostalgia while developing my own game and receiving a brand new Nintendo Wii U, I decided to revisit my past and explore what brought me here through a life of video games in a piece I'll call Nostalgia 64 for no reason other than because it sounds cool. It all began many years ago at my cousins' house. They had one of those Pong type video game machines. I can`t remember if it was the real thing or not, but I had so much fun trying to score as many points as possible bouncing a crude white square against my rectangular paddle. We`d sit really close to the television and, despite the simple gameplay and graphics, be entertained for hours. The other game we had fun with was a driving game. One of those silly little plastic things where you steer the wheel and the track was probably a rotating piece of plastic with lights to make it feel cool and high tech. There were enough loud sounds, flashing lights and interactions that it still kept me entertained. It was a while before I had my own games machine, though.

I might have had a game and watch at one point. They were all the rage in the schoolyard and were a lot of fun. Like all games back then, they were furiously difficult. The enemies or collectibles got faster and faster and that increased the difficulty. But all these machines were throwaway things and never really engaged me or fascinated me enough. That happened when I got my first computer.

I`m a bit fuzzy on the details, and some of this might be in the wrong order, but I remember we had some BBC Micros at school. As far as I know, they were nothing to do with the broadcasting corporation, and instead just clunky computers with even clunkier monitors that were coloured a delicious shade of cream and had shiny black keys that looked like they could have been the offspring of a typewriter. I had no idea what I was doing with them, but I would sometimes use the paint program or some mathematics software - that much I recall. Somehow I got singled out as one of the kids who was clever enough to use them - I don`t think even the teachers knew how back then.

My mother learned about this, along with news of some small event in Croydon where a bunch of smart kids would do stuff on computers. She took me there and I got to play my first adventure game. I`ve no idea what the game was, but it was a text adventure and might have had images at some of the locations. We might have even done a bit of programming. Either way, the person organizing the event somehow influenced my mother to get me a computer of my own, so we went to the Tandy store back home and brought my first computer - A Sinclair Spectrum 128K, or Speccy as owners would call it.

Now for a young kid in a time when home computers were new, this was the bees knees. It even had a built in tape deck with the words DATACORDER superimposed on a rainbow background. I mean, how cool is that?

My computer came bundled with a box full of 6 games, all in cassette obviously. I can't recall all of them, but I think one of them was called Treasure Island, another was Punchy, and a third was called Disco Dan. I think a fourth one was a mini golf game. Now the first thing is that few people will ever remember these games. They were so badly made and uninteresting to look at that if you were to play them now you'd not last 1 minute with them. However, as my first games they were fun enough. I remember Disco Dan's fun start screen music most of all, and Punchy had some kind of digitised laughter every time you died. The worst part was the loading. Since it was all in cassette you had to wait up to a couple of minutes for games to load. These horrible psychedelic bands of colour would flicker across the screen accompanied by screeching sounds. The most my 8 year old self could do to stave off the frustration was to dance to them. But I would grow very frustrated over the years.

My mother insisted that I use the computer for educational purposes, and somehow I recall getting some software that was what passed for edutainment back in the day. There was one quiz software that masqueraded as telephone calls between world leaders, or something like that, called Hotline, I had another program that seemed pretty sophisticated at the time as it had star maps, and I seem to recall that I could specify any time and date and it would show me the night sky, including planet locations.

I was hungry for more games, so when I discovered a local gaming store was in town I noticed they had huge racks full of cassettes (you have to realize that in the 1980s computer game stores weren't common - they were more of a specialty thing). Since I had very little pocket money, I decided to get value for money and buy some 4 packs of games called Quatro something-or-other.

The one shown here isn't one I had, but I do remember getting one that had Super Robin Hood, which was a really fun (at the time) platform game, and various Dizzy games. Dizzy always fascinated me. The character was really simple and easily identifiable and the maps had a lot of puzzles and secrets. I loved that sometimes you had to jump off the edge of the screen and land onto clouds - that blew my mind at the time. The only problem was the movement was frustrating. When you jumped you had to commit to the jump - there was no steering while in mid air. Your egg would be stuck in that arc until he landed, or died - a bit similar to Mega Man I think, but with less finesse. And since the graphics were presented in split screen format - again a limitation of the system - you couldn't line up your jumps well enough. It's movement machanics like that which would plague the 8bit computers.

