Latest Posts

Combat Skills

Gaming

One thing I feel is really lacking in pretty much all MMORPGs is actual player skill. With their simplistic auto-attack or even button/click feat based scenarios there is very little room for the player to really control how good their character is at fighting. Even in games like City of Heroes where there isn’t really an auto-attack, your skill is hamstrung by the limitations of the game mechanics, which in CoH is the recharge time and choice/placement of expansion slots.

FPS games are all about skill. Well, except when the game allows scripting/macroing. People who used the rocket-jump scripts in Quake were cheaters in my book, people who did it without a script were talented. But that aside, every player runs the same speed and has access to the same weapons, and what separates the players is how well they use the guns and know the maps.

However, in making combat more skill based, I don’t want to lose the players who actually prefer auto-attack. So consider this…

The default configuration is auto-attack. You equip a sword and run up to the monster and hit attack. Your weapon will do average damage, perhaps with a random chance to score a critical hit and do double damage. This model is enough to play the game. You won’t be the best in the world, but you will do alright. Then, on an option screen, you are able to select several levels of skill based control. For example, you can choose the “fighting style” method which presents your character with a list of pre-set sword grip and fighting styles. Each style has advantages and disadvantages, base-lined on the auto-attack, and you select them and use them. Then on the furthest end of the scale is “complete control” where your joystick controls your sword arm and your keyboard moves your feet, you gain the ability to move the sword in whatever way you choose to hamstring opponents or stab at the eyes, but you also have your damage affected by your movement because “strafing” around a target you’ll have much less power than if you plant your feet and put your whole body into the swing.

It would obviously take alot of effort to work out all the details, but the gist is that you allow the player to decide how much skill they want to use in the game. The less skill they use, the move “average” their character is; the more skill, the more chances for heroics.

Faster Food

Random Thoughts

I think at the point the thing that angers me the most when I go to eat fast food is the inability of the person at the register to type in exactly what I order. I’ve been eating at Wendy’s restaurants for a long long time, and in that time I have learned their keypad so that I order exactly the way that it must be keyed in. “Junior hamburger with mustard and pickles only.” On the register, all the guy needs to do is hit the junior hamburger button, then the mustard button, then the pickles button and finally the “only” button. Simple. So why do I still get burgers with onions, mayo, ketchup, cheese and/or lettuce on them? I look at the screen and I see that the person working the grill has made my burger to order, the problem being that my order says “Junior cheeseburger with ketchup and onions.”

This is why I get frustrated… I have done everything in my power to eliminate mistakes and yet the people working the register keep messing it up. The other workers to their job correctly, but the person I deal with gets it wrong screwing up the whole chain. Argh!

So, I’m at Wal-Mart and I’m buying two things. Instead of waiting in the ridiculously long lines (because they have three registers open with fifty customers), I head to the self check-out. Beep-beep, scan, beep, bag, scan, beep, bag, credit card, done. And I’m out. This is what fast food places need. Remove the cashiers, they are outdated. Spin the register around, let me punch in my order, swipe my card or insert my bills (provide change if needed) and print me a receipt. Then I proceed to the window and pick up my order when my number is called.

Wendy’s, Burger King, McDonald’s? Any of you guys reading this? As a bonus, it means all the cash is inside the machine in the wall. No more sticky fingers from the employees. No more store hold ups because there is no drawer for them to open. I’m telling you, wave of the future. Wave of the future.

One Day in February

Random Thoughts

On February 27th at 5:30 PM, Jodi and I got married. But it was one heck of a day…

The morning began like any other day… waking up, getting dressed, discovering my car had been broken into. They took my digital tire pressure gauge, a leatherman multi-tool and three packs of gum. They left behind the stereo, the CDs and the $15 in change in the ash tray. However, having somewhere we needed to be, Jodi and I decided we’d report the theft later and for now just empty the car, lock it back up and leave it, seeing as how the thieves were kind enough to not break any windows but just jimmy the lock in such a way as to render it useless on the outside but still operate inside and lock the door just fine.

We loaded up the other car and headed off to some friends’ house, K and P, the ones we’d roped into being our chauffeurs and valets for the day. Once all packed into their car we began the long journey from Atlanta to Savannah.

Upon arriving in Savannah, we were nervous. We needed to check into our hotel early… at noon, but the woman on the phone had said check in was 4pm, 3 at the earliest. Score one for our team as the rooms were ready and we checked in. But another strike for the day, P forgot his suit and has no pants.

Quickly we decide to head to the mall and buy some, he can do without a suit jacket, but he needs pants. Also, Jodi needs a bouquet, so she called up Flowerama (listed in the hotel service guide) and arranges for one over the phone. The shop is on Abercorne which is only a few blocks away. So we pile back into the car and head out. We drive past at least a dozen flower shops and finally reach the mall. We stop, buy P some pants at Macy’s and the girls get their nails done at Le Nails. Back on the road, we keep driving. Finally we find Flowerama. Basically, the farthest point you can get from our hotel while remaining in Savannah, that’s where it is.

