Tom Forsyth

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@TomF

Graphics coder and HW architect, previously at Muckyfoot, RAD Game Tools, Valve, Oculus, Intel, Rec Room and Riot.

Web: http://eelpi.gotdns.org
Blog: http://tomforsyth1000.github.io/blog.wiki.html
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tomforsyth.bsky.social
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tom_forsyth

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Last Notes

2026-09-28 05:34:20 GMT

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Prat!

2026-04-28 01:28:18 GMT

What's your favourite static web page builder? Something that takes some form of markup language and splits out some HTML. Nothing fancy, I just really really need to get my (read-only) web page/blog updated. Currently using https://pandoc.org/ which is great, just wondering if there's other options.

2026-03-30 22:30:47 GMT

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Interesting:
"true HDTV (1920 x 1035) resolution"
I wonder where that specific rez came from. The 1.85 ratio seems common in cinema, but then they combined it with 1920 wide.

2026-02-24 06:06:06 GMT

LHTAPTDA = Lift Heavy Things And Put then Down Again. Any strength exercise that uses the big tendons on the inside of your wrists. Weights, rowing, swimming, rock-climbing, etc.
CTI = Carpal Tunnel Inflammation. The tightness in your wrists after too much fine-motor work - typing, playing an instrument, etc. Also called RSI but let's be specific here.

2026-02-07 06:55:43 GMT

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malloc is fine. The tricky one is free - that's where all the trouble starts. But there is a solution...

2026-01-13 18:24:02 GMT

Our glorious leader confuses political asylum and insane asylums because:

2025-12-24 18:11:50 GMT

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First you have to fix floor numbering in the USA!

2025-12-24 18:04:35 GMT

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Nit-pick - a "fifth" goes up FOUR notes. Because... uh... reasons. Bad ones. Same bad reason the thing is called an "octave" even though it's only got 7 notes in it.

2025-12-10 19:24:37 GMT

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STL = Stuff Takes Longer :-)

2025-12-09 09:48:41 GMT

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If you actually played Receiver 1 - that was a quickie game jam thing. Receiver 2 is a far more polished version. I mean, it's still user-hostile - but for very deliberate and satisfying reasons!

2025-12-09 06:21:31 GMT

Playing Receiver 2 again, and I had forgotten just how simple the Glock 17 is. All the other guns have fancy controls and routines and so on (holy crap the Single Action Army - what a faff!).
Not the Glock - the Glock is simple. You put bullets in one end, and they come out the other into your leg.

2025-12-02 06:41:01 GMT

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Oh. OF COURSE he also has a scuba diving channel and OF COURSE he wanted to see if the Casio F-91W would stand up to it. It's like he's reading my mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow2mWkpyIUY

2025-12-01 05:57:10 GMT

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I remember it was one of the first cars our family had in the UK. The suspension was incredibly soft - my dad used to stand beside it and push the roof to show how easy it was to move the thing around just with your hand.

2025-12-01 05:34:21 GMT

Those of you who are devout Gun Jesus followers will be completely unsurprised by the car he drives. A Chauchat with wheels? Of course it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duxdKap09e4

2025-11-21 21:58:06 GMT

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And there you have it. The two biggest bug-farms in gamedev - doors and floating point - contrived to make a simple NPC placement bug into quite the time-travelling palaver. /end
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/589/924/206/267/299/original/fb3b7275787a8988.png

2025-11-21 21:57:25 GMT

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And that's why the bug went "back in time" - because yes it's the old code, but we were using a newer compiler with new default settings. In the original build, the compiler defaulted to x87, but in the newer compilers the default is SSE. It's not that one is "better" - the fundamental bug is that the guard was too close to the door, and that had always been there. But in the original the problem "self corrected" and so was never spotted, whereas in the newer compile it became a showstopper.

2025-11-21 21:56:34 GMT

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So on the next frame of simulation, his toe is still in the way of the door. The door isn't allowed to just pass through his toe, so it does the only other option - it bounces back. I think by default it's set to do so completely elastically, so the door bounces back with exactly the speed it came in at, slams shut, and locks again. And you're stuck.