The Spectrum was the first computer I would try to properly program for. However, I never achieved anything significant. An 8 year old learning to code using BASIC on a machine like that with no guidance will struggle and fail, constantly hitting wall after wall of problems. Obviously, you start with the familiar hello program everyone knew back then:

10 Print "Hello Charles"

20 Goto 10

Run

Then you might print your name in different colours, then you'd ask the user to input their name. Then you'd wonder how you can go from that to an actual game, so you'd play some games for "research" and forget why you started playing them in the first place. I think the most I ever did was display a working clock on the screen. It was the best clock I would ever program.

This was also the computer that introduced me to gaming magazines. The one I recall most fondly was Your Sinclair. I specifically remember this issue for some reason, probably because it was the first magazine I bought: http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/ys66.htm and https://archive.org/details/your-sinclair-66 As you can see, I joined the Speccy crowd late in the day and there were many better machines on the horizon. It came with a bunch of different games on a fat cassette and something called Pokerama - there were cheats on the cassette and somehow you'd "Poke" them into the game. The best way to describe it to someone now is that Poke was a command that you could run on the Spectrum, and by poking certain values into memory addresses in the game, you could somehow tunnel a cheat through. Sort of like replacing the number of lives with a really big number or stuff like that - I never got any of them to work, and half the time the cassettes didn't even work properly anyway, but I spent hours trying.

I recall getting a few issues of Your Sinclair, and possibly another magazine called Sinclair User, and reading them cover to cover for hints and ideas on the next game to save up for. I was also always fascinated to see these huge maps of games composed of in-game or hand drawn screens arranged side by side like a jigsaw. I never got to play most of the games I'd drooled over so much at the time, but the ones that got me excited the most were the cartoony ones with colourful characters - things like Dizzy, Steg the Slug and Seymour the... whatever he was.

The Speccy was also my first taste of "Format Wars". This was because some of my friends had a similar computer called the Commodore 64. It was on par with the Spectrum but had one advantage - the graphics were a little better. The Spectrum always had this flaw where the graphics would bleed. I think it was just to the fact that a character (as in a letter/symbol on the screen) could only have 2 colours. Most in game characters and objects were I think represented as composite characters. They'd use some graphics trick to scroll the characters across the screen. That meant that you'd sometimes see the joins of characters where the colours changed, but that was only when they were trying to do more than the machine could handle. The C64, as it was affectionately known, didn't suffer from that flaw. I never owned one myself, but I had played C64 games via emulators a long time ago and found it to be a much more enjoyable experience.

There were a few games I thought were innovative back in those days. One was called Impossaball. You just bounce a ball in what was a crude 3d environment, and try to move to the right while avoiding hazards. Another was called Knightlore, and was a puzzle adventure game presented in isometric 3D perspective. Little did I know that my future was entwined with the people behind that game...

#nostalgia64 #video games #spectrum #commodore 64 #8bit

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charlesgoatley-blog · 11 years

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New DAME game

Congratulations on Player Three for yet another game made with DAME. This time it's Nom Nation and is a side scrolling platform game where eating food is the big mechanic. What you eat changes what you can do, and it's an award winner on the PSN store as well.

Also, I just discovered that Anodyne, the Zelda like adventure game made with DAME, is now available on Steam, having successfully passed their Greenlight program. Since there's a Steam sale going on now would probably be a good time to buy!

#games DAME

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charlesgoatley-blog · 11 years

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DAME 3.1.3 out

It's been a while since I've been updating DAME so frequently but with the fixes/features in this things should be improved vastly for some users.

Firstly, DAME used to have a limit on the size of paths. Now this has finally been removed and paths can be any size you like.

Secondly, paths can now be filled in with a colour, which means they can pretty much be used like shapes now.

Finally, tilemaps that are extremely large will now render correctly. There used to be some clipping issues that were cutting out part of the tilemap from the display.

#DAME

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charlesgoatley-blog · 11 years

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DAME 3.1.2 released

A few fixes and features in the latest version of DAME.

Fix DAME crashing when you try to move tiles pasted in another group than the one they were copied from.

Fix tilemap border being draw incorrectly when the map is zoomed out far in tile matrix mode.

Option to force snapping of tilemap positions to units.

