My last post was all about Youtube Poops, a subject dear to my heart, and to its credit contained the phrase "artificial flamingo cloaca," but it was so long that I'm not sure any of my zero readers got all the way through it.
So I thought I'd present you, in addition, with a Pooper whose work is unironically great, hence this post's title. igiulamam makes music videos, most of which feature Dr. Robotnik of the Sonic series revealing a softer side of himself. His most recent is Planet Freedom, but Robotnik's Tea Party and It's From the Show are not to be missed.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Youtube Poop: The new unit of human creativity.
If ideas can be thought of as organisms, and the Internet a breeding ground, then what stands out about the environment is its lack of pressures. If you're a proto-giraffe in pre-Africa and you want to munch on some ur-leaves, you'd better grow a neck right-quick or you're not gonna make it.
But ideas, which typically thrive on reception, can survive - or, at least, exist, without being received. For an example, take this blog. Or, rather, don't, because by actually reading this blog, you'll considerably undermine my point, which is predicated on this blog having zero readers.
Yes, it's a philosophical minefield for those of us who construct arguments that immediately collapse under the weight of their own absurdity, but even we have a forum, whether it's here on Blogger, over there in Twitter, or far off in the artificial flamingo cloaca known as Youtube.
Often, this environment leads to the rise of ideas that, although they have the adaptive features to survive, simply wouldn't thrive in a harsher environment. The Lonely Island comedy troupe, for example, who were snatched up wholly by Saturday Night Live, are certainly funny and relatable enough to thrive in a nationally broadcast show, but they got their start, and their acclaim, on the internet. Also: furries. No, a sexual fetish for cartoon animals is not universal, but it is comprehensible and you'd be pretty behind the times if you didn't know by now what a furry was. You couldn't have, apropos of nothing, launched a Lonely Island or a Furry television program, but the internet gave them an environment without predators.
And of course, the internet provides an environment for ideas that, no matter how strong they might become, simply aren't adapted to a wider audience. And here we come to Youtube Poops, a phenomenon that deliberately rejects the notion of mainstream acceptance by virtue of its mere name. People can have serious, mainstream discussions over whether video games are art (they're not, by the way. They're experience, which is higher than art), but they can't do the same for something whose very genre contains the word "poop".
Youtube Poops are basically video and audio mash-ups, except without the concern for form and sense that the name "mash-up" implies. Poopers grab audio and video from any source they see fit(though there is a body of "canon" pooping material) and the result, on the whole, can be described as "Like Tim & Eric Awesome Show, except kind of weird."
[Translation Notes: Tim & Eric Awesome Show is already extremely weird]
Take NORMAN for example. It's a bit like... if the plot of the original episode were a person, and that person were exposed to a great deal of radiation. All the parts are still there, and relate to each other in much the same way, but the whole is altered terribly. And that one's in the top 50% of Youtube Poops as far as comprehensibility goes. Edging into the low end, there's LAST FEW POOPS MASHED ACID SHIT, by the same author, which has four previous Poops arranged in a square and running simultaneously.
And you have to ask yourself, why was this made? As entertainment, it's useless, even for people who would appreciate all four Poops on their own. The answer, partly, was that it was easy to make, but even that doesn't answer the basic question. And what of My Boy for 10 MINUTES, NO EDITS? It's based on a Youtube Poop standby, in which the King of Hyrule says "my boy" in the same ridiculous voice he says everything, but why ten minutes? Why eleven thousand views and five stars?
I posit that a Youtube Poop of this calibur represents the smallest measurable unit of human creative energy - that point where the will to create just barely results in action. And furthermore, that all future creative endeavors be measured in relation to this basic unit. "My Boy for 10 MINUTES, NO EDITS" is exactly one poop, and a larger, more labor-intensive, and bolder endeavor, like Citizen Kane, is, let's say, three mega-poops.
Well, this was a productive little piece, wasn't it? We (I) invented a way to measure human creativity. But to place us back on the original tack of this article for a moment, I'd like to point out that, although the mainstream isn't ready for Youtube Poops yet, it's almost ready. Tim and Eric or Wonder Showzen are almost as weird as some of the more sensible poops; perhaps it's just a matter of time.
Permitting ourselves to enjoy weirder and more abstract entertainment is no idle pastime; the less we demand that creative minds bow and bend to the objective truth of reality, the deeper we allow them to delve into the roiling chaos of how the mind experiences that reality. Like a Youtube Poop, our minds echo with words, flicker back and forth between moments and memories, inputs and ideas. There's something of value in that kind of expression, and Poopers are slouching towards it in a thousand different directions.
