robotslave

Thank you, itsamoose, that's helpful. And yes, I've worked with heavyweight frameworks before-- which is why I say learning the framework is harder than learning the language. I was expecting from the get-go that I'd be trying to figure out how Unity wants me to organize and design things, rather than dreaming up an architecture and then trying to figure out how to impose it on the framework. But it's definitely a bit of a shock to see such big and helpful chunks of a language (or standard library, if we're picking nits) walled off by a framework.

OK, so. Where to begin. I've been programming for 25 years, 10+ professionally, but I've never tried my hand at games. For reasons unclear even to myself, I've recently taken an interest in games programming, to the point of actually downloading Unity and working through a few tutorials. The framework is always harder to learn than the language. I picked Unity only because it seems to be snowballing. The best framework, for me, is the one I can get the most help with. I've worked on large projects in C, perl, common lisp, scheme, java, scala, ruby, bourne shell scripting (god help me), javascript, and several DSLs that escaped containment and grew into shambling half-designed full-blown languages. My problem is not learning C#. My problem is that it seems like programming games in any modern framework means I have to give up even the puniest, least powerful conveniences borrowed from functional programming that I've grown accustomed to in non-games languages and frameworks. Things like map(), fold(), and filter(). Apparently you can't use LINQ in Unity without utterly ruining performance. You can't even use foreach in lieu of a for loop? Mind you, I really don't have anything fancy in mind for a first outing; I've been inspired mostly by the Tower Defense episode of Three Moves Ahead. But though it's mechanically simple, that's a type of game where you're going to be manipulating a lot of collections of objects, you know? So... do I really have to give up ten years of progress and go back to lots (and lots and lots and lots) of nested for loops? Is Slinq still viable, even though development stopped two years ago? Does anyone in the world of games programming even care about this, or am I just being a whiny baby? And threading? Does Unity even use threads under the covers to do physics and stuff, or is it just completely single-threaded apart from whatever you're brave enough to cowboy up on your own? I've done a fair bit of concurrent programming -- I even added multithreading to the core engine of a stinkin' IRC bot, for heavens sake -- but no modern off-the-shelf game engine has any built-in support for asynch jobs, actors, worker pools, promises, futures... any of that sort of stuff? OK, I'm complaining. I'm... I'm kind of aghast, and I realize that's not attractive. But can some kind soul hold my hand and tell me everything is going to be OK?

Dear god, how on earth does one point the finger at Minecraft for promulgating "the wiki is part of the game" in one breath, and then turn around and congratulate oneself for loving Dwarf Fortress in the next?

I am of a certain age. I did play console games as a child, before the NES was released, but I have never played a Mario game. Not a single one of them. Nor a Zelda game, for that matter. Carry on.

Oh, it was Nick, never mind then. That was a completely unexceptional Nick description of a thing. But do tell Nick to stop speaking in a Spaff accent, it's confusing.

OK, so this will out me as a dork of the tallest order, but... Dang, Spaff, that is by far the worst description of P.D.Q. Bach I've ever heard, though I'm sure Peter Schickele would be delighted with it. It's a classical music comedy act, and maybe a single piece (or a single tour, if things got out of hand) would fit the description you gave. It's got more in common with Tom Leher than a noise band.

Er, what the hell? Kingdom Rush was originally an in-browser game made in Flash. It was later ported to iOS, and then Android. And then, even later, released as a standalone Unity port for Windows via Steam. It was available via your flash-enabled browser on any modern desktop OS well before it was available for your pocket telephone. With that said, it was also the last of the not-offensively-crappy-nor-shamelessly-cloned TD games made in Flash and released browser-first. And it's the Flash TD games that I play, mostly. Mobile after that. I've never played a single standalone PC-executable or console TD game. So I totally agree with all the other folks in this thread who are totally baffled by the Steam-centric bias of this episode.

