Mat Dickie

Every industry has one. The free-thinking rebel that redefines the rules. He says what no-one else will say and does what no-one else will do. Fuelled by raw passion, he seizes an art form by the throat and drags it to its apex. What they invented, he makes it sing. His peers hate him but the public love his style. At once he intimidates and inspires; breaking down the walls that secure some yet block others. Welcome to MDickie.com - home of the games industry's first true 3-dimensional character! Whether he's the "hero" or the "villain" depends entirely on your perspective...

http://www.mdickie.com/

Look at this badass motherfucker, /prog/. You'll never be as cool as him if you only keep making toy programs.

>>317
But which game does everyone remember? Oh, right, Doom.

You know, I'm reading the last question again and again, and I think that I'm missing something. How is the answer related? That asshole didn't even slip a word about FP. What the fuck is wrong with you, dick? Can't answer a question properly?

>>321
Why is that?

>>322
Indeed.  Besides flattering himself that he might be mentioned in a text-book on CS (LOL), he just ignored FP and SICP for the rest of his long-winded comment.

>>322
I believe that's because he is not acquainted with Haskell. Don't worry, Mat, we have a unsafeReplaceWithArtist for you.

>>300,302,309
Looks like BlitzBasic, or possibly DarkBasic.

>>313
SotC is my favorite game. And Ico is the only piece of entertainment (including books/movies) where I actually cared about the charachters. Probably because I had to hold that bitch's hand through the whole game.

WHY DID IT END THAT WAY? ;_;

Also someone should email that interview to GJS. Highlight the SICP part.

>>308-309
Definitely not VB, the code doesn't have Then at the end of If lines, also he seems to use statement separators on the 4th line, and a weird comment (?) character on the first line.

>>322
Also, he said
"functional" programming languages

>>327
I thought it was a label, like

:BODYSLAM

Dickie using GOTO maybe?

>>325,329

It is confirmed BlitzBasic: http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/p5fQ6v1FwDQ/hqdefault.jpg

Google returns many other such images of the same color back-ground and similar code color when you search for BlitzBasic.

And here's a better screenshot from Mr. Dickie: http://www.mdickie.com/images/back/back_3Dmoves04.JPG

Now let's review his code together!

>>330
Seems you can use # in identifier names, fascinating. Also, : serves both as a comment character and instead of the As keyword.

Also I shouldn't really comment on his code because I never finished any game but it seems kind of untidy.

>>331
In QBasic the : allowed you to have multiple statements on one line.

INPUT "What is your name? ", name$ : PRINT "Hello, ", name$, "!"

We'll have to wait for him to release the entire source for his games before we can really examine his EXPERT PROGRAMMING practices.  I'm guessing that it will be an un-commented mess.

Please don't feed the troll!

>>332
Good to know. Still, I don't think I'll ever write something in another BASIC after being forced to use VB :(

>>291
Have you read your fan mail today? Didn't think so.
Ｈｅ’ｓ　ｇｏｔ　ｕｓ　ｔｈｅｒｅ　：（　；（
Alright guys, which way to /art/?

>>335
I get fan mail.

   <meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">

>>336
The pleasure of being appreciated by someone ;_;

>>335
Contrast that with the Sussman's reply (loosely paraphrased): "Don't send me fan mail, this isn't about me". Truly, this man has attained ^Satori.

So this guy admits he's not a real programmer, but yet thinks he's superior just because he can write a few games?

>>340
Not only that, but because he is the only person to ever develop a game solo, and for that he has forever changed the industry.

>>291
http://www.mdickie.com/q&a_interview16.htm
Somehow I feel that WHBT.

Your message was perhaps one of the strangest pieces of email I have ever received. It is flattering to have a fan club, and it is a very good idea. Unlike most of human society, science and engineering are based on the laughable idea that each of us is capable of evaluating evidence and thinking on our own. Each of us can do experiments, work out the reasoning, and determine the truth for ourselves. Even worse, there is no room in science or engineering for "fans" representing group approval over individual thought. One of my heros, Adolf Hitler, put it very well:

We will not allow scientifically-minded rational folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not Artists, but something else—in any case something which has nothing to do with us.

I am pleased to talk with people about matters of wrestling or replacing scientists with artists, so you and your colleagues may certainly send me mail. I hope to endow you with as much of my genius as you may comprehend. But please get rid of the "hater" way of thinking. It is uncool and ultimately pathetic.

>>343
Mat Sussman? Gerald Jay Dickie?

>>344
Matt sucks man? Jerald's Gay Dickie?
yHbt.

