Sports news: Fans who want wars dead honoured at games are upset by lack of tributes
Takes your calls as the annual poppy-day row kicks off again.
Hearts wore poppies on their strip but Aberdeen didn't
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YOU would think it might not be beyond man’s ingenuity to make sure there was a uniform code of practice to cover matches played over the weekend which includes Remembrance Sunday.
There was no minute’s silence at three Premiership grounds on Saturday. Some teams had poppies sewn into their jerseys but others did not.
The lack of one, or the other, gesture was interpreted as an unacceptable lack of respect by those who feel that football should formally acknowledge the sacrifice made by those who perished in two world wars.
It is an annual bone of contention that ought to be avoidable.
Eric White, Hamilton, spoke for the outraged when he said: “My father fought in the Second World War and the apology issued by Ross County, talking about an ‘error of omission’ is an insult to your intelligence.”
Neil Jamieson, Newmilns, e-mailed: “Ross County’s statement is a lame effort. How can you claim to have forgotten it was Remembrance weekend?”
Ian Graham, Saltcoats, said: “I went to support Kilmarnock at St Johnstone on Saturday and was disgusted by the lack of a minute’s silence before the game.
“There is no excuse for forgetting to remember the war dead.”
Jim Clark, Glasgow, said: “What is the matter with people who can’t devote one or two minutes out of a year to stand with their heads bowed in remembrance?”
And John McMillan, Glasgow, said: “It is disgraceful several Scottish clubs had no poppies on their jerseys when the weekend of remembrance is universally acknowledged down south.”
Time for the game to lay down guidelines on this issue because inconsistency is causing offence.
David Kenneth, Paisley, had an interesting thought. He said: “Now that Sky are set to lose the Champions League to BT Sport in a billion pound deal it could lead to Celtic moving into English football.
“Sky will need to make a dramatic gesture to hold on to subscribers and attract new business so I think they’ll lobby for Celtic to be taken into the Championship and pave the way for them to move up into the Premier League.”
Another day, another Ibrox boardroom row. Jim McBeth, Glasgow, said: “What’s Ally McCoist all about? Every person who walks in the front door at Ibrox gets his immediate backing.
"He’s gone from Craig Whyte to David Somers with Charles Green in between. It’s time the manager grew a backbone.”
Pat Henderson, Perth, said: “McCoist’s praise for his new chairman is the same old rubbish he spouted about everybody else who came and then left.
“I thought Craig Mather was the man Ally said he could work with. What happened to him?
“Ally takes a lot out of Rangers and doesn’t put much back in so far as I can see.”
How much should you celebrate a hefty win over Ross County?
Mick McCormack, Uddingston , said: “Charlie Mulgrew is the most under-rated player in Britain and he was outstanding in the 4-1 win at Dingwall. It was a great result for Celtic.”
But Andrew Lamb, Fraserburgh, said: “Ross County are a glorified Highland League team and Derek Adams is over-rated as a manager. Why all the fuss about Celtic beating them so easily?”
Make your minds up.
Dunky Robertson, London, said: “Terry Butcher’s a shrewd man. He’s going to Hibs to use them as his stepping stone to Ibrox as McCoist’s successor.”
Tim Gibbens, Glasgow, e-mailed: “Terry has started to look like his dog, Fritz, if newspaper photographs are anything to go by. Now he should try and put the snarl back into Hibs’ play.”
But who’ll help Kilmarnock?
James McLean, Rothesay, said: “I fear for Killie after the beating we took from St Johnstone at the weekend.
“But I have to say referee Willie Collum’s display was woeful. I think he’s got it in for Killie because he had a spat with Kenny Shiels last season.”
Allegedly.
George McNeill, Kilmarnock, said: “I wish the Killie fans would stop taking their frustration out on Allan Johnston. The manager needs time to adjust to working in a higher division and playing settled teams.
“But there’s nothing wrong with the supporters continuing to have a go at chairman Michael Johnston.”
Time for whataboutery. You know you love it.
John Coyle, London, has a conspiracy theory. He said: “There’s an attempt being made to equate the trouble the Celtic supporters had in Amsterdam with Rangers’ long-standing hooligan problem, which is unfair.”
Terry Kerrigan, Erskine, said: “Rangers claimed there were 43,158 people at Saturday’s match with Airdrie. It didn’t look like it to me.”
And your point is?
Barra Stevens, Edinburgh, said: “Hearts’ full list of creditors is available. Why haven’t their names been published in full in the same way the people owed money by Rangers were highlighted. It smacks of double standards to me.”
Finally, I can never recall an East Stirling controversy before.
But John Stewart, Stirling, said: “The derby with Stirling Albion was spoiled for me by the fact they were allowed to open the scoring from a corner kick that should never have been awarded in the first place. It was a travesty of justice.”