But ideas, which typically thrive on reception, can survive - or, at least, exist, without being received. For an example, take this blog. Or, rather, don't, because by actually reading this blog, you'll considerably undermine my point, which is predicated on this blog having zero readers.
Yes, it's a philosophical minefield for those of us who construct arguments that immediately collapse under the weight of their own absurdity, but even we have a forum, whether it's here on Blogger, over there in Twitter, or far off in the artificial flamingo cloaca known as Youtube.
Often, this environment leads to the rise of ideas that, although they have the adaptive features to survive, simply wouldn't thrive in a harsher environment. The Lonely Island comedy troupe, for example, who were snatched up wholly by Saturday Night Live, are certainly funny and relatable enough to thrive in a nationally broadcast show, but they got their start, and their acclaim, on the internet. Also: furries. No, a sexual fetish for cartoon animals is not universal, but it is comprehensible and you'd be pretty behind the times if you didn't know by now what a furry was. You couldn't have, apropos of nothing, launched a Lonely Island or a Furry television program, but the internet gave them an environment without predators.
And of course, the internet provides an environment for ideas that, no matter how strong they might become, simply aren't adapted to a wider audience. And here we come to Youtube Poops, a phenomenon that deliberately rejects the notion of mainstream acceptance by virtue of its mere name. People can have serious, mainstream discussions over whether video games are art (they're not, by the way. They're experience, which is higher than art), but they can't do the same for something whose very genre contains the word "poop".
Youtube Poops are basically video and audio mash-ups, except without the concern for form and sense that the name "mash-up" implies. Poopers grab audio and video from any source they see fit(though there is a body of "canon" pooping material) and the result, on the whole, can be described as "Like Tim & Eric Awesome Show, except kind of weird."
[Translation Notes: Tim & Eric Awesome Show is already extremely weird]
Take NORMAN for example. It's a bit like... if the plot of the original episode were a person, and that person were exposed to a great deal of radiation. All the parts are still there, and relate to each other in much the same way, but the whole is altered terribly. And that one's in the top 50% of Youtube Poops as far as comprehensibility goes. Edging into the low end, there's LAST FEW POOPS MASHED ACID SHIT, by the same author, which has four previous Poops arranged in a square and running simultaneously.
And you have to ask yourself, why was this made? As entertainment, it's useless, even for people who would appreciate all four Poops on their own. The answer, partly, was that it was easy to make, but even that doesn't answer the basic question. And what of My Boy for 10 MINUTES, NO EDITS? It's based on a Youtube Poop standby, in which the King of Hyrule says "my boy" in the same ridiculous voice he says everything, but why ten minutes? Why eleven thousand views and five stars?
I posit that a Youtube Poop of this calibur represents the smallest measurable unit of human creative energy - that point where the will to create just barely results in action. And furthermore, that all future creative endeavors be measured in relation to this basic unit. "My Boy for 10 MINUTES, NO EDITS" is exactly one poop, and a larger, more labor-intensive, and bolder endeavor, like Citizen Kane, is, let's say, three mega-poops.
Well, this was a productive little piece, wasn't it? We (I) invented a way to measure human creativity. But to place us back on the original tack of this article for a moment, I'd like to point out that, although the mainstream isn't ready for Youtube Poops yet, it's almost ready. Tim and Eric or Wonder Showzen are almost as weird as some of the more sensible poops; perhaps it's just a matter of time.
Permitting ourselves to enjoy weirder and more abstract entertainment is no idle pastime; the less we demand that creative minds bow and bend to the objective truth of reality, the deeper we allow them to delve into the roiling chaos of how the mind experiences that reality. Like a Youtube Poop, our minds echo with words, flicker back and forth between moments and memories, inputs and ideas. There's something of value in that kind of expression, and Poopers are slouching towards it in a thousand different directions.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Okay, this one's a for-real upgrade.
Scrolling this time. Walk to the right, and you'll quickly run off the edge of the grid. But! Press A to make a new column of blocks and extend the field of play into infinity.
(Infinity not supported in Flash Player 9)
http://trentburg.com/leveleditor4.html
I even got the Braid-style rewind (Press B) to work with the scrolling. Uh, sorta. It sometimes overshoots the beginning of the level if you rewind to the beginning. DEAL WITH IT.