2025-11-21 21:56:11 GMT

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But on the SSE version, a whole bunch of tiny precisions are very slightly different, and a combination of the friction on the floor and the mass of the objects means the guard still rotates from the collision, but now he rotates very slightly less far.

2025-11-21 21:55:54 GMT

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On both versions, the door has just enough momentum to rotate the guard very slightly. The guard's friction on the floor is not quite enough to oppose this, and he rotates a tiny fraction of a degree. On the x87 version, this tiny rotation is enough to move his toe out of the way, the collision is resolved, and the door continues to swing open. All is well.

2025-11-21 21:55:22 GMT

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This collision is actually properly modelled - a big innovation of HL2 was the extensive use of a real physics engine. The door and the guard are both physical objects, both have momentum, they impart an impulse on each other, and although the door hinge is frictionless, the guard's boots have some amount of friction with the floor.

2025-11-21 21:54:46 GMT

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So problem solved, right? 80 bits of precision means the collision didn't happen, but in 32 bits of precision it does, and that's your problem, more bits better, QED, right? Well not quite.
The guard's toe overlaps in both cases - a few millimeters is still significantly larger than ANY of the possible precisions. In both the SSE and x87 versions, the door hits the guard's toe. So far, both agree.

2025-11-21 21:54:13 GMT

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But ten years later in 2013, SSE had been standard in all x86 CPUs for a while - the OS depended on it being there, so you could rely on it. So of course by default the compilers use it - in fact you have to go out of your way to make them emit the old (slightly slower) x87 code. SSE uses a much more well-defined precision of either 32 or 64 bit according to what the code asks for - it's much more predictable.

2025-11-21 21:53:49 GMT

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So this kicked off an even longer bug-hunt. The answer was (as with so many of my stories) good old floating point. Half Life 2 was originally shipped in 2004, and although the SSE instruction set existed, it wasn't yet ubiquitous, so most of HL2 was compiled to use the older 8087 or x87 maths instruction set. That has a wacky grab-bag of precisions - some things are 32-bit, some are 64-bit, some are 80-bit, and exactly which precision you get in which bits of code is somewhat arcane.

2025-11-21 21:53:05 GMT

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OK cool now we can ship the game phew. But why did this EVER work? The guard's toe was in the way in the original version as well. As I say, we went back in time and compiled the original as-shipped source code - and the bug happened there as well. It's always been there. Why didn't the door slam closed again? How did this ever ship in the first place?

2025-11-21 21:52:46 GMT

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Once we'd figured this out, the fix was simple - move the guard back about a millimeter. Easy. But it took a lot of work to find because people had to dust off old memories of how the debugging tools worked, etc.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/589/902/660/984/567/original/d4ca2934ca559c5d.png

2025-11-21 21:51:53 GMT

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If you watch the video, when the door unlocks and then opens, there's a second guard standing inside the room to the left of the opening door. That guard is actually standing very slightly too close - the very corner of his bounding box intersects the door's path as it opens. So what's happening is the door starts to open, slightly nudges into the guard's toe, bounces back, closes, and then automatically locks. And because there's no script to deal with this and re-open the door, you're stuck.

2025-11-21 21:51:27 GMT

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After about a day remembering how to use the debugging and replay tools, someone smart (sorry, I don't remember who) figured out what was going wrong.

2025-11-21 21:51:15 GMT

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Someone even goes back in the source history and compiles the original game as it shipped - nope, that original version is also broken. How can this possibly be? At this point people are freaking out - this isn't a normal bug - it appears to have traveled backwards in time and infected the original!

2025-11-21 21:50:53 GMT

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Oh dear. We can't ship this. I get some other folks, including some folks who worked on HL2 originally, and yep - it's broken. And it's broken when you're not in VR either - so it's not something Joe and I broke. But nobody knows why - none of the relevant code has changed.

2025-11-21 21:50:15 GMT

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I checked a video online, wondering if my memory was faulty - nope, the door's meant to open automatically, and you walk in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_3vMUOayyc&t=215s (at 3:40). But... now it doesn't!