Further to an earlier post ("The Pie Thrower", 30th September 2009), I suspect the phantom book reviewer can be traced to this grubby little forum where co-ordinated attacks on my character were being plotted. Suffice to say, it's a putrid sewer of baseless opinion - gushing forth from a group of inarticulate programmers who have never achieved anything. I had given the reviewer the credence of being a legitimate part of the games industry. It turns out that his "27 years of experience" amount to being the tea-boy in some IT department somewhere, and his "colleagues" are none other than those he corresponds with digitally. I did suspect that a legitimate game designer wouldn't have the time or the inclination to engage in this kind of stuff. I certainly never did while I was busy achieving various things. These tirades against my work are so self-defeating. They accuse me of being a talentless loser and then proceed to spend days on end talking about such an individual?! They accuse me of being "arrogant" and then spew the kind of mean-spirited filth that would never cross my lips. I'm fascinated by evil and wretchedness. I always wondered whether Nazi concentration camp guards would glance at each other and rhetorically ask, "Are we the bad guys?" It's a fitting question for these people to ask themselves. Do they genuinely believe they're the "good guys" and I'm the villain of the piece? Do they ever glance back over the filth they wrote and concede that it wasn't justified and wilts in the light of my dignified response? Ditto for the cowards you often find commenting on YouTube videos. These people make my critics in the Blitz community look positively civilized! Speaking of whom, I understand they also have a pissy little thread about my book. I'm not entirely sure one of their number isn't responsible for the review in question. I wouldn't put it past them, since they search tirelessly to find holes in my work so as to feel better about their insignificant output. Either way, we can chalk it up to a miserable human being who criticizes more than he contributes. Incidentally, anybody posting under the name of "MDickie" is an impostor. Anything I have to say can always be found at this site first...

As I was reading his replies, I thought, "Wow, he really does think he's bulletproof." Then I read this:

I'm bulletproof
I lol'd.

>>346
Oh crap, we're going to be invaded by dickites!

                       _.-------.                    
     ----------------''       ,-.`-----.             
                             ( X )      `-.          
                              `-'  ,---.   |         
                                  .     `---       ,----
    -----------------------.       `-.            .  
                            `---------`   ,--+-----`----
                                         ;    :      
                    Have you read your   +----;      
                   fan mail today?        `--+----,----
                                                 (   
                                                  `-----

Have you read your fan mail today?

>>316
Yeah, I wrote the list, and I have to admit I've never actually played Halo :(. I couldn't think of anything else in the ten seconds I spent on that question; I hoped anon would help me edit them and make them better. I honestly did not expect those questions to be sent as is, but email-anon jumped the gun.

>>330
Yes, it is blitz; he used to be popular around their forums, and he talks about it in his FAQ.

This should have been one of the questions. He says he did everything himself, but he didn't. He just licensed a game engine with a scripting language. This is *EXACTLY* the same as any Half-Life or Unreal mod, no difference.

There are tons of one-man outfits who do both scripting and artwork for game mods, and they are far, far better than MDickie's shitty games. Lots of extremely popular titles these days started as mods, such as Counter-Strike, or the various DotA clones (Demigod, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth)


But at the end of the day, his so-called accomplishment (doing everything himself) is actually counter-productive, and ultimately pointless. The whole reason we have advanced technologically as a society is because of division of labour.

I don't know how to make shoes. I don't know how to butcher a pig. I don't know how to build a house. I don't know how to generate electricity. *Different People* know how to do these things, and their specialization allows them to do it well. As you divide the house-building process amongst more people, you get bigger and better houses. It's not a 'revolution in house building' when one guy decides to single-handedly build and wire and insulate and furnish his own house; all that happens is he gets a shitty house.

Division of labour is the most fundamental aspect of civilization. It's the basic building block of society. We know exactly what life is like without division of labour, and it has been studied for centuries; in fact if you go to New Guinea you can see it for yourself.

This is why I'm not impressed by his inability to rely on others. It's not a strength; it's a failing. This is something I've had to learn myself the hard way throughout my own career. I still have a lot of difficulty handing work off to others that I could do myself, and it's a hard thing to admit when someone else can do a big part of your project better than you. But at the end of the day, you get to focus on what you really are good at, and the project as a whole turns out pretty amazing for everyone.

>>350
I honestly did not expect those questions to be sent as is, but email-anon jumped the gun.
Yeah I just wanted to get those out before I went to bed (and hopefully before Dickiehole went to bed) so I could read his response as early as possible the next day.

I still don't know what to reply to him in my email.  I want /prog/ to be mentioned on his website in some how.

>>346
Link to where this was written?

>>351
http://www.mdickie.com/blog.htm
It links to this thread. Apparently he was completely unaware of the 4chan before this.

s/of the/of/

>>352
HOHO YES.  Now if only he would link to http://dis.4chan.org/prog/ on some page.  But hey, linking to this thread may be even better.  I'm sure some people who get a hoot out of him will eventually read this thread too.

This guy is fucking forreal.

Dios mio.

>>355
worse, the ``modding'' communities are also real.  he has customers.

Even if the questions were different he still would have thought he was invincible.

>>352
He sure likes to end his blog posts with ellipses...

>>358
That's a sorry excuse for an ellipsis, boy…

>>359
To hell with our founding fathers’ typography!  This is the Internet, we can do whatever we want!