Thoughts from the Voidstate

Shotgun thoughts

2008-11-17T19:28:00.000-08:00

Things I think about while Im not updating my blog:

"Friends" who act sincere to you around other people, and then ignore you completely when they would have to interact with you alone piss me off. And I seem to be running into those kind of people a lot lately. Honestly, Im not so important to ANYONE that you have to fake being nice to me to impress someone else. Grow a set and tell me to eff off to my face, rather than hoping Ill just go away. I will just go away, but its just plain cowardly.

WAR is pretty damn cool, though I wonder whats going on with this 1.05 patch. Still, the game lives up to its billing, and while its no WoW killer, its going to make a nice solid run of it on its own merits.

Fallout 3 is a great game, inheriting the spirit of Fallout 1 (and the fan patched version of Fallout 2) while including the things Obsidian does best. Which amusingly work so much better in Fallout than in the various Morrowind games that introduced them...

Im not sure how Im going to make it through the holidays. I may just have bitten off more than I can chew.

Life can be pretty good, like mine is right now, and yet you can still have the urge to unload petty problems. Sadly, I only seem to piss people off with that, even though I have always extended a sympathetic ear. Sometimes what goes around doesnt come around. Ally McBeal had it right. Your own problems are always big and important, and others peoples problems are small and uninteresting.

WAR Beta report 1

2008-08-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday they lifted portions of the NDA for the WAR Beta. Which means I can once again chatter about one of the things I like best right now, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.

Ive been in the Beta for a few months now, and the first thing I wanted to get out about this Beta was how well it was run. In many betas Ive been in, you dont get the impression that your there as anything more than to get a preview of the game, even in "closed" betas. The Devs are unresponsive, suggested changes ignored, and key parts of the game are "reserved for live" and thus never tested before release by a wider audience.

Not so in this Beta. With a pool of three quarters of a million people to pick from, and a community management tradition started by the legendary Sanya Weathers, the WAR beta is intense, well organized, and boasts incredible interaction with the dev team. Granted, some of that comes about because those who deviate from the rules set forth are replaced from that staggering pool of people looking to beta test the game, but the rules themselves are not onerous, and the sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing (and seeing!) one of your suggestions get incorporated into the game makes up for any amount of rules.

And what a game! While the basic systems are tried and true, with only iterative polish rather than truly innovative changes, there are features in this game that I predict will become the new standard for MMOs to come.

The basics of the class system present "paired" classes between Destruction and Order, classes that share a mechanic and play style between them. Their are exceptions (largely because a number of classes where cut for the initial release), in general if there is a style of play you like in WAR, it is available to you on both sides of the RvR coin. The exceptions are the Chaos Chosen (Aura tanks), Dwarf Ironbreakers (Grudge building tanks), the High Elf Shadow Warrior (Skirmish RDPS), and Chaos Marauders (two weapon MDPS).

Classes get abilities to be used at various times and with various recharge times, as with most MMOs these days. Similar to DaoC, there is a Mastery system that lets a player focus his particular Tank or Mage to one aspect of the class or another, but the really interesting part of character development comes from Tactics. Tactics are various "switches" that can act as buffs to critical stats, can change the behavior of particular powers dramatically, or reward a particular play style with even further focus. For example, a tactic might take a power that only comes back once every 20 seconds (an eternity in player vs player combat, usable maybe once a combat) and reduce its recharge to 10 seconds. And it might do that to two related powers, meaning a player could change the entire sequence of actions for their character with just one tactic.

Fortunately, as you play through the level advancement, the options for your character are presented in manageable chunks, allowing you to develop your particular play style in the safety of the PvE environment and then test it in the fires of RvR long before you finish your development and enter the end game.

Much can and will be said of RvR in Warhammer. I find that Mythic's long experience with DaoC has distilled into one of the best PvP setups Ive ever had the pleasure to play in 10 years of MMO's. From subtle but far reaching design decisions like player collision and a longer time to kill, to obvious and welcome choices such as a distinct absence of that bane of PvP: Stuns/Mezzes, RvR is fast paced and exciting without being over so quick that you cannot react to changing circumstances (such as a new group of enemies joining the fray!). Realm vs Realm also puts a firm structure to what is generally a messy and often decidedly ugly and bullying form of online interaction. Because it is Realm vs Realm, you have a ready pool of allies wherever you go, without having to join a guild or know 30 other people who play the game when you do. Since this means the game is NOT a war of all vs all, but instead provides natural battle lines that players can relate to (pandering to the other great motivator (it seems) in online players, cliquishness. But it beats pandering to dominance games and bullying...), a casual player without a large guild can take part in RvR and not feel overwhelmed or excluded. Better yet, you can now join with all these allies and are presented with clear goals to try to accomplish, from beating the other side in instanced skirmishes or taking and holding a keep in the non-instanced world, all with visible and immediate effects on the world at large to give you a sense of accomplishment.

RvR is definitely the highlight of this game, but PvE has not been neglected. Im here to tell you that the Public Quest system is the one system I expect everyone to be copying as soon as they can figure out how to do it without getting sued. This one system, now being coupled with a "Public Group" system that makes finding a group truly simple, forms more bonds, and provides more direction to this MMO than any I have ever seen. And they do not hide the Public Quests away in unreachable areas reserved to guilds, oh no. You will run into a Public Quest within 10 minutes of starting out, and they are readily available through out your advancement in the PvE (and sometimes RvR!) game. And participating meaningfully is simplicity itself. As you enter the area of a Public Quest, clear instructions on what is needed to advance the quest are put up in your on screen quest tracker, and you can immediately begin to accomplish those goals, even if you havent helped with any earlier stages. Participate vigorously, and even a solo player stands a good chance of winning the roll for exceptional loot that occurs at the end of the linked set of events that forms a PQ's cycle. Even if you dont win on the PQ loot roll however (which happens automatically and has so far proven difficult for players to grief), you still gain "Area Influence" that unlocks guaranteed rewards just for participating.

The addictive pull Public Quests exert is hard to describe, but once the concept settles into players minds, Im sure we'll see them in other MMOs. The WAR devs deserve kudos for this system alone, but fortunately, its not the only place where WAR shines. More on that in my next post.