2025-11-21 21:50:00 GMT

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What is meant to happen is a guard (spoiler alert - it's actually Barney in disguise) bangs on a door, the door opens, he says "get in", and then the game waits for you to enter the room before the script proceeds.
But in this case the door sort of rattled, but didn't open, and then locked shut again. So you can't get in the room, and the gate closed behind you, so you can't go do anything else. The guard waits forever, pointing at the locked door, and you're stuck.

2025-11-21 21:49:23 GMT

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So I started it up, selected new game, played the intro section. It's a fairly well-known section - you arrive at the train station with a message from Breen, a guard makes you pick up a can, and then you have to go into a room and... uh... I got stuck. I wasn't dead, I just couldn't go anywhere. I was stuck in a corridor with a guard, and nowhere to go. Bizarre.

2025-11-21 21:49:00 GMT

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Of course we've played a bunch of HL2 by this point, testing all the VR stuff works. But we just skipped to the relevant chapters - we never actually played through from the start. And I hadn't played it through in a while, so I thought I'd do that in VR, start to finish. If I discovered anything that still didn't work, I could at least document it in the release notes.

2025-11-21 21:48:20 GMT

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Luckily, there was some other excuse to reissue HL2 anyway (see https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_2013) and the VR version worked pretty well, so we put the VR support on a command-line, labelled it "beta", rebuilt the whole of HL2 and prepared to ship it.

2025-11-21 21:47:44 GMT

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But HL2 did actually work pretty well. Joe spent a lot of time making the boat sequences work in a reasonable way.
There's a sequence of stacking boxes near the start that is somewhat infuriating in the original - the stack keeps falling over - but in VR it's really easy to place them well.
Also, whacking the manhacks with your crowbar goes from being a panicked flailing in flatscreen, to being an elegant one-swing home-run hit in VR.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/589/883/071/542/137/original/502e91e6547dfe2e.png

2025-11-21 21:46:27 GMT

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We picked Team Fortress 2 as the game - the reason why is a whole different story I won't go into here. TF2 used the Source 1 engine, and as it happened two Valve games also using that same version of the engine were Half Life 2 and Portal 1. So as a side-effect they also got to work in VR.
Well, Portal 1 "worked" - but all the tricks with perspective when you went through a portal were of course a nauseating disaster - it was pretty unplayable.

2025-11-21 21:45:51 GMT

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Once upon a time, I worked at Valve on virtual reality. This was in 2013 around the time the Oculus DK1 emerged, and Joe Ludwig and I decided that the best way to figure out how VR would work in a real game context was to port a real game to it and see what happened.

2025-11-21 21:45:35 GMT

Recent discussion about the perils of doors in gamedev reminded me of a bug caused by a door in a game you may have heard of called "Half Life 2". Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/589/872/869/803/006/original/811512981f638d11.png

2025-11-16 20:38:51 GMT

This decline in peanut allergies in kids is great news. I remember this paper right around when my nephews were born, and discussing it with their mother, and she took the new advice - early, little and often. It seems others did too, and with fantastic results.
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/nov/11/peanut-allergies-declining-children-explained

2025-10-09 17:27:49 GMT

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Yup, that's the reason CSG is tricky. Even if you don't go to fixed-point, it's a good idea to quantise the vertices to the worse-case precision first - then you have uniform behaviour. There really is no point in having better results in one corner of the model than everywhere else.

2025-10-09 08:10:19 GMT

Has anybody got a robust C/C++ CSG library that they have actually used and like? There's a bunch of them out there, but CSG is notorious for ugly edge cases that make it failed to be watertight and suchlike.

2025-10-05 17:41:46 GMT

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Yeah, I thought this video was great, but also depressing because of how worn down she sounded. The line between "I make videos for fun" and "holy shit now this is my job, and so I have to care about my audience" is brutal.

2025-07-13 03:54:03 GMT

CMYK test finch. Useful for printer calibration.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/843/898/422/605/036/original/ba916a835cc8a6d1.jpg

2025-06-17 01:49:19 GMT

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It's a dwarf merchant reading a note!
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Tilesets

2025-05-12 06:03:32 GMT

Applying for a passport renewal...
Your photo must be:
unaltered by computer software
a jpg or jpeg file
Folks, I have startling news about JPEGs...

