Artificial Intelligence?

October 19, 2009 4:24 PM

Hell is Other People

"Fight the ghosts of those that have come before by moving in two dimensions and shooting missiles. The fiercer you fight, the harder it shall be for those that come after. How much past can you cope with before you are overwhelmed?"

posted by flatluigi (61 comments total)

It wants me to install something called "Unity Web Player."
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:28 PM on October 19

Unity's actually pretty neat, Faint of Butt.
posted by brundlefly at 4:30 PM on October 19

Unity Web Player

One of us. One of us. One of us.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:30 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

Don't worry about Unity, it's nothing malicious.
posted by flatluigi at 4:31 PM on October 19

Unity is the new Flash, as far as games are concerned. it's an extremely convenient engine to use to program games - much more so than Flash is - and it's never caused me any problems stability-wise or unwanted-feature wise.

This game is really, really neat!
posted by Fraxas at 4:33 PM on October 19

Don't worry about Unity, it's nothing malicious.

Lies!
posted by dersins at 4:36 PM on October 19

Don't worry about Unity, it's nothing malicious.

Other than the fact that it will WASTE ALL YOUR TIME. The big thing you should check out is Blurst, there is also a bunch of stuff on Wooglie and the acquired taste that's Serious Games.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 4:39 PM on October 19 [3 favorites]

looks like Hell is a twelve-year-old.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 4:43 PM on October 19

How much past can you cope with before you are overunderwhelmed?
posted by davejay at 4:44 PM on October 19

'bout two minutes, same as in town
posted by davejay at 4:44 PM on October 19

I would go so far as to argue that Unity is what's missing in our lives.

This game is pretty neat. Tough, though.
posted by MidAtlantic at 4:45 PM on October 19

The game didn't load.
Then Unity crashed Opera. It. crashed. Opera.
This is the first Opera crash I've ever experienced - holy shit that's almost awesome.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:52 PM on October 19

Is this something that I would have to have the Unity Web Player™ to understand?
posted by killdevil at 4:54 PM on October 19 [2 favorites]

Incidentally, "Hell Is Other People..." is what I want engraved on my tombstone, followed by "I'm In Heaven Now."
posted by you just lost the game at 4:55 PM on October 19 [4 favorites]

Other than the fact that it will WASTE ALL YOUR TIME. The big thing you should check out is Blurst

Whoa. Time Donkey is pretty awesome.
posted by mr_roboto at 5:01 PM on October 19

22 ghosts... muahahaahaa. Good find.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:07 PM on October 19

30 ghosts. The trick is to get the side or rear firing guns, then head to the side or top, respectively, and stay there.
posted by logicpunk at 5:16 PM on October 19

I await seeing your ghost using that trick and defeating it.
posted by flatluigi at 5:17 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

In case anyone else wonders if unity runs under wine, it does not (at least with wine-1.0.1).
posted by idiopath at 5:18 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

Then Unity crashed Opera.

Unity only supports, at the moment, Firefox, IE and Safari. Chrome support is coming, don't know about Opera.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 5:23 PM on October 19

Unity only supports, at the moment, Firefox, IE and SafariWindows and OSX.

Flagged.
posted by DU at 5:28 PM on October 19 [4 favorites]

As what?
posted by brundlefly at 5:29 PM on October 19

Unity is the new Flash

I see the 'new Flash' is much like the 'old Flash' in that it lacks any pretense at Linux support.

Oh well, I'm sure my distro will seamlessly support it sometime around 2015 though...
posted by Avelwood at 5:32 PM on October 19

It doesn't support VMS, either.
posted by mr_roboto at 5:36 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

Unity supports Windows, Mac, iPhone and Wii, which I think is pretty darned impressive. I think they can be forgiven for not supporting Linux.
posted by brundlefly at 5:38 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

I await seeing your ghost using that trick and defeating it.

It works because the ghost's paths are reversed (up/down). If you have the tail gun, it makes sense to fly to the top of the screen. Your future ghosts will fly to the bottom of the screen, where it's pretty simple to dodge the slow moving bullets. Similarly, with the side gun, it makes sense to haul ass to the sides and position yourself fairly close to the top of the screen - thus minimizing your chances of being hit by ghosts with regular forward guns. Future ghosts with this strategy pretty much won't be an issue.

Where these tricks fail is when the screen gets overfull and you're forced to kill a ghost ship adjacent to yours, and it drops a forward gun "powerup". Then you're pretty much screwed.

All that said, it's a pretty interesting idea. Assuming that the strategies I outlined are optimal, I'd expect that over time most players will adopt them, which would mean that most ghosts would be at the bottom or the sides. Even if that happened, however, they would still be optimal strategies, since the middle of the arena would pretty much be a no man's land.
posted by logicpunk at 5:47 PM on October 19

The big thing you should check out is Blurst, there is also a bunch of stuff on Wooglie [....]

