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To Wii or not to Wii

Gaming

That is the question… sort of.

I was a console kid growing up. We had a PC, and I loved the Sierra games: King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, and the rest. But I still longed for the days of my Atari and marathon sessions of Yar’s Revenge and Pitfall. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) changed all that. I finally got one and spent endless days playing Super Mario Bros. and Pro Wrestling, Duck Hunt, and every other game I could get my hands on.

After the NES, well, I never got into the Sega Genesis or any of the other systems, and by the time my NES broke, the PC had finally caught up, and in my opinion, surpassed the consoles. It was computers all the way after that.

A couple years back, I was gifted with a Nintendo GameCube for my birthday, and I enjoyed a number of the games I got, but I was really still a PC guy, so I never got too far into it. And while I thought the PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and Xbox were cool systems… I was still a PC guy.

These days, my career is computers, steeped in programming, and frankly, many days I get home and don’t really want to sit in front of the keyboard. My PC at home has fallen behind… and I think that perhaps gaming technology, video cards and processor needs, are excalating too quickly. I really don’t have the desire or the extra cash to keep up any more. So, my eyes have turned back towards consoles.

Thanks to this article at the New York Times, I definately think I’m going to hold off on the PS3. I’m hearing good things about the Xbox 360, except that whole thing where lots of people have to return theirs due to hardware and firmware issues. I am, however, extremely interested in the Nintendo Wii. First off, I’ve always loved the Mario and Zelda games, then there is the fact that people are already confirming that it is 100% backward compatible with GameCube games, but the most interesting feature is the ability to download old NES, Super NES and N64 games from the past. That’s just awesome.

Now, I didn’t go camp out and pick one up this weekend, but I figure in the next month or so I’ll be able to snag one. So, I guess the answer to the question is… To Wii.

EVE: Worlds Collide

Gaming

I have been playing EVE Online again. This time a bit more aggressively that before. I’m doing more combat, and only doing mining as an AFK task when I have better things to do. One thing I really enjoy about the game now is that they have added more agent missions to the game since I last played. Before it was either “Do this supply run.” or “Go here and kill a few pirates.” Now the missions have a little story.

One of them, and one of the more infamous ones, is Worlds Collide. Two cartels are fighting and a supply ship has been caught in the middle. They want you to rescue the crew from the disabled ship. And most people will tell you that this mission is nearly impossible. Which is it, if you get it “too soon”.

However, one of the main reasons people find it so hard is that the mission is actually a departure from the usual stuff you do in the game. Even with a little more story, many missions are still of the “take this there” or “kill these guys” types. So when you are told the story of two cartels at war and the disabled ship, most people’s first thought is to kill them all and save the crew of the disabled vessel. But if you read the story, if you pay attention to the details, your contact tells you that concerning the two warring cartels… they don’t care, they’d sooner just sit back and watch them destroy each other, except for that stuck crew.

When you approach the mission point, the first one, you find yourself with two gates to choose from and a half dozen or so fighters on each side. The key here though is that you are between the gates, and while the gates are 45km away, the fighting factions are 90km away. Its a race. You could fight them, but you don’t have to. You can just run to the gate and warp to the next area.

Either gate you take warps you into a shit-storm. One side is admittedly easier than the other, but both sides are still rough. With the frigate that most people are likely to be piloting at the point in the game where they get this mission, fighting isn’t really an option. In fact, surviving at all isn’t that high on the probability list either. But, while you do warp into a hornets’ nest, you also are within 16km of the next gate. Again, you don’t have to fight. Just defend and run.

If you make the next jump, the final area is your disabled vessel with about a dozen fighters flying around… but these aren’t the rough customers of the last area, in fact, these hijackers are the kind that practically explode if you breathe on them too hard. Make your moves, draw them out, fight them, its a fairly easy win.

And that’s essentially what your agent tells you to do… rescue the crew, forget the cartels.

One of my favorite missions so far. Strategy over brute force.

Raiding is stupid

Gaming

It is. It really is. And if you are offended by that statement, its because you don’t really care about raiding, but you see it as a way to keep the really good loot out of the hands of people not willing to put forth the effort. You aren’t raiding because its a good story.

