Chris Szurgot's Blog

Great game, great engine, engagine, engrossing, yada, yada, yada....

One of the things that really impressed me (so much so that I didn't even notice it until I was almost 2/3 way through) was that the mouse/keyboard layout was setup so that you could actually play without taking your hand off the left hand off the left side of the keyboard. (Except to quicksave/quickload <grin>) All of the weapon selection keys were overloaded so they were on keys 1-5, instead of spread all the way out to keys 9, 0, and above like in some games (Doom 3, cough)And instead of the scroll wheel automatically choosing a weapon, it cycled through shadows of available, and you hit fire to choose. The whole process is so intuitive that it's a seamless part of the gameplay/interface.

I mention this as significant because unlike other games, the interface didn't detract from the gameplay by requiring you to take your hand off the left side and reach to the right, and go through all the animations. More developers should try to take into consideration the fastest way to change things in a program. <grin> I know I've been trying to be more aware of it, which is probably why it dawned on me that this was the best method I've ever seen in a FPS.

Everybody keeps praising Konfabulator, including Scoble, but I've found something that suits me better, and has much cleaner integration into my workstation...

It's called Desktop Sidebar, it's meant to mimic the upcoming Sidebar in Longhorn ("Don't wait for Longhorn. Start using Desktop Sidebar today!"), you can set it up to Dock to the side of the screen, and once you do, full screen apps won't overlap it, instead treating it as the boundary of the screen. You can setup mutliple panels, with various purposes (Clock, Messenger, Control winamp or WMP, slide show, weather, even a command prompt to alllow you to quick enter google, or start programs, or dictionary lookups, etc...)

Once you get past some of the initial overload (I don't need a news feed scrolling by every few seconds, or a slideshow changing every 3 seconds), and the fact that it's got some beta issues, it's an awesome program.

Mind you, having Multiple monitors does help <grin>, but then again, having multiple monitors always helps...

Wow, it's taken me well over a year, but I made it to 100 posts.

So as not to completely waste the post, the Half Life 2 launch seems to have gone off pretty well (for me at least) reloaded steam, waited about 15 minutes for it to downloads the 8 MB engine file, and was ready to play. Still some kinks to work out, but it looks like Steam could be a real winner in software distribution...

As I sit here waiting for 12:01 PST, trying to decide if I feel like being up at 3:00 AM EST (not so much because I feel like playing at the moment it's released, but because I think this is a pretty important event, and I'm curious to see it happen, even if it is just a little icon moving from one section of a list to another.

The reason I think it's important is that it will demonstrate the first worldwide simultaneous release of a highly anticipated piece of software, weighing in at over 4GB of data, with a digital only, and physical media release. If this goes off, they will have demonstrated not only their techical brilliance, but the viability of digital transfer, not just in the form of install files, but as self-maintaining packages. You can also create backups in case you need to restore your machine (or just to make some room)

I have two real concerns at this point. One is that I think Valve is mishandling the update/authentication server issue. They got into a disagreement with Vivendi over Steam because Steam could really cut them out of distribution profits (and probably so) But due to retail pressures, Vivendi set a release date for the holiday season (today, obviously), and the games set to be released, went gold, and everybody's happen. But the game can't be played, either with physical media, or download, until those activation servers come online. At this point, however, there's no indication from Valve that today's the day (it's 12:45 EST as I write this) Instead, all they do is say that they would be in violation of contract if they turne don the authentication servers at this time. (They said this Sat, but haven't updated since) They should've just given the time (or a time on the 16th) and been done with it, instead of pointing fingers at Vivendi.

The second, and more important, is cost. This will be the real deciding factor in digital distribution of software, especially lower priced software. Half-life 2 comes in 2 different retail packages and 3 different Steam packages. (Interestingly, the most expensive package is on Steam, and comes with a whole bunch of physical stuff that they will mail to you, but no game media) The Steam version of the basic package is only $5 less than the retail package, which pretty much only pays the cost of the DVD and the time it'll cost to burn the disc. The second package is a little better because you get Half-life Source (The original game remastered under the new engine) plus access to all of Steams current offerings, and it's $20 less than the retail "Collector's Edition" (Which only comes with HL: Source and a T-Shirt) At any rate, Digital distribution needs to show a considerable markdown over retail distribution, because it it cutting out a large portion of the distribution chain. The positive side of all of this those, is that you should be able to make software available for an unlimited time, just setting the cost to strike an appopriate balance between demand and bandwidth and storage costs....

