The World According to John

Some life still left in my blog :)

2010-02-19T12:58:00.004-05:00

Some updates to my favorite games not in my earlier post: (add this to my last post!)

Warlords (2600)

Omega (C64)

Modem Wars (C64)

Rise of the Triad (PC)

Total Anihalation (PC)

Battlefield 1942 (PC)

Steel Battalion (Xbox)

Steel Battalion: Line of Contact (Xbox)

BZFlag (PC)

Games I strongly enjoyed (until I finished them or moved on to something better):

Conquest of the World (O2)

Star Wars Jedi Outcast (PC)

Star Wars Ject Knight (PC)

Doom 1 and 2 (PC)

Command and Conquer (PC)

Warcraft 2 (PC)

Quake II (PC)

Baldar's Gate: Dark Alliance (GC)

Tron 2.0 (PC)

Biggest hits with my kids:

Animal Crossing (GC)

Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii)

Marble Madness (Wii)

Burnout Series (Xbox)

Sphinx (GC)

Tomb Rader Aniversary (PS2)

Lego Star Wars (PC)

Lego Batman (PC)

Lego Indiana Jones (PC)

Wii Fit / Wii Fot Plus (Wii)

Lifetime Video Gamer - List of Favorites

2009-01-26T14:49:00.002-05:00

I havent't posted for a long time, so I thought it would be fun to post this...

Arcade:
Galaga
Warlords
Sinistar

First Generation Consoles:
Atari 2600 - Adventure (mostly due to the secret Easter egg hidden by its author Warren Robinett)
Odyssey 2 - Quest for the Ring (the very first Board/video game combo)

Home Computers:
Commodore 64 - Modem Wars (first ever multiplayer RTS)
Arati 800 - Ultima III
Early PC - Mechwarrior 2
Modern PC - Half Life 2
Multiplayer PC - Tribes

Last Generation Consoles:
PS2 - Shadow of the Colossus
XBOX - Star Wars Battlefromt Series
GameCube - Star Wars Rogue Squadron Series
GameBoy Advance - Metroid Zero Mission

Current Generation:
XBOX 360 - Mirrors Edge
Wii - Boom Blox

Now Playing:
XBOX 360 - Ace Combat 6
XBOX 360 - Portal
XBOX 360 - Mirrors Edge

Robots, Joysticks and Simulators!

2007-12-17T10:11:00.000-05:00

Latest additcion = games with BIG controllers and Robots:

Ace Combat 6 - XBOX360

Steel Battalion XBOX x2 (using system link)

There is something about the added complexity that makes the game more real! I was addicted to Activisions Mechwarrior 2 in the middle 90's and Steel Battalion brings me back, not to mention that it is the next best thing to the Arcade Battletech simulators. Having been an Avionics Technician (AT) back in my Navy days, being attracted to games like this comes as no suprise.

Thanks to e-bay, I have 2 Steel Batallion controlers and two old XBOX systems networked together running in system link mode running the add-on called "Line of Contact".

I'm also excited about my latest toy: RoboQuad

My last robot toy i-Cybie was cool but it was blind as a bat. (purchased several but all are now in a box along with all of the custom power adapters and charging stations - I even have some software where they can use coded personality cartriges.) These were nice for their time but had a short rechargable battery life from 15 to 35 minutes.

RoboQuad is more advanced. It scans the room and can see objects and determine the best place to go. My kids and I have run it for at least 4 or 5 hours and the batteries are still going strong! It reminds me of something from Star Wars and even sounds like R2D2. I highly recommend this "Toy" for any geek who grew up hoping that robots would be as common as cars. We are almost there!

Why I switched to consoles from PC’s

2007-01-18T13:52:00.000-05:00

I am a video game-aholic. I’ve been addicted since the early 70’s (the first time I played pong on a friends TV). Growing up with this addiction has exposed me to most video games platforms ever marketed. From the first home pong systems and countless hours lost in smoky video arcades to home consoles like the Atari 2600, Maxnavox Odyssey2, Intellivision and the 1st Nentindo NES on and on up through the current cluster of GameCube, Playstation2, Xbox, Xavix Port and the even newer Xbox360 and Wii systems. Throw into this mix Gameboy Advance SP, building my own Arcade cabinets and purchasing a ton of those TV plug and play $20 joystick thingy’s.