Soon enough for what, though? That's my point here. Any well-run event of this size would have copious information available three months before the gates open. So which is it going to be? A poorly-run event, or no event until six months from now, at minimum? Valve's "everyone just works on whatever they feel like working on that day" approach to running a business might be fantastic for software development, but it's total disaster when the product is event planning.

Soon enough for what? An invite-only LAN?

If Valve is too overwhelmed to do the work necessary to organize a tournament with a LAN finals in November, then they should have stepped aside and let a company that does have the bandwidth set up an event. I understand that "TI5 JUST LITERALLY ENDED OMG STOP WHINING," but there have to be teams that would like to have a crack at breaking into the pros who are going to be screwed because Valve hasn't managed to get their ducks in a row soon enough to, say, let sub-pro teams know whether or not they're eligible for the next event and give them time to prepare for open qualifiers. I mean, there will of course be open qualifiers, won't there? And TI itself was hardly an example of good planning on Valve's part. The public didn't know when the group stage would begin, what the match schedule would be, or even what format it would have, until ten days before it started. The wildcard qualifiers were held so far ahead of the event that the play of some of the winners was barely recognizable in Seattle. I absolutely do think the independent tournament circuit was producing an overabundance of events, but Valve could just as easily have stayed out of the way and allowed the various companies holding events to eventually work the problem out between themselves. Instead, they killed the entire system dead, and unless they pull up their pants and start acting like organizers, the upshot is going to be fewer paydays, accessible only to the small group of teams that are lucky enough to be on a mysterious shortlist somewhere at Valve HQ that's used to pick the invitees.

I can fix that for you! Purge and ODPixel were also casting the game, in the newbie channel. Their coverage of the The Play will make you forget Tobi's tepid reaction: http://www.twitch.tv/dota2ti_newcomer/v/10164406?t=8h41m00s

Except they didn't really, did they? Valve announced a majors system, and then re-announced it, and then in typical Valve fashion went totally silent and we haven't heard a peep about it since. They haven't introduced a blessed thing yet. No locations, no formats, no tentative schedule, no casting partnerships, nothing. If there are supposed to be three of these things a year outside The International, then there are all of three months left before the "main event" LAN of the next one begins. And nobody outside of Valve Headquarters has any inkling of, say, what a team is supposed to do to even qualify for it. Or, like, what the name of the event will be. The only thing Valve has done so far is dump an enormous bucket of ice water on the burgeoning independent tournament circuit, for better or for worse.

So, I was half-expecting a post about the upcoming The International 5, with particular attention to the visa problems some teams have had in the past week or two. And I was primed for a rant, too, boy oh boy, but now all of what I've got bottled up seems petty and stupid and oh god I'm going to go away and hide now.

There's lyrics that mean nothing at all but work wonderfully from the standpoint of voice as instrument. From chant to scat to (featuring a scat break repeatedly caned off...) And then there's lyrics that are deeply meaningful as text, but don't work at all musically-- see, uh, endless piles of bad political music made continuously since the dawn of pop. There's a special place in music-hell for '90s activist rap-rock, is what I'm saying. But it sounds like we're all in contentious agreement, here. So here's to songs that have stupid, forgettable, or outright fascist lyrics, that nonetheless work fantastically musically? From Carl Orff to... oh, whoever.

If you ever do get a chance to talk to Puppey, even if isn't for a full interview, then please, please ask him whether he is a seven foot giant, or if he just refuses to play with any teammate over 5'2". This question consumes me.

Can't argue that it sounded like a difficult interview, but it did seem like there were a few times where he might have opened up a bit if you hadn't cut in with a question, or if you'd just allowed him to interrupt you. In particular, there was one point early in the show where it seemed Aui wanted to say something about SumaiL's recovery in the last game of DAC, but you didn't let him say it because you weren't finished spooling out your question.