At any rate, enough rambling on this topic... Half-Life is just a game (albiet one that shows some incredible promise following up an incredible game), but Steam, Steam, I think, will really be able to take us (and our software) places...

Everyone suffers from Information Overload these day, but I'm starting to suffer from Information Management Program overload. These programs to help me manage my data are working pretty well, but some of the interactions are going to drive me bonkers.

Take SpamBayes. I currently use SBS, Outlook, and SpamBayes. Largely, SpamBayes works great as an Anti-spam product (although I wish you had a little more control over it, like a sender white-list), and even catches a lot of viruses. But where it fails, and pushes things into overload territory, is the fact that 1) You can't adjust it's sender list, so every now and then infrequent senders get flagged as spam again, and 2) (the more frequent offender) almost every email that comes through is still notified with a desktop alert, a sound, and the stupid little email icon. Which means instead of silently processing the messages, and only notifying me of good mail, outlook is notifying me of every mail that comes in anyway, defeating a good portion of the purpose of filtering out the spam. Overload!!!!

Or take Sauce Reader.  I've been using Sauce Reader for some time now. I like it's integrated posting tool, it's display styles, etc... But it ends up (ended up, they *finally* fixed it this week), you had to manage the tool as much as the data to make sure you weren't missing any data. There was a bug where it would automatically focus on new items. While this would sound like a nice feature, this meant if you were reading an item, it would flip up to the new item. Which was especially bad if you had followed a link or two, because they were lost. And it was also bad if the Reader was minimized, because it would collect items in a feed, and auto-read them, so if you left it on an active feed like MS, you could come back after several hours, and have 1/2 of the new items already read for you. So you'd have to remember to put the reader on a quiet feed so it wouldn't do that. Argghh!!!!

It's truely frustrating when you have to manage the tools that are meant to help you manage your information. The Sauce Reader issue has been fixed, and now just a couple of bugs have to settle out from that...

SpamBayes is a different matter. It does what it's supposed to, and does it pretty well, (filter spam) but those notifications are killing me... I'll probably have to add a new layer into the system to pre-filter spam (ugh) and add rules into Outlook/Exchange to pre-filter common spam messages into a separate folder so they miss my inbox, but it would be nice to just set something up so that it could capture my mail, filter out the spam so I could no about the good positives, and check the negatives once a day or week.

Enough... This rant is contributing to overload. Just a thought to other developers *not* to contribute to information overload when developing information managment programs.

As I'm sitting here of a Friday night, waiting for a last minute process to finish so I can sign off work for the weekend (I am at home, thankfully), and I'm realizing it's going to be a quiet weeking because I don't have anything ready to play.

I've finished Doom 3, I didn't buy Halo 2 cause I didn't like the first one, and never got excited about FPS on consoles (except for Metroid, for some reason) I do have Half-life 2 preloaded and pre-purchased on my system, so I'm ready to play, and I have to wonder, why in the world do all these major video game releases come out on Tuesdays? Why not Thur, or Friday, or even Sat, when you can hunker down, and really enjoy it, and not have to stumble in to work or school bleary eyed the next day. Especially all these big 1st day (0 day, as crackers would put it) releases...

I've never understood it... It's not like Video Games have consistent street dates, like videos and music do (which is Tuesday) When a new Harry Potter novel comes out, that at least comes out on a Saturday so no one has to play hookey...

Ah well, see everyone next tuesday (or maybe not), maybe I'll play a little of the original Half Life since I've got it with my Half Life Silver Package (Even though I'll have Half Life: Source in a few days) Or maybe just read a good book

... and it's not mine. My wife recently got a Tablet PC from Acer. We shopped around, and it seemed to be the best Price/Performance/Feature/weight ratio.

All around, the Tablet PC is a pretty impressive little bundle. The tablet functionality is nice, and when you get over needing to write everything out, it's also a pretty nice little notebook. My wife is still learning how to use the tablet, then we'll whip up some OneNote template, and maybe some InfoPath forms, if applicable, the she can use at work.

And the really cool thing is that since it works with the wireless, it's always handy for checking the internet, and not having to run upstairs when watching TV, or playing a game in the Den. <grin>