Silence, it is ending.

2008-07-31T07:47:00.000-07:00

Its been a busy few months. Two months, anyway. Moving house takes a lot out of you, but probably the biggest reason for my silence lately is that one of the things I like to talk about the most I cant talk about publicly anymore. Make of that, what you will :)

Still, there have been a few developments. Fallout 3 is looking slick (its Bethesda, of course it will look slick...). Age of Conan is thrashing about, and I really feel for them. That is a good game that suffers for having reached to far to fast. Hopefully, the mature themes and nudity will keep enough players that they can patch themselves into greatness. Granted, they are probably not the kind of players I would want to play with, but such is the problem with the internet.

My new house is on 6 acres of forest and some yard in the middle of nowhere. So, of course, one of the first things I bought was a chainsaw. Apparently, besides the obvious uses for a chainsaw, you can use them to cut down trees, cut downed trees into chunks to be then split into firewood, and in general, do things with trees. Who knew? I mean, trees just SIT there. They dont shamble menacingly towards you, not even very very slowly. Unlike the thing you really use a chainsaw on...

So, anyway, chainsaw. And an axe (ahhh, that takes me back). And a splitting wedge, which is a damn sight easier to split a log with than an axe, thanks Dad for not having one when I was a kid... :)

I also picked up a Hava, for use with my dual-DSL connection. Just as soon as I can get Iowa Telecom to get me a config that allows outside connections to come in. The dual-DSL is pretty sweet (I use an RV042 to load balance the two links, and hook a WRT350N wireless to it (in non-router mode) to actually connect all my machines up), though its a pain to get configured. And Iowa Telecom appears to do "traffic shaping" on even legitimate torrents (such as what many game companies use to distribute patches...), so thats annoying as hell. If anyone knows of a good HTTPS proxy service that isnt some skeezy spam front, drop me a line.

The Hava is actually pretty nice. Being able to use any of my computers as a TV (at 480p 16:9 HD no less!) is very nice. I often watch TV and play a video game at the same time, and this lets me move the giant honking, filled with flashy blue lights, desktop out of the home theater area. Which I appreciate. Now that I have somewhere where I can consider putting in a home theater!

Next adventure: Furniture. Who knew it was so expensive. Dont get me started on flooring...

Age of Conan - open beta thoughts

2008-05-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

Ive played as much of the open beta of Age of Conan as they will let me, but as far as that goes, I believe this should be a success for the AoC crew. Despite a 13 (out of 80) level cap, and several features (and "features", more on that later) being disabled, the game comes off very good in this open beta.

After the jump, the good, and yes, even some of the bad of 13 levels of Age of Conan.

First, the good, because theres a lot of it and I want to gush a little.

Just to get it out of the way, yes, the game is gorgeous. Great graphics, and congratulations on taking my 7950GX2 and 2 GB of system ram machine and driving it to its knees. Time for an upgrade. You need a monstrous system for this game, but thats not a bad thing at all, and the graphics are wonderful to look at. Sound effects and music are actually great too, this is one of the only MMO's Ive ever played with the sound on. Most MMO's, the repetitive and constant sound effects, coupled with a distinct lack of any kind of immersive environmental sound, have me reaching for my speakers power button. AoC, on the other hand, has the local cats trying to find out where the damn tropical bird is in my room.

Sound also gets wisely used for voice on every quest giver Ive run into in a too short foray into the game as a whole. This is very very welcome, even if it must consist of a substantial part of the 12GB on my drive this game takes up. An MMO with excellent voice acting, where NPC's are throwing out curses straight out of a Conan book and you get to throw back things like "flea-bitten dog" and "Has the jungle raped your mind of all reason"? Yes please, Ill take more of this.

Writing and the effort the developers have gone to to immerse the player in the Conan universe is flat out my favorite part of this game. The classic, somewhat overwrought dialogue of a Sword and Sandle fantasy would have justified the M for Mature rating, and payed it off all by itself. And Im glad that the writers have cut loose given that they dont have to write to a pre-teen audience. The quests, while very often just the same old Fed-Ex stuff you get anywhere else, are made far more entertaining in how they are presented to you, and how you may choose to react to them. Being given the option, when presented with a truly trite request, to say "No you didnt just.. No, just no" is a welcome change, even if the quests themselves are often depressingly typical.

AoC has a unique, and worthy of much praise and outright copycatting, system for solo players. There is an option to switch to a set of interlinked quests described as "Destiny" quests, and the fact that it involves the game sucking you into what amounts to your own instance of the game world is wonderfully woven into the game world itself. During the day, you are in the shared world, interacting with hundreds of other players on your server and taking quests meant for all kinds of players. Check in with the person who gives out your destiny quests, and you are sent to the same areas at night, where its just you and the bad guys, and the plot is more tightly woven to the type of character your playing.

I dont know if that solo style lasts past level 20 (the first 20 levels basically being the training wheels portion of the game). I hope it does, in some capacity, because its an excellent device, and it gives less-than social players such as myself something to do in the game that feel rewarding.

So, I like this game, its nice to look at, good sound, excellent writing. Conan is a beloved IP, so high marks for executing that well. But I may not end up playing AoC, even though WAR has been delayed multiple times.

So, the not-so-good and even the bad.

First, Rated M for Mature does not mean mature people play this game. It was a controversial move on the part of AoC to go for the M rating, but I had approved of it for a couple of reasons, and added another reason after I played for a bit. Conans world is violent, sexy, and crude, and an M lets the developers be completely true to that. And the developers did not pass up that opportunity. By going with an M, they limited their market, but the market they limited themselves is far more likely to have the kind of machine needed to play this game, so in the end that was a good deal. We get pretty graphics and some much vaunted nudity, gore, and foul language, and AoC still gets the audience it wanted.

But even if the person on the other side is 43, having them run up to your female character (who's only armor happens to be a tattered shirt you scavenged off some dead Picts corpse in the jungle, what with you washing up on the beach damn near nude and all) and repeatedly screaming "NICE NIPPLES BITCH" is off putting. Yah okay, my character is nipping out a bit, thanks for pointing that out. Now shoo, the grownups want to play this game.