2025-04-19 20:39:01 GMT

I am trying to find a game I can play co-op PvE with my nephew. The constraint is he's on Switch 1, and I'm on a PC. There's a decent number of games on both platforms, but so far all the fine print reveals that the two platforms can't play TOGETHER (e.g. No Mans Sky). Very frustrating. Any ideas?

2025-02-22 10:03:25 GMT

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I watched it on a 12-hour plane flight when I had literally nothing else to do, and at the end I regretted it, instead of doing something more interesting like punch myself unconscious.

2025-02-22 09:48:57 GMT

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Holy crap people - the script is FREE - you take a smart person, you give them a laptop, and you lock them in a room for a month. What could it cost, ten dollars?. But nooooooooo instead you spend millions on all the other aspects. And it doesn't work. Your film is forgotten.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/046/909/464/889/961/original/73302b4bf8dcec4a.png

2025-02-22 09:48:36 GMT

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It is very distressing to watch some movies these days where the acting is great, the sets are great, the tech is great, everything is great, EXCEPT the script. And it doesn't matter about all those other things, because at the end of the movie you don't remember any of it.

2025-02-22 09:48:22 GMT

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I'm kidding of course. This is an amazing movie. For all the obvious reasons, yes, but primarily because the writers (Cameron, Hurd and Wisher) clearly sat there and day after day polished and refined every single scene and line. Over and over and over. And it shows.

2025-02-22 09:47:59 GMT

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The Terminator. It's OK. Competent. Arnie has like three lines - hard to screw them up. Everyone else is fine. 6/10 perfectly acceptable 80s action movie.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/046/905/636/533/731/original/72c30da3426fe046.png

2025-02-21 06:36:24 GMT

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I love Conan The Barbarian because it's so absurdly self-serious. But the comedy in this one really bursts the bubble.
As an example, in the first one, Arnie punches a camel, and it's bizarre but amusing. Here, Arnie punches the same camel, and it falls flat.
Ah well - there's worse Arnie movies.

2025-02-21 06:36:11 GMT

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This film was made when Grace Jones was enjoying her new boy toy - a brilliant chemistry student named Dolph Lundgren. He would have fit right into this movie, but his first actual screen appearance was A View To a Kill the year after.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/040/488/488/209/665/original/36ec55352e9da669.png

2025-02-21 06:35:39 GMT

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Nobody has any real acting to do here - hey it's a Conan movie. Grace Jones is probably the stand-out, though she maybe had ten lines if that. It's not what you watch a Conan movie for. Every other character was a cardboard cutout as expected.

2025-02-21 06:35:21 GMT

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Wilt Chamberlain towers over all of them as the fifth wheel here - the princesses' bodyguard. Andre the Giant is also famously uncredited as the monster in a suit. Arnie is a decent height - 6ft2. But Wilt is 7ft1 and Andre the Giant is 7ft4.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/040/485/182/267/005/original/8a8fdf08d4f10f2e.png

2025-02-21 06:34:52 GMT

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As mentioned, the jokes were bad. In the first movie they were forgettable, but here they actively detracted from the movie, which was a shame. The fellow playing the thief was fine, but there's a limit to what you can do with the material.

2025-02-21 06:34:33 GMT

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Interestingly the Wizard (who got a name this time around - Akiro) wasn't a joker character this time. They swap out the Archer and replace him with the Thief, and he's the comic relief. And the valkyrie is played splendidly by Grace Jones. Still four of them, as the Gauntlet gods decreed.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/040/481/842/891/707/original/b720a0b4577cc625.png

2025-02-21 06:33:57 GMT

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Tonight was Conan The Destroyer. It's fine. They didn't pack nearly as much plot in as the first one, so the pace was a little slow, and they filled it out with some weak jokes. Still some amazing sets and costumes though.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/040/479/360/816/515/original/90dafb6a0cc19c8d.png