Its obvious we are going to be late meeting up with the photographer at 4 PM as planned, so we call and ask to meet at 4:30. She’s fine with it and we get back to the hotel with plenty of time to get ready. While Jodi is putting on makeup, she spills some which I start cleaning up. Crawling around on the floor I didn’t realize that I had gone under the coffee maker drawer and WHAM! I get a nice little red whelt on my head that starts bleeding a little. But fine, we can cover that up or I can just make sure I don’t look down in the photos. Finally I start getting dressed, I open my suit bag and scream something like “Where are my pants?!”

Up until this point, I had totally kept my cool. Now I lost it. I was swearing like a sailor, I wanted to punch and break things, I was going to drive back to Atlanta and kill everyone at the Men’s Warehouse for forgetting to put my pants in with my suit jacket… when I realize… I’m looking at my sport coat. I packed the wrong bag.

I throw my jeans back on and run next door to K and P’s room.

Me: We have a problem. I don’t have my suit.
P: That’s not funny.
Me: I have a sport coat, which is fine, but I don’t have pants.
P: Oh my God, you’re serious?
Me: I’m going to go find pants, Jodi is going to need some help.

And I run to the lobby. I speak with the concieges and explain my predicament. The woman there just goes blank and mutters something about Banana Republic and the Gap. Then the man steps up and tells me to step out the doors, turn left, go down to Broughton, hang a left and a few blocks down will be J. Parker Limited who can hook me up. I run out of the hotel.

At J. Parker Limited I walk in and explain my dilemma. The man there calmly asks, “What color?” I tell him black and he asks, “What size waist?” I answer him and he turns around, flips through the rack he’d been leaning on and pulls out a pair of pants. I try them on. Perfect fit. He marks them, I take them off, and he hands them to the tailor. While we wait we talk about weddings. He thinks we are right in just running off, big weddings are a hassle. He tells me a story of a bride with a $6,000 Irish linen dress whose reception runs out of booze before the wedding party arrives who should have gotten a $500 dress, lied about what it was made of and spent the other $5,500 on more drinks and food. Because honestly, as long as the dress looked good would anyone care that it was Irish linen? As we talked and laughed, my body slackened and I calmed down. Fifteen minutes of waiting at the pants were done. I thanked both him and the tailor and headed back to the hotel.

Everyone else was ready. I got dressed, threw my tie over my shoulder, and we headed to Factor’s Walk, the location our photographer picked for the ceremony. On the way we went over everything. Rings? Check. Checks for the officiant and photographer? Check. Marriage paperwork? … So I sent everyone ahead and ran back to the hotel for the papers.

Finally, I catch back up to the group. We chat a moment and then I inform them that I can’t tie a tie. P makes a valiant effort, but fails. The Reverend Steven P. Schulte steps in and does it up right. I think this is where the laughter started.

We moved out on to the bridge for the ceremony and took a few quick photos. Then the photographer, Nancy Heffernan, moved off to a spot to take shots during the ceremony. Since we had no time to rehearse, Nancy resorted to yelling out instructions as they were needed. “Get closer!” “Back up!” “Not you!” “Move to your left!” “Your other left!” We couldn’t stop laughing.

Reverend Schulte said the words, we exchanged vows, I gave Jodi her ring, she gave me mine… which got stuck halfway over the knuckle. We were going to just force it on when my finger turned purple. Quickly I fought the ring off and left my ring finger red and throbbing. We put the ring on my pinky and vowed to resize it later. We finally managed to stop laughing long enough for Rev Schulte to pronounce us man and wife, and we kissed. We were married.

After the ceremony, we hung around the park at Factor’s Walk for a while taking photos. Then we strolled River Street, getting congratulated by the passerbys and taking more photos until the light faded. We went back to the hotel for Nancy to burn us CDs of all the photos she had taken.

Earlier in the day we had made reservations at Elizabeth on 37th, but now none of us wanted to get in the car and drive somewhere. Nancy suggested Vic’s On the River, which happened to be not fifty feet from where we got married. When Nancy left, we headed out again on foot and went to Vic’s. The atmosphere and the food were excellent, and we sat and ate and chatted over the day’s events and laughed.

I think that if my wedding had been better planned and gone more smoothly, the day would practially fade to nothing in my memories. I’d remember that I got married, and I’d look at the photos and recall some of the day. But the wedding I had… I don’t think I’ll forget a single thing.

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.

Personal Space in Games

Gaming

In MMORPGs, one of the decisions that gets made in their design is whether or not to give player characters personal space, or as I usually call it a “bounding box”.