The saddest part of behavior like that is, the open beta has the more naughty bits on the female characters covered or removed. Some nipples through a shirt (or, on some of the female models, the shape of the nipples are still there in the nude, but they are the same color as the rest of the characters skin) are about all your getting. And if that kind of thing is enough to get you all tingly, nothing stops you from just making your own character, swinging the camera around, and going to town. So if this is the kind of thing one can expect in the actual game (and I ran into it enough that it drove me a little crazy) where theres actual nudity, well... it might not be worth wading through that just for some good writing.

I havent really touched on gameplay much, and thats because theres nothing really to say here. The open beta barely gives you a taste of overall gameplay, and what it does let you see, is pedestrian. There is the much hyped combat system, but in PvE it just reduces to madly clicking some buttons for the most part. The actual strategy in PvE is very shallow (some mobs attack both slowly and predictably enough for you to adjust your "shields" to react, but for the most part you have 2 or 3 guys on you, and you cant afford to leave any portion uncovered. Your getting hit everywhere. There is some potential for skill in PvP to play a huge role, but I suspect instead that PvP will be dominated by the Ranger (ranged-damage badass with the ability to stealth) and possibly the Tempest (full up tank with heavy armor and attack spells, some of which life-tap to heal you). Carefully selecting where to hit those two types of characters in PvP, and taking the time to adjust your defenses, is probably not going to make any difference at all as they spam their techniques until you die. Certainly, I couldnt make it so.

The rest of gameplay (spells, agro, skill use) is pretty much MMO standard. Its neither a plus nor a minus, MMOs are starting to mature as a gametype, and just as I dont complain about the WASD model for controlling your character being standard, I dont complain about mages getting some nukes, some DoTs, and some snares.

But it doesnt draw me irresistibly to the game the same why some of the mechanics in WAR do.

I could go on, but over all, Age of Conan is a worthy game, but sadly not something I see sucking up my time between now and the release of WAR. Its lacking some kind of spark for me, which I lament, because Conan is one of my favorite universes.

Perhaps, after the May 20th release, there will be an opportunity for the rest of the game to convince me otherwise. Im certain some people are hooked by the 13 levels we are presented with in the open beta, but the hook just didnt quite stick for me.

Lost my Bet. I owe myself $10

2008-03-26T06:24:00.000-07:00

Well. Countdown is over, announcements have been made, and boy did I lose my bet. No open beta announcement. In a way, we got a release date announcement, but it was just to announce WAR has been delayed again. Sad Panda.

One the other hand, the collectors edition contents WHERE announced, and they do look very choice. This is a collectors edition worth of the name, with a trade collection of all the WAR comics, in hardcover no less; A huge 224 page hardbound artbook; A pair of miniatures (or possibly one combined one) of the Ork Warboss and his Shaman co-boss from WAR; and a truly enormous set of ingame benefits, including a bonus xp item (limited to 3 uses, otherwise could you imagine the howls?), and 12 new: quests, items, titles, and heads.

Lots of goodies in that CE, I want one. Oh, and supposedly a beta key, though a beta key like all the other promotional beta keys, ie: you just get priority, not an instant invite.

Im usually doom and gloom about delays in game, and Im pretty doom and gloom about this delay. But Ive said what I want to about delays. All that I have new for this delay is: After all these delays with the promise of polish, WAR had damn well better be polished when it comes out. This game had best SHINE. MMOs usually have pretty rocky launches, and WAR's popularity promises the kind of launch that WoW experienced. Lots of lag, full servers, etc... but after these delays, I dont think WAR can get away with that kind of thing. You cant say "polish, make it better, polish" through three delays and then release a game that trips out of the gate. I doubt WAR would ever fall down on any facet, even the launch, but at least MY tolerance for mistakes decreases with every announced delay...

War Countdown

2008-03-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

There is an intriguing countdown on the Warhammer Europe site. There was a leak of the Collectors Edition box and preorder information from a German site. My bet? We get both the open beta start date and the actual release date for Warhammer Age of Reckoning in a little more than 3 days.

I havent done a post on WAR in a while, because things have only come out in dribbles. But the game is looking very solid. I had commented before on how each class has a mechanism that sets the "pacing" of that class, from the Bright Wizards Combustion (spells which generate a lot of combustion critical more often, but get to much combustion and you damage yourself) to the Chosen's and Knights auras (and the "twisting" that would go with that, asking the player to choose how much they can be bothered to increase their own effectiveness), to a Witch Elves Frenzy, a counter stat that gateways combos, each class has a process that allows a player to inject skill into the usually static and predictable interactions of an MMORPG.

For a game centered on RvR (PvP by a less onerous name), having _every_ class have such a mechanism is critical. When only a few classes are able to be moved by skill, conflict between players will be skewed towards those classes, all other things being more or less equal. A good example of how that can occur would be Rogues and Druids in WoW. The ability to plan out sequences that quickly unlocked the high damage, high effect finishing moves was the mark of a skilled Rogue, and the inability of most other classes to do anything similar meant that Rogues could know with high precision which fights they could win, and which they should avoid. And there where only a few fights for them to avoid, given how much more effective an efficient combo made them. WAR avoids that problem, though it may run into others, by letting every class have the opportunity to increase their effectiveness through careful planning and experience playing that class.

WAR added in open world RvR Keeps, pretty much verbatim (with improvements based on feed back) from DAoC. This is actually a good thing, because the keep fights are central to DAoC, and one of its best features. WAR has also borrowed the concept of masteries from DAoC, and I have yet to decide if the changes made in the translation actually make the mastery paths a good thing. I think it is pretty much a given, in any modern MMO, that you will have "specializations" within a class, but as WoW made obvious (but as DAoC and other MMOs suffered from long before), it is very easy to get the balance of specializations, both within a class, and between classes, wrong. Fortunately, WAR will have no official forums, so at least there wont be one consolidated place for everyone to whine in.