2025-02-21 02:18:14 GMT

Get you a wife who puts up with your nerdy jokes long enough to get 30th anniversary rings that are also emojis (hers is the smaller one - doesn't quite fit me).
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/039/473/111/037/007/original/cb7878609c78fe5e.png

2025-02-20 07:00:39 GMT

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Incidentally, if you're thinking the name "Hargitay" sounds familiar, you may be thinking of their fourth child, Mariska Hargitay - who plays Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/034/922/003/296/664/original/e0e52a809f5e438b.png

2025-02-20 07:00:04 GMT

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It's a fine film, it deservedly won some awards, and both leads were good in it. Both rely a lot on their physicality, but that's absolutely fitting to the real characters. It's inherently limited by having to be real - the ending is a bummer.

2025-02-20 06:59:51 GMT

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I did chuckle at the the bit where Loni Anderson (blonde movie bombshell) is in a biopic playing Jayne Mansfield (blonde movie bombshell) hoping to do a biopic playing Jean Harlow (blonde movie bombshell). Fortunately, unlike the other two, Loni Anderson did not die tragically young.

2025-02-20 06:59:25 GMT

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Easy casting decisions, but they're both good actors. Arnie's accent seems pretty thick, but he lampshades it in one scene, and in the emotional bits he's genuinely good. Loni is superb early on as the cunning bi-modal Mansfield, and also later as the frustrated alcoholic Mansfield.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/034/916/055/272/137/original/f16c9a2c748b5fda.png

2025-02-20 06:58:24 GMT

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Both lead actors basically fall into their roles. Mansfield was a big-boobed blonde sex kitten starlet, and Mickey Hargitay (her middle husband) was a Hungarian-American bodybuilder and the 1955 Mr. Universe. In fact Arnie won the same title as Hargitay, 12 years after.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/034/911/996/367/335/original/acbfd8b982f7e6ce.png

2025-02-20 06:57:20 GMT

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A huge relief to watch The Jayne Mansfield Story after last night's debacle. This was a perfectly decent biopic of Mansfield. How accurate was it? I have no way to tell, but it was a well-told story as far as biopics go.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/034/908/094/728/223/original/67ebdea19f0a6b70.png

2025-02-19 05:50:36 GMT

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At least with Hercules in New York they were trying, but had no money no time and no talent. Whereas these folks had plenty of all three - you can see the money on the screen. They just made terrible terrible decisions and ended up with a pointlessly crap film. Go watch The Cannonball Run again.

2025-02-19 05:50:27 GMT

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I have no idea why Arnie was cast in this. He has absolutely no comic skill, he never shows his muscles, his clothes don't fit well enough to do so, he never shows he's strong, and at this point nobody knew who he was. I don't understand at all.

2025-02-19 05:50:20 GMT

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Ironically, what Deliberately Offensively Jewish Indian Guy really wants is the horse, recognizing correctly that it is the true talent in this film. So maybe not he's not so bad after all? Haha no just kidding - he was awful.

2025-02-19 05:50:12 GMT

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They are also pursued by Paul Lynde playing an Indian Chief. Apparently Paul Lynde was a camp icon at the time, and this was his last film role. But what it comes across as, is him playing Mel Brooks playing an Indian Chief - which is multi-level cringe.

2025-02-19 05:49:54 GMT

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The second best actor in this whole disaster is his horse, who is fantastic. I didn't know you could get a horse to act this well. Congratulations to the horse - give it an Oscar for best supporting actor.

2025-02-19 05:49:44 GMT

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He even has a couple of seconds of Coyote-Time when a bush he's hanging onto (while trying to look down the aforementioned cleavage) comes out of the cliff. A few seconds just hanging there. It's deliberate and awful and not even clever.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/028/981/881/809/790/original/8b8a50bc4650d160.png

2025-02-19 05:49:27 GMT

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And they trudge though all the cliches painfully slowly. He paints a tunnel on the rock, and then Arnie-Margret go through the fake tunnel, he looks gobsmacked, and then he chases them and smacks his gob on the painted rock. Telegraphed at agonising pace.