EverQuest had a bounding box. Two people could not pass directly through one another. This caused issues when popular NPCs, like bankers, would get mobbed by players resulting in people who could not get close enough to interact. And sometimes this caused huge uproars when it came to doorways and other tight spaces. It was not uncommon to see an ogre in the Plane of Knowledge sitting in the bank doorway being an ass and demanding to be paid to move. It had other uses too, on my server there was at least one incident of using an orge to block a passage way into raid content, denying competition to a second group to a raced spawn.

Of course, going with no bounding box at all can cause just as much issue. In World of Warcraft players have no personal space. This is great when it comes to the auction house because there will commonly be fifty people trying to crowd around the one NPC. The drawback comes in PvP combat. A spell caster has to keep his target in his field of view to cast, so in order to interrupt casting all a melee player needs to do is run right up, step through the caster, then step back. In about a second the target goes from being in front, to 180 degrees behind, back to front again. Even with good reflexes and high speed mouse control, its very hard not to lose the spell cast, and for a melee player with a slow two handed weapon he won’t even miss a swing while he two-steps the caster’s blast into interruption.

What I would suggest is that instead of strictly making the bounding box a property of the character object, also make it modifiable by the surroundings. Make it so that in a defined area, around an NPC or doorways to buildings or narrow hallways in dungeons, the player becomes “intangible” and other players can pass right through them, and while not in those areas, players have a seeming mass and cannot be stepped through.

And with this, I kick off my section “The Game That Never Was“, which is going to be a collection of ideas that I have about what would make the perfect MMORPG.

The Wizard Knight

Reviews

I don’t want to be overly harsh here. But ultimately, I didn’t like The Knight and The Wizard, the two volume tale The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe. However, your tastes may vary, so if you see it in the book store, flip through the first few pages and see for yourself.

Now, why didn’t I like them?

The story was pretty good: a boy crosses into another world, one of giants and ogres and more, and becomes a man and a knight. Fairly typical, but with some interesting twists, like this world isn’t just one world, it’s seven worlds that layer over one another and the normal world, as far as normal goes in a fantasy setting, is smack in the middle, with three worlds above and three worlds below. Plenty of the characters were likable, and overall I enjoyed meeting them throughout the tale.

The one drawback, and to me it was huge but may not affect other readers as much, was that the entire story, across both books, was told as if the main character was writing down what happened in an enormous letter to his brother, back in our world (you know, the one we live in, without magic and dragons). As such, almost the entirety of the two books feels like someone is telling you a story, so as much as I wanted to get immersed in this world I was constantly kept at arms length by the writing style. It bugged me.

Along with this was also the author’s choice of weird formal language. The following is NOT an excerpt from either book, but is just an example of how many conversations go within the story:

“I have something that I must tell you, and I need you not to ask me questions while I do.”
“That is fine, but before you start I must know how you got here?”
“I came in a strange manner which will be clear when I tell you what I must tell you.”
“Then I will hinder you no longer. Tell me your story.”
“The story I am about to tell is strange and you may not believe me, but I ask you to trust that I am telling the truth of it.”
“I will take you at your word as I have no reason to doubt you.”
“I knew that you would as you are a trusting man. Here is my tale…”

About a third of every conversation between characters was verbal foreplay, telling each other that they want to tell each other things, interrupting each other to say things that didn’t need to be said at all. Now, this actually happens in real life. You are sitting with your friends at the local pub and you say, “Hey, I’ve got to tell you this story about work.” And they say, “Its not about the copy machine again is it?” And you say, “No, it isn’t, and if you let me tell the story you’d know that.” However, in real life this doesn’t happen all the time. In the book it happens all the time. It got to the point where I would literally see it coming and then skip two or three paragraphs to get to the point where the foreplay is done and the real conversation would begin.

Despite the style of the writing though, I did enjoy the world Gene crafted in his two volume tale. So, as I said before, if you see the book in the store, read a few pages, maybe a chapter or two, and if the writing style doesn’t bother you, pick up the books, it’ll be worth it. If the style bothers you, pick these up only if you are into world crafting and don’t mind it not being a smooth easy read.

Odd Things Make Me Laugh

Random Thoughts

I am a child of technology. As I was growing up I had an Atari, a Nintendo, a computer in my house since they became reasonably affordable, and the first thing I did when I got a computer was beg for a modem. Since then, in some way or another, I have been online. One thing I have always found interesting about technology, and specifically being online or the internet, is the terms that get used by the media and by business marketers that rarely if ever get used by the actual users. The big one for me is “Cyberspace”. The only time I have ever used that term has been in a mocking manner, usually when talking about horrid movies like “Hackers” where getting into a computer system is depicted as travelling through a three dimensional flight simulator, as opposed to reality where most hacking is done in code or on the command line. But command lines aren’t sexy.