Because the fastest way to grow to hate a game is to read its forums. Which is sad, because learning from other players is the best way to improve your own game, but the price of finding what good advice there might be out there can be high.

What is going to make WAR into an exceptional game, however, is going to be the world that you actually play in, and recent announcements have given me great hope for the interactivity, depth, and atmosphere of that world. Explorers will be rewarded, and rewarded well, through the Tome of Knowledge, gaining morale abilities, titles, and even boosts to abilities based on what they find off the beaten path. And as icing, exploring will even have risk, as the dark corners of areas will have vastly out of level encounters to lure back high level players to zones they may have long since outgrown. Adding to the explorers fun, if you somehow manage to work your way into a part of the world that you are not, technically, supposed to be able to get to, rather than punish you, the game will "Plunger" you back to a safe area, and a notation in the Tome of Knowledge will be made of your accomplishment. This is utterly unique in MMOs, most of whom either ignore players circumventing the design of the environment, or actually ban players who do so. Couple all of this with the dark humor and grim fantasy of the Warhammer world, and even the PvE for this game sounds like it will be a blast.

It all comes down to execution now, and if they DO announce a release date in 3 days, it will be because EA Mythic is satisfied that they have a solid game. And Electronic Arts itself will have gone a long way to rehabilitating its normally grim reputation. An EA that actually cares about quality games, and then demonstrates with actions, not just words, that change of heart, is an excellent sign for the gaming industry as a whole. And WAR is where they get to demonstrate that most clearly.

So heres hoping.

Gary Gygax 1938 - 2008. He will be missed.

2008-03-04T19:45:00.000-08:00

Gary Gygax died today, he was having heart trouble according to reports.

Nothing I can say wont already have been said. He was a huge force in the RPG industry, and his unique style of DM'ing still goes by the term "Hardcore" in my circle of friends today, 34 years later. Ive been playing D&D in some form for 30 of those years, learning at my mothers side in her D&D campaign. She played a monk (first edition mind you, 17 levels of bad ass), and my brother an I where henchmen. Not even classed. Just normal human henchmen. Some of my best memories involve that time, running through Keep of the Slave Lords, Against the Giants, The Drow series and all the way to the Queen of the Demon Web Pits.

Gamma World, an unabashed space fantasy game in the D&D mold, was Gary Gygax' fault, and I loved it. Mutant cat with levitate, force field, TK and Telepathy, and the time we ran our asses off to escape a honest to the gods Death Bot in its full, 100+ attack glory. We came back for it specific, and it carved up four PCs before going down in a hail of missile fire.

Gary Gygax made that possible. I had the honor to finally meet him, at the roll out of D&D 3.0 after WoTC had bought TSR and there was a chance for some reconciliation. He must have had his faults, for what human doesnt, but he was a great guy with his fans, and that speaks well for his overall character.

I can just see him taking a tour of the planes now. It would be fitting. God bless.

Champions MMO announced by Cryptic

2008-02-20T11:59:00.000-08:00

Not to long ago, it was announced that Marvel was putting the Marvel Superheros MMO on hold (or canceled, hard to say), so the recent announcement by Cryptic I was directed to is welcome news indeed.

And an interesting read the Champions MMO webpage makes. Note the cell shading on the screen shots. Note the heavy emphasis on common complaints with City of Heroes: Power Customization, Free choice of powers, wide ranging locations (everything not crammed into one City). As well as careful hints about keeping the good: Massive costume customization, interactive combat ("No boring waits for auto attacks and long recharge times", though arguably CoH had the latter...). And some nice additions that I have seen requested for CoH, but really fall under the label "New to this game", such as the custom archvillain for your character that you design yourself...

The Champions RPG universe is a storied and rich one, and it will be exciting to see what Cryptic and Jack can do with it. Jack has always been a fan of Champions, as anyone whos played a game of Champions GM'ed by him at conventions could tell you. This bodes well for the project, for the same reason I have high hopes for Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. Passion breeds quality, and Jack has a lot of passion for Champions.

Does this bode ill for our beloved City of Heroes/Villains? I dont believe so, but I have only history to back that up with. DaoC didnt kill off Everquest, and World of Warcraft didnt kill off either of those two. Anarchy Online still lives and breathes, despite (or perhaps because of) Tabula Rasa. Older MMOs dont appear to die off just because new ones come out. Usually it takes drastic mismanagement by the owners to finally kill off an MMO that manages to make it through the first few years. And CoH is well established.

On the other hand... If Champions delivers on its many promises (and I wont hold out to much hope till beta reports, still many moons away), it might spell the doom of the CoX franchise for _me_...

Obsidian to create Aliens RPG videogame

2008-01-30T09:30:00.000-08:00

What?

Wait. What?

Obsidian Entertainment announced that they have signed a deal with SEGA and Twentieth Century Fox to produce a video game RPG based in the Aliens universe.

Yah, thats what the press release says. Same people who brought us Neverwinter Nights 2, bringing us something like that, only with Aliens. And presumably, Marines.

O.M.G.

I want to be happy about this. Im going to be happy about this. There is, of course, absolutely NO real information yet. Deal was signed a year ago, but it doesnt look like anyone has taken the time, quite yet, to work on buzz or community. Theres a forum over at Segas site for this, but it is absent anything interesting to read.

But still. This would be so nice if they pull it off.

Incidentally, Gearbox is working on a shooter as well. Meh, but there it is.

MMO Server architecture thought

2008-01-23T05:55:00.000-08:00

What I do in my day job can be summed up as "consolidating servers onto mainframes". It involves taking applications on poorly utilized servers that, as their gravest sin, take up a lot of space, power, and cooling, and sticking those applications into a virtual environment on a mainframe that can expand quite a bit without taking up more space, power, or cooling.

I (and the presenter at this IBM meeting I was just at) am pondering if such an architecture wouldnt be useful for a gaming company, specifically, an MMO game.