The main reason I say that raiding is stupid is that the way current MMOs are designed, raid encounters just do not make any sense at all. Seriously. If I were a sixty foot tall winged god surrounded by eighty people, you can bet your ass that I would not waste my time beating on the glowing regenerating turtle in a hard shell while the remainder of them killed me. I’d use my wings to sweep aside my attackers, I’d divide them and step on them. I’d kill the healers first and pick the rest off at my leisure…. because… I. Am. A. GOD.

The idea of mere mortals, even equipped with super uber weapons of doom, ganging up to kill gods is just… stupid. Especially when the gods just stand there and take it like the two dollar whore they are coded to be. I could actually buy it if it was just a group of six or even ten people, with a use of strategy and tactics… but have you ever seen people work together in large groups? Either most of them turn off their brains, follow orders, and many of them lose/die, or they are complete and utter chaos.

Raid content is insulting in the basicness of its design.

Frankly, I don’t play games to be archer number seven in a war someone else is leading. I don’t play to be a part of healing bank two, or even to be the “main tank”. When I play a game, I’m looking for narrative, and I’m looking to be the hero, not to be fire support for the hero. No one in the history of fantasy has ever said “My favorite character in Lord of the Rings is Glormindar, which is the name I gave to the guy who was standing about twenty feet away from Aragorn and was killed when the Nazgul arrived. He was fuckin’ sweet!” If you play games to be a cog in someone else’s wheel, well… I feel sorry for you. I really do.

12:01 PM

Reviews

If you have never seen the short film 12:01 PM, then you have missed out.

Don’t confuse 12:01 PM with 12:01, a horrid movie update of the same basic plot starring Jonathan Silverman and Helen Slater. 12:01 PM is about a man, Myron Castleman (played wonderfully by Kurtwood Smith) who appears to be repeating the same hour, from 12:01 PM to 1:01 PM. Its kind of like Groundhog Day, only its just the one hour. Looping a whole day over and over again isn’t really all that scary, because you have a whole day, but how much can you really do in an hour. Anyway, Myron realizes that he is repeating the hour and tries to figure out how to get out of the time bounce, but one hour just doesn’t seem to be enough to get anything done.

This is a masterpiece of short film making as its only 25 minutes long and yet in just about every way is more satisfying than most feature films.

Now, I bet you are wondering why it is I’m talking about a short film that was made in 1990, over 15 years ago. Its because I really would like to see this short film again. I’d like to own it on DVD. Its only 25 minutes long, but I would gladly pay $20 for a DVD with this on it and nothing else. The problem is… its not available. Well, not in the US anyway.

I really hate region codes. They suck. As does the NTSC and PAL crap. There is a box set for sale over on the Amazon UK site called Academy Award Winning Shorts – Cinema Collection – 56 Movies – One Box. It looks like a pretty damn kickass box set. There is a full list of the shorts over on Play.com. I want to own this box. Of course, its confusing, because the Amazon site and the Special Features section on Play both say its Region 0 or All Regions, but the details on Play say its Region 2, which is more likely. But it doesn’t matter, because its PAL, which means my TV won’t play it. And this box, which is just awesome for its content, is not available in the US (Region 1) or in NTSC. And I just find that to be really crappy.

So, I’m going to do something I don’t normally do and make an open call for piracy… if they won’t sell it to me, I have to resort to other methods. If you know where I can get a copy of 12:01 PM, point me at it. And if you work in the film industry and have any influence, put this on a Region 1 DVD and I’ll buy it, even if I already get a pirated copy.

The Golem`s Eye

Reviews

Grabbing a few minutes here and there, the occasional bus ride to and from work, and my recent trip to Jamaica, I finished reading the second book of the Bartimaeus Trilogy, The Golem’s Eye.

Once again we fight Nathanial, a.k.a. John Mandrake, dealing with the magician government. He’s got a new master and a new job working for the Internal Affairs department, and he’s been tasked with tracking down the Resistance. Bartimaeus, as usual, doesn’t want to be there, but bound to service helps Nathanial make his way. The trouble this time comes in the form of a Golem, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the great war with Prague, trashing buildings and businesses of reputable magicians. Everyone wants to point fingers at the Resistance, but Nathanial feels there is more going on and begins his investigation with Bartimaeus’ help.

