Tag: idea

NaNoWriMo

Random Thoughts

First off, Mr. Eko is dead. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it. If you understand it, well, I hope you already watched this week’s episode.

My problem with Mr. Eko was that when they introduced him as the silent butt kicking prayer stick guy, I liked him. His representation of a man with faith was cool, and looked to be a good introduction to the mix of people finding their faith only once they were stuck on the island. Then they had to go and make him just like everyone else as he decided that “the button” was his purpose. *sigh*

In a way, I’m glad he’s dead… So, what exactly does that have to do with the NaNoWriMo? I’ll tell you.

When I started thinking about the project, I have a handful of ideas swirling around in my head. Immediately, I narrowed it down to three. Then I tossed out one because it would work much better as a TV script instead of a novel, and that left me with two. I wrestled and anguished over which idea I would run with, and finally I picked one.

Then I started writing it… See, I’ve tried writing this story before. I know where it starts, and I know where it ends, and I even know a few places it has to go in the middle, but I’m missing all the inbetween parts. As expected, when I sat down and started writing, the story started not going where I wanted it to go. I got stuck, as I always do, trying to get from where I am to the next major plot point. I see where they should go, but my characters don’t seem to want to get there. And this is how it relates to Mr. Eko.

From the show, I get the feeling that someone wrote up the character of Eko as he was in the first few episodes. Silent butt kicker who, with Ana-Lucia helps the tail survivors actually survive the much harsher life they fall into as compared to the relative peace of the other group from season one. I think that it was intended for Eko to somehow die, perhaps sacrifice himself to save the other survivors, on their trip across the island, but the character proved so popular that they kept him alive. According to legend, Jack was the same way. The good doctor was supposed to die in the two hour premier, but they rewrote the part when Michael Keaton turned down the role. He went from a big name guest star to a smaller name major character. In Jack’s case it all turned out pretty well, but with Eko, it seems like they hadn’t considered what to do with him. Upon the tail survivors reaching the rest of the passengers, they made Ana-Lucia the fighter, and so they decided to make Eko pursue his faith, which lead him to the button, and the conflict of faith with Locke… and it was all pretty uninteresting, Eko’s half anyway.

When writing my story, the character I want to make the main character keeps trying to step back and let other people be in the spotlight. I keep pulling him back in, but it just feels forced. So I think I’m either going to have to scrap the idea until I find a way to make him the main character without it feeling forced, or just let him fade into the background and use somebody else. I don’t want to turn him into a Mr. Eko.

Anyway… that’s all I’ve got today.

Can Someone Really Do That?

Gaming

One thing that irritates me in games is the lack of reality in certain aspects. Don’t get me wrong, I think being able to carry a half dozen backpacks loaded with gear is actually a good idea because reality in this care would impeed fun since you’d have to keep running back to town and dropping off loot instead of playing.

However, in combat, I am annoyed with people who whiz around running at full speed and jumping like they are on crack.

In reality, if you tried to attack someone with a sword while you ran around them in a circle, sidestepping, while jumping every second, you’d be fairly inaccurate and your swings would be pretty weak. In order to get good power into a swing, either you have to be charging, using your momentum to push the blade, or you have to plant your feet on the ground to support the muscular force you wish to bring to bear.

So, to that end, I wish to introduce a little reality into the game. Movement in any direction other than toward your enemy should have a negative impact on accuracy and power (damage). Moving toward an enemy should increase power based on the distance travelled (makes horseback lance fighting a possibility), and standing still should positively impact accuracy (chance to hit). Jumping should pretty much destroy accuracy and power. However, on the other side, if you are moving any direction but toward your enemy, your ability to dodge should increase. Jumping will actually make you harder to hit.

Now the question is “Well, I could just be jumping when I’m defending and stand still when attacking. Right?” No, not with any noticable effect. The jumping, or moving away from an opponent, would cap fairly quickly and be only a small modifier. The attack bonuses would be greater the longer you stayed still (or charged). So the end result of the proposed scenario would be “You’d be a little harder to hit, but have almost no attack bonus.”

It makes the combat engine very complex, and means that reduction of client/server lag is of paramount importance, but I think it would make for a much better game, especially in PvP.

Creative Roadblocks

Random Thoughts

I have been a writer for a large portion of my life. I am constantly jotting down ideas, paragraphs, pages, and half-chapters. Sadly, little of it ever really gets complete.

I don’t believe in writer’s block. What most people call writer’s block is usually either fear, or just a lack of a clear path from point A to point B, or worse, not wanting to use the path that has come to you naturally. Truth is though, most people who claim to be blocked are really just trying to hard to write final drafts on the first draft. The solution: write it, and if it comes out crappy, rewrite it.