Added help menu option to open settings file.

Added Tool menu option to reset to default settings.

Fix for crash when ignore map edges is ticked on a tile matrix with special connections.

#DAME

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charlesgoatley-blog · 11 years

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DAME 3.1.1 released

Here's the list of fixes/features added in the new version of DAME:

Duplicated sprite entries now copy all relevant data.

Fix bug where loading a file with layer templates added duplicate entries.

Added more options to control what can go in the settings file.

Save sprites separately option has been moved to the Tools->Options window.

Prevent the map height options from showing up on new map layers.

Options will be reset upon loading a project saved before versions 3.1.0 and 3.1.1

Can now add layer group templates.

What this essentially boils down to is that I'm trying to allow for the greater separation of level specific data (ie the placement of all objects in a level) and general level settings (what sprites/tilemaps/settings are used).

Previously the .dsf files were only used to save sprite entries, but now this has been expanded to include more data. Instead of being a dame sprite file it's now a dame settings file. Fortunately, I didn't need to change the acronym!

#Dame

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charlesgoatley-blog · 11 years

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DAME 3.1.0 released

This version of DAME adds some new features designed to be more restrictive and make it easier for end users to edit maps and not make mistakes.

First up I've added the concept of layer templates. For now this is just for map layers. You can create a template from a map layer in the layers tab and then whenever you want to add a new map layer you can pick from the list of templates, instead of having to mess around with setting up tilesets.

I've also added some options in the Tools->Options menu to force users to only add maps from templates, and to disallow them from modifying the template list.

Another option I've added is to prevent editing sprite entries. Again, this is designed so that if you have a framework you can just give it to end users and not worry about them accidentally changing something. (Though, they can still change the option in Tools->Options if they need, but it's a bit more hidden away).

In sprite entries I've added 2 options. One to force rotations to always be in 90 degree angles. There already was a keyboard shortcut to do this with 45 degree angles, but this is for those sprites that you only ever want placed in the simplest way. A second option I added prevents editing of tileset frames. Most people never use this feature so it prevents accidental breakage.

By default DAME should work exactly as it always did, so you'll need to turn these features on, but hopefully it should help things a bit.

#DAME

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charlesgoatley-blog · 12 years

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Carnage and Adventure

I've got 2 new games that were made using DAME to tell you about today.

First up is Dukes and Dirigibles, made by Backward Pies, which is best described as a game of carnage in the Victorian skies. It's got blimps, lots of shooting and simple gameplay that keeps you playing.

Secondly, is Anodyne by Analgesic Productions. Technically, this game hasn't released yet. But the playable demo is out and it's looking pretty fine. It's an adventure game in the spirit of classic Zelda games and while it's still early days yet, I found myself caught up in the spirit of the game.

#games #DAME

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charlesgoatley-blog · 12 years

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Three more games made with DAME

It's been a while but I've been informed of 3 more games made using DAME and so I've decided to bundle them all up in 1 post of mini reviews.

First up is Rot Gut, which is a really stylized film noir game with shooting and jumping and quite a bit of blood! This one is quite challenging but a lot of fun to play. I dealt with the developers a little bit and some of the new look UI for DAME 3 was contributed by the artist Behzad Rahimi. Here's hoping we see more from these guys!

Secondly, it's a real pleasure to know that DAME has helped make a Doctor Who game - Dalek Supremacy! Ok, You don't actually play as Doctor Who but Daleks instead, but as a fan of the show in my childhood it makes me smile. Of course, I can't help but wish you played as the Sea Devils instead...

Finally, is another top down game by the same developer - Truth Specs. Actually, I recall debugging a bug with the map a long time ago early on in DAME's lifecycle and thinking it was a really nice and complex map, worthy of any metroidvania fan. So it's good to see the finished product with finished art.

You can find all the games made with DAME (I know of!) here

If you've made a game that isn't listed please let me know!

#Dame #games

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charlesgoatley-blog · 12 years

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DAME goes open source + Post Mortem

It's been requested many many times and I've finally done it and made DAME open source. This is mainly due to the fact that I feel that I've done as much for DAME as I originally intended and it's time to let others have a go.

Firstly, here is the link:

https://github.com/XanderXevious/DAME

Now that's out of the way, I thought I'd provide a little post mortem, not that DAME is in any way dead, but more on the development side. So here goes:

THE POST MORTEM!

