Latest Posts

Zombies: Replenishing the World

Gaming

One concern that has been brought up by the few people I have discussed this game idea with is: How do you replenish supplies in the world?

This is a very complex issue, that after much though has a very very simple solution, and that is: You don’t. Not directly anyway.

To be honest, one of the problems I have with many games is the endless respawn of stuff. Now, I did say this would be a world of endless zombies, but all my zombie spawns would be “at the edge of the world”. Anywhere a “populated” area meets an “unpopulated” area is a potential spawn point for zombies because they are wandering in from other areas. But monsters and items fading in to view appearing out of thin air while the player watches… not in my game, its immersion breaking.

As for food and other supplies that players go after, in their area they will eventually scavenge it clean, at which point they’ll need to either a) start with the farming, b) widen their scavenging routes, or c) move somewhere else. If they choose a, then there is no need to handle any replenishment of supplies, they will find make them themselves. If they choose b or c… well, you don’t want the world to eventually be totally picked clean, so what you do is, when an area remains “unpopulated” for a length of time, you reset it, and everything goes back to like it was on launch day.

By design, the game will take care of all potential issues except for player memory. Players who used to live in the area that haven’t logged in will have eventually starved to death (as mentioned before, the game is going to have a level of persistance not used in very many games, when you are offline your character is still living), which is one of the factors in deciding to reset the area. However, nothing could be coded to prevent a player from remembering that they used to live in that area but had moved out. They’ll remember clearing the mall and eating all the food, perhaps even burning it to the ground, but suddenly upon area reset the mall will be back and stocked (with supplies and zombies).

The only real issue facing the game is making sure there is enough world to support the players, but that’s an issue that would have to be planned for but addressed only if the game exceeds expectations.

On The Hunt

Gaming

The Burning Crusade came out to much fanfair. Lots of people have blogged about how it is either totally awesome, more of the same, or a complete waste of time. I’m enjoying it, but probably not for the same reasons that everyone else has.

Most of my friends always wanted to play the Horde. And I must admit, playing on the side that is, in PvP, the perpetual underdog appealed to me. Back when I used to play FPS games exclusively, I always joined the losing side in public games to try to even the score. You can’t be the hero if you win all the time… heroes are supposed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, not lazily claim another victory from the pile of easy wins. But one thing always kept me from getting in to the Horde: the male-hunchback syndrome.

All the males of all the Horde races have their heads slumped down and look like they should be ringing the bells of Notre Dame. It would be one thing if the women were hunched too, but they weren’t, it was just the men. But with the introduction of the Blood Elves for the Horde in the Burning Crusade, finally there was an upright standing male to play.

So the wife and I rolled up some blood elves, and rather than our usual form of one of us playing damage and the other support, we decided to both play hunters.

It really is kind of silly. Another friend of ours plays a warlock and when we all group, its like we have a six person group, not three. The one thing we lack is reliable healing, but luckily (or is that sadly?) you can pretty well avoid the need for healing with the proper tactics. We kill… everything. Pets and traps, bows and arrows. The animals tank, we slow them and burn them, and we pincushion them. It’s almost not fun unless we push the envelope and work exclusively on Orange and Red quests, fighting stuff three, four and five levels above us.

It is definately a different game than the old priest/paladin game we are used to playing.

Frodo`s New Shoes

Gaming

I played in the Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar beta for a bit, but I stopped once I realized I really didn’t have much interest in the game.

I have always loved the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings books, and the Peter Jackson movies were fantastic. But what makes those things great is the story, the lore. And while some of that is captured in the MMO, there were some things that were just out of place. Much like with Vangard, their attempts at trying to attain a “realistic” look and feel for the game is destroyed by floating question marks and exclamation points. Over in this thread for the problem in Vanguard, Destral proposes what I think is an excellent idea:

I would have thought it wouldn’t be too hard to have NPC’s react to the proximity of a character that can perform a quest for them by having them call out to the player (and only to the player, so that other players don’t see it).
So a character could be walking around in Leth Nurae, when they might see ‘Flavian Vel’selth calls out to you, “Good day, Soandso, would you have a moment?”‘. If the player is interested in accepting a quest, he could then walk over to the character and hail them, initiating the quest dialog.
Of course, this should only happen with some NPC’s in any case, else all quests would be discovered all too soon.
That should take care of the floating question marks, imo.

That is one seriously good idea, and while there are issues brought up in the following discussion, I’m sure most of them could be worked out rather easily.