Kitty, one of the Resistance members introduced slightly in the first book, becomes a main character here and gives us insight into the Resistance, which isn’t the organized rebel movement the magician’s fear it is. In fact, they are little more than petty thieves and vandals, but a new conspiritor shows up and begins to usher them into something far more dangerous.

Over all, I really enjoyed this book. There is something refreshing about this dark and miserable tale that is missing from the Harry Potter series. I look forward to picking up the third and final book of this trilogy.

Jamaica

Random Thoughts

2006 has been a banner year for my family. In February, I got married. In June, my younger brother got married. And two days ago, my older brother got married. I know what you are thinking… “Dude, the title of this post is Jamaica!” Yeah, we all flew down to Jamaica and my new sister-in-law and her husband got hitched on the beach.

Well, not on the beach, but on a gazeebo thingy on a little pier like thing out from the beach. It was fairly cool.

And Jamaica itself is nothing to shake a stick at… unless you really just love shaking sticks at things, because I suppose if that kind of thing is your bag, well, just shake away, my friend, shake away. The beaches are nice, the water is warm, the pools are cool, the jacuzzis are hot, and when you stay at a Sandals resort all the food and drinks are free.

We stayed at the Sandals Royal Caribbean resort which is in Montego Bay… unfortunately it is being partially renovated at this time, so a couple of the restaurants were closed, but they have a private island, and that’s just sweet.

As always though, three nights anywhere just really is not enough time to really get into a vacation. The next one I swear is going to be at least a week.

The Pitfalls of Design

Gaming

As a gamer, I have often found myself uttering things that begin with “It can’t be that hard to…” followed by something that logically it can’t be that hard to design. For example, in many MMO games, friend lists usually have a hard cap, some games go high to start with while other games begin at 10 or 20. Later on, people will want more friends on their list and will say “It can’t be that hard to increase the size from 10 to 20.” And logically, they are right. In a perfect world, you’d just go into the code where the MaxFriendListSize variable is and change it from 10 to 20, or 50, or 200.

As a programmer, I have often found myself nearly exploding in a fiery ball of hate when a boss or customer says things that begin with “It can’t be that hard to…”, because honestly, if it wasn’t hard, we wouldn’t even be having the conversation we were having for them to be able to say that, I would have just done it. The problem is, that when designing a program, you literally can’t think of everything. You know, yes it wouldn’t be hard at all if there was in fact a MaxFriendListSize variable, but we didn’t think of that when writing the program because that number, 10, was only supposed to appear in one place, however, over time it ended up in 22 modules and one lazy coder even used that number to hack some other part of the program and when we changed it from 10 to 20 on one of our internal test servers the character models all doubled in size… grrr…

Seriously… This is exactly how programming works sometimes. You sit down and design out 500 features of your program, then, 18 months later, you realize that you need feature 501, but the best way to do number 501 involves redesigning 47 other features because 501 needs outputs or to share variables with some of those features, or 501 just kicked off an idea of a much more efficient design template that would make a number of other features work better.

Nothing, and I mean nothing in programming is ever easy. Its like getting to the end of writing a novel and deciding that “well, I don’t think the brother should be the killer, it should be the police officer” and now you have to rewrite half to book to make it all make sense.

Logic is cold

Gaming

Thanks to Scott for the original link.

One of the problems I find, not just in games but also in life, is that people have an unwillingness to accept logical truth. There is a basic dichotomy to any competative game: if someone wins, someone else has to lose.

Look at something non-MMO, like Baseball… the teams with the most wins last season still lost just over 40% of their games. The Mets and Yankees finished with .599 records. 97 wins and 65 losses. And its considered a pretty good season. Yet somehow, in PvP games, lots of folks find that ratio, dying 4 out of 10 times you enter a fight, to be completely and utterly unacceptable. On the other hand, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had a .377 season, 61 wins and 101 losses. More than 6 out of 10 times, they lost… if people can’t accept a 40% death rate, a 60+% rate would drive them completely off the “unfair” deep end. If you are winning 6 out of 10 fights… someone out there is only winning 4 out of 10.

