[Core War]

Then there's always Core War.

This is the definitive game in the genre.

I'm also working on a programming game myself.

Also, there are some monitors that come with the ability to rotate them vertically. Having a monitor rotated vertically is becoming very popular among programmers.

I can say from personal experience that such monitors are terrible. I had one; It was buggy, unwieldy and all around inconvenient. I'm anal enough about the precise positioning of my static monitor, I can't even imagine fiddling with a rotating one. What if I can't get it straight?

I would love to see a developer produce a game that is made to be played on a widescreen monitor/TV that has been turned on its side. (a super-vertical shmup)

...why not just make it a horizontal shmup?

Evolutionary processes typically use a combination of mutation, crossover (which certainly isn't random) and introduction of new population members. I think it's as wrong to describe it as 'random' as it is to describe it as 'tweaking'. But 'tweaking' was a nice general term to describe the small changes that are typically made on each iteration.

I strongly disagree. Crossover, by which I presume you mean the combining of two genes into one as in sexual reproduction, is just an additional mechanism in sexually reproducing species, not universal to evolution itself; There are plenty of asexual organisms with no such quality. Exhaustive evolution requires completely random changes. Otherwise, all possibilities would not be explored. If you "tweak" genes in only specific ways by an algorithm, there exist parts of the search space such a system never explores.

That's not to say you can't use sexual reproduction to accelerate evolution, but doing only that leads to local optima that is difficult to break out of.

You need to know how to 'tweak' a potential solution to make lots of similar, but different, solutions.

Evolution doesn't work by "tweaking", it works by randomly mutating. That's a very important difference. If you 'tweak' with an algorithm you run into problems with hill-climbing local optima. The changes should be random to break out of that.

I've been watching Lexx. It's hilarious in its retro-ness, but I can see how it would have been the bomb in 1997.

Please say this is going to be a game

Oh I'm sorry, you have the wrong thread. This is pixel art, not mockups.

Shut up, it counts.

Solaris

The book's a lot better; In fact, Stanislaw Lem is my favorite sci-fi writer. (from, you know, back when I read books)

Starship Troopers [...] But WTF happened with the sequel? It's WORSE than what Uve Boll could have made!

Agreed - just downright awful.


Mad Max is not science fiction, it's post-apocalypse.

[Stargate Universe]

There's always Stargate Universe.

Alien: Resurrection, Starship Troopers, classic movies. (the prior 3 Alien movies are a bit outdated. Do not watch the first unless you want an epileptic seizure!)

Anyone who has not watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, get out of this thread.

Oddly enough, I'd-a thought to have more but... no. Depressing lack of good sci-fi, none of this Jedi powers pew pew lasers make sound in a vacuum crap.

Of course there's books two generations down and now games as the modern format; Plenty of sci-fi there.

I'm trying to remember the name of a mac game from the 90's. It was a 2d side view of a field and you played as a frog that had to eat all the bugs on the screen to progress. You had to dodge a snake, mole with dynamite, car and lightening. There was also a wasp that would switch between being red and yellow and you could only eat it in it's yellow/calm state. I think you could also shoot water drops but I can't really remember... I think it was called something like "Kojo the Frog" but I can't find anything called that. 

I remember now, it was Koji the Frog!

Apparently the developer released a Windows version at some point, but it's not on his site anymore.

Jeez, that was a long read.

I hate singing. I'm a composer myself and I think that if you need words on top of the music to explain what emotion it's supposed to evoke, you're a bad composer. This is so analogous to what the OP said I'm a little stumped.

Music transpires traditional sensory input. It's not a definitive language. It's not a type of input that exists in nature. It's a sequence of patterns of sound that makes you feel something that does not exist, or recall something that does by cultural association. To have no music just seems wrong, it's like being deprived of one of your senses. Like a game without image, or without sound. You might equally well argue that a truly masterfully made game doesn't need picture either - but that's not the point; The point is that music is as much part of the nonexistent experience we're seeking as the simulated virtual reality, designed characters or fantastic storyline.

When I played Half-Life as a kid, the music was off. Not intentionally, but in retrospect the cd-in wire from the disc drive might not have been plugged into the motherboard (well, there's a relevant trivia for the thread ). So I actually experienced HL without any crafted music, which certainly makes me think back in light of this thread. I do feel that some scenes in media feel too forced by the introduction of music that clashes with what I'm actually experiencing... But I'm not so convinced music as an art form is to blame so much as just bad design or composition. Most of Half-Life 2 (which I played through with the music on) seemed appropriate and immersive. Like the timing of silence in a joke, a subtle, skillfully included piece of music makes an experience that much richer.

I enjoyed the ambient wasteland tracks in Fallout 3 as much as the in-world radio. One of the Rayman games had music that the characters could hear, but didn't have a source; That was pretty interesting. Think, background music as normal, except in-world characters react to it (dance in this case) as if it was in-world, even when it clearly wasn't. I can't name any games or movies off the top of my head that didn't have music but I'm sure I've watched some. They're an appreciated reprieve from my usually musically saturated world, but I wouldn't go great lengths without any music at all.

The bottom line is a matter of taste. There's nothing more repulsive like some hollywood blockbuster movie that shoves sad music in your face in a sad scene, or a comedy with prerecorded laughs as if you lacked any sense of humor yourself and needed other people to signal you when to chuckle. But I also couldn't imagine games like Portal 2 and StarCraft 2 without their very impressive soundtracks that form images of science and space in my mind.

I'm two-spirited and bisexual. What's two-spirited, you ask? I have the capacity to be both genders, like two sexes crammed in one body; I think in half man, half woman.

I designed some cards for the lulz.

Yeah, try to play against registered players with a higher rank. It's surprising how polite and professional they get up the curve.

With web development, I try to stay Agile and develop with TDD to give me some form of direction

This is probably why you're lacking in direction. For something as complex as a video game, you can't really just make it bit by bit. I design the whole thing through and through before I even touch a compiler.

Granted, it's slow. In fact, I've yet to release a game. But I certainly have direction.

I also come from a web dev background. Other than that, I just play a lot of games and think about how they're implemented.

Abysmal performance; Crysis 2 ran infinitely smoother and I'm pretty sure it looked better, too. Horrible frame rate, screen tearing, texture pop-in, unresponsive controls, nauseatingly low field of vision... Endured maybe five minutes then uninstalled all 20 gigs of it.

I've been playing Dominion Online for about two months now (playing the game offline with real cards is more fun ofc) and I've only had one occasion of someone quitting on me (that I can recall). http://dominion.isotropic.org/

Ha, me too. We should play sometime; You should add me on an IM network.

We're focussing on the military aspect so far. I'm one of those guys who's more interested in base building than raising/commanding armies.

For a healthy mix of both, look into Moonbase Commander. It's quite interesting; It's turn-based strategy with no units (all base-building) but it also includes precision and dexterity mechanics.

I'm thinking... I'm not playing a Java game.

It's legitimate feedback.

Ugly but functional. From me, that's a compliment.