errantember

The computer AI for Total Annihilation playing Skirmish on Hard is a total pushover.

I just wiped out two opponents in under 20 minutes while talking on the phone with my Mom. My score was somewhere around 4000, theirs was each under 400.

I've given a lot of thought recently to whole warrior mythos male role thing. This examination has lead me to reject a lot of what I've been brought up to believe, and has changed my behaviors in certain ways as well. Although I don't buy the whole "I shot my teacher because I play violent video games" cause-and-effect scenario, I do believe that when a culture constantly glorifies violence it makes a big difference in the way children raised in that culture see the world. I see violent video games as more of a symptom than a cause, but it's always amazed me that such a high percentage of gaming was so violence-based, especially considering how much more potential the medium has.

One project that's been stewing in my mind for years is the idea of a game where the goal is to *stop* the violence without using violence yourself. To be worth doing it couldn't just be a little trinket game that people would think was cute and then forget about. It would have to be good enough to actually steal mindshare away from more violent alternatives and get people thinking. I'm not willing to devote enough time to this right now to "lead a team" or start from scratch, but adapting an existing RTS framework might be doable, at least as a first stab at manifesting the idea. Ironically, the best one I've found for this kind of major modding is Total Annihilation. Although quite old, it's still considered one of the best RTSs of all time, and it's framework is about as open as you can be without being 100% Open Source.

So once those Core fuckers are sucking on my iron boot, it'll be time to get started creating Peace.