Recent posts by Havermorphism on Kongregate

Topic: Game Programming / is there something wrong with this i'm not seeing?

Part of the student agreement is that you may not use it for commercial work, IIRC

I tried to look this up. There’s some confusion on this point, as some “academic” versions of Adobe products do allow for commercial use. There’s some subtle distinction made between “student version”, “student license”, and “academic version”, and somehow “education version” is also used. Lots of words with unclear terminology.

I searched the CS4 EULA for “student”, “academic”, “education”, “commercial”, and “non(-)commercial”. Doing so did not reveal any limitations to noncommercial use other than something about video encoding and mobile devices.

Frankly, as confusing as they make it to figure out this information, if they do try to sue someone based on commercial use, the EULA is so unapproachable even by searching that you could make a case for it, except under the “student license” version I saw on Adobe’s UK website, where it very clearly states no noncommercial use. The education version I looked at on Adobe’s US website very much did not make that noncommercial use clause anywhere I could find. There may be a distinction between countries, perhaps.

Topic: Game Programming / is there something wrong with this i'm not seeing?

CS4 license is under $200 for students, FYI.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Is it better for a leader to be loved or feared?

Much harder to convince you of that.

Indeed. It’s harder to rule well by love, but in the end, the results are better.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Is it better for a leader to be loved or feared?

If you said I’d kill you if you don’t face the sun most people will face the sun. Therefore there has been change.

That’s not a change so much as a temporary alteration of behavior. What happens when you turn around?

Now, convince me that facing the sun will help me grow as a person and achieve…well, then I’ll face the sun happily all day long, whether you’re watching me or not. Maybe some people won’t. But most will.

Topic: Serious Discussion / WALL.E: the future (warning: spoilers)?

It’s reminiscent of dark humor. It’s not propaganda so much as a caricature. The linked article is absurd in its claims: it puts persuasive rhetoric above reasoned analysis. Anti-technological? My ass. Egregiously unrealistic? So’s fucking Bambi. But drama has used farce as a vehicle of self-analysis for centuries.

Suspense of disbelief does wonders. Some skepticism on WALL-E is warranted, but this kind of nigh-surrealist misguided deconstruction wins itself a place in the hall of fail.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Is it better for a leader to be loved or feared?

Ruling by fear gets quick results, but doesn’t bring about change. Ruling by love is the only way to bring about change in a population, and to truly motivate it to do its best.

For the best examples of this, take a look at your local moderators. The best of them enforce rules merely through asking players to respect them. And they do. And they generally follow. Ruling with an iron fist will never pacify a troll. Though unfortunately, it may be the only option to deal with some people, there will always be someone who is capable of reforming as an individual under the proper application of concern and respect.

Topic: Serious Discussion / "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"..No More?

communism rules!

Quoted For Truth, indeed. Emphasize “rules”. As in “dictates”.

Topic: Serious Discussion / RAF MAN SPOTS UFO HOVERING OVER STANSTED AIRPORT

It’s one thing to believe in aliens. It’s another thing to believe that they’re flying around and other assorted crap.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Illegal Downloads

on youtube: It’s pretty easy to grab the .flv that’s being played when you look at it on YouTube. And then convert it to .avi or whatever you need.

Also still pretty illegal.

i said that as in, if they arrested everyone that pirated, 1/3 the country would be in prison

Not by half. Not by quarter. Not by eighth.

Not gonna source it, but damn sure it’s under the 10% realm.

Hell, does even 1/3 the US own an mp3 player?

Topic: Serious Discussion / Should Congress Accept Bush's Bail Out Request?

It’s not really Bush’s bail-out program anymore. Bush is handing the money over to Obama. If Bush doesn’t do this, Obama will have to take time to do it himself, delaying any positive effects the use of the money might have.

And let’s keep in mind that the government isn’t handing out free money any more than banks hand out free money when you go bankrupt. Loans are repaid, or your assets are repossesed.