Why are you kicking? You are half a leg's length away! What are you doing?
I'm on a adventure of determinate length and a blue ninja is running at me. The camera cinematically cuts between him, sprinting in my direction, and me, doing a cautious sideways ninja creep because I don’t know any other way of moving. I kick at him vigorously, or more truthfully, I swing one leg around in the air until he runs into it enough times that he eventually dies. I hardly creep another inch before an identical enemy ninja comes running my way again.
This is the world of Karateka, a 1984 beat ‘em up game. It's an early work of Jordan Mechner, who went on to create the Prince of Persia series. I’m able to play Karateka today because it has been preserved along with a number of other games at the Internet Archive historical software page, both for download and in a browser emulator of limited integrity.
Killed him dead!
I never played the original Karateka—it came before my time. I was born in 1987, and the earliest game I remember playing was Treasure Mountain! (released in 1990). Even if that game was restricted to arcane keyboard controls, it was also aimed at children. Real old school games, especially the arcane RPGs and fighting games, have more or less remained off my radar.
My older Ars peers tell me that Karateka is a short game. It’s also a game without any breaks or even a pause button, though this could just be a function of my poorly mapped keyboard. The enemy martial arts experts just keep coming, even when I am kicking at them. The AI dumbly strides forward at me while my foot flaps around in the air, as if to say, "I am computationally obligated to approach you and fall on the sword that is your leg."
I lay out ninja after ninja by spamming kicks (pressing every key on my keyboard failed to yield a punch button), but per the one inviolable beginner’s rule of fighting games, the second I start to try to be strategic about my attacks, I lose. My avatar crumples to the ground in a blob of huge white pixels. Game over. Start from the beginning.
The Internet Archive’s stash presents an opportunity for me to play these vintage games that I might not otherwise have even run across. I had never heard of Karateka or most of the games of the top-five list of downloads before, and I would probably never have thought to seek out classics of the Apple IIc gaming era. The Internet Archive is a path to both highlighting and providing these games, even if it’s operated without the original game publishers’ explicit blessings.
The second "level" of Karateka, which is identical to the first level, except you're apparently indoors.
Everything on the Internet Archive, which includes software and games as well as movies and video content, stays there under the fair use provision in US copyright law. The Internet Archive places a lot of emphasis on the idea that the emulations and downloads are distributed for non-commercial use with attribution, and the service is maintained through donations.
Video game ROMs exist at the margins of legality at best. Most big video game companies outright condemn them and (rightfully, in many cases) classify them as copyright infringement. But existence or temporary hosting of a ROM is different from committed preservation of one under fair use, which software hasn’t seen a whole lot of. That the games can now be emulated in-browser will go a long way to keep them alive and in the public consciousness.
Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of archive.org, did not respond directly to requests for comment on this matter. There is still a version of Karateka for sale, though not emulated on the Apple IIc platform: it's been ported to iOS, and creator Jordan Mechner also released a remake on the App Store in 2012.
Video games have found precious few sanctuaries in libraries or archives, and collections at major museums are usually modestly sized (notable exceptions are the National Museum of Play and ICHEGin Rochester, NY). In the last two years, the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian both created collections involving the usual suspects of notable video games: Pac Man, Super Mario Bros, Myst, SimCity.
But these collections are far from comprehensive, and online gaming history can go way beyond this surface. Any Web-surfing gaming archaeologist can find landmark software like the Internet Archive’s Visicalc and WordStar or fan-made emulators of Windows 1.0 or 3.1 dredged up from the annals of computer history. Their existence on the Internet makes that experience far more accessible to those who might never have tried these programs or operating systems.
I don't... know, but it's in the intro scene of Akalabeth.
While experimenting with these old games, I also tried my hand at Akalabeth, one of the earliest video-game RPGs and a precursor to the Ultima series. It takes place in a poorly drawn world that operates as if it was conceived by a drunken, excitable child. The art is strangely reminiscent ofHyperbole and a Half or cave paintings.
The emulation isn’t helped by the fact that it seems to not only misunderstand my keyboard’s layout but that keys appear to get remapped every few presses. Even so, the instructions are so extensive and arcane it’s amazing that anyone could be bothered to commit them to memory. I screenshotted them, but in the dark days, people presumably wrote them down.
A giant rat that is unusually strong and impervious to large, sharp weapons.
I concede that modern games are staged so that almost all main characters are irrationally immortal and generally not constrained by our understandings of time and space—instead of dying or starting again, you faint, respawn, or regenerate. But Akalabeth is just too real. You can’t accomplish much without facing death. If you spend too much time exploring outside, you run out of food and die. You can’t hit a rat with your axe or rapier, so you die. If you're in a dungeon too long, you die.