Now, most MMO game servers are anything BUT underutilized. Or are they? With only one exception that I know of (and that exception is not live yet), all MMO companies use some kind of cluster of unix or windows based servers, parking one or a few zones of their world on each server in the cluster, plus a server or three to handle logging, comms, and other chores. The problem with this setup is that you have to be an excellent judge of which task (be it zone, logging, or what have you) needs a full server (or more than one server), and which can be safely be piled onto one server. And if you get that wrong, your going to get "server lag" from the viewpoint of the players.

For the most part, this task is done pretty well, except for certain events that show great popularity in the player base (for example, in WoW, the Faire coming to town). The server for the zone in question is sized to handle typical traffic plus a little extra, and cannot be quickly adjust to handle a sudden or unexpected influx.

This is where a virtual server architecture could greatly assist an MMO, I think. By putting your MMO server cluster onto a platform beefy enough to handle the full load (and here, I think things like VMWare would fail you. I dont know many x86 boxes that can cram enough CPU's into one frame to handle it), you can carve it up as needed to handle the loads your actually seeing. The resources of your box can then travel with your concentration of players. If you have a huge army moving from zone to zone, each virtual server for that zone can pick up extra memory and cpu, automatically, to handle that huge army without slowing down.

Very basic virtual server stuff that. But a mainframe is about two orders of magnitude more expensive, GHz to Ghz, than a x86 box. From a TCO point of view, you need to generally swap in about 10-15 x86 machines into 1 cpu's worth of mainframe to be saving yourself money. So any proposal to take hordes of intel based servers and put them onto a mainframe is going to have to justify itself, and the simple proposal that its going to improve the customer experience is probably not going to be enough.

Improved customer experience only matters if that impacts things that make money, such as new sign ups, a reduction in canceled accounts, or what have you. Or, possibly, by shutting off enough x86 machines that the savings in cooling, power, and floor space in your datacenter makes up for it by itself. That last is where Ill focus, and its a tall order.

There are two things an MMO server cluster does, basically. The first amounts to "running the physics", and involves arbitrating where everything is and how those things interact in the virtual world. Basically huge amounts of vector math done very quickly. The second is pass data back and forth between things like network and disk. The first task is very cpu intensive (it depends on just a few registers, doesnt REALLY care about a large cache on the cpu, and will gobble GHz insatiably). That kind of computation is something that a mainframe CPU is very poor at. The second task is (or rather, _can be_) very cpu light, as the components involved have far slower timings than a CPU, and so the CPU can manage far more of them without being saturated. Here, large caches, copious pipelines, and tricks like sub-processors (controllers, if you will) all help enormously. Mainframes are very very good at that kind of management, nearly best of breed.

The trick, then, is what to do with your physics. Well, really, what to do with your fast math. The IBM presentation I attended had a very interesting proposal. IBM, it turns out, was one of the partners with Sony and (interestingly, given the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray tiff) Toshiba in creating the Cell processor. The same processor that does gaming so well in the PS3. Without out digging to much into the technical right now (I will, in a later post, when Ive gathered up some nifty source material to link to), Cell processors are just plain nifty at doing vector math. And what IBM is trying to do is link those Cell processors via some high bandwidth connection (dedicated gigabit ethernet, PCI-E, etc) to a mainframe.

You (and I, and IBM) begin to see where this might go. Cell processors dont cost any more than an x86 CPU, but are somewhere north of 10x as fast for vector math processing (and several other types of workloads, centered around small amounts of data that need lots of operations performed on it). Mainframes are real good at moving data around. Its peanut butter and chocolate, living together happily and making the world a better place.

The proposal works like this: You pick up a Mainframe with enough horsepower to handle your transactional (ie: data moving) tasks plus a little extra. You link in enough Cell based boxes to handle your physics. Because the Mainframe is a specialist, you can shut off 10-14 transaction dedicated intel or unix CPUs (the ratio needed to actually save money by going to the Mainframe). Because the Cell processors are a specialist (AND dont cost significantly more than x86 to begin with), you save money by doing a 10-1 (or more) consolidation of physics oriented intel cpus to your Cell servers.

IBM has numbers on this, as it turns out, but I dont have those numbers in linkable format. Ill do a later post when I do that demonstrates some tangible arguments on this. But suffice to say that there is a Brazilian MMO in development right now using this architecture, and their numbers look very solid.

And the fun doesnt stop there. You've saved yourself some money (primarily in cooling, space, and power) by consolidating, and youve probably made your server admins lives easier (which can save you money too. The usual ratio of servers to admins I see for virtual is 80-1. For physical servers, its more like 30-1). And hey, look, you actually get an improved feature to go along with all this. The mainframe, as your management server, is shipping physics tasks to the Cell servers without regard to which zone those task are coming from. Which means you have your entire physics oriented cluster of cpu power available for any zone that may need it. So if a horde of players all move into one zone, you can use the same number of CPUs to handle it as you did when they where split amongst many zones. Additionally, the transaction side of things can shift CPU (and memory, which doesnt, or shouldnt, matter on the Cell side) to those virtual servers that need it based on load. Which will PROBABLY be the virtual servers that have the most players in their zones, but Ive seen weird things happen in highly interconnected environments.

You get another hidden benefit here as well. IBM is very big on the whole "capacity on demand" thing. Mainframes allocate CPU in "books" of 8 cpus. Your charged a base price for a book, and then extra for each CPU in a book you turn on. Often, this means you will have inactive CPUs in your mainframe, because you havent needed to buy them yet. IBM has a process by which you can turn those inactive CPUs on to handle a transient load (a big christmas sale, or perhaps launch day, patch day, or something similar), and then turn those CPUs off again when you dont need them. Your mainframe is thus very nimble, it can respond quickly to changing business requirements, without huge capital outlays.

Because the mainframe is acting as the gatekeeper for your Cell boxes, they are fairly nimble as well. Obviously, each Cell server (which is basically a 4-way cell box that goes in a rack, just about exactly like your current Intel server does), doesnt have any idle cpus on it. But because those servers are not _dedicated_ to a particular zone, its very easy to add horsepower seamlessly. Put in another blade, turn it on, and stick it into the mainframes connection, and its CPUs are instantly available for work.