Firstly, why did I make DAME? Well, it began because I wanted to make a simple 2d game and I was playing around with Adom Atomic's wonderful Flixel framework at the time. I had tried a few other free editors and none of them did what I wanted or were as customizable/easy to use as I wanted them to be. So I thought 'why not use Flixel to make the editor since half the work is already done? It shouldn't take too long...'

I would come to regret those words.

I created my initial list of features for what I wanted in a map editor:

To be able to paint down all the edge tiles automatically.

To be able to draw directly on tiles and create new tiles where I draw.

To be able to place down trigger areas and paths.

To be able to place down sprites and freely scale/rotate them.

To modify the sprite animations.

To not be tied to any specific language/framework/or style of implementation.

PROS

Flixel was really good at the start. In fact, I believe that for the entirety of version 1 of DAME I didn't need to modify the Flixel codebase at all. The only time I began modifying any of the Flixel code was when I introduced crazier stuff like isometric tilemaps. Overally, Flixel was pretty scalable as a framework for building a 2d editor on.

The Tile Matrix was one of the initial features I did and I haven't needed to touch it much since it was first implemented. It's customisability proved to be highly useful.

Lua. It took me a while to figure out which form of scripting I would use for the exporters. I considered people loading swf plugins or a completely closed system but those seemed to go against making DAME a generic tool for any language/framework. In the end, Lua did have some limitations, mainly because bridging between it and Action Script is slow, so I had to write an intermediate language. However, I've used this for many different types of exporters and it's very efficient and flexible.

The Flixel community. Flixel users provided a lot of feedback and DAME was quickly adopted by the Flixel community. Also, being friendly with the community helps a lot. At the very least, people are more willing to communicate with you when you respond with a smiley :) You can find the DAME thread in the flixel forums here if you're interested: http://forums.flixel.org/index.php/topic,2333.0.html

Going multi-platform. Always a fan favourite, this! However, I didn't have a Mac or Linux, which meant relying on others to debug problems. But actually this turned out to be a Pro for me and taught me how to better figure out solutions to problems when I can't reproduce them myself.

Making it free. I could put this as a con, since I didn't really make that much in donations from DAME. But I received enough to encourage me to keep the website going.

CONS

Feature creep. I got a lot of requests and a lot of bugs during the first 2 versions of DAME, so I spent a lot of my free time working on them.

Not going open source early enough. This one is speculative, but if I had gone open source sooner it's possible I could have had more people adding features and improving it... or not.

Not promoting DAME enough. As far as I know, DAME hasn't really been used outside of Flixel, which is a shame since I built it to work with any 2d framework you want.

Not creating an xml exporter soon enough. This goes with the above point, but making an xml exporter promotes its use in other frameworks.

Lack of documentation/videos - sigh.

Adobe Air. This one is controversial, but in the end, I think had I have made DAME with another framework I might have had fewer problems. Adobe Air proved to have a lot of small limitations that increased my development time. Action Script is also pretty inefficient and especially so in the hands of someone who doesn't know all the tricks. DAME projects tend to be pretty bulky, so this becomes pretty important.

Lack of planning and knowledge of Action Script. I've learnt a lot over the last 2 years and can now consider myself fairly knowledgeable in AS3, but when I started DAME I had only spent about 2 weeks working with it.

The Future

I'd love for DAME to continue to evolve and improve, but going open source is me finally accepting that I've done as much as I can alone and giving up the reigns. If anyone wishes to help then please get in touch as I'm sure there are still plenty of things we could add. Here's my wishlist:

Improve the UI.

Make it more efficient.

Port it to something more reliable than Adobe Air.

Allow for larger paths and more flexible shapes.

???

I hope you all enjoyed DAME over the last 2 years. If you have never tried it then please do. It shall always be entirely free and I'd like to see it reach a version 4 or 5 one day.

And thanks to all those who contributed in some way over the long and winding road to this point.

Before I forget...

Did I ever make the game I intended to make?

No.

I got carried away making DAME instead. But watch this space. I still intend to make something with it. In fact, quite a few things...

#DAME

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charlesgoatley-blog · 12 years

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The Cone Zero Strategies - a short story

It's funny what you sometimes forget about.