I'm as irked as Sean with the preposterously long qualifiers for tournaments. It seems we're saddled with these because organizers have collectively jettisoned the round-robin format for early phases of tournaments. Presumably because they were too long, teams didn't care about a lot of the matches, and fans didn't tune in. So they replaced it with a process that takes even longer, teams don't bother to prepare for, and fans don't watch? And I'm double irked with the lack of good information about tournament schedules. This has always bothered me, but I guess Sean is experiencing more of it now that he's watching more games than he's playing. The issue, as far as I can make out, is that tournament organizers provide almost no scheduling information at all until the matches are entered into the client, and as Sean mentioned, the client knows nothing about brackets. Fine for the players, I suppose, but the rest of us would like to know, well in advance, at least what day a given bracket pairing is going to be held on. And then you have very silly things like The Summit 3 SEA final of the qualifiers finishing before the Chinese phase 1 competitors are even selected. It's going to be *two months* between Rave's qualifier win and their first game at the finals. Maybe that's OK for a competition held every four years, like the Olympics or the World Cup, but it seems like a crappy way to treat teams participating in a "casual" (scare-quoted for purse size) tourney. As far as I can tell, there's very little communication between news sites like Gosugamers on the one hand, and tournament organizers on the other. And tournament organizers don't seem to feel the need to update web sites with basic information about their tournaments, either. When they have a web site at all, we get a tournament announcement with start and end dates and an initial list of participants, then zilch until a match is listed in client (and on the news sites via API), often as not less than 24 hours before it begins. And that's poop.

And to simply assert that without saying which points you take issue with is disingenuous. Either tell us what, specifically, you disagree with, or move along. Otherwise you're attempting to discredit a comment without providing any evidence or argument. If it is now possible to download a DOTA2 server executable, disconnect your local LAN from the internet, fire up the DOTA2 server executable on your LAN, and then play a game of DOAT2 with your firends or co-workers using that local server, please tell me how to do this. Bonus points if you can tell me how to do this without any part of the games being reported back to Valve.

A lot of the very same problems that Synderen brought up exist in the LoL pro circuit as well. That's why I think it's kind of insane to not even mention Riot in a discussion of problems like: Making pro play financially viable for players (and coaches) Dealing with roster changes Clarifying tournament qualification and eligibility Spreading prize money out, instead of paying everything out in a single annual tournament The fact that LoL is essentially the same game as DoTA2 is relevant as well. Some of these problems are pretty specific to 5 v. 5 team play; a comparison to Starcraft tournaments wouldn't address any of the team issues; a comparison to LoL addresses exactly the same team issues. I do understand the "Valve just won't do that" argument, when it's a response to a particular proposed solution to a problem. I do not understand it as a blanket dismissal of any comparison at all to the way Riot manages play-for-money. I'm also a bit suspicious of the oft-repeated assertion that "Valve just wants to empower the community, instead of taking the reins themselves." This is patently untrue for many aspects of DoTA2, first and foremost of which is the ongoing development of the game itself. No part of the game code is open-source. No part of the development process even allows for public input. It's clear that some people in the scene have the ear of people inside of Valve, but that's a far cry from community-driven development. Second, the game's infrastructure is a Valve monopoly. If you want to set up a server and have a game with your friends or co-workers on your own LAN without going through the game-maker's servers, then you'll have to play some game other than DoTA2. It's worth remembering that it doesn't have to work that way-- this is Valve's decision to centralize and control the game, rather than turn it over to the community. And then there's the hat store. Valve might let you set up your own branded booth inside the store, but your customers will have to check out through Valve's cash register. If you want to make your own magic sticker book for your tournament, you're out of luck-- only Valve gets to do that. Valve have chosen the iOS model for their store, not the "let the community do it" model. "Let the community do it" is Valve corporate mythology, not reality. The company may very well see an advantage in getting the community to do some of the lower-margin or more labor-intensive aspects of promoting competitive play, but we should be careful about parroting "Valve wants to empower the community" when there are some very obvious and important ways in which Valve clearly does not want to do that at all.