(Infinity not supported in Flash Player 9)
http://trentburg.com/leveleditor4.html
I even got the Braid-style rewind (Press B) to work with the scrolling. Uh, sorta. It sometimes overshoots the beginning of the level if you rewind to the beginning. DEAL WITH IT.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Level Editor: Now with additional called-for functionality!
Okay, see those gray boxes up in the top left? I mean, you'll see them when you click the link. Those are brush buttons, like in Photoshop. Click on one, then paint on the grid. The top button is for full blocks, the middle one is for half-blocks (two-fifths, really) and the bottom one is for erasing. Yeah, it's all still very rough-looking. I'll get to that.
The point is, you can "paint" rather that clicking on each grid square.
http://trentburg.com/leveleditor2.html
Painting capability means fewer clicks for the user! Fewer clicks means more time to manufacture counterfeit drugs. Not that you would do that, of course. Never you.
The point is, you can "paint" rather that clicking on each grid square.
http://trentburg.com/leveleditor2.html
Painting capability means fewer clicks for the user! Fewer clicks means more time to manufacture counterfeit drugs. Not that you would do that, of course. Never you.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Time to stop being productive and bitch about something
I want to buy Episode 5 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People on the PC. It looks neat.
Can't buy it, though. I can't buy it because there's no option to buy the episodes separately. I could buy the whole season, but I don't want to. This seems deliberate; I can buy the Sam and Max episodes separately, but not the Strong Bad ones. I want to think I'm jumping the gun, the way I'm about to condemn Telltale for this, but if they were going to offer the option to guy the last episode separately, you'd think they'd do it on release day.
Is it just me, or does this sort of defeat the player-side value proposition of episodic gaming? You guys get to make them at a comfortable pace, but I don't get to buy them at a comfortable pace.
What's the bottom-line argument for this decision? No really, is this saving/making you money, Telltale? Because if so, and I really mean this, no harm/no foul. Or is this an experiment for you, seeing if the money lost by not letting me and my budget-conscious ilk just buy one episode is greater or lesser than the money gained from the people who are willing to shell out a little bit more to round out the whole season?
If so, I'm curious as to what your findings will be. Again, I'm serious. I happen to think it'll be a sour sign for episodic gaming if it proves unavoidably profitable to force people to buy whole-season packs.
Can't buy it, though. I can't buy it because there's no option to buy the episodes separately. I could buy the whole season, but I don't want to. This seems deliberate; I can buy the Sam and Max episodes separately, but not the Strong Bad ones. I want to think I'm jumping the gun, the way I'm about to condemn Telltale for this, but if they were going to offer the option to guy the last episode separately, you'd think they'd do it on release day.
Is it just me, or does this sort of defeat the player-side value proposition of episodic gaming? You guys get to make them at a comfortable pace, but I don't get to buy them at a comfortable pace.
What's the bottom-line argument for this decision? No really, is this saving/making you money, Telltale? Because if so, and I really mean this, no harm/no foul. Or is this an experiment for you, seeing if the money lost by not letting me and my budget-conscious ilk just buy one episode is greater or lesser than the money gained from the people who are willing to shell out a little bit more to round out the whole season?
If so, I'm curious as to what your findings will be. Again, I'm serious. I happen to think it'll be a sour sign for episodic gaming if it proves unavoidably profitable to force people to buy whole-season packs.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Level Editor: This one was inspired by Blow
Now you can press B to reverse time, Braid-style. It only affects the player character.
As I expected, this was really easy to do. This is actually a "Braid lite" sort of system, in that it doesn't keep track of time you spend sitting still or time spent outside of the stage. So if you jump on a block, wait for five minutes, and reverse time, you'll immediately jump back instead of having to wait five minutes to get to your last action. Similarly, if you fall off the stage, no matter how long you wait, pressing B will immediately start you back at the point you left the stage and begin reversing from there.
Here it is.
This was a totally uncalled-for bit of functionality, but I can't stop myself. What will I do next?
I know! I'll hold a reader contest to determine what I'll do next! All you have to do is be the first reader!
And I mean the first reader ever. Like, in the history of this blog.
See, the joke is that nobody reads this thing. Ta-dah!
As I expected, this was really easy to do. This is actually a "Braid lite" sort of system, in that it doesn't keep track of time you spend sitting still or time spent outside of the stage. So if you jump on a block, wait for five minutes, and reverse time, you'll immediately jump back instead of having to wait five minutes to get to your last action. Similarly, if you fall off the stage, no matter how long you wait, pressing B will immediately start you back at the point you left the stage and begin reversing from there.