What follows is a short story I wrote in 2008. It made the shortlist for a collection of stories based around a theme, but sadly failed to make the final list. And bizarrely, having got further than before with my attempts at becoming a writer I decided to abandon that particular avenue.

I had completely forgotten about it until now, and found myself amused while reading the story again. I'd even forgotten what happened in the story! In truth, I had no idea what the story was while I was writing it either... and it probably shows!

So here it is, for better or worse:

'Congratulations. Cone Zero is a triumphant success.'

'So what happens next?' one of the analysts asked innocently.

'We can all start with Cone One...'

'What?'

'And then if that succeeds we move onto Cone Two, followed by Three and so on. Simple really.'

The diminutive analyst who asked the question was not alone in her dissent. In fact, almost the entire floor of scientists, researchers, data inputters, quantifiers and analysts were beginning to mumble amongst themselves, spreading this verbal virus around.

'Look,' said the supervisor, 'I know you probably thought this was just going to be a quick task. "We'll finish Cone Zero and then we can all go home." Am I right? Well, it is because of your dedication to the project that my superiors have asked me to extend the project. So I may as well tell you that the goal is now Cone Infinity.'

That didn't go down as well as expected. People were shouting now.

'Excuse me,' roared the four foot high analyst who was now apparently the ring leader of the group. 'Did you just say Cone Infinity?'

'Er... yes. Or rather Cone Zero to the the power of infinity.'

'But isn't Cone Infinity, by its very definition, an impossibility? Wouldn't we have to work an infinite number of hours in order to achieve it?'

'Ah, I'm glad you raised that point.' He wasn't. 'You see, I'm sure you're aware of the quantum theories surrounding the Cone project, and as we all know there are an infinite number of realities I want your dopplegangers within each of those realities to simultaneously generate a different Cone field.'

That appeared to have calmed things down a bit, at least long enough for them to figure out exactly what he meant. The supervisor watched eagerly as everyone gathered below him no longer looked angry. Instead they looked quite confused.

'How do we do that?' asked the ringleader.

'I haven't the faintest idea.' The supervisor was rather pleased with himself, and couldn't help reveal the smile on his face.

'But nobody's ever attempted that before. The whole thing could collapse.'

'She's right, you know.' It was someone else who had spoken. That threw the supervisor a bit. He looked around for the new rogue element and finally spotted him. He was sitting on one of the expensive swivel chairs he had paid for half the team to have only to realise that those with them were doing less work and spinning around instead. He was a good-for-nothing physicist. Well, some kind of scientist anyway. It didn't matter to the supervisor. They were all the same.

'You see,' the scientist continued in his scientific tone that implied he was right and knew everything about everything. 'It's all about the point of total collapse within the Cone Field. One Cone within a quantum reality is manageable, as are two and three. Even if we were to utilise the entire human race on the task of creating Cones for the rest of our existance we would still only manage, say, four million Cones. the universe could cope with that.'

'So what's your problem, Mister..?' Nobody knew anybody's name here; not even the supervisor knew them. It was just the way the supervisor liked it as it prevented things from getting messy.

'My name is unimportant. The problem is that if you start meddling with alternate realities to create a multi-dimensionally parallel array of infinite Cones you would end up with a every cone expending energy within the same point within multidimensional space. The whole thing would collapse in on itself.'

'I still don't see your point.' He didn't understand science, and especially not quantum physics.

The scientist stood up in defience. 'Well, quite frankly it's immoral.'

Ah, ethics! That old spectre.

'Now I hardly think you're the kind of person to talk about morality.'

'You don't even know my name, so how could you possibly say that about me?'

'I didn't want to raise this, but you've forced my hand. You see, my statisticians have told me that exactly fifty percent of the scientists selected had been involved in highly dubious and blatently unethical practices.'

'And how would you know which fifty percent I belong to?'

'As for the other fifty, when our headhunters chose them they were trailed by our investigators non-stop for two months prior to the moment they were approached. What we discovered was quite shocking.'

The supervisor decided to wait before going on. He was afraid of the fall out from this but it was to be expected. The screening programme was designed to choose people who would be easily manipulated and so this situation had been completely anticipated. He watched as some of the scientists begin to look quite uneasy. Many of them were probably innocent and had no idea what the supervisor was about to say, but he believed the majority would be quite accurate in their assumptions. The rogue scientist, however, revealed nothing.

