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Daily Crap 2009-06-27

  1. My summer job is tutoring kids on how to make iPhone applications. The instructor and my co-TA disagree, but I think Objective C is a much better language than C++.
  2. I'm reading a borrowed copy of "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!".

  3. I loved Jason Scott's Super Mario Presentation 64 back when he posted it in April. The highlights for me:

    • Levels in most games are throw-away locales that you never see again once you leave. SM64's castle is your home base and has new things to learn about it and do with it every time you visit.
    • Mario Kart makes the game harder for good players because the goal is to make the game fun, not force players to get better at it. I'm pretty good at the 'Kart games and can beat most people consistently, so there is still a little skill involved, though.
      • It's mentioned in The Humane Interface that game user interfaces have the opposite goal of other user interfaces – games make completing goals harder for the user by obscuring solutions and making them difficult to carry out even when they're known. It reminds me of the first Myst, where you could proceed immediately to the end-game after you'd beaten it once by entering the fireplace code.
    • Everything you do in SM64 has a reward, even standing still (which rewards you with idle animations).
    • The first thin Jason's friend does in a racing game is try to turn around. If he can't, he stops playing.

Posted Jun 27, 2009, in the afternoon.

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