Players of these games would have to be masochistic. There is a seemingly endless number of ways that you can not only die but be compelled to start over from the beginning, set up yet another character, buy another set of weapons, and try to navigate between mountains just a little better this time so you have a slightly better chance of not dying at the hand of a giant, pentagonal rat.
I can’t argue against choosing to preserve Tetris or the immortal and impenetrable Dwarf Fortressover this Karateka that Ars deputy editor Nate Anderson gets so enthusiastic about. But computer games and software deserve more dedicated preservation space, if only to highlight how patient and credulous we were (or had to be) then and how angry and impatient we are now.
Game jams have exploded in popularity. What used to be mostly small locally hosted events are now massive worldwide gatherings of game developers. There’s a good reason for this: game jams are a great way for developers to experiment with new ideas and to flex their creative and technical muscles. To make the most out of your game jamming experience, I’ve compiled a list of tips, tools and resources that should help things go smoothly.
A game jam is an event where participants try to make a video game as quickly as possible. Most game jams take place over a single weekend, where everyone has 48 hours to try to make a game often based on a secret theme that is either voted upon or chosen by the organizers. The theme is used as a limitation that encourages creative thinking.
Themes from past game jams have included everything from simple concepts such as fear, islands, and darkness, to abstract expressions like ouroboros, build the level you play, and time manipulation.
Some jams have a competitive element — this type of jam is referred to as a “compo” — while others have no winners or losers and are simply a fun thing to do. Some sponsored events even have prizes, and many feature voting on games to declare a winner in various categories, but the general consensus is that game jamming is primarily done purely for the fun of it. The real “prize” is your finished game.
Look at all the happy coders. (Image by menno.deen)
People who take part in many game jams do so more for bragging rights, the pride in completing a game, or in the pleasure of honing their craft and seeking inspiration in one crazy weekend of late nights and rapid prototyping.
Though there are team events, jams that last for extended periods of time (such as an entire month), and jams that are held in public places by large numbers of people, the most common type of game jam is one that is performed solo, at home, over a single weekend.
Tips
1. Eat, Sleep and Exercise
Give the energy drinks a miss. (Photo by Austin Kirk)
This is the first tip on this list because it’s without a doubt the most important. When approached with a forty-eight hour deadline to make a game, most people’s initial reaction is to want to order a couple pizzas, stack up on energy drinks, and lock themselves into a room for the entire duration. This is a bad idea.
Making games is cerebral work and you simply can’t do it effectively for two days without interruption. The more rested you are and well fed you are the better you’ll work. Twenty-four hours of effective clear-headed work over two days will get you much farther than an initial ten hours of solid work followed by thirty-eight hours of exhausted caffeine-driven work.
As for exercise, it isn’t absolutely necessary; I’m sure we’ve all spent two days at some point in our life without exercising, game jam or not. However, when you’re tackling a difficult issue that you just can’t seem to figure out, few things are more helpful than going for a run or bike ride to clear your head. No matter how well rested and fed you are, being cooped up for forty-eight hours can lead to a muddled head space that makes it hard to do good work.
2. When in Doubt, Go 2D
Which one looks more complicated?
This tip is a simple one: if you’re debating whether or not to make a 2D game or a 3D game, make a 2D game. Working in three dimensions adds an extra level of complexity to art and coding, and the payoff is almost never worth it. You may stand out more with a fully 3D game, but it probably won’t play as well, and you’ll probably have to spend more time working on basic functionality and much less experimenting with fun new mechanics.
3. Keep Things Simple
When you’re thinking up the design of your game, remember that simple mechanics that work well are infinitely better than complex one’s that don’t. Don’t plan for multiplayer, complex A.I, cut-scenes or a physics engine.
In fact, when designing your game, I recommend trying to come up with something you think you could easily complete in only twenty-four hours, rather than the full forty-eight. Things almost always take longer than you anticipate, and there’s a good chance you’ll only barely finish by the end of the forty-eight hours. If for some reason you get things done faster than you now have that much more time to polish your game, and polish is what separates the good from the great.
4. Code for Functionality, Not a Beautiful Codebase
The more you learn to code the more you come to appreciate the importance of clear, well-structured code. You learn the dangers of massive nested if blocks and the beautiful simplicity that comes with well-executed inheritance structures.
Forget this.
You only have forty-eight hours, and you need to get things done. Don’t waste time setting up versatile classes with minimal redundancy, code for functionality instead.
It might be difficult to understand your code when you look at it a week later, but you’ll get the best results in the moment, and in a game jam that’s what counts. If you want to continue your project afterwards, you can fix things retroactively. It’s a bit of work, but it’s work you shouldn’t be spending your forty-eight hours doing.