In 1985 I purchased my fist computer Commodore 64 computer system and decided then and there that computer gaming was where it was at. I moved to the PC platform (386) after some time working as a computer repairman in 1992. I’ve been a strong PC gamer throughout the birth of games with more than 4 colors, 5.25” to 3.5” floppies, Hard drives, CD Rom Drives, the birth and explosion of shareware companies (ID, Apogee, Epic, 3D realms), FMV, 3D graphics, FPS, RTS, network multiplayer, the internet and MMO’s. I loved my computer games, but throughout this experience I had many challenges, operating systems changing, hardware requirements changing, driver updates, game patching, firmware upgrades etc… with each new iteration of my PC, older games were being lost because the newer hardware/software platforms no longer supported them. My shelves were growing heavy with games I never had the time to finish before a newer game forced an upgrade making the older game obsolete. If I got nostalgic I would feverishly search for a patch or even go as far as building an older system just to play it on. Needless to say this was becoming very expensive.

Going through all of this, I finally realized that I was spending more time (and money) tweaking my PC to actually run and install these games than I was spending playing them… This made me a pretty good PC support guy but I was missing out on all of the fun inside these games. Over time and after having kids, my free time became very limited and if I got two hours once a week to play a game, I didn’t want to spend 1.5 hours of that just installing/upgrading and tweaking my system. I also noticed that many of the newer games also game out on console platforms at the exact time as the PC release.

Once I put two and two together, I decided that consoles gave me the same fun experience without 99% of the aggravation. I am now actually finishing games. They boot up in moments, play just and smooth (if not better) than their PC counterparts since all consoles are the same hardware, the programmers squeeze every ounce of performance out of them completely optimizing them for the console hardware. Newer consoles have hard drives so you can now save your game anywhere just like on the PC. In reality, today’s consoles are simply PC’s repackaged and optimized for pure gaming, They come with a 3 to 5 year life span in which you can play all of the latest games without upgrading. They eliminate all of the hardware, driver headaches and maximize on all of the game play and fun. Oh, and one more thing… I can get an entire console system including all of the bells and whistles for less than the cost of the latest and greatest PC video card upgrade!

Sure PC games are bleeding edge. This bleeding edge (which is much narrower now more than ever) comes at a great cost in both money and in time lost. I would rather give up this small edge, for more time to enjoy and play the games rather than getting lost in the system hardware, software installation, drivers and configuration.

Zacarias Moussaoui deserves to suffer…

2006-05-04T10:39:00.000-04:00

It makes me angry that he didn’t get the death penalty! It seems that we live in a time where a group of Americans that despise America are finding creative ways to bring the rest of us down (can you say liberals?). All it takes is to have one of these idiots on your jury and you can avoid just punishment for your crimes. They are willing to spare the life of creatures like Moussaoui and are just as happy to stand by and gloat over the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans. I had no idea that things were getting this bad.

Life in prison today is like a lifetime membership to a country club. You get to watch TV, eat full meals, sleep on a soft bed, read, study, get a GED and go to college, learn a trade, work a job, have access to a gym, go outside, send and receive mail, use the internet, make friends, listen to music, smoke and play video games.

Okay, its time for the rest of us to be creative. If we must accept that liberals are going to screw us out of a just penalty like death, then I say we work on changing the way prisons for those who do the worst of crimes are operated. I say we work on creating a special prison for evil people that is like a ‘Hell on earth’. I say we call this prison complex HELL! We need to construct a place that makes your life so unbearable that you’ll consider it a fate worse than death! I think we can all be happy sending losers like Moussaoui to HELL.

Some creative ideas for a HELL Prison complex:

* Rough dark walls made of jagged rock.

* No windows. Extremely dim lighting.

* Alternating temperatures that never go below 110F for one week and never above 46F for the other.

