Author: D'Arque Bishop

Mortal Kombat on PC? Don’t bet on it.

D'Arque Bishop17 Comments

Due to recent events occurring over at Mortal Kombat Online, I’ve started monitoring the site’s official Twitter account. For the most part, it’s been about the same as I can remember, with one slightly annoying difference: there have been a few people constantly flooding our “mentions” with requests regarding a PC version of Mortal Kombat, especially now that Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition (with all of the DLC characters and skins included) has been announced. While we’re not the only people getting these messages, it’s still irritating to see the flood.

What I’m about to say is my own opinion, and not that of Mortal Kombat Online and (definitely) not NetherRealm Studios. The chances of Mortal Kombat coming to PC are non-existent, with the exception of Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection. Even then, the PC version of MKAK has been delayed by several months.

I’ve already seen some of the most common arguments regarding porting Mortal Kombat to PC. One of these arguments is that there’s an online petition with something like 13,000 signatures, showing demand for the game. The problem there is that when it comes to showing demand, online petitions don’t mean much. Anyone can put in a signature, but it doesn’t mean they actually intend to buy the game. A secondary problem is that 13,000 is in fact a pretty small number. By comparison, 732,000 copies of the game were sold in the first week for consoles (reference). I would hazard that if the online petition wanted to be taken seriously, they would need 50-100 times the signatures that they currently have.

Another argument I’ve heard used is the fact that Capcom has released Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition to PC, and that they’re planning on releasing Street Fighter X Tekken as well. They also claim that the popularity numbers are high for the game, indicating a lot of sales. Unfortunately, they don’t give figures as to the exact number of sales. In addition, it doesn’t take into account just how many sales there were compared to how much the game has been pirated. I’ve heard arguments that the SF4 games on PC have DRM to prevent piracy, but the problem there is that the pirates rather quickly defeated the DRM. I’ve heard stories about how tournaments would use pirated copies of SF4 for PC instead of licensed or console copies.

That said, people would still point to the PC sales and say, “They’re still making money!” The question becomes, “How much money?” If Netherrealm were to release a PC version of Mortal Kombat, they would have to use time and resources (in other words, money) towards porting the game over. If the game’s sales on PC do not cover the cost of porting, then it’s not worth it for them to go through the trouble. Unlike consoles, PC hardware runs the gamut of different manufacturers, drivers, and capabilities. They would have to take all of that into account.

So, one may ask, why was Capcom able to do it? The answer is simple: they already HAD a Windows version. Unlike Mortal Kombat, the Street Fighter 4 games were released for arcades, and the arcade hardware they used was a system called Taito Type X. Instead of using proprietary components, Taito Type X uses PC hardware and runs on Windows XP Embedded. In other words, a very good chunk of the porting had to be done anyway, so what extra they needed to do was covered by the PC sales.

That doesn’t change the fact that the Street Fighter 4 games are very heavily pirated. While it’s true that console games are pirated as well, the barrier for entry for pirating console games in much higher. While any PC can run a pirated PC game, game consoles have to be modified before they can run pirated console games. Modifying console hardware is a risky venture; not only can it ruin your console (rendering it a brick) should something go wrong, the security systems in the console itself will get you banned from online services if the modification is detected. While I’ve heard it said that only paying customers can play Street Fighter 4 online, I personally find that rather doubtful as I’ve not heard of how this is supposedly accomplished outside of a “Kombat Pass” system like Mortal Kombat uses. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard that claim and have the reality be that many online players of a game were pirates.

The sad thing is that none of this is really anything new. When I started at MK Online (then called MK5.ORG) back in 2002, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was in development. We had gotten a lot of people asking if and when MK:DA would be released for PC. So, when I went to E3, I asked a couple of people in Midway’s marketing department if there was a PC version in development. They said that there wasn’t, simply because they had never made any money off of the PC versions. The fact that the game was very heavily pirated became apparent in that respect, because I knew a lot of people with MK games for PC, yet the game never made any money. In addition, at least one person who demanded a PC version in the site’s chat channel inadvertently admitted that the only reason he wanted it was so he could pirate it.

So, in essence, it really comes down to money. NetherRealm and Warner Bros. apparently do not feel that porting Mortal Kombat to PC would be worth the money. While the Street Fighter 4 games are out for PC, they were ported ahead of time for different reasons and as such the comparison is not valid. I’m sure Warner Bros. has already done the research and crunched the numbers, as if there were a true profit to be made we’d be seeing a port. Unfortunately, the petitions have too few signatures, the projected PC sales aren’t high enough, and the piracy would be rampant.