5. Have an Idea of What You’re Doing Before You Hit the Computer
This might be common sense to the more experienced of you out there, but this is a huge pitfall that snares many a game jam newbie. With only forty-eight hours to do something, people are inclined to get to work immediately. This often means jumping on the computer as soon as the theme is announced and starting to pound out some code.
Why do this? You don’t know what it is you’re making within a split-second of the theme getting announced and you certainly aren’t going to figure it out as you go. Take some time to decide on exactly what it is you’re going to try to make, have something specific in mind when you first hit the computer, and see what happens from there. For a more in depth look at this topic take a gander at What to Do Before Even Touching a Computer (though keep in mind its suggestions might go a little overboard in the context of a game jam).
6. Make Sure Your Game Is Easily Distributable
Make sure your game runs on these. (Opera optional)
You’re not the only one participating in any given game jam; there are going to be a lot of games, and the people playing them will have a lot to choose from. This is where distribution is important: with so many choices of games with such a wide variety in quality, players won’t want to invest a lot of time into setting any specific game up.
Ideally, your game should be playable one click away from your submission page. Obviously browser-based games are the best for this, but a standalone executable can work well too. Avoid requiring your player to download some sort of framework or plugin they aren’t likely to already have, and under no circumstance have your game require an installation. If they see your game takes too long to set up, most people will simply skip over it and have a try at another game that gives them less hassle. Choose your development platform accordingly.
Bfxr is a nice little free tool for easily making retro-style sound effects. It offers a range of preset sound effect types to choose from and an easy to use interface for tweaking those sounds exactly to your liking. As3sfxr, on the other hand, is a simple ActionScript 3 port of sfxr (the predecessor to Bfxr) that allows you to dynamically create sound effects in real time using the same parameters as Bfxr, whic his very useful when you want to randomize an aspect of a commonly used sound.
Here are three free and easy to use level editors with versatile exporters that allow them to fit into the workflow of almost any project. Rather than making your own level editor, it can be a huge time saver at first to use one of these to get things started. Who knows, you may even find that they have all the functionality you’re looking for.
We have guides to both Ogmo and Tiled on this site, so I encourage you to check them out.
These three graphics editors are incredibly useful when making games using pixel art. They all have support for sprite sheets as well as a host of other useful features to discover.
My personal favorite here is Pixen due to its tiny size and extremely clean interface, but it isn’t free and only works on OS X; GraphicsGale also costs money and is Windows-only. Asesprite works on everything under the sun and is free, so give it a look if you, like most people, don’t like spending money.
Blender is the quintessential tool for making 3D graphics on a budget of zero dollars. It’s one of the easiest to use 3D modelling programs out there, once you get over the initial confusion you’ll have with the interface, and it’s surprisingly robust for its price tag. Be warned, though, 3D modelling is very difficult and even as elegant a program as Blender can’t change that.
From the same mind behind sfxr we have musagi, a relatively simple tool for making your own chiptune music. Just like with 3D modelling, the term “relatively” is important here. Making music can be difficult and musagi can’t change this, but if you have the necessary skills it can be a great outlet for making music very quickly.
Open Game Art is a great resource for free video game art (go figure). With everything from sprite sheets to 3D models all the way to music and sound effects, this site is an invaluable resource if you’re not of the artistic inclination. I highly recommend you take a look.
These are two useful resources with free music for use in your game. No Soap Radio is particular in its search features, which allows you to sort music based on attributes like the type of game you are making and where the music will be playing in your game. Incompetech is a much more standard database, but provided you are capable of finding the type of track you are looking for, the music is generally of much higher quality.
Both of these resources are useful for those less musically-inclined and can really step up the quality of a game, as good audio is one of the pillars of the gaming experience.
This website has a huge repository of both retro-style sounds and more realistic foley for use in your game. I personally prefer using Bfxr if I’m going for retro sound effects, but FlashKit is invaluable when trying to go with a more realistic style. (Unless of course you have a great mic and a sound-proof room to record a police siren in.)
CGTextures is exactly what it sounds like: a site filled to the brim with texture for use on various 3D models. Most of the textures are free, and they are of very high quality. If you are going the 3D route, this site can be a massive time saver, though you do need an account to use the site.
If you’re really in a rut and can’t find any ideas for what you want to make you might want to take a look at this site. Though hit or miss, this site can often generate some cool game ideas that can be both original and hilarious. Take a look when all else fails.
Conclusion
So those were my 16 tips, tools and resources for succeeding in your next game jam. Make good use of them and I guarantee you’ll see some good things come from your future game jams. If you want to read more on the subject check out our other article: How to Get the Most Out of a Game Jam.