This architecture really comes into its own when you run multiple shards (worlds, what a player might call a "server") on the same set of mainframe and cell systems. Most MMOs size their shards very similarly, and seek to balance players amongst shards to get the most out of their infrastructure. Imbalances always occur of course, and a company then has to make the decision of when and how to increase resources for the imbalanced servers. If you have your shards running on this setup, all of your resources are available to any shard as needed. If one server ends up more popular than another, you will not have idle or underutilized resources languishing in your datacenter. Those resources will simply get used by the more active shard and its set of virtual servers.

Throw in the fact that multiple mainframes can be linked together, and you begin to see where this can really take off.

Now, I would still expect that you would have multiple shards, despite the great honking big pool of resources you now have available to you. Why? Because the software side of things probably has a "sweet spot" regarding the number of players its set to handle, and splitting your player base up into shards helps you manage that. Software limitations, however, have been much more generous than hardware limitations have been, at least to date.

Now, in my day job, there are other benefits we see that may or may not be applicable to a MMO. Things like easing disaster recovery, or even running hot-hot between multiple datacenters, speed of provisioning virtual servers vs physical servers, disk management, and similar. But I doubt any of those except possibly the DR, would be very persuasive to an MMO CIO. But the simpler argument of consolidating 100 servers into 1 + 10 servers, and the savings you would see, well. That I could see being very persuasive indeed.

MMOs arent even the target audience for this kind of setup, and will certainly not be the early adopters. The people putting this into production tend to be big trading houses (Mainframes gatekeeping Cell processors for lots and lots of traders running monte-carlo simulations...). Even IBM is getting into this, though less on the Cell side and more on the "consolidate underutilized servers on to mainframes" side. But there are real businesses doing this and saving money while doing so, and thats always comforting to hear if your a CIO trying to make a call.

But from a gaming perspective, I think this is a very exciting technology. And I know I would appreciate the company who did this, from a player perspective, as me and 100 of my closest friends slugged it out against 101 of our bitter enemies in the same zone...

Obviously, if someone where interested in looking at this seriously, contacting IBM for a consult is the way to go. Or make me an offer I cant refuse... managing a nice z/VM running Linux going to Cell processor system for a gaming company would be a dream come true :)

Sad news about Eric Wujcik

2008-01-03T06:54:00.000-08:00

Eric Wujcik, creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG, Heros Unlimited (and its countless accessories), Rifts... and, of course, Amber diceles RPG (of which I own more than a few, read ALL, the T-shirts) is dying of pancreatic cancer.

Eric is (not was, not yet...) a huge force in the RPG industry. Hes a great guy, btw. Ive met him in person, and the amazing thing is, Im one of thousands, perhaps 10s of thousands, who can and do say that. He is a constant presence at conventions, incredibly approachable, friendly, and runs some of the coolest Amber events you'll ever see.

Hes a huge "fan" himself, of course, having taken Zelazny's works and really transformed them into something more. TMNT was the same way, Im sure (and I spent many a happy hour in high school playing TMNT, a game that my friends parent banned due to the drug addiction rules... so cool! Rebellion! We never once USED those rules, of course, to much fun in kicking ass as a mutated wolverine or platypus. Platypus, their poisonous you know).

Kevin Siembieda has set up a blog that consists of fans, friends, and strangers writing their thoughts on Eric. Many gamers are not big into religion or the power of prayer, but to me, this represents the same kind of thing. If ever there was a time for the collective well wishes, good thoughts, and positive thinking to work a miracle, this would be it. Thats the happy ending Im going to keep in my heart, even if reality is unlikely to bend to my weak will. I hope you will to.

Happy Holidays, and griping

2007-12-30T08:20:00.001-08:00

Happy Holidays everyone, all, err, 3 of you that read the site. I did one post at the beginning of December, and now Im capping the month off with one post at the end. Because December is a bastard of a month, and it drains the creativity and opinion right out of a person. And all this blog IS is opinion, hopefully written creatively.

But there must be a bright side. I was on 4 different airplanes in the last week, and my baggage was lost three times. I had a flight outright canceled (please go away. Go get your baggage at baggage claim and hit the ticket counter to get on another flight. Then re-enter security...) and had the new flight delayed by 3 hours. A flight that was damn near 25% 2 year olds and under. One poor mother was flying with a 3 month old, which just didnt seem like a good idea for anyone involved.

I had my tiny little pen knife confiscated. Its been in my carry on bag for 10 passes through security with nary a word, but they got it this time. Its a nail file and a scissor (both allowed), but the tiny little blade is prohibited. My bad, but I miss that knife.

Im worn down and jet lagged, and its a good thing its the end of the year, because Im done with traveling for this year :).

Good things? Well, Ive reconnected with several friends and family that I hadnt seen in ages, in one case, not for 5 years. I have a list of New Years resolutions, and I might even be able to keep some of them. I really like my iPhone, and it was times like this most recent FUMTU travel period that really caused a warm fuzzy feeling whenever I used it.

Actually, Im going to expand on that iPhone bit, because Im a pretentious git of a Mac lover... or not, but hear me out. Ive always wanted multi-function phones, and Ive messed around with all kinds, from the earliest Palms and Treos to this most recent wave of iPhone wannabees. And the iPhone is definitely the current winner. I watched The Princess Bride on it while waiting for a flight. I listened to a sampling of my extensive (*cough*) music collection. I watched music videos. I used it to browse the web without paying $8 for Sea-Tacs wireless (hello? Sea-Tac? O'hare and Atlanta both have free wi-fi. Whats up guys? Even SPOKANE has free wi-fi!). I used it to call American Airlines and get a new flight without standing in line behind 45 other disgruntled and vocal about it fliers. That last bit right there any phone could do, but it did all the rest and that, and it did it on just one battery charge. That battery lasted for nearly 8 hours of video, music, web browsing, and phone calling (never mind texting), and still had juice in it when I got home. Thats a nice warm feeling, right there, and it made the whole experience much nicer than it could have been.