There seems to be, among players of computer games, a feeling that somehow them being human playing against a computer (even if its actually another person controlling the enemy on their screen) gives them an edge, that the game will be “more fair”. Of course, the idea of “more fair” is a total waste of time. There is fair and there is not fair. Something cannot be more or less fair, once it stops being fair it is not fair. What they mean by “more fair” is that they will win more often. Against computer AI in most games this is true simply because the game doesn’t learn. It may kick the crap out of you all the time when you first play, but as you play more you will (should) get better, and the computer will not. Eventually, you’ll win all the time because you will have learned all the moves it is programmed to use. Computer games are old dogs, and they don’t learn new tricks.

But when a player takes control of the enemy, now you are playing against… you. When he loses, just like you, he’ll learn. The both of you will learn, and keep challenging each other, and over time what will show is that one of you is better at learning than the other and therefore stays ahead better, winning more often. One of you will be the Yankees, and the other one will be the Devil Rays. And there is nothing wrong with this. Its true. Its logical. And from the point of view of the Devil Rays, totally and completely unfair.

So, what’s the answer? There isn’t one. Like I said, its not fair, and that’s just the way it is. But I will leave you with a thought…

It comes from the movie Rudy, about Daniel Ruettiger. Rudy doesn’t make the real team, but he makes the practice team. In practice, one of the real team guys yells at Rudy for trying too hard. Rudy fires back with this great line (which of course I can’t find right now) about how he has to do his best in order to keep the real team at their best. When you PvP, keep in mind that you may not win all the time, or even most of the time, but by God you can make them work for it.

Very Non-Idle Hands

Random Thoughts

Time magazine has run a story about the Best Invenstions of 2006.

Their cream of the crop is YouTube. Obviously the runaway success (company sold for like $1.6 billion) of it all had an impact on their placement on the list. Sharing things on the internet isn’t new, but it really has never been more easy. Consider YouTube the ultimate of the “right place, right time” set. It could never have happened five years ago.

Now… my opinions on the rest of the list…

As a proof of concept, the Horizon Fuel Cell makes me kind of giddy in a “Wow, not that is a giant leap forward” sort of way. Sure, this is just a toy, but it proves to more than just science geeks that an engine really can run on water. Awesome.

Yeah, the Tesla Roadster 100 costs $100,000, but the sheer fact that Tesla Motors put out a fully electric sports car that can do 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. Well, its just cool, and in a weird way its them finally living up to the Tesla name.

The Clever car is an ideal… its great, until that idiot in his Hummer literally turns you into a chunky paste. Perhaps one day when cities become more compact and the roads aren’t so full of people rushing to get somewhere they live too far away from. The Mark V falls into that category too, and 3,145 miles per gallon just sounds too good to be viably true unless society changes to allow such flimsy vehicles.
First to enter in on the “Duh” category, the Black & Decker Simple Start answers the question of “What if my car battery dies in the middle of nowhere?” as directly as possible. Nice.

I’ve never really been on a boat, but part of me always glorfies life at sea. I would either want an old wooden pirate ship, or a sun21. Maybe a combination of both. Oh, and I’d also need an Innespace Sea Breacher. SeaQuest DSV here we come!

My wife really needs a Loc8tor. The hovering bed, however, I don’t think anyone needs. And as cool as the concept of the Wovel is, you would just look like such a dork using it. My older brother and his soon to be wife have ruined a section of carpet in their home, which would have been prevented by the self-lifting Oliso iron.

I hate seafood, and really I had never considered that it took two minutes to kill a lobster when you boil it, but if you have, don’t worry, with the CrustaStun you can now electrocute them in 5 seconds. I imagine the lobster tank at the local restaurant to be like a miniature death row leading to the electric chair now. And while faster isn’t always better, something inside me both cheers and cringes when I read about the Moo Bella icecream machines. There is no doubt about my cringing when it comes to the pudding-like coffee espesso. But the fruit and vegetable Lotus Sanitizing System definately looks cool.

First in the “man, I wish I had that” category is the NanoNuno umbrella. Adding to that in the “man, I wish I had that as a kid” subcategory is Nike’s Macro React clothing. No, I didn’t wish I had a dress, they make shirts for men. And just as I’m getting my hopes up, they make me weep for the future with the Hug Shirt. Why is it that I imagine this being sold by Apple, it being called the “iShirt” and them adding music and videos to it?