Topic: Serious Discussion / 2012 Olympic controversy

Giving him another chance seriously injures determent and defies the purpose of the Olympics.

Testing practices aren’t perfect or complete, but they’re making a vague balance between interference and principle. Occasional spot checks are statistically effective deterrents.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Do you think Israel still deserves the USA's backing?

Ah boo-hoo. You think Arabs don’t get treated like shit in the west? Try reading the news.

That was a significant part of the purpose of Israel: giving Jews a country where they can be safe from anti-semitism. Arabs have a dozen countries of their own where they can be relatively safe from racism and anti-Moslem sentiments. Jews have one.

I hope everyone commenting in this thread is aware of some of the historical attacks committed by Arab nations. That’s what provides far more reason for US backing than any of this terrorist nonsense.

In particular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_day_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War

In 1967 and again in 1973, several Arab nations launched unprovoked surprise attacks on Israel. In the first, they were soundly defeated in six days. In the second, the attack was launched on the holiest of days for Judaism. They were again soundly and swiftly defeated. These kinds of attacks are, in my understanding, why the US supports Israel.

The US has plenty of resources even in economic “crisis”, and Israel doesn’t exactly take much of anything. Hell, the US still has troops running around Korea, Kosovo, and Columbia. If something happens in the middle east, the US needs to be there to keep it in control, no matter what “sides” are involved.

Topic: The Arts / Reaper Graphix™: Closed until further notice.

A photographer can take a photograph in milliseconds. Seconds, maybe, if you count the time it takes to take out the camera, focus, frame, and shoot. Does that mean that a photographer is not an artist?

It isn’t the time it takes that matters. It’s the artistic eye that matters. An artist is someone who sees something, captures it, and shares it with others. The time the artist takes or any manual dexterity required in capturing that image is NOT relevant. Art is an image, not a stopwatch.

Topic: Kongregate / Remove Doom Game.

Where do we draw the line on user-created content?

There are all kinds of open-source games out there. Am I free to grab those and upload them?

Case 2: I have to do all the work to rewrite the code by hand in Flash.
Quasi-original. Not really, but at least the code is yours.

Case 1.5: I run the code through an automatic converter that churns out a Flash game from whatever I give it automatically.
Game isn’t mine, code isn’t mine, but…at least I ran the conversion myself.

Case 1.1: Flash develops a built-in converter that automagically turns any open-source code I give it into a Flash game, graphics and all.
Surrealism aside, I basically haven’t done any more than uploading a game that isn’t mine. It just happens to be open-source.

Case 1: It’s already in Flash.
Then I’m just re-uploading a Flash game that isn’t mine.

So what is the real problem with “stolen” games? Is it that the user didn’t create it, the user doesn’t own the rights to it, or something more subtle? Putting some effort—-whether months or minutes—-of turning someone else’s game into a Flash file I can upload to Kongregate isn’t the point. To emphasize: the effort put into the conversion is irrelevant.

To me, the legal issue is less important than the Kongregate principle of user-created content.

As a side-note: What happens if someone else comes along and does the exact same process to convert DOOM and upload it to Kongregate? Now we have identical games from two people.

Topic: Kongregate / Remove Doom Game.

I don’t think that id Software would have a problem with it

I think it’s pretty important to check on that.

He did not write the game himself, as Kongregate rules require. The part where he “converted” the material is a loophole and a precedent I’m not sure Kongregate wants to set. If he is a direct representative of id Software, mayhaps this is a by, but he doesn’t appear to represent id Software, who holds the copyright.

Topic: Game Programming / Shun the nonbeliever!

The instructor said Flash isn’t meant, nor is good at making games in.

He has a point. It isn’t. Notice how people complain about the terrible lag in so many games? Anytime you have lots of particles wandering around, everything lags. Why? Because Flash scripting is bulky and inefficient. Even efficient algorithms run inefficiently in Flash.

It works. But not well. Computers are fast enough that there’s no reason that these very, very simple games with extraordinarily simple graphics should have _any difficulty running on any computer made in the last 10 years. Even a basic game of pong has a noticeable amount of lag in response at certain points.