However, if you have been on the internet or paid attention to it at all you have heard the term “Cybersex”. If you do not know what that is, well, its kind of like phone sex but with typing. Anyhow, with the ongoing need for people with crappy typing skills to shorten everything, cybersex has long since been just referred to as “cybering” or “cyber”. You’ll see this in online games, again, largely in a mocking tone, because people who are serious about it generally do not talk in public about doing it.

This leads us to my work… The IT staff at my current job location are called “The Cyber Team”. So, every time I call them with a problem concerning my PC or a server I’m using, they answer the phone “Cyber Team, this is [insert name], how can I help you today?” and I start to laugh and want to answer with something like “I lick your earlobe, and undo your watch.” It is a fight to get through the call, then I have to take the elevator down twenty-two floors, step out through security and exit the building where I can finally unleash with the gut rending laughter.

Do they not realize what “cyber” has come to mean? Damn them!

Survey: Question Number Two

Gaming

Following the last question on stat systems: Would you prefer to play in a game where all the numbers are shown to you, or one where the numbers are hidden and values have to be inferred through experience, or some middle ground mix of numbers and inferences?

Several games in their Alphas or early Beta stages have toyed with removing numbers. If I remember correctly, EverQuest did this. You either “miss”ed or “hit” when fighting, and there are life bars, and there are descriptions for stats like “strong as an ox” or “slightly slow and dim-witted”. But in the end, and I believe usually from player/tester pressure, they put the numbers back in so that we can see that we hit for 8 points of damage and that we have 73 hit points remaining and that our strength is 18 and our intelligence is 9.

I’ve often thought I’d enjoy playing a game without the numbers, even though I’ve not played one like that yet outside the pen & paper gaming group on Saturdays. Mostly, its just because I’ve come to dislike the culture of numbers in games, where people judge you on your stats instead of your ability to play. It’s something I would like to try.

How about you? What system would you prefer?

Instant Gratification

Random Thoughts

When it comes to movies, its been years since the world has gone to a model of instant gratification. I want to say it was Batman that sealed the deal, but I don’t know for sure. I do know that that is when I noticed the change. Before then, having a solid opening weekend and good review was what companies wanted… followed by their movie staying at the box office for a few months, maybe more. Somewhere in the late 80’s that changed and studios began pushing for a mega-opening followed by… well… nothing. Advertising for films push the opening weekend so hard, and any movie that doesn’t crack twenty million at least is considered a failure. And if you notice, up until that opening weekend you’ll see commercials, and hear radio spots, but after that first weekend, any movie that didn’t finish in the top 5, doesn’t have critical acclaim or an Oscar bid will vanish. No more ads. It lost. The only exception to that rule is a movie that came out before a holiday but might experience a surge due to a holiday, like any romantic comedy or date film type movie that came out in January always gets a second push for Valentine’s Day… if its still in the theaters.

Television in the last few seasons has finally caught up to movies. This season saw Emily’s Reasons Why Not get a huge advertising push prior to its debut, then when it didn’t snag a monster share of viewers, not only was the advertising dropped, it was cancelled. After one single airing of the pilot episode, the network scrapped the show. Now, I’m not saying that Emily was a great show. It was kinda funny, and Heather Graham is nice to look at… but one episode? First off, it was airing in a slot that had previously belonged to Monday Night Football, so people who watch fluffy romance comedy shows weren’t likely to be on that channel at that time. And to be honest, as much as ABC claimed they promoted the show, if I didn’t normally watch shows on ABC I’d have never known it was on as most of their ad push seemed to be commercials on their own network during shows that, while popular, were not anywhere near the same demographic… I kept seeing the commercials during Lost and Invasion. Sci-Fi fans aren’t likely to watch romantic comedy shows.

Outside of Emily, CBS has pulled Love Monkey after, what, three episodes? It was a quirky show about the music industry using unknown acts and delivering rapid fire dialog. Obviously they pulled it because some page of numbers somewhere indicated that this show should have dominate the dial pulling in 30 million viewers… and obviously there are some TV execs with their heads firmly planted in their asses if they thought this show was going to be anything other than a niche show until at least a dozen episodes had aired and allowed word of mouth to spread. ‘Night Stalker’ also got cancelled a while back because it was only pulling in ‘X-Files’ ratings (a show that started slow, but ran 9 seasons, had a movie, and continues to sell seasons on DVD for $70 despite that the usual season price these days sits around $40-$50) and not ludacrisly lofty ‘American Idol’ numbers. And there are lots more examples…

It seems like Television, as with their Film counterparts, have lost faith in anything but the Out-of-the-Gate success. And its a shame, because lots of these shows that are falling by the wayside are good shows, and half of the ‘monster hits’ of the past wouldn’t survive under today’s rules. But then again, I think I have loved every show that has ever been pre-maturely cancelled, so my view may be biased.