I’m not even going to bother linking to any of the crap in the Toys section of the invention list. Its all crap. Okay, the talking mirror is kind of neat, but really if you have a talking automated house, the talking face isn’t really any better than the disembodied voice, because, honestly, unless you install like 40 of these things, what are the chances you are going to be in the room with the mirror when stuff happens? Oh, and NASCAR sucks.

The new drunk driver test that measures skin’s light reflectivity scares me just a little. Part of me is scared by the possibility of being falsely identified as drunk with it, and part of me is scared by the possibility that its never wrong. “No, Officer, I’m just a naturally dull person.” I can’t, however, say anything bad about Gardasil, a vaccine for a virus that can cause cancer. Good work. On the other hand, I’m a little weirded out by Allerca’s hypoallergenic cats, bred for your comfort. And in the “one step closer to cyborgs” bin goes Realive, a suit that helps people with muscle rehabilitation by triggering the affected arm to mimic the movements of the “good” arm. Cool stuff. In the “but can they be trusted to use it for good” category comes a water-harvesting machine that sucks clean water right out of the air.

Woodshop teachers of the world rejoiced at the invention of SawStop’s finger saving saw, when it detects that the blade is sinking into flesh, it stops and retracts, leaving the user with only a nick. People trying to dispose of bodies were not amused. Another entry in the “Duh” category of inventions that just make sense and its just so F-ing cool that someone actually invented the damn thing, the LifeLine, so that no firefighter has to simply jump and pray again when things go bad.

The military, of course, invents stuff all the time, and a few of their items made it on the list… first up is the Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (BEAR), go figure, the military invents robots and they save lives instead of ending them. Next we get the M80 Stiletto, a boat that weighs 45 tons and only draws 3 feet of water (for you non boat people, that means only 3 feet of the boat hull is submerged, so it can go in really shallow water). Lastly we get the StrawJet, a machine that takes straw and turns it into quality building material.

I really see no good purpose for the Power Flower, I mean, I think it looks ugly. On the other hand, solar cells that are so thin that they are printed directly onto building materials like this solar skin is just awesome. And the paper-thin, flexible lightbulbs from CeeLite make me hope they will replace ugly disgusting flourescent lighting in office buildings everywhere… not to mention my own kitchen.

And that is the end of their list, and this is the end of my post.

The Monster is Loose

Reviews

There is just something I like about Meat Loaf. Not the food… can’t stand the stuff usually, but the singer. This past week saw the release of Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose. And it is good.

Although… it is weak in places. Meat Loaf has always had a sort of semi-operatic tone to his voice, good for belting out ballads. Jim Steinman has always been great at writing songs that are touching, funny and moderately nasty all at once. The combination of the two of them have produced some fairly awesome songs like Paradise by the Dashboard Light, Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad, I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), and more. And in some respects this album delivers. Steinman originally wrote It’s All Coming Back To Me Now for Meat Loaf, but Meat didn’t record it for Bat Out of Hell II, so he sold it to Celine Dion (and here I went 8 years without mentioning her on my website, damn)… Meat Loaf takes the song back, and the lyrics just fit him so much better than they did her. All of Steinman’s songs on the album are strong and as good as they ever were.

But, Jim had a heart attack and a couple of strokes that sidelined him for a while, and Meat Loaf, rather than wait, decided to push on with another writer… Desmond Child. Now, Desmond has produced lots of people and worked with tons of bands… but there is something here that, for me, just doesn’t work. The songs that Desmond worked on instead of Jim feel more generic, like they aren’t tailor made for Meat Loaf to record. They don’t have that… that special something that the Meat Loaf/Steinman collaborations have. And its a shame, the songs aren’t bad they just don’t pop, they don’t spark like the rest.

All in all though, Meat Loaf lays down another solid album, and its worth the money. A fine 3rd part for this trilogy. And I think I’m pretty safe calling it a trilogy, because the first one was 1977, the second was 1993 (16 years), and now 2006 (13 years)… if there is a fourth chapter, when Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman finish fighting and get back to working together, we can expect it right around 2021 when Meat Loaf will be 74. I’m not going to hold my breath.