Flash is fantastic scripting software, but it’s terrible for games. He never said it can’t be done. He said it isn’t meant to and that it isn’t very good at it. I’m not certain on whether it was meant to or not, but you all have seen the evidence that it is NOT good at it. At all.

Topic: Technical Support / CAPS ALLOWED ROOMS

Lower monitor resolution and the built-in Windows magnification tool can cover this problem, but perhaps when the chat system is upgraded, this might be considered as an option. A slightly higher font size will still fit adequately and make the problem slightly easier to solve.

Topic: Game Programming / Flash backup software

Could someone (mayhaps Kong staff?) write a little program to back up and restore Kong save files? Maybe have a little tutorial in it on how to find the folder with Kong flash saves (“Search for *.sol …”), then stick ’em in a tarball or somesuch.

Many Kong users would love you forever. I’ve been doing this manually, because I’m too lazy to figure out the exact code I need to write a batch file. Many users don’t know how to do this. A simple program would streamline the process and save much frustration.

Hell, I’d pay Kreds for it.

Topic: General Gaming / Dress up games

As a guy, I’d much rather go shopping than play a game about killing people. That being said, I can’t think of any dress-up games that had anything interesting about them to keep my attention. Other than, perhaps, the Spore Creature Creator, I suppose. That’s innovative and interesting.

Most of the dress-up games I’ve seen have terrible interfaces, bland graphics, obnoxious sounds, and very little variety. If you’re going to make a dress-up game, I want to have more than 3 pairs of shoes to choose from. I want more than one face. I want to choose my pose and skin color. I want ponies and dragons in the background. Yes, these things take time to create, but you reap what you sow. If you make a terrible dress-up game, I will rate it as a terrible game. I will also rate all the terrible shooter games as terrible games, because they’re also terrible.

The game is judged for its merit, not the type of content it contains. The dress-up games I’ve seen are absolutely gaudy, cheesy, half-assed knockoffs. Take the creation of a dress-up game seriously, and give it what it deserves, and I’ll be happy to rate it a 5.

Topic: Technical Support / crashy flashy

Actually, they should share it, to encourage people like me to whitelist Kongregate on adblock lists.

Topic: Technical Support / crashy flashy

I’m not sure it really is an ad problem, since I’m guilty of running adblock even on Kongregate.

Out of curiousity, do we have any statistics on how much potential money adblock is denying Kongregate?

Topic: Technical Support / crashy flashy

In the last couple weeks, since I returned from a couple month break from flash games, I’ve discovered that Flash games crash my browser fairly often. I’ve heard other users having crashing problems too.

Details: Firefox 3.0.3 (and 3.0.1), uninstalled and reinstalled the newest version of Adobe Flash from their website, after removing all of the old saved data (some of which I restored by hand when that didn’t change the problem).

The crash happens on a number of games, from Amorphous and Bloons TD3 to Warfare1917, Ether War, MAD, and Arachsomethingsomething. Crashes seem to happen more often on games that require holding down keyboard keys, like that semi-recent racing game.

I’ve tried closing all other tabs and windows, as well as closing other running programs.

Topic: Off-topic / Didactic Fractalism

“Created by me.”

Thus, “Created by aenh and me.”

Topic: Kongregate / New Cards?

Greg doesn’t make the cards. David Sirlin does.

Try this: http://www.sirlin.net/archive/game-balance-part-1/

Topic: Kongregate / Stop giving double cards

Kongai was very carefully designed by David Sirlin. The characters were strategically thought out and balanced to give you some variety yet familiarity with the cards. You can’t just throw more cards into the mix lightly.

There are more advantages than disadvantages to having many cards in a game like this. Keep in mind that this game isn’t “Magic: The Gathering” with a bunch of fairly generic cards. Kongai cards are significantly more complex, and developed for a game based on developing a strategy from knowing your opponent’s possible moves.