* Rooms not much bigger than graves (6x6x6 sounds good) , when you are in your cell you get coffin to sleep in.

* Loud screams and the sounds of babies crying are always playing 24 hours a day at the highest possible volume that ensures that you will not go deaf so you can enjoy these sounds for the rest of your life.

* An extremely loud siren or buzzer goes off at random with no intermission longer than 7 minutes to startle you out of any sleep or rest you are attempting to get.

* Food will consist of insects only. Liquid consists of animal blood (pig blood sounds like a good choice.)

* You never leave your grave sized cell; meals are slid under the door once every 3 days.

* You get nothing, no belongings, no human contact, no cloths, no showers, and one hole for a toilet.

* You are gassed to sleep if the prison guards need to move you or treat you, you’ll never know when or how often this happens since you won’t remember anything.

I think we can all agree that if prison was this bad, it would truly be a deterrent and that it would bring true justice to those who deserve to be there. A long life here in HELL is worse than death!

Pinball Dreams!

2006-03-28T08:37:00.000-05:00

For the last few years somewhere just before spring, I get inspired to build something. This year is no different. This year, I chose to build a pinball machine. Inspired by Visual Pinball, and the growing hobby to build arcade machines based on M.A.M.E. (multiple arcade machine emulator) I decided that Visual Pinball needed to have a machine built around it. Playing pinball on a PC is fun but it was missing that real arcade feeling. Having already built two arcade cabinets for my home I decided that no arcade was complete without a full-blown pinball machine.

I wanted the machine to look like a pinball machine so I searched ebay for a set of pinball machine legs. I found a set for $8! I found some pinball shipping diagrams on the web and was able to determine the exact dimensions of a typical pinball table. I quickly diagramed it out to determine the materials I’d need from the hardware store on a budget of about $150.00 (not counting the computer and monitor).

Once I had the materials and a borrowed circular saw I started to put it all together. It took less than 3 hours to completely assemble and a few more hours to paint (3 coats).

You can read more about it here (www.tacticalneuronics.com)

My place in History

2006-03-06T09:01:00.003-05:00

It's now official. My early games from the 90's are being memorialized on a web site dedicated to CLassic DOS Games! Out of the 5 DOS games I wrote and released as Shareware in the 90's, the one I'm most proud of is a game called 'The Dungeons of Grimlor II'. This game was inspired by games I was downloading (and playing) off the the local BBS's (pre-internet) that were written by Apogee, ID and Epic Megagames. I am very honored to have my works placed on a web site dedicated to works of these great game making giants! I tip my hat to the webmaster of this web site for the work he is doing to keep the memory of all of these old games alive.

They have a complete list of every DOS game I made including their full registered versions online and available for download.

Republicans vs. Democrats

2005-12-06T08:51:00.000-05:00

This is yet another classic world according to John moment. I am a Republican. There I’ve said it. Not many people who write their opinions in today’s media actually admit their alignment. Statistics show that 80% of those who work for today’s press are *not* republican. I’m always amused at the lengths they go to in order to *hide* their affiliation with the left. They want you to think that they are thoughtfully impartial why they spew out the latest Democratic Party talking points.

To enlighten those who wonder what makes me (a Republican) tick, I’d like to make it simple:

I believe that Republicans (conservatives) tend to gravitate toward issues that take a stand against evil and toward issues that stand up for the innocent. Democrats (liberals) tend to gravitate to the other end of the spectrum. They seem to gravitate toward issues that take no stand for the innocent and they tend to stand up for evil.

Here are some simple examples:

Republicans: for the death penalty (if you commit terrible evil crimes, you need to die)
Democrats: for saving the lives of evil criminals on death row.

Republicans: against abortion. (Abortion kills innocent lives, makes babies the victim without a voice).
Democrats: for abortion on demand. They care nothing for the millions of babies murdered in the process.

Republicans: for the war on terror. They want to stand up against evil. Even if it isn’t the most popular thing to do.
Democrats: against the war on terror. More interested in being popular or at least not singled out. They’re like the quiet kid on the playground who will not stand up to a bully picking on the new kid. They would prefer to stand quietly in the background, hoping to be invisible so the bully will not choose them as their next target.

