if $programming == art && PoP:SoT (cont.)
I shall start off with PoP:SoT
I judged it too quickly… it is actually a pretty good game, when it works properly.
That’s right, the game was glitching. While half the midwestern USA was laughing at my lack of skill, I was rattling ideas around in the cage of my mindbrain. On a whim, I set the affinity of POP.EXE to CPU1 only, and voilà, it worked just fine! For about an hour. After I quit/restarted the game (several times) it became incredibly slow.
A simple restart fixes most game problems. But come on, it’s 2010. There should be a patch for multicore systems by now.
When it’s actually working properly though, this is a pretty awesome game. I still have qualms about 3D platformers, primarily the fact that iit’s so hard to aim. I think this is because platformers are tradtionally 3rd person, and mouse-controlled games just don’t do well in 3rd person. In fact, the only games I can think of that do 3rd person POV very well are The Sims and <generic racing game.>
At any rate, I think PoP:SoT is pretty good when it’s playable. I’d like to play it on a console, where it works perfectly all the time… even though I can’t stand controllers ;).
Onto the art of programming - this was just running through my mind… is programming art?
I mean, what is art?
We consider music an art, and music is just language organized (to a beat) to create a certain mood or feeling.
Programs are just a subset of language organized to a flow structure to accomplish a certain task or pattern…
Part of me feels that programming is most definitely an art, because it takes a certain creative spark to come up with a unique solution. At the same time, I feel that programming languages are too limiting to be truly expressive; and art is all about self-expression (or so they tell me.)
I will definitely be pondering the art of programming this week. I may even pick up a book or two on it. :D
