notes
Saturday, 11 January 2003Practical fun #1
Game design primer. My pal Greg Costikyan has a fantastic primer on game-design-theory up -- it's old, but I hadn't seen it until today.In The Art of Computer Game Design, Chris Crawford contrasts what he call "games" with "puzzles." Puzzles are static; they present the "player" with a logic structure to be solved with the assistance of clues. "Games," by contrast, are not static, but change with the player's actions.Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom) [Boing Boing Blog]Some puzzles are obviously so; no one would call a crossword a "game." But, according to Crawford, some "games" a really just puzzles -- Lebling & Blank's Zork, for instance. The game's sole objective is the solution of puzzles: finding objects and using them in particular ways to cause desired changes in the game-state. There is no opposition, there is no roleplaying, and there are no resources to manage; victory is solely a consequence of puzzle solving.
To be sure, Zork is not entirely static; the character moves from setting to setting, allowable actions vary by setting, and inventory changes with action. We must think of a continuum, rather than a dichotomy; if a crossword is 100% puzzle, Zork is 90% puzzle and 10% game.
Almost every game has some degree of puzzle-solving; even a pure military strategy game requires players to, e.g., solve the puzzle of making an optimum attack at this point with these units. To eliminate puzzle-solving entirely, you need a game that's almost entirely exploration: Just Grandma and Me, a CD-ROM interactive storybook with game-like elements of decision-making and exploration, is a good example. Clicking on screen objects causes entertaining sounds and animations, but there's nothing to 'solve,' in fact, no strategy whatsoever.
A puzzle is static. A game is interactive.
Googlology
The Study of Googlology. To Google or not to Google is Never the Question!
[The Shifted Librarian]"Due to the way Google has captured our collective attention in the simplicity of delivery and the excellent results in locating documents across the web, people who are truly 'googlites' have begun working words into our vocabulary. Primarily this expresses their feelings of belonging and oneness to what is considered to be an excellent search engine. Amongst others, there are the verbs 'googling' (appears 19,800 times in Google Search), 'googler' (3,850), and recently I found 'The Art and Science of Googlology' ('googlology' appears 5 times in Google Search).
Googlology is the study of origins, history and structure of Google....
I would like to put it forward that this study be one of the central elements of this site along with the matter I will be bringing forward tomorrow Googlosophy. In bringing forward the term 'Googlology' I seek that we can shortcut some of our previously long descriptions necessary because we were foundering in obtaining a term to point at things associated with Google -- the super electronic text. It is inside the electronic text of Google that we find the Google Village where caricatures, icons and listings of you and I reside that make up the searchable world of Google. Googlology is therefore the study of how you and I are represented in this text and how the structure of Google makes meaning in the wider context of the complete Internet.
This study is not only a great new place to construct theory, it is also a place to apprehend electronic reality. This is the study of Googlology. Enjoy as we proceed." [Google Village]
Robots make radios (1940s style)
robots make radios. " It could be a futurist fantasy - a wholly automated factory, with only a few attendants keeping watch. But this is 1947, the bakelite age. For radio and automation expert John Sargrove it is the culmination of a dream. He has designed ECME - Electronic Circuit Making Equipment. It should be a world-beater, but it isn’t. What happened? " Robots make radios (1940s style)
This is a fascinating story from the London Science Museum. Sargrove's (ne Szabadi) system of spraying the circuit and components onto bakelite sheets as part of the construction of the radio set seems to pre-date the printed circuit board (patented by Paul Eisler in 1943). In fact "In the Sargrove method the circuits, resistors, inductances and other components were formed by spraying on to a pre-moulded bakelite panel."
Zinc was sprayed onto a bakelite panel that had grooves mouled into the surface. The metal was then finely ground away to leave material in the lower part of the grooves - forming here in the detailed view part of the inductance or coil used in the tuning circuit of a two-valve set destined for China in 1947.
The attraction of doing it with robots was to minimise losses due to wiring mistakes. When I spoke to people involved in the Australian radio industry during these years a number of them described this issue. Many radio factories believed that women were much better at wiring than men - much better at fine detail with far fewer mistakes. They were presumably cheaper to pay as well.
The production system depended on large numbers and the cancellation of a large order from the Indian government after independence in 1947 signalled the end.
[kellerkind bogenallee 11] pic from Science & Society Picture Library