With all of the factors taken into account, there simply isn’t enough of a legal market for the port for the effort to be worth it.

Following up on the kitties…

D'Arque Bishop

… so, the two have had their first vet appointment today. They’re in very good health and have gotten some of their needed shots. The vet also confirmed what we suspected: the mostly-white one (referred to as a “blue point” in coloring) is a boy, and the brown and white one (referred to as a “seal point” in coloring) is a girl.

So, along with another picture of them, I’m pleased to let you know their names. :-)

Meet Bennett and Sasha. :-)

Right now we’re in the slow process of getting them and the older cats used to one another. We’ve opened the spare bedroom door, but put a gate in the entrance to prevent cats from entering or leaving. Sophie and Darcy have already seen Bennett and Sasha; as we expected, Darcy welcomed them with open arms but Sophie is hissing and growling (like the prima donna she is). We’ll keep them separated for a while until they learn to tolerate one another’s presence, and then we’ll let the younger two roam the house freely. As it stands, for the near future all they’ll have access to is the spare bedroom and a short hallway.

They’re definitely getting better about being around us, though, and it’s great to see them playing and discovering their world. This should be a lot of fun. :-)

Introducing our Christmas presents to ourselves…

D'Arque Bishop

So, Jennifer and I decided this year to give each other a special Christmas present. We got ourselves two new kittens. :-)

We had been talking about getting a kitten for a while. Jennifer had been missing Lucy, her first cat, and we wanted to get a playmate for Sophie and Darcy (our current two). We decided on getting a ragdoll like the others, simply because of how great they have been for us. So, we contacted the person we got the others from, and finally got a response from her after a while. It turned out that she had stopped breeding ragdolls, but was taking care of some kittens for a colleague of hers who had cancer. Through her, we worked out the details. It turned out she would be in town anyway Christmas weekend, so we arranged to go and pick them up Christmas Eve.

It was also at about that time that we realized that it would be best if we got two kittens instead of just one. That way, they would have each other as playmates to relate to instead of being alone with two other older cats. We asked for two girls, but as it turns out, we ended up with a girl and a boy. We didn’t mind at all; that way it’s even amongst the sexes here. :-) We played with them a bit there, got the paperwork for them, and then made the trip home. Jennifer stayed in the back seat with them, while they cowered in the kitty carrier. (They had been through so many trips that week that they were very spooked.) Once home, we put them in the spare bedroom with their own food, water, litter box, and toys. That way they could get acclimatized without having to deal with the older cats.

When we got them, we were told the girl was the dominant one and that the boy was quiet and let the girl take charge. That seemed to be the case at first, but over the past 24 hours, the boy kitten became more assertive and playful, while the girl kitten stayed back and was more skittish. We don’t think they were socialized around humans, as they’re still very nervous around us. Still, we’ve been spending time with them, playing with them, and getting them used to us. They’ve gotten to the point where they will play with toys and such with us, but the instant they realize they might be getting too close, they back off a bit. We figure that they’ll be far more comfortable around us in time, but for now, we’re taking it slowly.

Before anyone asks, though, we don’t have names for either yet. We’ve been considering all manner of different names for them, but until we have them checked out by a vet (especially to confirm the genders!), we’re not setting anything in stone yet. We do have some finalist names for both, though; we should be ready to announce them in a few days.

I have to say, though, that they are far more adorable and playful than I was expecting. They’re WONDERFUL kittens, and are a delight to play with. I’m looking forward to spending a long time with them in our family. :-)

Of webs and androids…

D'Arque Bishop

It’s Saturday night, and I’m sitting in the living room watching Mythbusters while Jennifer dozes on the couch. All in all, it’s a good evening.

Up until recently, though, I would be found in my office at least part of the evening, as I’d have an urge to browse the net. I would use my phone, but I like to keep it in the kitchen where it charges. I also have a work laptop, but it’s a little unweildy sitting in my lap while I’m in the living room. That was taken care of recently by my mother-in-law, who managed to get us an HP TouchPad. For $150, it was extremely inexpensive yet very functional. Both Jennifer and I use the tablet, and it now comes with us on trips instead of the work laptop.

Also, as Jennifer puts it, “I now see a lot more of Scott in the evening.”