Some liberals may see my thinking as too black and white. They like to hide in the grey areas of every argument. They like to use this cloud to hide their movements as they slip from one side to the other (whichever side is most popular – or safest). The grey makes it easy to make excuses and feel sorry for those who do evil. I believe it comes from a deep rooted guilt that they have for doing things that they aren’t proud of, and leaves them room to hope that they can be accepted. I believe that they secretly hope someone will make excuses for them when the time comes. It is a way to escape responsibility for their own actions.

Republicans believe in responsibility. If you do wrong, you pay a price. If you do nothing in the face of evil, you pay a price (can you say WWII France…) If you do not try, you fail. If you surround yourself with bad people, your likely to become a their victim. If you work, you get paid. If you try really hard, you are respected. If you have an opinion, you express it. If you have a belief, you stand by it. If you see someone in need, you help them. If you quit, you loose. It is that simple.

Is there a God? Creation vs. Evolution

2005-11-30T08:44:00.000-05:00

This is a classic World According to John moment. I am growing tired of all of the people falling all over themselves in their attempts to justify either side of this argument. Consider this, perhaps the truth may lie somewhere in between!

To me it’s so obvious. I am a programmer; we have the power to create worlds. Inside of a computer we can define rules and parameters that our worlds follow. We create intelligent objects that exist within these worlds. We can give these objects freedoms to pursue their own paths within the limits of the universe that we create. If we can do this, why not God?

Our universe follows some basic laws. We call them physics. gravity, time and the elements. Out of these basic building blocks everything else exists. In a computer program we also have some basic building blocks, electrons, cycles, pixels… but as we all know, computer programs do not write themselves. Random electrons, cycles and pixels do not create working worlds. For a computer program (or our universe) to work we need order. Order that is created through and with much thought and design.

I’m pretty sure that a complex universe like ours, built on these seemingly simple building blocks must have been designed by a creator with a very high and complex intelligence. For this design to lead to intelligent adaptive life, it needed to be perfectly conceived.

A nerd as old as me can remember a movie named Tron. In Tron a programmer gets sucked into a computer system and gets to be an eye witness to the worlds within. In these worlds the programs go about their daily work. Some silly programs actually believe in a religion that believes in entities called ‘Users’. Most of the other programs think that this is a silly religion and there is no proof of these so-called ‘Users’.

Back to my point... I believe that the stories about God creating the universe are true. I believe that he did. I also believe that evolution is true. I think that this is how God went about doing it. God is the creator of the things we call science. I believe that what we are observing when we study the sciences are all Gods engineering. We learn more and more about how he has designed the universe and the technologies that he uses.

Now for another leap… I believe that our universe may be just one in an infinite number of universes that God has created. Our single universe has trillions of galaxies; each galaxy has billions of suns. Each sun seems to have many worlds. And the numbers seem to support that the probability of life on other worlds is excellent.

For those hard-core fundamentalists: news flash: The earth is not Flat! Give God some credit. His creation is awesome, perfect and very complex. You can see the physical evidence that supports the science just as clearly as the evidence that you exist. Many of you trust your doctor to treat you when you are very sick. Why? His works are based on science…

For those scientists who are skeptical about the existence of God, I submit these questions: Why did the big bang happen? Where did all of this matter come from? How can all of our universe come from Nothing? Perhaps it was God simply booting up his computer!

Old Style Gaming Goodness: CGE Vectrex

2005-09-19T06:16:00.000-04:00

I am a computer gadget hacker at heart; I love to tinker with both hardware and software. For me, the vintage 1984 CGE Vectrex is a “dream come true”. For those of you who don’t know what a Vectrex is, it is a video game system that incorporates its own vertically mounted 9” black and white vector graphics display. Vector graphics are found on old arcade cabinets like Asteroids, Battlezone and Tempest. They are graphics that are drawn with plotted lines unlike most of the more modern video games which raster graphics (same as your TV). These lines can have their intensity level set from high to low allowing the developer to get clean crisp and fast (in many cases 3D) line based in-game objects.