But... but... you spent most of the episode talking about ways in which you'd like to see Valve do more organizing and/or sponsoring of tournaments. What's the point of this entire cast if Valve is "never going to do that?"

I realize there's a heavy taboo in DoTA2 circles against recognizing the existence of Riot Games, but it seems insane to have such a long speculative discussion about tournament structure without so much as a passing allusion to the system that exists for what is essentially exactly the same game, except not developed by Valve.

I'm not doing that at all, though I didn't do a good job of making it extra-clear that meeting strangers is only one aspect I appreciate about video games in public spaces. The first reason I gave is the primary one, to me-- the things we do and see in public places are the best ones. it's not just about meeting strangers, it's about the difference between the entertainment, expression, or appreciation of an entire society or community, vs. that of individuals or close friends & family. Pub games are nice, but again, the question is not "what is the best game," the question is "what is the best video game," and that is why things like "snooker" or "darts" are not on my list. Another reason they're not on my list is that they are not played in the same kinds of places where cabinet games were once widely played; snooker and darts are played almost exclusively in bars. I love bars, don't get me wrong, but people below a certain age in most of the world can't go into bars and play 9-ball to amuse themselves, which would go against another of the meandering "best" criteria I listed. If 9-ball were a video game. Which it isn't. The very earliest cabinet video games were initially played almost exclusively in bars, too, yes. But the very earliest cabinet games (the monochrome ones, essentially: pong, space invaders, asteroids, etc) didn't make my short list, either. Meeting strangers (really meeting them, and really strangers) is only one aspect of cabinet video games that makes them best to me, and it's an aspect that itself is really only a facet of the actual best-making thing-- play in public spaces.

But the question was "what is the best video game", was it not? Also, only a tiny fraction of board games are commonly played in public spaces: chess, dominoes, mancala, go, mah jong, and perhaps a dozen others with similar long cultural roots. The rest, and the vast majority, are played in your house or your friend's house, so I'm having some trouble seeing where your comparison is coming from.

I for one would never give "best video game" to something that's only experienced at home. It has to be a cabinet game. There's a fundamental difference between something you experience in your (or your friend's) house, and something you experience in public, and I think the best things we do and see are the public ones. Video games where you can actually meet strangers are best (and not where you can just meet their typing, or their disembodied voices, either). Arcades weren't the best places, though, because they quickly filled up with gamers (there were gamers even in the earliest era of video games). The best cabinets were always in other places, grocery stores or train stations or family-run pizza parlors. Anyway. Now that I've narrowed the field down to the couple dozen or so cabinet games that were widely available in normal public spaces like that... ...the best game would have to be a game that appeals to lots of different kinds of people, not just young males. That rules out most of the ones about spaceships, shooting, or shooting spaceships, which is maybe too bad, because some of those were great. It also rules out anything but the simplest controls (but then only a few cabinet games had controls that took more than a couple of quarters to learn) and fairly forgiving ones (which rules out those that required non-old-person reflexes too soon in the difficulty progression). So, uh, I think I'm down to Ms. Pac-Man and Tetris. And I'm going to go with Ms. Pac-Man, because I'm better at it. And unlike the 'best games' the Thumbs came up with, I still actually play my 'best game' from time to time, when I happen to find a cabinet or tabletop of it in a pizza parlor or bar. # # # Aside: would we have the same problems with depictions of women in video games today, if video games were still played in cabinets in grocery stores and train stations? Also, Centipede maybe should have gone on that short list. Even though it had shooting in it. For whatever reason, it seemed to have a noticeably higher appeal to older and/or female-er people.

FYI, as a gent who doesn't spend his days immersed in games-related twitters and forums and whatnot, I still have NO FUCKING IDEA what you all were talking about for the first 45 minutes of the podcast. Clearly, whatever it is is emotionally draining, and the last thing you want to do is retell it (them?) all over again, but I honestly don't have a clue as to what might have precipitated all of the horrible internet-hate you're apparently dealing with.