The other really huge problem I have with Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is the title to this post. Yes, hobbits wear shoes. Sure, you can disable the graphics much like turning off helms and cloaks in World of Warcraft, but seriously… in the original lore Tolkien spends entire chapters (well, not really all at once, but over the course of the tales) talking about hobbits and their feet. Their leathery soles and hairy toes are arguably an integral part of the world. Even giving them a shoe/boot equipment slot is abandoning the lore. Of course, the designers were probably worried about equality in equipment… but why? Why does there have to be equality? Why not give the hobbits an anklet slot instead and allow them to wear ankle jewelry that no one else gets to wear in place of the shoes that they don’t wear.

Overall, it is things like this that keep me playing WoW. I want to play an MMO, but so far no new game has really shown me anything I want that isn’t in WoW that is good enough for me to put up with the stuff that is wrong with those games.

You`ve been Data Mined!

Random Thoughts

Over at Broken Toys, Scott has brought up an issue that was the butt of one of Blizzard’s April Fool’s Day gags. How much of a game’s data is public fodder?

Personally, there are only two valid reasons I can see for having the Armory work as it currently does.

  1. Virtual dick measuring. Some people love to compare gear, to lord over others the awesome gear they have. It is naturally inherant in any item-centric game.
  2. Harassment. I, personally, have already had one instance of someone telling me I should be able to solo certain content, then retracting that statement after they pulled up my Armory profile and began telling me how crappy my gear was. And the number of gold and item auction site tells and mails I have gotten has increased.

Honestly, I could do without the dick measuring. There already exists enough of it within the pre-Armory game, but localized to servers. Now you can pull up the inventory (including bags, bank and talent builds) of any character anywhere. Do we really need that?

As for the harassment, sure my story is anecdotal, but that doesn’t make it less true. And if its not being used for this widespread yet, it will.

There is really only one “good” use for this tool, and that is statistic gathering. No game has ever made available (that I know of) this level of character information to the public. But this one good function would not be hurt by allowing players to “opt-anonymous” of the Armory. Show my gear and talents and bank and everything, just keep my name and my guild out of it. That would solve both of the aforementioned problems and have no impact on statistics gathering.

I’d really like to see Blizzard offer this option.

Why I Dislike Oprah

Random Thoughts

Most of my life I have been a skeptic and a pessimist. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

This is why I dislike Oprah.

I’ve gotten into a bit of a tiff with a friend of mine because I mistakenly used the word “hate” while talking about Oprah, and I appearantly wasn’t clear that my dislike has nothing to do with Oprah Winfrey personally but only with the brand Oprah that she has created. Much the same way I have a dislike for Microsoft, or any large brand.

If you read up on Oprah, she has done some wonderful things with her life, her show, her magazines, her charities… she’s made a few mistakes along the way, most famously is James Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces where she and her people didn’t bother to do the minimal background work that thesmokinggun.com did that proved his book was a pile of lies. But, overall, she does good, and that’s why when she suggests or recommends something I give it attention and look into it for myself.

Sounds like I don’t dislike her, right? Let me continue…

Where I start to get uncomfortable is the cult like following that she has engendered and nurtured. There are literally millions of people who will take her at her word and do what she says without thinking for themselves. She says a charity is worth giving to and suddenly that charity gets record donations. She’s probably not wrong, but I am worried by the blind faith that people have… almost the same problem I have with many organized religions. Follow, don’t question.

Is it really her fault? Can she stop people from just doing what she says? No, not really… people like knowing that other people know better, following a strong leader is easier than trying to lead themselves. But what I dislike is that Oprah, as a brand, seeks to gain by maintaining this blind following, and not once have I ever heard her openly state that people should do research on these ideas, books and charities themselves before acting. It would be bad for business to give people advice and in the same breath tell than that you could be wrong and they should really figure it out for themselves.

Most recently, Oprah has funded the building of a school. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy. Building the school is clearly a good thing, but to prove a point, I discussed the school with some coworkers, and while all of them said it was good, not one of them could tell me why Oprah felt the school needed to be built beyond “because they needed a school for women.” No one could tell me why that school, why there, why now… all that was lost in the Oprah publicity of the school being built and how great it was.

Along with that, I find I am put off by the fact that she puts her name in the forefront of everything, on everything. I watched one of the TV specials about something she was doing, it may have even been the school, but I completely lost interest because in the ten minutes I watched, Oprah was always center frame, even when she was talking to someone who, in the context of the special, should have been more important than her. With Oprah, it seems that the subject is never “Here is something worth knowing about…” its always “I’m Oprah, and behind me is something worth knowing about…” There is a distinction there that I think is very important.