I purchased my used 20 year old Vectrex in 2004 from eBay for $175 (includes shipping). It came with 8 original game cartridges and one game built in. These games are wonderful but I knew that it would be hard to find additional games in cartridge form. I turned to the internet and discovered a thing called “VecFlash”. The VecFlash is a gutted Vectrex game cartridge that contains writable memory banks where Vectrex ROM images (copies of the original video game code) can be loaded via a serial PC link cable. This allows me to download any Vectrex ROM image from the internet and load it on the cartridge. Actually it holds many ROM images and generates a nice little front-end menu for me to select the games from. The coolest thing about this is that people are still writing new Vectrex games! Many of the newer games are many times better than the original games published by CGE.

The original table top Vectrex joystick is a little hard to use if you are used to using the newer video game hand-held game-pads so I found a guy on the internet that modifies old Sega Genesis game-pads to work with the Vectrex for $20 US.

I found another guy on the internet that makes a Voice and Sound card add-on that uses the 2nd joystick port! I also found a site that builds a cable that allows the vector graphics display to be attached directly to your PC, allowing you to run a program called VectorMame. You can use VectorMame to play the old arcade vector based games using a real vector monitor. As you can see, the possibilities are endless for a vintage game addict like me!

List of Favorite new Vectrex games: (Database)
Protector (Defender Clone)
YASI (Yet Another Space Invaders)
Patriot III (Missile Command Clone)
Tsunami (Tempest Clone)
Rockroids Remix (Asteroids Clone)
Wormhole (Gyruss clone)

Star Wars Gave Me Tennis Elbow: A Geeks Obsession!

2005-05-31T21:11:00.000-04:00

How’s that for a title? Well it seems the XaviX platform is becoming popular with many toy and game manufacturers! I just purchased the new stand-alone Star Wars Lightsaber Battle Game which is a XaviX based processor housed in a camera that looks like the little lightsaber training droid from episode 4 (A New Hope). It connects directly to your TV and has a small reflective lightsaber that you hold and use just like you'd imagine a real lightsaber would be used. I bought it with my (almost 4 year old) son in mind because he lives and breaths Star Wars 24/7. He has a small collection of lightsabers and toys that imitate lightsabers (including a small plastic golf club) that he plays with at least 400+ times a day. The package says that it is recommended for 8 year olds and up, but my son has already embraced and mastered its many nuances. My daughter also enjoys it so I'm glad I didn’t give it to my son outright. Instead I treat it as a family game. Just like other XaviX games, you use body movements to simulate real action and the camera/light sensor array reads them and translates them into on-screen action. The graphics are a generation or two behind the GameCube/PS2/Xbox but they do just fine. It was well worth the price and I expect it to be a popular item.

This game goes into my larger collection of ultimate geek games. To read more about my geek game obsession check out my article titled 'The Life of a Computer Game Geek' in this months Retrogaming Times Monthly. If you are a fan of retro-gaming, this e-zine is one of the oldest and best ones around.

Xavix Bowling Platform

2005-02-28T06:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I've done it now. Xavix Bowling has me so hooked that I just cant let it alone. I have decided to take the plunge and make it as immersive as possible. I have decided to purchase a small box of laminate flooring (on sale at Home Depot for $43.00). I added a foul line and some alignment arrows simply using electrical tape cut outs. The overall effect looks great and my average score has jumped from the 140's to the low 200's. The alignment arrows really translate great into the games ball-roll alignment. My next step will probably be wiring a connector and extensions into the XavixPort so I can attach external switch wiring and buttons. I plan to attach large arcade cabinet style buttons to a stand-alone control surface that will be easy for the bowler to access while playing the game without having to walk up to the XavixPort to change a ball spin strength settings and selecting new game options.