However, while we’ve been very happy with the TouchPad, we have come to realize that there’s one major problem with it. The TouchPad runs webOS, which is HP’s own mobile operating system (which they got when they acquired Palm). While webOS is a nice operating system, with the discontinuation of the TouchPad it is becoming seen as a dead OS. The app support has been slight, and there have been no real additions to the lineup. What I needed most was a remote access app for work purposes, and ended up jury-rigging a proprietary solution.

Obviously we needed something better. Fortunately, a solution presented itself Thursday.

My friend Rigo Cortes posted on Twitter that a new release of CyanogenMod had been released for the TouchPad. Intrigued, I looked into it. CyanogenMod is a community-written third party distribution of Android. The installation process for CyanogenMod looked simple, and kept the original webOS install in place. I asked Rigo, and he assured me that while it was labeled as alpha software, it was still very stable.

So, last night I downloaded the needed software, and I installed it this morning.

How did it go? It turned out to be as easy as I had read. It’s also as stable as Rigo had said. I’ve gotten all sorts of software downloaded that I couldn’t get for webOS, like Fruit Ninja, Netflix, Trillian, and others. I even have remote access software installed. I’ve only used it today, but it’s working great.

So, now I’ve got a much more useful tablet. It’s too bad webOS had to be replaced, as we liked using it. However, app support is much better on Android, and app support is what’s most important. Jennifer gets her Fruit Ninja, and I get my other apps.

We’re both happy campers. :-)

I don’t mind supposed “remakes”, but even I have my limits.

D'Arque Bishop

Movie remakes are all the rage these days, it seems. A few recent examples have included Fright Night, Footloose, and the upcoming Robocop. Needless to say, a lot of people are getting enraged at the lack of originality in Hollywood these days. I don’t really blame them, myself, though I’m not entirely sold on whether a lot of the films being bandied about as remakes should be considered so.

To me, for a film to be considered a “remake”, it needs to be a new version of an original movie and not based on other media. For example, The Thing (the 1982 movie, not the 2011 prequel) is often touted as a remake of the 1951 film The Thing From Another World. The truth of the matter is that the 1982 movie, like the 1951 one, was based on a novella called Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell; unlike the 1951 film, the 1982 film was FAR more faithful to the original material. Another example is the upcoming The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, as like the Swedish-language movie (which I highly recommend), it’s based on the novel by Stieg Larsson. New movies based on Spider-Man and Superman are in the works; as they’re based on comic books, I see them as fresh looks at the source material as opposed to remakes of previous films.

Even then, I’m not against remakes as a whole. If a remake can provide a new, fresh interpretation of the original story while still being a quality product, then I’m all for it. People were against remakes of the aforementioned Fright Night and Footloose, yet critical reception of both films was positive. In fact, according to Rotten Tomatoes, Footloose got much better ratings than the original version did.

Still, it strikes me as funny that remakes are causing so much rage. Classic movies have been remade and new interpretations of old materials released for as long as I can remember. For example, the 1983 classic Scarface was a remake of a 1932 film. The most well-known versions of The Wizard of Oz and The Maltese Falcon were not the first adaptations of those novels to film. It’s hardly a new thing to come about.

Now, while I’m normally not against remakes or adaptations, there is one exception. I don’t like it when an adaptation comes out in a particular medium for the first time, and does not try to be faithful to the original source material. It could be an animated film based on a comic, but changes personalities of characters and the basic plotline. The adaptation that comes to mind most prominently is the live-action adaptation of the comic and animated film Akira. Akira is a profoundly Japanese film, that served as a generation’s introduction to Japanese animation. However, the live-action adaptation is casting whites instead of Japanese (for example, Kristen Stewart has been offered the lead female role), and the setting has been changed from Neo-Tokyo to “New Manhattan”. If what I’ve read online is true, then the storyline has been altered as well, no longer focusing on juvenile delinquents as the main protagonists/antagonists.

The Spirit is another example. Leaving out Frank Miller’s supposedly horrid writing and direction, the movie is not faithful to the comics in several respects. One that comes to mind is that in the film Denny Colt has superhuman abilities after the incident that made him become the Spirit, while Will Eisner deliberately made him an everyman in the comics. Another is that the Octopus was prominently shown in the movie, whereas in the comics his face was never seen. Had it been a faithful adaptation, I would have been more inclined to watch it. As it stands… no.

Why is it so difficult for the studios making these films to make a faithful adaptation?

In the end, though, it comes down to quality. The remakes and new adaptations that succeed are faithful to the source material while bringing a fresh look and new perspectives. The ones that fail are the money grabs that don’t pay attention to what made the original source material great in the first place. I know I’m preaching to the choir there, as I’m hardly the only one to feel that way.