2025-02-19 05:49:19 GMT

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It's blatantly awful - he goes through the entire Acme catalogue. They do the same "jump too late land on your face" gag three times. They do the "dragged through the dirt by your own rope" gag three times. He is crushed by his own boulder. Twice.

2025-02-19 05:49:10 GMT

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Pursuing them, in what must be the Douglas family's most embarrassing role ever, is Kirk Douglas. He plays Wile E. Coyote chasing the roadrunner couple. I'm not being figurative here - he repeatedly tries to ambush them in stupid methods right from the cartoons.

2025-02-19 05:49:01 GMT

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This is terrible. Really bad. The best actor in this is Ann-Margret, playing a cleavage, who has to be escorted by a six-gun-in-his-pocket played by Arnie, across some random "wild west" country. No really, their character names are Charming Jones and Handsome Stranger - don't worry about it.

2025-02-19 05:48:51 GMT

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This film is exactly half-way between those two gems chronologically (1979) but in terms of quality it is rock bottom. Imagine the subtlety of Cannonball Run, with the plot complexity of a Roadrunner movie. Absolutely not kidding - we will get to that.

2025-02-19 05:48:36 GMT

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Welp. I thought Hercules in New York was Arnie's worst film. Not even close. That honour goes to tonight's film - "The Villain". The director is Hal Needham. You may recognise that name from such epic films as Smokey and The Bandit, and Cannonball Run.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/028/977/315/831/085/original/8eb7399de93a6cb3.jpg

2025-02-18 07:09:54 GMT

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I'm with them - I have no idea where or why this ending happened. I assume the writers panicked. Despite the bizarre finish, it's still a really interesting film to watch for fans of all the three main actors. Or if you just want to watch Arnie and his fellow muscle men do their stuff I guess?

2025-02-18 07:09:40 GMT

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And having been a subtle and intriguing tale of social mores, the end of the film inexplicably becomes a Benny-Hill-style romp where twenty Speedo-clad bodybuilders spread out over downtown Atlanta flexing for the people while the cops look on, bewildered.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/023/633/895/594/853/original/1ecf2bf7728ea842.png

2025-02-18 07:09:25 GMT

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Also, it's 70s Alabama, which is half a world away from my British upbringing. But this is just to say it's a really interesting movie to watch, even though it's "of its time". And Arnie honestly does a great job in it. He's natural, fluent, relaxed and charming.

2025-02-18 07:09:17 GMT

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It's sometimes a little hard to follow because it's 50 years ago, and social mores have changed. So people get angry or don't say what they should for no obvious reason to modern sensibilities, so it can be hard to unpick, and I had to watch a few scenes multiple times to figure out the dynamics.

2025-02-18 07:09:10 GMT

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It's a nice mix of working-class sleaze meets high-society skullduggery, with some really nice subtle characters even in the stereotypical placeholder folks.

2025-02-18 07:09:01 GMT

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Honestly this film is surprisingly good, and well worth watching. Jeff Bridges has inherited Alabama Old Money and isn't sure what to do with it, he's mixed up in some shady business, and he meets working-class girl Sally Field through Arnie.

2025-02-18 07:08:51 GMT

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And although there's a bunch of fighting in the film, none of it involves Arnie. So this film is somewhat unique - at no point does the plot revolve around how absurdly strong he is!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/023/630/655/778/926/original/817e82d125ab30bb.png

2025-02-18 07:08:00 GMT

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There's also Robert Englund in a supporting role. He does fine, and doesn't kill anybody. Also in a supporting role - Arnold's muscles. Of course there's some gratuitous bodybuilding scenes, but outside those he's an actual person. He even manages to play the fiddle quite convincingly.

2025-02-18 07:07:50 GMT

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Honestly this is the best I've seen him. He's not menacing or doing one-liners - he's playing an actual character. Sure, the character is an Austrian body-builder trying to find his place in America, training to win Mr. Universe, so it's not exactly a stretch, but he's charming, modest and likeable.