New XaviX Games

2005-01-25T09:26:00.000-05:00

Since my kids love the XaviX bowling so much I decided to purchase all of the other available XaviX games (actually there are only 2 other games. It's nice to be able to say that I have every game for a specific game console!). The games are Tennis and Baseball. I have only had about 30 minutes to evaluate these (15 minutes each). Baseball comes with a bat and ball. The bat is designed to detect movement and the ball has buttons where you can enter the type of pitch and movement detection as well. When you swing and hear the crack of the bat sound effect you feel like you are actually hitting a ball! Tennis feels the same, you have two racquets and you swing them at the ball giving you a feeling that you are actually playing. I can't wait to introduce the kids to these! I'll update this blog with their reactions.

While I'm talking about the XaviX, I had an idea to setup a mock bowling alley in my basement to go with my Arcade theme. I have been pricing laminate flooring to build a small 4x7' lane in front of a mounted TV. I am also planning to open my XaviX port and see if I can wire in a connecter that will allow me to run wires to the end of the bowling lane where I can put some Arcade style buttons to allow players to select game options from their seats. I'll update this blog with pictures if I manage to pull this project off. The XaviX has an expansion port so this may be clean way to add devices. I'll know more when I void the warranty!

Pinball Anyone?

2005-01-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

I have been a big fan of the old 80’s arcade experience. Over the last 25 years I have been purchasing and researching better ways to bring this experience from the arcades into my home. Since the late 90’s it has gotten much easier with software like MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and great compilations for more modern home console systems from companies like Namco and Midway. But over this time something was missing, Video games, although a BIG part of the arcade experience, were not the whole experience. What about PINBALL??? Well over the last few months I have been playing with a program called VisualPinball. VisualPinball along with a tool called VPLauncher have unleashed the world of pinball onto my PC. This tool allows you to download thousands of table data files available all over the internet that attempt to lovingly reproduce all of the worlds favorite pinball machines from the early 1900’s on up. The majority of them look almost dead on with the actual scans from the table artwork to the reproduction of the mechanical scoring and all of the original bells, dings and sirens of the actual machines. My future plan is to build a new arcade cabinet dedicated to pinball emulation. For now I have found some XBOX titles that emulate some new and classic machines almost as well as VisualPinball. I have these collections running on my XBOX based cabinet. The XBOX compilations are PinBall Hall of Fame and Pure Pinball. If you are a Pinball lover all of these products are well worth your download time and money!

Be your own graphic design shop owner!

2005-01-13T14:24:00.000-05:00

If anyone out there is looking to sell something on the web, have I got a cool solution for you! I just discovered this web site called CafePress.com. This web site invites you to setup a FREE storefront where you can sell their items along with your designs. For instance they allow you to sell all kinds of shirts, t-shirts, sweat shirts, baseball jerseys etc. with artwork or sayings on them that you design! You select the merchandise that you want to sell and upload image files for them to print onto these items. Some shirts can have images on both the front and the back. You then tell them how much money you wish to make off of each sale and they add that to the base price. They will send you monthly checks for the money you make above their base prices. It is easy to set up an account and they give you a web site store front with a URL that you can advertise. If you are creative enough to come up with the next famous catch phrase or cool graphic you might stand to make a ton of money! This is also cool if you want to create team uniforms and sports jerseys. They allow you to create clothing, mugs, hats, mouse pads, bags, etc. They even let you sell CD’s with data or music that you send them. They let you design the CD and jewel case artwork and they will manufacture and ship them as they are sold. They allow you to publish books! You upload the manuscript in MS Word or PDF format and upload the images for the book covers, you then choose the book binding style and size and they will manufacture and ship them as they are ordered!