'They were -- and it upsets me to the core to say this -- murderers, thieves, politicians -- the list goes on. Now which one are you?'

The scientist sat down silently with a glum look upon hearing this revelation. He could have been in either division. It didn't matter. The headhunters had done their job.

The supervisor looked at the analyst and what followed was a silent battle of wills between them. Both of them analysed each other's facial expressions for the mere hint of a lapse in confidence. Did the supervisor know something about her? Did the analyst have a guilty secret and if so, which one? Neither one of the pair appeared to budge and the onlookers were just as transfixed by the spectacle of this face-off as the security cameras analysing every wrinkle in her face and passing back information to the supervisor so that he could gain the upper hand.

The staring contest might have continued as indefinitely as the project were it not for the alarms suddenly screaching.

'It appears that we have a Code Four and regretfully I will have to continue this discussion later.'

'You will,' the analyst muttered before she returned to her work.

The supervisor returned to his bland office and observed the commotion downstairs. It had been wise of him to install an override to Cone Zero so that he could trigger a Code Four if ever he was in trouble.

The supervisor had himself been selected for his talents in predicting implausible outcomes and choosing appropriate gambits to pre-empt them. Few people knew it but he was behind half of the major war victories over the past decade. He had never failed and his strategies ensured that he never would.

He sat down at a table and continued one of the five games of chess he had been playing against himself. All five had now lasted almost a year over tens of thousands of moves each, and this was the longest he had lasted without a stalemate or a victory. It was an amazing achievement as he was able to separate his game into two distinct personalities, each as clever as the other and capable of second guessing the other's moves without cheating.

His strategic genius was without question.

So it was a shame that it had been that genius that had led him to a career position he didn't want due to unseen moves he had failed to predict. He had been blackmailed into taking this job after his initial refusal, and they had only done so because he had become such a master strategist. Had he perhaps failed on one or two occasions they might have chosen someone else but now he was a pawn in an increasingly complex game.

The phone rang.

'Hello. I'm afraid we're rather busy here with a Code Four so if it can wait...'

'This can't wait,' the voice said on the speaker. It was the director, angrier than usual apparently.

'How can I help you then?'

'I hear you have had trouble getting cooperation on the Cone Infinity project.'

'News travels fast, director. Well, I can assure you that the matter is nearly settled. One rogue element has been silenced and the other will be nullified very soon.'

'They had better be. This project is too serious to fail now.'

'If I may ask, sir...'

'Go on...'

'I may need to relay further information back to the team and it would help to be able to explain why we need to continue beyond Cone Zero when the initial aims of the project have been completed.'

'You do, do you?'

'Yes. The slightest information will help, sir. It's for the good of the team.'

'The team, huh? I can give you two explanations. One is true and the other is false.'

'Of course, I'll need both.'

'Are you sure? I know I can trust you given the power I hold over you, but really, wouldn't it be easier on your conscience if you just knew the lie? After all, that's all you need to provide them with.'

'How funny that you are concerned with my conscience. Come now, I think it's blatently obvious that you still don't trust me entirely. By knowing the truth I will always be one step ahead of the group, as you are with me. I will provide them with explanations built around the lie that will steer them away from the truth. Surely, you are clever enough to realise this?'

'Of course! So be it.' The director's proud streak was always his biggest vulnerability. 'The lie is that Cone Infinity will provide a sustanable energy source. An infinite well of power and knowledge that will beam directly to every home --'

'No doubt so that the whole of humankind will be forever indebt to you and your organisation. Limitless power!'

'I never said that!.. How silly of me. This is the lie after all. But still, why do you jump to that conclusion?'

'I don't. Of course it's the lie, but the important thing is that the team will inevitably believe that your organisation has a malevolent intent, after all, we are talking about kidnap and blackmail here. If the worst I can give them is that then they will be easily appeased.'

'I see your point. You always explore every angle. I was right to hire you.'

Hire indeed.

'Now for the truth,' the supervisor said.

'Yes, the truth. Well, that is we want to destry the majority of the human population.' This was better than the supervisor could have possibly imagined. 'An Infinite array of Cones will, if triggered in the correct way, cause an extinction event on a never before seen scale. In fact, the entire universe will be dredged of life as though it had never existed save for the few thousand people and anything else living inside the small residual field of the Cone.'