I am constantly rewriting.

However, on occasion, I can churn out some quick content… heck, its what half of this website is… but there are times where I do get stuck. I come up with a good parody idea, and sometimes the words just flow right out… other times, I get halfway there and get hung on a word, a needed rhyme or turn of phrase that just doesn’t come. My usual response is just to set it aside, ignore it, work on something else, and the lightning will strike my brain, inspiration will appear. But for some reason, today, I have been sitting here with something that if a great idea, in this case the re-lyricing of a song for laughs, and when I employed my usual tactic the words just never came. So I’m sitting here with a half written song (I have the chorus set, and a couple of the lines) and I’m laughing at the idea of it, but for some reason I just can finish the execution.

Perhaps my brain just has a bridge out and what I need is a good solid detour… mmm… time to go home.

Killing in the name of God

Random Thoughts

So I read this story. This frightens me because one thing I am constantly being told is that acts of terrorism and violence are acts of fundamentalist Islam, and not of the general Islamic people. But, just like the car bombings, I’m searching around and I’m not finding any Islamic people saying its wrong. At most, they say that “we” do not understand their culture.

And I guess I don’t, nor do I want to. But I suppose that comes with being brought up in the “loving and caring God” Christian household, with being taught that things like the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades were misguided. Now we have an entire section of the world that is literally saying, “if you do not believe in our God, we will kill you and we are right in doing so,” and not enough of the “right” people are condemning it.

I suppose my feelings on this are firmly planted in the idea that silence is acceptance. If something is wrong, and you look the other way, you are passively saying that you agree, that you are going to allow that to happen. So now we have a man who was Muslim and is now Christian, and his countrymen want him to die because turning away from Allah is a sin against Allah that holds the punishment of death.

I keep being told that Islam is a peaceful religion, and yet, especially in the Middle East, its followers cling tightly to the concept of the “infidel”. An infidel is, in short, someone who doesn’t worship Allah. And while over the years Christianity has taken the stance that non-believers should be converted (and yeah, at some periods they felt that conversion through torture and death was okay), but Islam has held to the idea that infidels, non-believers are less than human and not worth converting. Infidels are the enemy, and they are charged by Allah to rid the world of infidels. In Islam, while the treatment of other Islamics might be purely peaceful, killing infidels is rewarded in the afterlife. And the problem is that the fundamentalist Islamics who fully support this are very loud, and the Islamics who condemn this are fairly silent.

Its great that we want to help out developing nations, but should we be helping support a belief system that would prefer to see us dead? I don’t know, but its definately something to think about.

Stuff on the Net

Stuff on the Net

I keep watching this and it just gets better every time I see it. Good fan films are awesome.

Lum the Mad clued me in on the next big thing in Chinese online games. The funny thing is, while this is the first game that comes right out and says that the goal is to be just like everybody else, that idea is not new… every MMORPG seems to follow that mantra.

You know, when you go to the movies, the policy is that they don’t sell tickets to R rated movies to kids under 17, however it is not the law. But some government stooges would like to make selling “mature” themed video games to minors illegal. Support better parenting and stop the government from doing it for them.

So those are the things that stuck with me this week…

A New Project

Random Thoughts

I’ve started up a new project I’m calling “The Game That Never Was”. It is basically just a collection of my thought on what would make the perfect MMORPG. Some of those ideas can be found here on my weblog under the Gaming heading, and I’ll be integrating those into TGTNW eventually. Until then, when I add something new to it, I’ll also include on the index of Probablynot.com a discussion or explanation as to why I came to that idea or decision.

Anyway… enjoy.

Double Fisted Gaming

Gaming

I hate playing First Person Shooter games on a console system. The step back from a keyboard and mouse set up to a console game controller is just too much for me. However, games for consoles have been getting better and better, and upgrading my computer over and over keeps getting more expensive. So I’ve been looking at the next generation consoles… So far, the XBox 360 seems like a good one, and I like the idea of online play which it excels at. But the Playstation 3 promises to be backwards compatible with all PS2 and PS1 games, which is something I miss on other systems. I currently own a GameCube, and I’d kill to play classic Super Mario Bros. if they’d let me. It wasn’t until I was really looking into the Nintendo Revolution that it hit me as to what I really want from a game system… Double Fisted Gaming.

I look at the Revolution controller, the new wand thing… and it sounds both neat and annoying. However, it also sounds like halfway to what I want. Imagine playing a shooter game, with the wand-like controller as a gun, and a second controller on your other hand to control movement. Not two thumbsticks like current games, but two completely separate controllers… like a keyboard and a mouse.