And about my crack about 25% children on a flight. I just spent the last 4 days up to my eyeballs in 2-4 year olds. There was barely any time when I wasnt surrounded by screaming, crying, snot, quarreling, and constant demands on attention. And it was all good, not because they where "my" kids (related to me, and thus excused due to carrying on the genes...), but because I like kids, and these kids are well-behaved compared to some. And yes, listening to one kid after another wake up and begin fussing or crying on a 4 hour flight is no picnic. But thats not why I dread flying with children. It isnt the children that make that flight unbearable, its the so-called adults who cannot control themselves that do. Its the 20-something ADD male with a bizarre form of tourettes, a form that forces him to loudly mutter his thoughts and feelings to everyone around him. I now WHY he does it, hes looking for one other person to buy into his feelings, thus validating them, so that he can then escalate his actions. He was sitting across the aisle from me, and I dont think he shut up the entire flight, even when the kids did. Its the 40-something I hate kids because everyone expected me to have them women sitting next to me who kicked the chair of the kid in front of her (a 6-9month old infant in its mothers arms...), loudly and repeatedly shuffled her magazine, and sighed constantly. No, its not the children that make such a flight a living horror, its the adults with less self-control than a pack of 2-4 year olds, and worse, no real adults to reign in their misbehavior. When you have to tell a 20-something to sit down and shut up when he tries to accost an 18 year old mother flying alone with her 3 month old child, you know that the world is a bitter and cruel place.

So, I got that out of my system. On to resolutions.

1. Get into cardiovascular shape. Ive been old enough for a while now that this isnt just a good idea, its becoming life-threatening. There are numerous barriers to my doing it, and they dont all boil down to "Im lazy and dont want to make the time". I _was_ running for an hour every day, but that lead to a CT scan and a huge needle stuck into my hip, so some other alternate needs to be found. Im thinking bike riding.

2. Learn to play the drum. Not a drum set, though I think Id like to learn that to. A hand drum. My dad gave me a drum the size of an end table for Christmas, and Id like to do it some justice. Ive always wanted to learn the drum, and this year is going to be the year.

3. Finish the costume suit. Additionally, I have an idea about how to make it easier to make various SIZES of a suit like that, without having to hand craft new molds for each new suit. And I think I can even build the thing that does the sizing with my own three hands. Getting that done this coming year would be a huge win.

4. Build a steam engine and/or a stirling engine.

5. Build an armature with electric motors.

No, Im not going to add things like "be nice to people" or "work towards world peace". Those are not things I resolve to do on a yearly basis. Those are things I work to do all the damn time, which is a good thing too, cause otherwise Id REALLY suck at it.

See you all in the new year, and good luck on your own resolutions.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

2007-12-02T09:53:00.000-08:00

Beat Mass Effect the first time two days ago. And looky what I found! Two more difficulty levels, each unlocked by beating the game. Just what I always wanted! Halfway through on Hardcore, and the game is feeling a little challenging. Theres still a big drop off in difficulty when you get enough money for your first HMWS weapon, but I expect Insane will fix that... Also, I found where I can get my very own Mako!

Does this thing look at all familiar? Cause it does to me. Right down to the "where does the crew sit" low slug look. Of course, in the Crusher, the crew sits in an A/C'd room back on base, since its a robot. But hey, its a 150 years in the future, we can figure something out! If you want to know where I learned to drive my Mako, just check out the 4 minute movie on the Crusher. All will be revealed.

In case my first post didnt sound too positve, let me state that Mass Effect is a great game, and you should play it. From being able to ask if you can try out a 3 way with an alien (but Ill let you find out if you manage it or not!), to the oh-so-comforting option to just shoot the a*hole that is giving you so much lip (or not, but hey, each path has its rewards!), Mass Effect delivers on player choice and interactive story telling.

Also, there are a few decent rewards for cruising around on a planet, poking in dark corners. Second time through, Im finding even more little goodies tucked away in the remote parts of worlds. Game changing things? No, that would be bad game design (as many players might miss those game changing finds, and feel cheated). But nice enough goodies that the Explorer in me feels well served.

I also happen to like the combat in Mass Effect. Its not a complicated, deeply tactical shooter, but it does give you a nice, visceral thrill, and the AI, while stupid, at least provides some amusement. And using the shotgun to knock charging opponents on their ass never gets old. Now if I can just figure out the sniper rifle...

Back to playing. Have to collect all the unlockables now!

The Mass Effect

2007-11-28T15:46:00.001-08:00

So, Mass Effect is finally here. Actually, its been here for the last 10 days, of which Ive probably slept only 16 hours. This is Bioware in top form, and while there are a few issues with the game, it is a pinnacle of the game makers art, and certainly a title that could sell Xboxs, if Xbox needed any such help.
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First, the bad things. Penny Arcade hit those points pretty solidly, because, well, theres a reason those guys are fucking rockstars in the video game world. I wont delve to deeply in that ground. The long elevators (Especially on the Normandy, where there is no interesting voice over interlude or interaction between your companions to break up the monotony) are a problem. Most are encountered on the Citadel, and can there be avoided by simply using the rapid transit system to teleport around. Its gotta be teleporting, because I dont see anywhere on most of those terminals to park one of the vehicles the game suggests is what you use... The hacking, if it can be called such, should have been removed completely. Its a minigame thats boring the third time you do it (with, so far, one extremely interesting, or annoying, variation on an optional side quest...) and doesnt add much to the "you need so much skill to break open this box of goodies" part of the game. The Omni-gel bypass appears to be a form of economic balancing act. Or at least it would be, if you didnt get so many things to turn into Omni-gel, get Omni-gel as quest rewards, and in general, are so swimming in either items, cash, or goo by the mid point of the game that you would think nothing of spending 100 Omni-gel on a problem if such an option where presented. And of course there is no tutorial to speak of, and not much in the way of instructions in the manual. Ive found no upside or alternative to this complaint. I spent the first few hours of play time with a low level, simmering frustration. If I wasnt so familiar with the common practices of Bioware games, Im not sure I would have kept playing at all...

Ill add that the combat difficulty slider needs a level above Veteran. Possibly two levels. There are whole combats I miss completely because I happened to be pointed in the wrong direction when they started, and my hyperactive AI buddies slaughtered everything in the time it took me to turn around.