In this argument with my friend, she brought up other brands (Microsoft, Nike, etc) latching on to the idea that it must be brands that I “hated”, not Oprah. But the truth is, I bring the same skepticism to those brands. I never buy software because its Microsoft, I buy it because I need the functions that it does and from my research it fills my needs. Microsoft Office is a great example, I love the product, but only because I’ve gone down the road of using other software. I’ve installed Star Office and used other email readers, and in the end, after trying dozens of other products, it turns out that Microsoft Office is the one that does everything I need in the best way possible for me. And Nike, well, I’m a skinflint when it comes to shoes and refuse to spend more than $30 for any pair. I’m rough on shoes, and spending $100 for a pair is like throwing money out the window. Again, I’ve done the footwork, pardon the pun, and realized that buying Ocean Pacific sneakers for $19.99 was a much better fit for my lifestyle.

In a way however, these companies are more honest than Oprah, because they are trying to directly sell you on their products… Oprah, on the other hand, is often trying to sell you other people’s work, their books, their deeds, their charities. And while you can look into Oprah’s eyes and see if she is sincere, she has put a layer between you and the product, potentially hiding from you if the original purveyor was sincere, and you have to trust that she has done all the proper background work, which she has shown on occasion that she (or her staff) has not.

So what am I trying to get at with this blog? In the end I suppose the core of it is that I am adverse to any person or group that encourages, actively or passively, people to stop thinking for themselves.

Misguided vs. Wrong

Random Thoughts

Note: The following post has nothing to do with any particular issue. Its just something I thought of and wanted to put out there.

I am rarely ever wrong.

Now, before you get all upset and fire off a ten page missive about how I am wrong, read on…

If you were to want to borrow my car, and I hand you the keys and tell you “It’s the first white car on the third row.” If you now go and try use my keys to open the door of the second red car on the first row, you are wrong. I gave you the facts, you forgot them or ignored them, you are wrong, and now you are setting off the alarm on someone else’s car. If, however, I were to tell you it was the second red car on the first row when it is really the first white car on the third, when you go to the red car, you are not wrong, you are misguided.

When I get into discussions with people, when I write long blogs here, I do so from the vantage point of everything that I know, every fact that I have… if I am misguided, I expect and appreciate when people show me how I am mistaken, clarify something I don’t understand, or show me the right path. I tend to try to treat others the same way… I try not to slam people when they state things I don’t agree with, I’d much rather get into why we disagree and see if I can learn something from them or teach something to them.

So… if you read anything on this site that you feel is not correct, please, feel free to show me where I have gone awry. I may disagree at first (because obviously I am under the impression that what I know to be true is true), but I’m pretty much always amenable to changing my mind if I can be convinced.

On the other hand, if all you are going to do is say “You’re wrong!” or some other definitive yet unexplanitory statement, don’t bother. If you can’t be bothered to show me where I am misguided, I would rather not be bothered by you at all.

Zombies: An MMO Idea

Gaming

If I could design an MMO, completely from the ground up and I had full control, what would I do? Easy. Zombies.

First off, there would be only one world, and the world, in effect, would be as large as the real world. It would not be a zoneless game, but for most people it would feel like it. When you log in for the first time, you create a character, no classes, just a person (using the obligatory super cool character creator with eleventy billion combinations of body parts and textures and clothes), and you choose where you are going to be from (a nice world map with glowy red dots for player populations, so you could decide to be where there are lots of people, or where there are no people, or somewhere in between). You would also choose a “player type”. This “type” would decide if you are issued a house or if you are given a list of dwellings of appropriate survivor capacities that are currently open to new members (if you pick a type for a size of group to which none is available, a new one will be created for you and new players will begin joining you shortly). In game a player can always choose to change their “type” by simply leaving their current group and joining a group of another type (or if you have decided to abandon people and go it solo, you have to clean out a house and bar the doors for safety).