Now, I know game companies like the idea of people being able to sit in any position and hold the controller… but you know what? Screw ’em! I want a second controller “keypad” that I strap to my leg or something, or rest on a table and give it about a dozen or so keys, maybe even a scroll wheel (for weapon switching in FPS games). Take that and the Revolution wand and I’ve got me a “keyboard” and a gun in my hand. Hell yeah!

If you are a designer out there and want to make fansy controllers for game systems.. please, PLEASE, steal this idea!

Evolution Revolution

Random Thoughts

Intelligent Design isn’t the stupidest idea to ever be put forward, but its got unique issues of its own. See, the Theory of Evolution that is taught in schools today is not the original theory proposed by Charles Darwin. It bears similarities, but over the year as science has been able to find evidence the theory has been tweaked. Evolution doesn’t deny God. It’s still quite possible that the series of events, of mutations, that we perceive as Evolution is actually a brilliantly designed plan of God that is unfolding over millions of years. There is plenty of room for God in Evolution.

Intelligent Design, on the other hand, holds that some facets of living creatures, like the eye for example, are so complex that they could not have evolved through the course of millions of years of mutation, but had to have been created “as is” by some force outside or greater than the Universe. While Evolution can prove that small mutations occur and can trace genetics through many generations of an animal, Intelligent Design can’t prove that “stuff just happens”… unfortunately, it can’t be disproven either until someone builds a time machine and goes back to see if eyes evolved or if they just showed up.

That is my problem with Intelligent Design… it wants to be science, but because its core theory cannot be in any way proven by the scientific method, its supporters strive to redefine science to allow Intelligent Design to fit. That’s exactly was Kansas did… their school board redefined science to allow for more than just natural and observable phenomenon to be included. The caveat here is that by doing so they have technically opened the door for ghosts, and leviathan elder gods, and more to be considered perfectly good science. Essentially, what they have done is allowed non-falsifiable (things that are impossible to be shown as being false) theories to stand. Part of the scientific method is that your theory has to be either true or false, it has to be defined such that if a given condition arrises, the theory will fail. Intelligent Design doesn’t have that, at least without time machines… If, one day, a new organ appears in an animal that cannot be linked to mutation, then ID is correct. However, if no new organ ever shows up from now until the end of time, ID might still be correct. There is no event that can occur under which the result is that ID is false.

Over at the University of Kansas, a few teachers have decided that enough is enough, and are putting together a new class to study the mythology of Intelligent Design. And its were it belongs… One day Zeus might show up proving that the old Greek myths were correct, but if Zeus never shows up it doesn’t prove them false. That’s what myths are, things believed to be true but utterly unfalsifiable. Intelligent Design belongs in religious study, it belongs at church, until such time as they revise their “theory” to allow for the possibility that its wrong.

A How-To Guide

Site News

Basically, it’s for my brother, but I’ve added a simple “How To” guide on Programming to the site here. It’s over on the right listed as “So you want to be a programmer?”

It isn’t anything fancy, just the basic rules that I personally follow when it comes to programming, which is what I do for a living. The main idea behind it is that you don’t need to spend large amounts of time trying to memorize all the nuances of a language, just learn the basics and fake the rest.

The Death of Innovation

Random Thoughts

There is an article on CNN… Here. And what I have to say only deals with it abstractly. The gist of the article is, a number of years ago, to raise awareness of the ostracizing and belligerent treatment of homosexuals, GLSEN came up with the idea of a “Day of Silence”. People supporting the cause would choose to not speak for an entire day, the idea being that if enough people do it, then perhaps those that treat gays (and other) kids badly might see what its like to be separated from the rest. The article isn’t about the Day of Silence, but about the “Day of Truth” being organized by ‘the other side’. Religious folks and whatnot who are going to use the day after the Day of Silence to wear loud T-shirts and hand out pamphlets, and basically be anything but silent about how being gay is a sin and is harmful to humanity as a whole.

Honestly, I really believe that people can do whatever they want, as long as they don’t hurt people who don’t want to be hurt. (Surprisingly, there are a number of people who for one reason or another, in one form or another, actually WANT to be hurt, and I feel they are free to do so.) So neither the Day of Silence nor the Day of Truth will have any real affect on me. But, when the Day of Silence was conceived at least it was original… the whole approach was fresh, and different. It was kinda neat. But these people with the Day of Truth, they couldn’t think of anything other than “Let’s do the opposite of them!”

Come on, you right wing religious zelots! Get out there and show us what you’ve got! Be original! Be imaginative! Be innovative!