Look, if you're just going to sit there and make up words, I'm not going to have this conversation with you any more.
posted by webmutant at 5:52 PM on October 19 [10 favorites]

I think they can be forgiven for not supporting Linux.

*cries a single tear, wanders off somewhere else
posted by PercussivePaul at 5:52 PM on October 19 [7 favorites]

Do not taunt Unity Web Player.
posted by HannoverFist at 6:00 PM on October 19

Unity (or the game itself) crashed my browser (Firefox) three times. Was fun, though, while it lasted.
posted by zylocomotion at 6:35 PM on October 19

Works fine for me using Opera.
posted by The Pusher Robot at 6:36 PM on October 19

Yeah, it crashed Firefox for me. At first, I thought that was the point - you know, hell is other people, so log off the internet. Like a comment on social networking or something. Clearly, I'm just overthinking a plate of poorly-coded beans.
posted by naju at 6:38 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

I think they can be forgiven for not supporting Linux.

Not by anybody running Linux. It does make the name Unity into a bit of a lie, though. Coalition, maybe, or Bipartisan (in a system with more than two parties) or Supermajority or Almost Everybody, but not Unity.
posted by evilmidnightbomberwhatbombsatmidnight at 6:44 PM on October 19 [6 favorites]

Unity supports Windows, Mac, iPhone and Wii, which I think is pretty darned impressive. I think they can be forgiven for not supporting Linux.

No it can't, because I can't see what this link is all about at all!

Or what evil . . . said.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:47 PM on October 19

Every time I think about switching to Linux, I read some Linux user whining about something or another not supporting Linux. Don't get me wrong, as a Mac user it annoys me when something doesn't support Mac, but it seems like Linux users tend to have this bizarre sense of entitlement about it. Anyway, whatever. Sorry for the derail.
posted by brundlefly at 7:09 PM on October 19

At the risk of inspiring a barage of "Well DUH!!s," "Hell is other people" is a reference to J-P Sarte's No Exit. I'm not a gamer, I'm an English major, and when I was in high school I went to forensics nationals with a dramatic interp from the play--a fantastic work about four people in a room who spend eternity driving each other batshit insane. So just based on that existentialist shit, I'm *almost inclined to download the thing and play my first video game--literally--since that all-night Oregon Trail marathon in 1998.
posted by njbradburn at 7:12 PM on October 19

Unity supports Windows, Mac, iPhone and Wii, which I think is pretty darned impressive. I think they can be forgiven for not supporting Linux.

HTML manages. It's about standards and openness.
posted by DU at 7:15 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

Every time I think about switching to Linux, I read some Linux user whining about something or another not supporting Linux. Don't get me wrong, as a Mac user it annoys me when something doesn't support Mac, but it seems like Linux users tend to have this bizarre sense of entitlement about it. Anyway, whatever. Sorry for the derail.

A sense of entitlement about wanting to use applications or internet extensions that everyone else can? I mean, really, I can do, I'd say, 98% of the stuff that I want to do on Ubuntu just fine. The exceptions--like this and, uh, watching stuff instantly on Netflix* (and there's not anything I can think of besides these)--stick out like a sore thumb.

*And I just load a Virtual Box for that, of course, but it's still a pain in the butt. I mean, I'm a paying user, and plenty of other services--hulu, for one--that cooperate with Linux just fine.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:35 PM on October 19

If Unity is the new Flash it's going to have all the same security issues as Flash and every other plugin has had, resulting in getting owned by ‘REALLY GOOD ANTIVIRUS 2009’ when visiting a compromised web page.

I'm rid of QT, WMP, Real, Office and Acrobat plugins; all I have left to cope with is Flash (and that can be tamed by judicious use of Flashblock). Absolutely the last thing I want is another new browser plugin. Do Unity games interact with elements of the web page in any way that makes it at all worthwhile to have it as a plugin rather than a standalone app? No? Then just give me the damn .EXE and leave my browser alone. Cheers.

(Sorry Luigi, I don't mean to piss on your FPP, but I've been meaning to rant at Unity for a while. Recent history should have taught us not to be so blasé about installing new net-facing code like plugins, although clearly from the Firefox ClickOnce fiasco Microsoft haven't quite got it yet.)
posted by BobInce at 7:41 PM on October 19

Yea, no. I'm not installing another plugin. Having flash is bad enough.
posted by octothorpe at 7:49 PM on October 19

...to hell with other people.
posted by limeonaire at 8:17 PM on October 19

Linux. Heh.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:19 PM on October 19

it seems like Linux users tend to have this bizarre sense of entitlement about it

As a matter of fact I do feel entitled to use the Internet.