2025-02-18 07:07:25 GMT

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Tonight was Stay Hungry, which stars Jeff Bridges and Sally Field, but Arnie's a close third. And he can actually act! It's been six years since the abysmal Hercules In New York, and he's learned to be a real human being.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/023/624/937/963/772/original/c22d17ff581c3f08.png

2025-02-17 08:28:24 GMT

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The mythology is all over the place. Hercules is a Roman demigod. But in the film his father is Zeus, who is Greek. The film mentions Juno, who is Roman. And apparently at the end Atlas (Greek) and Samson (Jewish) appear. They should have thrown in Thor and Optimus Prime for good measure.

2025-02-17 05:10:27 GMT

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Anyway, the film is terrible. Please - I beg you - do not.

2025-02-17 05:10:15 GMT

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Amusingly, Arnie's biggest box-office rival in the 80s, Sylvester Stallone, was dubbed in German by.... Thomas Danneberg! He also did plenty of other very cool folks. Sadly, he died a few years ago. RIP legend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Danneberg

2025-02-17 05:10:02 GMT

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As a fun fact, although Arnold speaks perfectly good German, in the German version of most of his films (probably not this one) he was always dubbed by Thomas Danneberg. This is because Arnie has a broad Austrian "yokel" accent which ruins the menace - imagine being threatened by Elmer Fudd.

2025-02-17 05:09:45 GMT

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In the version I found, Arnie is dubbed (and I can't find out who by). There is a version where it's his voice, but predictably it's even worse. Hey, he's 22 and it's his first speaking role. Here's a video with a comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6dYrgu8XqI
Trust me, those are the good bits.

2025-02-17 05:09:26 GMT

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It was released on video under the title "Hercules Goes Bananas" presumably to make it sound similar to a Herbie film. I'm sorry, but of the two Germanic exports, the VW is by far the better actor, and was given infinitely better scripts.

2025-02-17 05:09:14 GMT

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It was so bad, I gave up at the 40-minute mark. A bear has just escaped from Central Park Zoo, and clearly Arnie was going to have to wrestle it, but since it's also clearly a dude in a suit he shouldn't have much trouble. That suit was probably half the budget of the entire film.

2025-02-17 05:09:02 GMT

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This is just a series of excuses to have Arnie take his clothes off and demonstrate feats of strength. Which sure, fair play, he does that well, but I'm not sure why somebody would ruin it by writing such an abysmal script around it. The porn analogy still holds.

2025-02-17 05:08:52 GMT

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For tonight, I managed to find Arnie's first film, Hercules In New York. I now regret that - terrible move on my part. It is beyond awful. Imagine a cheap 70s porn film, but then they forget to do the porn bit. If you really must watch it, get very drunk or stoned first.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/017/492/733/358/235/original/7a91b4c9001931d9.jpg

2025-02-16 06:51:15 GMT

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Things I noticed on this watch:
This is another film in which James Earl Jones has a monologue where he declares that the hero is his son (ESB was 2 years earlier)
I had forgotten how much stabbing and slitting of throats this movie has. There are only two actual swordfights in this film, and Valkyrie wins both of them.

2025-02-16 06:50:40 GMT

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The scale of the sets, the number of extras, and the costumes is amazing. They spent $20m of 1984 money on this, which is mad, but they did make it back.
And the plot really moves - we go through about six or seven different "ages" of Conan in a single movie - you will not be bored!

2025-02-16 06:50:26 GMT

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I had forgotten that it sets up the canonical (Conanical?) Gauntlet foursome - the barbarian, the valkyrie, the archer, and the wizard.
FACT - at no time does Conan have a beard. Not even a 5-o-clock shadow. So why is he a "barbarian"? Kids these days...
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/012/232/224/908/354/original/6e50bfcecd2f1d2d.jpg

2025-02-16 06:49:37 GMT

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Who doesn't love Conan? It's epic. It's mad. It's low on dialogue, high on boobs. I've seen it so often, and it's still fantastic.
By which I mean - it makes no sense. Why was he freed? Who knows. Who and why was the sorceress? Who knows. Why did he go meet the wizard? Who knows!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/012/230/352/833/949/original/3f933d1524aed18e.jpg