Needless to say I have taken full advantage of this FREE opportunity and have integrated them into my website to promote my website and video games! Visit my CafePress storefront here: Tactical Neuronics Merchandise

Video Game Advice for Parents

2005-01-11T08:20:00.000-05:00

As a parent who loves to share his love of video games with his kids (and anyone else who is interested), it is exciting to stumble across one that gets some real play time. I must say that I purchase 10 times more games and systems than actually catch the interest of my kids. It is an expensive hobby and I’m sure many parents get bit by the marketing hype only to see it tossed to the side and never played and enjoyed. Since I’m thinking about games that my kids like (I like them too) I think it would be a good idea to mention another big favorite in case anyone is interested:

Animal Crossing (Nintendo GameCube): This game allows your kids to become citizens of a small town populated by little 3D cartoon animal people. You live life in this town as you would in real life, you have a job a house (complete with a mortgage) and you can have hobbies, collect or create art, make things and sell them, fossil hunt, plant flowers, design clothing, catch fish, hunt bugs and discover secrets hidden everywhere. The town has a general store, post office, train station, light house, town square, museum, police station, city dump, boat dock, streams, lakes, beaches, forests, gardens, trails and waterfalls. The game uses your system clock to know the true date and time. The game has real seasons to match the real weather outside and current time of day. All of the clocks in the game are correct and the town has events throughout the days, weeks, months and years to match real events and holidays! They have fishing tournaments, Halloween festivals, monthly lotteries, Saturday night concerts, birthday celebrations and you even get gifts from the towns people like Nintendo NES system games that you can actually play! You can decorate your home any why you like and upgrade it as you make more money. The town has occasional visitors that sell and trade goods or simply challenge you to a friendly game. This is a game that plays on forever. My daughter has put in over 100 hours to date. The in-game money is a unit called a Bell and she has earned enough to upgrade her house 2 times and spent enough to allow the town general store to upgrade from a small one room store building to a huge supermarket! My daughter is really learning the basics of earning and saving money, paying bills and how to avoid impulse buys in order to save for something more substantial. These are valuable life lessons that are certainly better learned in a simulation than in real life. I wonder how many other 8 year olds understand these concepts. The town supports up to 4 human players. The game allows you to create other towns using additional memory cards and each one can have up to 4 human players. The cool thing is that the hourly train will let you board in one town and visit the others. Each town has a unique layout and its own special plants and goods. You can do some shopping and bring them back to your town to sell plant or farm for more money. This game is very open ended and it seems like it can go on forever!

Addicting my Kids

2005-01-10T08:05:00.000-05:00

Update on the XaviX Bowling game: My kids have played it for 4 days straight. I can’t remember that last game that had them both hooked like this. The graphics on this system are nothing special but they are more than ample for a bowling game. The kids also like the mini-games. My 3 ½ year old son likes the one where the pins move across a triple wide lane like ducks in a shooting gallery and he also like a game where colored bricks fall from the ceiling and you have to hit them to clear them out similar to playing Tetris. My 8 year old daughter likes a time challenge game where the pins are setup in different configurations and you have a time-limit to knock them down with one ball. All of these are fun diversions but they still enjoy playing each other in the regular bowling game mode the best. The game supports up to 4 players in a single game and twice that in tournament mode.

Bowling for Robots

2005-01-07T08:22:00.000-05:00

Well I finally received the XaviX Bowling kit. I inserted it into my XaviX PORT and I witnessed my XaviX come to life for the first time since I purchased it 5 days ago! I only had the chance to test/play it for about 45 minutes. It is very fun. I'd say the experience is somewhere between real bowling and those small bowling games you find in old bars. Even with the 16oz bowling ball, my arm was starting to get tired. Tonight I plan to let my kids see/play it.

In order to give myself enough room to set it up for bowling I had to move around a few things including a large table that my daughter and I are building and testing our robot projects on. Currently we have two prototypes cobbled together, one to test out obstacle navigation and anther to test out quick acrobatic movements. We are using Lego MindStorms to do this. My daughter's ultimate goal is to build a robot cat. If you haven't heard of MindStorms, they are a collaborative effort between Lego and MIT. MIT chose Lego's as a simple media to develop quick prototypes while teaching engineering concepts and developed a component called a Brick. The MIT Brick is the brain that has a computer and several input and output ports. Lego redesigned a smaller version called an RCX which is the core of the MindStorms technology. The RCX has its own computer, operating system and programming language interpreter. You write the programs on a standard PC and download up to 5 of them onto the brick using a infra-red transmitter. There are several operating systems available that allow you to program your RCX's with languages like java, C, VB, Logo and LegOS or you can use the default Lego language (RCX Code) which comes with the MindStorms out of the box. I have managed to merge several MindStorms Kits and accessory sets into a large assortment including several motors, gears, lights, wires and sensors or many types. My daughter loves to invent things and this is a great way for us to do something together where she can learn something real and have fun doing it. She is pretty sharp for an 8 year old and loves science. I'm doing all I can to stimulate her and my sons imagination in these areas. Between all of my computers, video consoles, arcade games, Robotics lab and electronics gizmos of every type, add to that my new bowling alley simulator and my basement is quickly becoming the nerd’s version of the Wonka factory!

