DOS Games Discussion

Just found this neat site, it's quite handy and functional:
http://gamedipper.com/

Just like you'd expect, you enter a title and it brings up a list of games that supposedly have at least a certain degree of similarity to your query.

Hmmmmmmm....

When using keyword 'unreal' the site gives me (oh surprise!!) all unreal and UT games ever made, but also on the second page Nuclear Strike ..... Revenge of Arcade ..... etcetera etcetera.
That's where I leave and never will return over there.

The similarity rating upon which suggestions are made is based on statistical analysis of keyword relevance, with keywords obtained from reviews on gaming websites (infomration on the site). Personally I find this an interesting approach to data processing and search techniques, although of course it doesn't produce results as accurate as expert evaluation by human agents.

Recently a member of the site's development team posted the following response in another forum in the thread about the engine:

yuppio wrote:First of all thanks for finding out about our site and thanks for some feedback.

We started this project very recently and trying to improve in any possible way.

The main thing is: site is fully automatic, no manual entries (yet) are made to the similar game lists. All similar games are generated from keywords, which we extract from reviews. By now we only depend on keywords and gernes.
The results actually are way better than we expected in the first place. Of course they are far from "very good".

Also the description texts and screenshots are automatically generated from Wikipedia / Google image search. So errors are not a rare thing

So far the best feature in this project to me personally is keyword search. If I like zombie killing, I can search kill zombies. These results are even quite good, if compared to the similar game lists This is a approach to search by things you want to do in a game or what theme/time/whatever game is about, not so much thinking about gernes or something like that.

Next step is to add some user generated content, allow them to alter the game lists, so we can enliminate some crazy wrong results.

And indeed, the keyword search (you can type as many keywords as you want, just separate them with hyphens) does look promising:
http://gamedipper.com/keyword/greek-mythology
http://gamedipper.com/keyword/fantasy-strategy
etc.

MrFlibble wrote:And indeed, the keyword search (you can type as many keywords as you want, just separate them with hyphens) does look promising............

Indeed, but as usual it also shows the flaws of computer 'intelligence'.
It misses human intuitive searching, no 'fingerspitz' feeling ... also etcetera... (it's all been said a thousand times before).

Example:
http://gamedipper.com/keyword/greek-mythology
lists also Will Rock, I don't believe a human would associate 'Greek mythology' with Will Rock ......

dosraider wrote:Example:
http://gamedipper.com/keyword/greek-mythology
lists also Will Rock, I don't believe a human would associate 'Greek mythology' with Will Rock ......

Are Minotaurs, Cyclops, Harpies, Satyrs, Medusa, Hephaestus and Zeus not Greek enough for you? The game has Greek mythological stuff all over the place.

MrFlibble wrote:Are Minotaurs, Cyclops, Harpies, Satyrs, Medusa, Hephaestus and Zeus not Greek enough for you? The game has Greek mythological stuff all over the place.

Eeeuuurrrrhhhhh ....... I wouldn't call that 'Greek mythological stuff all over the place' ...
Would be the same as saying: "Watch Troy to learn the history of Troy .....
Or even : watch 300 to learn about Thermopylae ....

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhh.

Come on, seriously, you hardly can say Will Rock ..... ah, forget it.
Read Iliad or the Odyssey, not much to see with Will Rock.

dosraider wrote:

MrFlibble wrote:Are Minotaurs, Cyclops, Harpies, Satyrs, Medusa, Hephaestus and Zeus not Greek enough for you? The game has Greek mythological stuff all over the place.

Eeeuuurrrrhhhhh ....... I wouldn't call that 'Greek mythological stuff all over the place' ...
Would be the same as saying: "Watch Troy to learn the history of Troy .....
Or even : watch 300 to learn about Thermopylae ....

Um, a game that has Greek mythological elements is not supposed to be an educational enterprise about Greek mythology. At least, this is how I understand it. A game doesn't have to be historical edutainment at all to include elements from whatever mythology or fiction.

The relevant difference here IMO is in quantity. Heroes of Might and Magic series also has Harpies and Minotaurs and Titans, but those are placed in some completely fictional fantasy setting alongside with other mythological creatures borrowed from other cultures. Whereas Will Rock has predominantly Greek mythological creatures, and it is explicitly said that the game takes place in Greece. The fact that the wacko plot doesn't have anything to do with Greek myths per se doesn't somehow contradict this.

So your statement can only be fair if you consider borrowed elements from Greek mythology as not enough for the game to have the "Greek mythology" tag.

dosraider wrote:Come on, seriously, you hardly can say Will Rock ..... ah, forget it.
Read Iliad or the Odyssey, not much to see with Will Rock.

I have read both The Odyssey and The Iliad (okay, I stopped reading The Iliad shortly after the list of ships), what does it have to do with the game? As far as I know, Will Rock has never been marketed as "based on Homer's works" or anything like that, rather, as "Serious Sam in an Ancient Greek setting".

You can call it a "quasi-Ancient Greek setting" if you wish, but the fact that the game has lots of elements taken directly from Greek mythology is something beyond dispute.

BTW, do you like Age of Mythology? It has so much stuff that was invented by the developers out of the blue I can't take it seriously at all. Yet I don't think that the game should not be marked as relevant to Greek mythology in spite of numerous inconsistencies.

Maybe you're right, and I'm too critical, too old ...?

Maybe, yep.

Anyhoo, the developers promise to improve on the algorithms they currently use, probably the results are going to be more consistent in the future. They aim for as much an automated process as possible, which is going to require rather careful design of initial conditions and aims of analysis, and personally I'd like to think that this engine is eventually going to get quite decent results, although of course automated tasks in the field of semantics (we're sure talking semantics here) still cannot be used as anything more than supplementary help. Doesn't prevent them from getting more advanced with time though.