'I think I see where you are going with this.'

'You do? Perhaps I misjudged you. It seems you do understand.'

'With a clean slate you'll be able to colonise the universe unhindered. Every living thing under your command and nothing to stop you --'

'And perhaps you as the supervisor, huh? Ha ha!'

'Perhaps. Such a proposition is not unattractive to me.'

'Well, you are correct. An entire universe. The Cones will see to that.'

'I see why you felt the need to kidnap and blackmail us all into working for you.'

'Indeed! Though, perhaps let's use friendlier words between friends. I prefer the terms borrow and persuade.'

The director had never been so happy. He was laughing between every other sentence, presumably because he had finally found a fellow conspirator.

'There is just one thing, director.'

'Go on.'

It was now or never.

'It's been exactly a year since I was... influenced into coming here now --'

'Ha. Already thinking like me!'

'Yes. Well, I feel that there is something that I must... get off my chest before we continue.'

'Anything, of course.'

'I knew you would blackmail me a week before you did.'

The director was silent for a moment.

'Just a week?' he asked.

'Yes. But that was long enough to investigate you and store all the information I had discovered about you in two separate locations under the instructions that if I am not there to open them within one year and one day they are to release the information in public, and I must do the same once a month for the rest of my life. That's tomorrow, I believe.'

'Nonsense! You have nothing on me.' He was furious again, though more so than the supervisor had ever known him to be.

'But I do. Director Bosun is what you're called outside, I believe. I know about everything your organisation had done within the last seven years. There is enough there to have you arrested for corruption, embezzlement, fraud. Why, the Boston incident alone would...'

'Ok. I get the picture. But even if you do, I could send you away for just as long. Stalemate I believe. I will release you and track your every move. Once you have ensured the information is kept hidden I will kidnap you again, or kill you.'

'I believe you should be using friendlier words than those. If you do either of those things then you will neither complete your project nor guarantee your safety. Check!'

'What do you mean?'

'Firstly, one of the team was planted by me to gather information. I will not reveal which one and in fact, like every one else I don't even know their identity. Suffice to say, I ensured their safety by tying information about you to their release.'

'Then I shall torture you for that knowledge or release them all for a short time. You can't win!'

'But I can. You won't torture me because we both have to retrieve the information at the same time and I don't think you are capable of doing that within the space of a day, and as I said I know nothing about the plant, not to mention that you may torture me so much that you risk my death and then you will be exposed anyway. I'm afraid your only option is to release me and everyone here.'

'Even so, it doesn't matter. Another team can be constructed to continue where you left off. And eventually I will achieve my goals.'

'Ah, yes. Where we left off... I'm afraid to tell you that Cone Zero is, and always has been, a complete failure.'

'But I've seen the results. They indicate a clear quantative stream of --'

'Results can be faked. I made sure that every body I chose was the worst of their kind. There are data inputters who will enter anything to get a bonus, analysts who see what they want to see and scientists so fraudulent they will stop at nothing to get the results they want, even if it means faking them. I'm sure if you tried to replicate Cone Zero you would find nothing but flashing lights.'

'Then I'll start from the beginning --'

'I'm afraid you won't.'

'Why not?'

'Because I now know what to expect from a Cone Zero experiment. I'll be keeping a close eye on you and your organisation, and the moment I see any indication that you have resumed the experiments, which is quite easy to spot once you know what you're looking for, I will bring you down to hell. Because, you can guarantee that I do not want to be party to a mass extinction, one, I might add, that would see my own death. Check and mate, I believe.'

The director said nothing. The other end of the phone was eerily silent, but the supervisor was already putting his coat on.

'I expect nobody to prevent me from walking out of this building right now, director. I'm sure you understand.'

'Y-yes.' The director sounded forlorn, as if his entire universe had collapsed in an impossible cone.

'Then, this will be goodbye. Oh, do finish those games of chess I've left for you. I think you can find a check-mate within two moves for each one. That is, if you think you're up to the task.'

The supervisor didn't bother hanging up the phone. He wanted to hear the sound of the broken man as he walked out. It was satisfying, and he knew that sound would last the rest of his very long life back outside.

#stories #writing

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