Flip flopping like a fish out of water

It seems McCain and Pallin have never met an opinion they didn't like.

Having completely failed in their attempt to convince America that following in Bush's footsteps was "change."  They have changed their tune. 

Turns out change is *bad* according to the snippet of McCain speech I heard the other night.  All that change Obama wants? Its gonna hurt you. Really.  Stick to the status quo...

I have to admit there is ONE change from Bush to McCain.

Bush was a notably more convincing liar.

When not to use events

I've been doing a moderate amount of ActionScript/Flash CS3 coding lately and I've been learning a few things.

Many languages have facilities that seem on the surface to be cool ways to save time but that can hurt you badly if you don't understand where they should and shouldnt be used.  In Java, a common beginner's stumbling block of this sort is the reflecion API.  In AS3, it's event dispatchers.

Event dispatchers seem like a great general way to tie code together.  All you need do is declare an object's class as an EventDispatcher and anyone else can register with it to be notified of events.  This can be very handy HOWEVER it is key to realize that a an event dispatch is NOT the moral equivalent of a function call on the listener.  Making this mistake can cause no end of subtle errors.

What then is a difference?  Well, when an object's method makes a direct call to a method on another object, that call is synchronous.  The called method is executed immediately on the same call stack as the calling object.  As Flash CS3 is a single-threaded execution engine, this means that order of direct method calls is deterministic and predictable.

However, when  you dispatch an event, all that happens is that the event you dispatched is added to the event dispatcher's event queue.  That method invocation will not actually happen until the queue gets processed.  This will happen at some later time that is not under your control.  Event dispatches are asynchronous, which is to say their order is not entirely deterministic.

Different events dispatched to the same event queue will reliably get processed in the order they were dipatched in.  However, every instance of an event dispatching class has its own queue.  What order these queues are processed in in relation to each other is again, up to the execution engine and something you have no control over.

The upshot of all this is this, event dispatch in AS3 is fundementally asynchronous.  You should never use it for making calls to other code where there are requirements on the order in which such calls get executed.  Use a direct reference to a listening object instead.

If you follow this rule, then the single-threaded nature of AS3 will keep you from ever having to worry about race conditions leading to heisenbugs.  (A heisenbug is a bug that changes when you try to examine it and they are among the hardest to find and fix.)  Ignore this rule and I guarantee you will have exactly that.

Conan and the Rath of Empty Words

Well,

Today I quit Age of Conan.

I've been playing WAR.  Its not as pretty as AoC.  But the thing is, its a lot more fun.  I even enjoy the PvP in WAR and I'm a stolid cooperative gaming PvE type player.

Even so, i might've held out on AoC.  As I've blogged about before there was a  lot I liked about it, but in the end, its incompatent management made  my decision clear.

Godager was an ass.  He ignored his players preferring instead to produce sermons from the mountain.  He told us how wonderful his agme was while we were screaming at him about things that needed fixing.  Simple, obvious and easy fixes, like giving North America an official PvE RP server.  Over 600 users entered their names on a forum topic asking for this simple consideration.  Something that could have been done in a minute with an administrative command.  Instead, he chose to ignore those customers, refusing even to answer "no" to the request.

That was bad enough, but then he was replaced by Morrision.  Mr. Morrision has spent a huge amount of time talking to the press about the new, responsive attitude he is bringing.  The thing is, he seems to be spending so MUCH time talking to the press that, apparently, HE doesn't have the time to address the concerns of his PvE RP players either.

Being ignored by a company we were paying $15.00 a month to was bad enough, but heraring this *total* ass tell everyone how much he cares about the players' opinions and STILL being ignored is beyond insulting.

Morrison's latest proclimation that he will  win back his lost customers by word of mouth is the most laughably empty statement yet.  If you want to win back your customers, show you care enough to LISTEN to them.

When I hear you are treating PvE RP customers like real customers, I might think about coming back.  But not before.

I have this idea for a game....

So I see this question pretty often these days from people outside of the industry:

"I have a video game idea and I am wondering if anyone can provide any
insight where to begin. I know thousands of people say thay(sic) have good(sic)
game idea, but I really feel passionate that it can be successful."

Here's an answer. Its probably not the answer you want to hear, but its an answer:

Do you have money to spend on this?

As an experienced business person I hope your not surprised by this question. Ideas, are indeed, a dime a dozen and worth very little if anything at all on their own.

If you don't have your own money or don't have enough to fund the entire project you will need to get a publisher involved, A game studio with a good track record for delivering product can pitch an idea to a publisher, you will need more. You will need a demo that shows enough of the game to give the publisher confidence that you have the "chops" both technically and artistically to pull this off. You are asking them to make a pretty big money bet in your team's ability. They need confidence that its a good bet to make and they get that from either a track record or clear evidence of your team's talent.

If you really believe in this idea and have money to spend, you have two options. You can start a game company or you can hire a contract shop to do it. There are some *very* good contracting shops in this business but they don't come cheap.

If you decide to build a company the first thing you MUST hire is an experienced game producer. Think of this person like a general contractor. They know what has to happen to make this project successful-- you don't.

If you know friends with coding and art ability you could try to self-exploit and get them to help with the demo in return for a stake in the project. Most good people in this industry however have both too little time and too little money to take such fliers.

So here's your reality check. Ideas are a dime a dozen. If you have money or friends willing to donate their time you might be able to get this to demo level and then shop a publisher. But no one is going to give you money based just on your idea and personal conviction that its a "hit concept".

While we are at it

The same two britts explain the Iraq war clearer then our government ever has....

George Parr on the Iraq War

This speaks to a truth I learned the year I lived in Italy. I had a better idea of what was really going on in the US reading european newspapers then I ever had before or since from the American media. Our entire world view from inside the US is juandiced and fed us through a tightly controlled media. And if you don't get out of the country and see it from the outside, you can easily live your whole life without realizing it.

The sad fact of the sub-prime market...

... is that the British were already making fun of it back in february. THEY could see the absurdity clearly.

A sub-prime primmer.

Note that they also predicted that, when the whole thing collapsed, their pet politicians would tell the common tax-payer that the bail-out was for their own good.

Debate Follies

Well, I watched the vice presidential debate last night. It was the first time I had really seen Sarah Palin speak. My reaction can be best summed up by quoting Bugs Bunny:
"I like her, she's funny!"

Some classic Palin quotes from the debates that I caught follow below....

On the Fiscal Crisis:
"There is a toxic mess on main street that is poisoning wall street."

See what happens when you don't curb your dog?

On how she and John Mccain might run the country:
"There have been big blunders in the past administration, as there are in any administration."

It's nice to know where she sets the bar for their performance.

On what the common man wants from their government:
"How the average man views the inaction of government ... 'Just get out of my way.'"

So all the government needs to do is "get out of the way." No action needed! (I actually, I'd agree with that except that didn't seem to be what she was *trying* to say or she never would have brought it up as something to 'change.')

On the plight of the middle class:
"Your wife was a teacher, her reward is in heaven."

I guess she and Mccain feel middle class teachers don't need earthly rewards.

On diversity:
"I have a very diverse family, people from all political persuasions."

I didn't know that "diversity" means a bunch of WASPs who don't all agree.

On the distribution of wealth in America:
"Fight for the average middle class family like mine."

Apparently she thinks that, in 2001, the average middle class American made more then $80,000 and got to live in a mansion for free. Maybe she meant she'd fight for the average, middle class governor's family. After all, she didn't get a jet like many governors do.