Warhawk Revisited

Last Fall I picked up a copy of Warhawk, the online-only PS3 exclusive title that simulates dogfighting in advanced fighter ships while maintaining a strong ground war.  I loved it, but it was riddled with bugs.  What finally drove me to quit playing though was merely loneliness- none of my friends had a PS3.

Finally, some of my friends have acquired PS3’s and I’m encouraging them to purchase the game.  I’ve started playing again this week and I’m addicted once more.  The game has the intensity of Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4, sans realism, but it has an extra element that I appreciate even more than the realism:  it never takes itself too seriously.  Without going as far as the voice-over work that was done for the characters in Team Fortress 2, the game succeeds at adding humor through things like the exaggerated ragdoll effects your lifeless body exhibits after a grenade kill.

Some handy additions and bug fixes have been applied since I last played as well.  You can now swap out the default knife melee weapon for a wrench, which can kill as effectly as the knife but also repair vehicles and turrents with a similar swinging motion to that in Team Fortress 2.  Health regeneration equipment has been added as well to create a “healing zone” for team mates to hold a position longer. 

There are 2 expansion packs now – priced at $8 a piece or $12 together – which add a map and vehicle each.  I haven’t purchased these as of yet, but I plan to if said friends are interested as well. 

I don’t know if the term underrated applies to this game, because the game has largely received terrific reviews.  But it doesn’t seem to get talked about nearly as much as Team Fortress 2, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, etc.  And the simple reason is that there aren’t as many players.  Sony is claiming PS3 sales high enough that there could reasonably be a competing force of Warhawk players out there, but its just not the case.  Sure there are plenty of servers and players in them, but not on the levels that more mainstream games see.  So my question is this:  why isn’t this game mainstream?  It should be.

Telling a Story with Code

Warning:  Esoteric Nerd Thoughts Ensue

An idea has been forming in my tiny little mind for the last week or so pertaining to a combination of the evolution that code goes through within a single application during its development and the evolution that a narrative story and its characters go through as the reader partakes.  That sentence came out longer than I wanted it to, so let me simplify.

When writing software from scratch, the code that makes up that software changes during its development.  A developer will start to solve one bit of the requirements using one method, but then switch off to favor a different method once another requirement presents itself as problematic to integrate with.  Test Driven Development practices are one terrific way to make your code evolve in directions you wouldn’t have previously considered.

Similarly, any well written story, fiction or non, typically involves the evolution of the characters in it as they progress from some pre-condition to some post-condition due to the direction the drama takes.

So my idea: what if we combined these?  I’m wondering if there is a way to combine the story telling aspect of prose narrative with the code deciphering aspect of working on a software project.  While reading through an existing app’s code to figure out how its running under the hood, I scan through class definitions and functions, following Visual Studio’s “Go To Definition” option through as many turns as possible.  Code has many of the same elements that spoken/written languages have.  There are objects that serve as subjects, functions that serve as verbs, properties that serve as adjectives. 

I think this is possible…  A narrative tale told through code would have to be completely nonlinear as the “reader” would have the ability to open all source files at the beginning and read wherever he so chooses.  The trick to the story telling is to architect the code in such a way that you guide at least a majority of your readers through the dependancy structure in such a way that each function they read will make them want to follow the logic further to see what the next method or object is doing.  The comments in the code themselves could even become a form of meta communication that could be a layer of story of its own.

I want to try this.  If I’m successful I’ll publish the code as open source and let other nerds partake.  Now I just have to think of a plotline that can be expressed in C#…

Playing Crysis with an Xbox 360 Controller

Last week while I was at Microsoft headquarters, I picked up an Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for my PC’s.  After a driver download for Windows Vista 64bit, it loaded right up and allowed me to sync my Xbox 360 wireless controller to my laptop.  I subsequently connected my laptop to my TV through an HDMI port and to my receiver through the headphone jack.

Crysis was my game of choice to test out the arrangement and it didn’t disappoint.  As soon as the game loaded it noticed the presence of the 360 controller and allowed me to use it by default.  Unfortunately there is no way to remap the controller’s button configuration.  More on that later.

On the whole, it was a wonderful experience.  I felt like I was playing Crysis (a PC-exclusive title) on a 360.  Most FPS-enthusiast gamers would cry blasphemy at choosing a console controller over the keyboard/mouse setup, but I’ve spent as much time now playing shooters on consoles as on PC’s and frankly I just don’t care anymore.  Sure the keyboard and mouse can be more precise than a console controller, but its hard to relax on the couch or reclyner with a keyboard in my lap and a mouse on… the armrest?  Where am I supposed to put the mouse on the couch?  I don’t have to ask that question when playing console games, and that’s why I’m happy to play my PC games with my console controllers.

After finishing the mission in Crysis, I moved on to some good ol’ Trackmania Nations Forever.  The car handled wonderfully and I was able to successfully navigate my own custom insane track.  I’d previously been playing this game with an adapter that let me play PC games with Playstation 2 controllers.  I love that adapter, but I think I prever the 360 alternative simply for the wirelessness. 

The only disappointments came with the severe lack of options.  No key remapping (without a 3rd party tool that I’m still researching), constant re-syncing the control back and forth from 360 to PC and back, inability to simply turn off the 360 controller without pulling the battery(ies) out, etc.  Those kinds of things add up and definitely detract from the overall coolness.  Its annoying, but then again, these controllers weren’t originally intended to be docked to multiple machines or control PC games at all.  So I suppose its forgivable.

If you’re interested in wireless gamepad play on your PC and you already have a 360, I heartily recommend giving this option a shot.  The pricepoint is relatively low and its fun to replay some PC games the console way.

.Net 3.5 SP1 (Beta) Installation FAIL

I have successfully installed this service pack beta on multiple machines, however my office desktop today gave me this puzzling error:

After pressing Retry a couple of times, the setup completed successfully.  Weird.