Here it is.
This was a totally uncalled-for bit of functionality, but I can't stop myself. What will I do next?
I know! I'll hold a reader contest to determine what I'll do next! All you have to do is be the first reader!
And I mean the first reader ever. Like, in the history of this blog.
See, the joke is that nobody reads this thing. Ta-dah!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Level Editor v2
I updated the level editor. Now! Decent, albeit a little hacky, collision, a reset button (the R key), and Awesomeface has utterly lost the Seven Fathom Boots, and by default doesn't have the Cape of Superfly. You can press S to toggle infinite double jumps on and off.
As I make more versions I guess I'll link them instead of throwing them right on the blog.
As I make more versions I guess I'll link them instead of throwing them right on the blog.
I Flashed up a level editor
In Reno, just to watch it level edit.
Well, what I really made is a grid full of squares you can click on and a little Awesomeface guy that can interact with them when you do. Also, there's two "dimensions" you can switch between and build levels in. I'm making a quick 2D level prototyping tool for myself, and in time I intend to make it a lot richer than this, which represents a brief evening's work.
Controls:
Right Arrow, Left Arrow: Horizontal movement.
Up Arrow: Jump.
Shift Button: Switch dimensions. As you build environments, you'll see that each one is preserved when you switch back to it.
Notes:
This tool stars Awesomeface in the role of the protagonist. Due to lazy collision programming, Awesomeface is always equipped with two mystical relics that give him special powers:
The Magical Cape of Superfly, which lets Awesomeface jump at any time, whether or not he's in contact with the ground, and
The Seven Fathom Boots, which let Awesomeface scale any vertical wall; simply by walking into a wall, Awesomeface will instantly appear at the top of it.
Well, what I really made is a grid full of squares you can click on and a little Awesomeface guy that can interact with them when you do. Also, there's two "dimensions" you can switch between and build levels in. I'm making a quick 2D level prototyping tool for myself, and in time I intend to make it a lot richer than this, which represents a brief evening's work.
Controls:
Right Arrow, Left Arrow: Horizontal movement.
Up Arrow: Jump.
Shift Button: Switch dimensions. As you build environments, you'll see that each one is preserved when you switch back to it.
Notes:
This tool stars Awesomeface in the role of the protagonist. Due to lazy collision programming, Awesomeface is always equipped with two mystical relics that give him special powers:
The Magical Cape of Superfly, which lets Awesomeface jump at any time, whether or not he's in contact with the ground, and
The Seven Fathom Boots, which let Awesomeface scale any vertical wall; simply by walking into a wall, Awesomeface will instantly appear at the top of it.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Auntie Pixelante Watch: Edition Never
Well well well, look who comes out in favor of intelligent game criticism. It's Anna Anthropy, the self-described "all-purpose pervert" who's responsible for Mighty Jill Off and Calamity Annie.
She's plugging some thing or other called jmac's Arcade, which is nice enough, but then she drops this bomb on us: "jmac’s arcade is insightful and personal, and completely unlike the majority of videos of older games on the internet, which are interested in those games only so far as they can be sacrificed for a few cheap laughs and five minutes of fame for the author."
Well someone just lost her spot as the featured game creatrix on Episode 1 of my upcoming web series, "BadTrent Expresses Exaggerated, Artlessly Profane Rage at Indie Games"! Listen, Auntie Pixelante - if that is your real pseudonym - I don't think you quite understand how hard it is out there for people who like to get mad at videogames. Your whole gimmick is that you're a genuinely insightful, intelligent person. Good for you. But NOT ALL OF US HAVE THAT LUXURY.
She's plugging some thing or other called jmac's Arcade, which is nice enough, but then she drops this bomb on us: "jmac’s arcade is insightful and personal, and completely unlike the majority of videos of older games on the internet, which are interested in those games only so far as they can be sacrificed for a few cheap laughs and five minutes of fame for the author."
Well someone just lost her spot as the featured game creatrix on Episode 1 of my upcoming web series, "BadTrent Expresses Exaggerated, Artlessly Profane Rage at Indie Games"! Listen, Auntie Pixelante - if that is your real pseudonym - I don't think you quite understand how hard it is out there for people who like to get mad at videogames. Your whole gimmick is that you're a genuinely insightful, intelligent person. Good for you. But NOT ALL OF US HAVE THAT LUXURY.
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