Today I have two things to be excited about.

2005-01-06T08:47:00.000-05:00

The first one is that a group of people who enjoy a game I wrote are banding together to revive the community aspect built around my game. They have put together a fan web site and are preparing to hold tournaments starting in February. The game is A.I. Wars (The Insect Mind) it is a game that allows its players to develop artificial intelligence for a robot insect (Cybug) that you place in battle simulations against up to 10 other player’s Cybugs. I first wrote the game just before the birth of my daughter in 1996 and I have been improving it ever since based on player feedback. A community of fans started to form after an article was written about it in PC Gaming World (European version of Computer Gaming World). Tournaments were held, fan sites sprung up and players generally enjoyed helping each other out. Somewhere in late 2003 interest started to taper off and the fan sites started to drop off or froze without updates. Every two or three months someone would ask about new tournaments but no one would answer. I wrote a new simplified version of the game named A.I. Wars (Armor Commander) that used tanks instead of Cybugs but this didn’t seem to ignite any new interest. A Chinese company had me write two new Chinese language versions of the game for a planned national scholastic competition in China but seemed to drop off of the face of the earth overnight. I was just about to concede that the game had run its course until all of the sudden a new player came on board that wanted to startup a tournament. He managed to contact some of the old players and now they are putting together this new fan site along with tournaments that are already attracting new player interest. This looks very promising, I am very excited!

The second thing I’m excited about is a package that is being delivered to my home as I write this. It is a video game cartridge / peripheral that I ordered online Monday for a new game console I just purchased. Anyone who knows me, knows I love video games; I have been playing them since the late 70’s and writing them since the late 80’s. I have hundreds of PC and console based games and even some full size custom built arcade cabinets. This new console system will go right along side my other modern console systems (XBOX, GameCubes and PlayStation 2). This new system is so new, that I have only seen two commercials for it, and that was after I purchased one on Monday. Its name is XaviX PORT. The game that is being shipped to me is called XaviX Bowling. What makes me so excited about this game/system is that it uses live human body action as its interface instead of a game pad, keyboard, mouse or joystick. Each game comes with hardware that simulates a real interactive piece of sporting gear. For example Bowling comes with a bowling ball that is laced with sensors. The XaviX PORT will watch you simulate rolling this ball (you don’t actually let it go = not a good idea if you like your TV screen) and it will record every micro movement in real time and translate that into a ball that hits the floor and rolls down the alley on your TV screen to hopefully knock down all of the pins. I love bowling games and have many great childhood memories from actual real bowling alleys to those little electro-mechanical bowling lanes you used to see in bars. I’m hoping for a similar feel to those little bar versions at least. I’ll let you know how it actually is once I’ve had the chance to play it. If I like it enough, I’ll probably purchase the Tennis and the Baseball games that come with tennis racquets, baseball and bat. I don’t know how popular this system will become but I like to see these new ideas. I hope they make millions.

Welcome

2005-01-05T11:14:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my blog! Opinions are my specialty. My coworkers have named my constant ranting ‘WAJ’ (World According to John). My favorite topics are computers, games, gadgets and politics. I am married and the father of two wonderful young children. I enjoy playing and writing my own video games (see My Website). I build simple robots with my kids. I design and build full size arcade cabinets for fun. I write clinical software for a large pediatric hospital for a living. I am a U.S. Navy veteran. I tinker in electronics (I love to modify things and take them apart). I am a GOP flag carrying right wing lunatic!

Enjoy!