I just wish the studio executives understood that too.

Ultraviolet? More like ultra-annoying.

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

By now, it’s pretty obvious to people who know me that I like to have digital copies of my movies. I guess one could argue I got started relatively early (compared to the current consumer desire, that is), seeing as that as far back as 2006, I was making digital copies of Mortal Kombat to watch on my smartphone. Nowadays, though, when a movie comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray, I buy the version of the disc that comes with the digital copy. I like being able to have the movie in iTunes, where I can watch it later using my iPhone or HP TouchPad.

However, the studios have started offering this “new service” for the digital copies that is really annoying me.

I’ve noticed that several movies that featuring a digital copy have a label on the packaging advertising that it is an “Ultraviolet digital copy”. It’s a reference to Ultraviolet, a service by Flixster that sells access to streamed versions of movies, plus allows you to redeem codes for movies you’ve bought. You can watch the movies via the Flixster app on iOS and Android, and there’s also an app (based on Adobe AIR) for PCs as well. Sounds great, right?

In my case, it’s anything but.

The primary reason I have digital copies of movies is because I want to watch them while traveling. As I brought up earlier, I like watching Mortal Kombat when on trips for Mortal Kombat Online. Another example was when I was traveling from Dubai to Houston; I watched the entire The Lord of the Rings film trilogy on the flight. Also, on a drive from New Orleans to Houston, Jennifer and I once watched The Dark Knight. In other words, I mostly watch my digital copies on portable devices. PC playback support, while kind of nice, is less important to me.

There are really three problems here. The first problem is that I like to use iTunes to manage the media on my iPhone. It tells me how much space I have available on the device, so when I’m picking and choosing what movies I want on the phone, I can make accommodations for what I’m willing to remove to make space, like shrinking the music playlists and the like. Furthermore, with the movies on the hard drive, I can simply copy the movies over USB to the phone. With Ultraviolet, while I can copy the media to my devices, I can’t actually copy it to iTunes. I can copy it to my PC, but iTunes will not recognize it as a viewable movie. I can download it straight to my iPhone, but then I have to figure out ahead of time how much space I need to clear. Worse, according to Flixster’s website, I can’t delete the movie afterwards without deleting the entire app first.

The second problem is the one that REALLY irks me. There’s no support at all for the iPod Classic or the HP TouchPad. There isn’t a Flixster app for webOS (and I’m not holding out hope that one will come out), and the iPod Classic doesn’t have net access at all. The iPod Classic is what I bring with me on trips where I don’t know what I’ll want to watch beforehand, as my entire media library will fit on it (as it has a 160 GB hard drive). One might think it’s annoying watching a movie on a screen the size of the iPod Classic’s, but if I’m not sharing with another person, it’s not that bad.

The third problem is that all of this depends on the Flixster and Ultraviolet services being completely in sync. That doesn’t seem to be the case. During the setup process for my account (done while trying to redeem a digital copy of Green Lantern), it set up a Flixster account and asked me for an email address and password for the Ultraviolet account. However, I was never told what the sign in name was for Ultraviolet, and there isn’t a process by which to find out what it is on Ultraviolet’s website. I’ve got a support ticket in, and I hope they can tell me what it is. In addition, the Flixster app for iOS isn’t giving me access to the movies in Ultraviolet. The FAQ on Flixster’s site said that if the Flixster and Ultraviolet accounts are linked, I should have access to the movies. I guess the accounts weren’t linked after all (despite what the setup process said).

All in all, I’m pretty fed up. At least when the movies had iTunes support, all I needed to do was put the code in to iTunes and the movie would simply download to my PC, and work right off. All of these extra hoops I’m having to jump through with extra accounts, new players, and the like do nothing to make things easier for the consumer. It’s crap like this that helps increase piracy, as those people who “do the right thing” get the shaft, and the pirates can get their copies of the movie far more easily and without any of the hassle.

I guess I should just look at the bright side. The worst case scenario for me is that I can take the DVD and use HandBrake to create my own digital copies. Still, it’s frustrating, and I’m going to definitely think twice before buying any film that features an “Ultraviolet” digital copy.

