Windows and the grain of sand in your shoe

An old proverb states: "It's not the mountain you must climb, but the grain of sand in your shoe."

I've had it up to here with Windows. It works on a gross level, but it's the little irritations that add up over the course of a day that make me hate it. I'm a game programmer, so I spend 8 hours a day dealing with Windows before I can go home to my Mac. I've decided to compile a list (in no particular order) of annoying little things wrong with Windows. I will attempt to avoid personal preferences, like the issue about when you click a non-focused window, it uses that click to generate an event as well as to gain focus.

I have other larger complaints regarding MS's business practices and other things related to Windows. But these are the day-to-day problems that make me swear at it on an hourly basis. This list is not comprehensive, either.


* Gadgets are too close together. I can't say how many times I click minimize on a window instead of maximize, or close instead of maximize, etc. There should be more space between them.

* Copying and pasting a file in the same directory names it stupidly; "File.txt" becomes "Copy of File.txt". This alphabetizes all copied files to where files starting with "c" are. It should be "File copy.txt".

* Windows doesn't always remember window settings like size.

* Remote desktop will move the icons on the desktop you connect to, then not put them back when you disconnect.

* Remote desktop reveals the keyboard setting in the language bar, and doesn't re-hide it when you exit.

* Many settings are not where you expect them to be. I spend a lot of time hunting for things that I've found before because they're in odd places.

* The grabbable resize gadget in the lower right-hand corner is not consistent across windows. Sometimes it's really small (just the blue bar), other times it's large (includes the grippy looking thing). Other times it shows the grippy thing, but it doesn't work. I suppose I could understand this, except it's not even consistent across MS apps.

* Some files have an "Open With" item in their contextual menu, others don't. This should be consistent at the operating system level.

* Sometimes the clock in the system tray doesn't respond to the mouse being over it and won't show the date without a double-click to open the calendar.

* Using the "explore" item from a folder in the Start Menu opens a pseudo view to its contents. Changing the name of a folder there does not alter the name of the folder in the user settings directories. Example: I renamed "Games" to "MSGames" on a fresh install of XP. Then I tried to create a folder called "Games," but I was told it already existed.

* There's no option to make "Paste Unformatted Text" the default in MS apps. So every time I copy text from a webpage to place in a mail, I have to Paste Special->Paste Unformatted Text if I want it to go in as plain text instead of with colors and other stuff.

* When I drag a shortcut into the Start Menu, it lets me choose where in the list to drop it. Upon reopening the folder I put the shortcut in, I find it is at the bottom. I then have to move it to where I put it the first time. Why can't it just remember where I put it initially?

* Why is backspace a hotkey for "previous page" in Internet Explorer? Many times, I go to a web page and start typing in a text box before the page is done loading. The page finishes, and takes keyboard focus away from the text box. I make a typo right at that moment, and hit backspace. Bingo! I'm back at the previous page!

Depeche Mode in Montréal

Excellent concert. Those guys still rock. The concert was a good blend of old and new, with a lot of stuff from SoFaD; this makes me happy because that's my favorite of their albums. Martin did a single guitar rendition of Judas, which was excellent. But I was really hoping to hear that track with the monster bass at the arena. The video presnetation was put together by a clever program that took live footage from the current performance and did strange effects with it to make it seem like it had been edited as in the opening sequence to the movie Se7en.

The opening act was okay. It was a blend of The Cure, Violent Femmes and Jane's Addiction. Pretty heavy on Cure influence.

It's nice living a 5 minute walk from the Centre Bell in Montréal, since we didn't have to find parking or get stuck in traffic after the concert. :)

Burnout Revenge

Well, after bashing EA's destruction of the Burnout series based on what other people said about it, I thought I'd better make sure I'm well informed of the problems. So I've been playing some Burnout Revenge on the PS2.

First, let's talk about SPEED. BR has LOADS of this. The framerate is a smooth 60 FPS all the time, and you get that kind of tunnel vision where you only see about a 2 inch round area on the screen as you try to pick out oncoming obstacles before you get too close to avoid them. I haven't even gotten to the really fast cars yet. So if you can imagine one of those little "correct answer" sounds from a gameshow, BR gets a *dink* for speed.