Welcome to a world populated by endless zombies. You and your group (or just you) need to implement and maintain defences as well as gather survival supplies, food, fresh water, broken pipe replacements, clothes for the winter, a way to stay cool in the summer, weapons, etc etc. And of course the zombies need to be killed, because zombies tend to bunch, and if you don’t keep an eye out you’ll be surrounded and starve to death before you know it. Zombies tend to walk, but some will run when they see food. Rarely do they think, but once in a while they’ll be accidentally crafty. Log in, survive, log out… but don’t forget to make sure you’ve got food before you leave, you might starve while you are gone (working in groups helps, if your mall has 24 residents you can afford to not log in for a month as long as the rest of your group keeps you fed, but be careful, if you don’t pull your weight, they might feed you to the ghouls).

When you are logged out, your character is an NPC in defence mode. Unless other members of your group are online to manage the perimeter, its assumed you will warn people trying to break in and kill them before they succeed.

If a place gets too overpopulated by players, not only will you run out of zombies, but you’ll run out of food, unless you start farming, but farming (unlike your home) isn’t safe and you might get robbed. Get enough people working together and you might rebuild a city, at least until people stop logging in… dead players becomes zombies, and your city might be destroyed from within.

And what about player death? Well, a player can only have one character at a time. If they find out friends or coworkers play, they can always travel to them… if they can survive the trip that is. Death is death, and you have to roll up a new character, but without levels in the game, the only thing you’ll really have lost is your home and your possessions (given to your groupmates if you had any, left for scavengers if you didn’t).

What can you do besides fight zombies and survive? Well, anything you want to really, as long as you are also fighting zombies and surviving. Rebuild a PC and get a working satellite dish and some power and you can hook up to the remains of the internet and communicate with others, even play games… or play games with your group mates or other neighbors when you have them over for tea (or they get cut off while scavenging and needed a place to hide until daybreak). Depending on bandwidth and licensing issues, run your own TV station or radio station… publish a newspaper. Rebuild a car and go for a drive (be sure to lock the doors).

Essentially, Second Life… but with zombies!

Setec Astronomy

Gaming

The irony of most secrets is that they are not, in fact, secret. It is strange to see people fight tooth and nail to hide things which everybody knows. Even more so when their attempts to dodge certainty and protect their secrets result in miscommunication and bad blood between people who should be getting along.

How does this relate to gaming? Well, in the world of game design, there are many developers who post on blogs and on message boards, and all of them to some degree talk in vague notions and hints, hiding their precious secrets. The funny thing is, most times when their games finally do come out they really don’t introduce anything that was worth hiding, at least not hiding to the degree they did it. I realize that many times they are being vague because they might get fired for revealing company secrets, but if that is the problem why are they getting involved in the discussions at all? If you aren’t supposed to talk about your work, then don’t talk about your work. Its almost like that kid back in grade school who’d dance around singing “I know something you don’t know.”

Why the hell am I blogging about this? I’ll tell you…

I do not work in the game industry. I wish I did, but currently I live in Atlanta, and there isn’t much going on around here (at least not that I know of), and I don’t want to move. Also, while I feel that I have a good grasp on programming and design, I don’t have the experience on my resume that would make other people have the same faith in me that I have in myself. I mean, hey, I’ve only done full life-cycle design on a time and attendance software package picked as the best on the market by several independant studies, and a data warehouse application for one of the largest telcos in the US, but clearly that’s not good enough. I also am currently accustomed to a lifestyle that precludes me from starting over at the bottom, so I can’t just pick up and move across the country to take a bottom rung CS or QA job making next to nothing. But, despite not working in the game industry, I love games and I think about them alot. Starting this week, I’m going to start posting every idea I have ever had for games on my weblog. Some of them are raw, some of them are more thought out, and I hope people find them interesting enough to discuss them with me, and maybe, just maybe, someone might give me credit if they decide to steal one or two of them.

No more secrets.

Reign Over Me

Reviews

I saw Reign Over Me yesterday. A very powerful film about love and loss and life. I’m not going to spend alot of time reviewing it, I only want to say that Don Cheadle continues to be an excellent actor and Adam Sandler proves again that he isn’t just a comedy guy. Mike Binder, who’s work I have loved since Crossing the Bridge and Indian Summer, has written and directed a wonderful film full of joy and heartbreak. Maybe they’ll remember him by the time the Oscars roll around next year.

It is not a happy joy joy film, so know that going in, but I highly recommend seeing this movie.

Forewarned is Forearmed

Random Thoughts

Be careful what you read today
Be careful what you believe
The truth is out to lunch all day
And lies have a reprieve

They may tell you what you want to hear
They may make you want to scream
Do not do anything rash today
Though important it may seem

Double check your sources
And remember to keep your cool
Because you would not want to be
The one who is the fool