The Bishop Wedding Soundtrack

D'Arque Bishop

As part of our way of saying “thank you” to everyone who came out to our wedding, Jennifer put together a bunch of gift bags for all of the guests and had the hotel front desk hand them out when they arrived. Among the items we included were a beach bag, suntan lotion, a small bottle of rum, and other items. One of the most personal items we put in was a music CD, filled with songs that we felt represented us and our lives together. I wanted to go ahead and list out and give an explanation for each of tracks… not just for the guests but for everyone who might be interested. :-) Read more “The Bishop Wedding Soundtrack”

Not really how I wanted to upgrade…

D'Arque Bishop

Some (but not many) people are probably wondering why it took me so long to put the blog post up announcing our marriage. The answer is that, well… it wasn’t exactly by choice.

A couple of days after we arrived in the Bahamas, I noticed that I wasn’t receiving email from my main server. A quick check showed that the web services weren’t responding and that the server itself wasn’t responding to pings. I wasn’t too worried; I just figured the system suffered a kernel panic (the Linux equivalent of a BSOD) and needed to be rebooted. I sent an email to the pet sitter asking him to hit the reset button on the server, and left it at that.

A day or so later, he emailed back saying he had done so. I checked, and it was still down. I still wasn’t too concerned, as I figured he probably hit the wrong button. I ended up asking Jennifer’s mom to power cycle the box. After the now-in-laws returned home, I got an email saying she had done so. I checked the server, and I still got nothing. Now I began to worry, thinking a hard drive might have failed.

When we got home, one of the first things I did was check on the server. It was worse than I thought: the system wouldn’t even bring up video. I sighed, and decided to check to see if I had a replacement motherboard. I did, but it was in an old case and wouldn’t come out.

I think it was about at that point that I decided “frak this” and started checking Newegg to see how much a new server would cost. To my surprise, there was an HP Proliant server that fit my needs that only cost $450. I talked to my dad, and he bought it for me with next day delivery (as I host his business email as well, and have done so for years).

We ended up learning a life lesson. When Newegg says “next day delivery”, they mean “delivery the day after the order is processed”. Until now, all of my orders had been processed within two hours. This time, it took two DAYS to process. The end result was that the box arrived on Wednesday instead of Monday. Dad was unhappy, even after Newegg graciously refunded the shipping costs.

As soon as the server arrived, I added a second hard drive (to hold backups), added the users and groups, installed the backup software, and copied the backup archives to the server. Thankfully, the backups restored with no problems. After that I got mail up and running (and was promptly buried under an avalanche of two weeks of undelivered email). Once email was up, I could get everything else up and running.

The new server is pretty nice, too. It’s a lot faster than the old box was (as the old one was using 10 year old hardware), has a smaller case, and it’s far more quiet. The only disadvantage is that I don’t have it set up for RAID, but I don’t need it just yet. Besides, the RAID on the old server caused me issues when I was trying to read the drives from my Windows PC for recovery purposes. :-)

Ah, well. The server, barring some last minor problems, is completely up and running. I’m just thankful the restore (once started) went as quickly as it did, and that the friends who do secondary MX for me were so willing to accommodate having two weeks worth of queued mail on their servers. :-)

No point in signing the mail if no one verifies it.

D'Arque Bishop

It’s pretty common knowledge that I tend to be something of a nut about security.

For the past several years, I’ve been using GnuPG to cryptographically sign all of my outgoing email. The digital signature was attached to every outgoing message, as a way of verifying that I was the one who originally wrote the message. Adding GnuPG support to my emails wasn’t hard; mutt had GnuPG support built-in, while Mozilla Thunderbird could get support via the Enigmail extension. However, after using it for several years, I decided this weekend to stop automatically signing all outgoing email.

The first reason for doing so is the fact that for a couple of years now, I’ve been accessing my email via my iPhone. It doesn’t support GnuPG or any sort of PGP natively, so of course I wouldn’t be able to send out signed emails. The second – and more important – reason is the fact that really… outside of me, no one cares. Most people I know use either a webmail of some sorts or Outlook to access their email, so to them my digital signature looks like a weird text attachment. They pretty much figure the message must have come from me anyway, and aren’t concerned about it. Also, most (if not all) emails aren’t even important enough to worry about signing; I’d been signing my emails pretty much out of sheer habit. For the most part, there isn’t anything that would require me to later on prove that I actually sent it.

So, I’ve decided to stop digitally signing my emails, so those friends of mine I do send emails to won’t have to wonder about those weird text attachments on them. For the most part, I’m sure they won’t care, and I really am not going to lose any sleep over it.

Though, I will admit, it’ll be nice not having to type in the encryption passphrase with every email sent anymore. :-)