How does the game look? Well, it looks awesome. It's hard to believe how far that old PS2 architecture has come in the hands of capable programmers. The levels are large, detailed, and occasionally beautiful; the mountain level has nice vistas and old stone bridges (that are easy to fall from). There are also some really nice visual effects, such as blur around the edges of the screen. Graphics: *dink*

Is the sound good? Hell yeah! You can hear things whooshing by while you're boosting, crash sound effects sound real, and the "game" effects (like when you get a Takedown) are solid. I wish I had surround sound for this. Sound: *dink*

How about the music? Well, it's mediocre; it's just standard EA licensed music. Why is it that almost every EA game has to have licensed music? I miss Burnout 2's game-exclusive dynamic music. What's worse, is EA have decided that SOME tracks MUST be heard. There's a menu where you can select whether each track is off, played during the menu or the game, or both. Some tracks may not be set to off. That's just wrong. I can see it: "Yeah, we can make it so a player can't disable your music. Just knock 50% off the license fee." Music: *brrrm*

Now for the real question: Is it fun? Yes, it's fun. Ramming the computer opponents (as opposed to traffic) into walls and off cliffs is fun. Crash mode is fun, even if the whole "aftertouch" thing is a bit contrived. Crashbreakers don't add a whole lot to crash mode, and I haven't progressed far enough in the game to use them in races, so the jury is still out on those.

But could it be better? I think so. I still prefer Burnout 2. I played BR for 2 hours straight, then went back to B2 just to prove it. It may not look AS good, but it still looks very good. A few tweaks to the game design have been made that really make BR less fun for me.

You can now ram same-direction small traffic for extra boost. Because of this, the road is a much less hazardous place to be speeding. It also takes out the need for strings of near misses. Those were really fun because you were encouraged to keep your string going. I'd cross 3 lanes of traffic to get to the far left oncoming lane just to get another near miss, and hope I didn't lose control in the process.

You can now press the boost button, let go, and use it again before refilling the meter. In B2, once you hit boost, you were usually committed to hold it until it ran out. Once it ran out, if you had done enough stunts, it would fill again. This was lots of fun, and encouraged the player to keep the boost button held until finally running out or crashing. Also, in BR, the best way to fill the boost meter is to score a Takedown; one of these fills the meter completely, and extends its size. This marginalizes the usefulness of oncoming, drift, near-misses and air with regard to filling the boost meter.

You can unlock a LOAD of stuff, but most of it is more challenges and more cares. More challenges isn't really an "unlock," it's just standard game progression. There are over 70 cars in it. That's just too many for a game like Burnout; it's great for Gran Turismo where the focus is on the subtle differences between cars and equipment. Mostly, the different cars just offer incremental upgrades. EA just seems to have this thing about having a lot of unlockable content, even if there isn't much point to it.

So to sum it up -
fun: *dink*
more fun than B2: *brrrm*

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5.

If I were to rate B2, I think it would come out around 4 or 4.5 stars. So BR is not as large a step backward as I had previously thought, but it's still not as good as it could be. I stand by my assertion that Burnout would have continued to be a brilliant series, if EA hadn't bought Criterion. As it stands, it is a merely a good series.

TransFormers: PS2

Quick note about this game.

I played it on Hard for about 3 hours. Not bad! Better than I expected for a license title.

Problems:
It would have been fun, except the frame rate suffered badly during fights. There are some level design issues; it encourages you to hunt around the entire level looking for things. This might not be so bad, but the level design isn't great once you get off the main mission path. The upgrade system might leave you underpowered at higher levels if you fail to hunt down all the extra weapons.

Good things:
Combat is fun and fast. The upgrade system balances powerful weapons by allowing you to add which parts you want, but each part must go in a certain slot. So if you they give you two very powerful missile launchers, you can't equip both since they both go on the L2 button. The car form is so much faster than the robot form that you can use it during combat. It transforms quickly, so you can use it in difficult situations. I use it to run through a group of enemies to pick up energy packs. The menus look really slick.

Overall: Not a bad game. But not really good either.

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5.

Game Politics: Re-Rating a Game

I have to say something about this.

You're a developer. You make a game. It's rated Teen. Some unknown person on the net makes a mod for your game. The game is re-rated Mature. Suddenly, certain unnamed large retailers will be reticent to carry your title because of the M rating, regardless of how it got that rating.

So what if someone mods the game so it shows hideous nasty gory evilness that should never have even entered anyone's mind ever? Should it be universally taken off shelves or given the Adults Only rating (which would have similar effects)?

The rating given should only apply to the game as published. The GTA hot coffee issue was a little less clear, since the questionable content did exist on the original published media. Personally, I don't think it required a re-rating, since players had to explicitly hack the game to display it. But re-rating Oblivion for content entirely from a mod... that's just wrong.

But the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) agrees with me, at least in the Oblivion case. I guess the British have a better sense of where consumer responsibility begins and ends than the Americans do.