*Notices the game's URL*

Oh wait, nevermind.
posted by Loudmax at 8:27 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

This is like a first person shooter version of tit-for-tat, the prisoner's dilemma model. Pretty cool.
posted by christhelongtimelurker at 8:44 PM on October 19

"Hell is other people at breakfast." - Jean-Paul Sartre
posted by neuron at 8:46 PM on October 19

it seems like Linux users tend to have this bizarre sense of entitlement about it. Anyway, whatever. Sorry for the derail.

That's okay; I remember when Mac users used to whine about things like poor gaming application support. I also remember when Windows users used to whine about the things they couldn't get without upgrading to Windows95, or a CD-Rom player.

People whine so they'll be heard, so that folks will realize there's a market for it, and then will hopefully start serving that market. Here's to the squeaky wheels.
posted by davejay at 8:54 PM on October 19

not that whining really helped the windows 3.1 users who didn't want to upgrade to 95, but whatevs
posted by davejay at 8:55 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

Hell is in "Hello".

Merely a comment on the often overlooked Lee Marvin — J-P. Sartre nexus.
posted by Wolof at 11:24 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

Is this like the first game for this plugin or something?
posted by chillmost at 1:47 AM on October 20

I took it to 10 until I realised how involved I was getting and that every other person I nerfed was having a worse day than me because of it, so stopped.

A strange game...
posted by Molesome at 5:27 AM on October 20

I liked it a lot. That is all.
posted by the cydonian at 5:31 AM on October 20

chillmost: Is this like the first game for this plugin or something?

Far from it; check out TheDevilTesla's comment upthread for several more sites that use the plugin.
posted by flatluigi at 7:20 AM on October 20

I always thought of Ted as a really nice bloke until now...
posted by cameronfromedinburgh at 7:39 AM on October 20

People whine so they'll be heard, so that folks will realize there's a market for it, and then will hopefully start serving that market. Here's to the squeaky wheels.

Which is fair enough, and I totally sympathize. Although I'd say that, "This is cool! I wish it supported my OS of choice!" would work better than, "It is unforgivable that this software doesn't support my OS of choice! *grumble *grumble*" Honey and vinegar, etc.

FWIW, last I heard, a Linux version has not been ruled out. I just don't think it's unreasonable (from a business perspective at least) for a developer to prioritize platforms like Wii or iPhone over a relatively small segment of the gaming market, like Linux.
posted by brundlefly at 10:19 AM on October 20

brundlefly, how are we supposed to know whether something is cool if we can't even load it on our computers?!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:33 AM on October 20

Uh, the same way I've been able to look at some Windows only software and go, "That looks pretty neat. Wish I could run it on my Mac." Context? Descriptions? Screenshots? The normal ways you learn about software. In the case of Unity, you can go to their website and get all of that.
posted by brundlefly at 10:57 AM on October 20

Uh, the same way I've been able to look at some Windows only software and go, "That looks pretty neat. Wish I could run it on my Mac." Context? Descriptions? Screenshots? The normal ways you learn about software. In the case of Unity, you can go to their website and get all of that.

We're not even really talking about software here--I can understand why Photoshop doesn't work on my computer fine, and, of course, there are alternatives available to Linux users. We're talking about browser plug-ins. We're talking about closing areas of the internet to subsets of users, making them inaccessible--about clicking on a link on metafilter and having no way to access the content behind it. Sorry if I'm not all sweetness and light about that. It's frustrating.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:18 PM on October 20

Unity is available for Windows, Mac (Intel and PPC), iphone and the wii. This is evidence that the folks who wrote this know a bit about porting code. I'm a linux user, I don't feel entitled to Unity or this game but when a team puts its effort into supporting a console and a phone before linux it makes me wonder why. Who has iphones and wiies? People who have loads of disposable income and track record of disposing of it. Who has linux? We don't have time to think about that since we are attempting to push 'disruptive technology' against an established player like Adobe and our VC guys us to show them some income.

RELATED CONTENT:
Unity is playing against a ghost that earlier passed through this space, and now the idea has to fight against the ghost of the idea.
posted by bdc34 at 1:23 PM on October 20 [4 favorites]

Also, I wish them (Unity co.) luck.
posted by bdc34 at 1:33 PM on October 20

Alright, researching it a bit, it seems that Linux support has been asked for since 2005 and is asked for the most out of all the other suggested features. An unofficial port is being worked on, but it's far from complete and isn't a project that's being constantly worked on.

It's also -- and this is important -- primarily a game development tool, not a browser plugin.
posted by flatluigi at 1:35 PM on October 20 [1 favorite]

So I'm the only one who took the "other people" comment to heart and tried to communicate via spelling out messages with the trails that my ship left? Awright, then.
posted by DrAwkward at 11:22 PM on October 29