Those are the bad points. Know them (and read Penny Arcades larger write ups) so that you know what you will run into. All the better to ignore it. Because the story to this game will blow your socks off, but youll have plenty of time to put them back on as you poke around the dark corners of the galaxy, getting into random bits of trouble that all seem to collect into a coherent, hideous pattern.

The main quests are pretty solidly linear, though for once, the Bioware "good guy, bad guy" dichotomy (presented as Paragon and Renegade), is more about HOW you do something, not WHAT you do. Nor are the two sides mutually exclusive, a welcome change. My current character, initially meant to be my "Renegade" plot character, has nearly as many Paragon points as Renegade ones, and when I realized that was possible, I relaxed a little and stopped trying to be such a dick all the time. I could choose to put a bullet in a guy who was just pissing me off, and I could choose to help the colonists out, and those choices where BOTH reflected accurately on my character.

The side quests, on the other hand, are wide open. Ive done side quests "out of order" multiple times, because my wanderings have stumbled me upon the end point of a sequence rather than the beginning. The game handles this reasonably smoothly, and it gives the explorer in me a nice feeling of real accomplishment when that happens. Id complain that there arent enough side quests, except that there are, it is only my appetite for them that is to large.

Speaking of side quests, I want a Mako. This 6 wheeled devil can scale 70deg slopes (Ive even managed some that looked more like 85deg), has some jump jets, a 155mm rail gun, and a coaxial machine gun. Its packing a mass effect field that lets it land from pretty much any fall, at any angle, and it can cross some of the most impassable terrain imaginable. Which is good, because Ive yet to see a planet that wasnt more howling, knife edged mountain than plains... There are lots of quests that involve fighting in the Mako, some very satisfying, and some so badly a slaughter that you kind of feel bad for the bastards. And even one set of quests where I got out of the Mako and fought on foot, because cowering behind cover and sniping was about the only way I could beat those opponents without having my beloved ride blown to hell...

I just got the "Krogan Ally" merit, meaning that Ive just now reached the half-way point. Which means there is a LOT of game here. You owe it to yourself, if you love CRPGs, to play Mass Effect. You can blame the last 10 days of silence on it. Its a good game.

Beowulf isnt.

2007-11-18T18:45:00.000-08:00

Just saw this movie today. Yes, they took a few, large, liberties with the story. Purists and fans of the original Heroic Epic will scream. The story, however, is not this movies weak spot. Taken as it is, with no regard to the original, this is a hearty tale worthy of your attention. If only that was where I could leave this review.

Ive talked before about the facial recognition gap and how it can be the bane of video game designers. And you might be thinking to yourself "Why would you be talking about facial recognition gaps in a movie revie..." and then it would hit you. And you would get a sinking feeling in your gut.

See, we saw this problem first in Matrix Revolutions. They filmed Keanu Reeves himself as he goes about his normal, land bound duties, even during most of the fight scenes. But whenever Neo, his character, flew like Superman, or during one notable fight (the first with Mr. Smith of this movie), Keanu Reeves is replaced by what looks like a badly cast Ken doll. The technology just was not up to the task of rendering an actors face, and they ran directly into the facial recognition gap.

That movie could be forgiven, however, because it limited its use of that technique to high action scenes, where the effect could be largely ignored.

Beowulf, on the other hand, renders nearly the entire movie. There are notable points where they _dont_ render, or copy from the actual actor so exactly that it may as well not be a render. They are notable for their rarity.

This movies failing is taking Anthony Hopkins and Angelina fucking Jolie and striping away those notable, recognizable faces and replacing them with jarring humunculi. Id say the same of Beowulf, except I dont think there ever WAS a real person playing Beowulf. He was always a rendering, so far as I can tell, and IMDB doesnt even list a voice actor (an oversight no doubt, but still).

This is an awe inspiring story in film form. If it had done the usual, and kept the CGI to just special effects, and off the actors, it would have been perfection indeed. Instead, I fear this movie will fail miserably, as viewers warn off their friends (as I do) because of the strange use of CGI where none was needed.

I want you to go see this movie. Its a good movie. But it is, sadly, probably best seen on a small screen, such as your TV, where the visual flaws might not stand out so drastically. Or perhaps the IMAX 3d experience will so overwhelm you mind that the facial recognition center will switch off. But I doubt it.

This is a two thumbs up movie dragged down by a perverse over use of an immature technology (and one that seems a step backward from the state of the art, as Mass Effect appears to have better faces!) See it, but see it where those faults can be masked by a smaller format.

Lions for Lambs

2007-11-12T15:05:00.000-08:00

I recommend going to see this movie, regardless of your view on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Robert Redford takes the time to present both of the contending arguments clearly, as well as make his own, more personal, point.

Its really to bad this movie seems to be relegated to "art house" status due to its political tone. The movie seeks to have a conversation directly with the current crop of 20 somethings, challenging them to find their own voice in the current political climate. Even as someone well away from his twenties, I found Robert Redfords message both powerful and convincing.

Tom Cruise gives a masterful performance, and the acting all across the movie make every character impossible to ignore. Redford includes an extremely tense setting to help keep the audiences tension and attention high during what would otherwise be a university lecture and/or debate team exchange.

This movie deserves your attention, and I sincerely hope it manages to find an audience in todays movie going population. Sadly, the people Redford most wants to talk to with this film will likely stay away in droves, reveling in the very apathy he tries to exorcise here.

I know that the conversations this movie sparked in my circle of friends actually help clarify (and move) my own opinion to something with a far stronger and more satisfactory basis. Its not often a movie gets this much action going for me after its finished.

Go see it, youll be glad you did.

Well, Im going to dig up some hope on CoH/CoV after all.

2007-11-08T14:36:00.000-08:00

Back Alley Brawler (a psuedonym) is one of the developers for CoH/CoV, and made the leap from Cryptic to NCSoft. Apparently, according to this post he made that leap with a great deal of enthusiasm.

BAB (and _Castle_) have both been straight shooters and fan favorites in CoH/CoV for... years. And its hard to maintain pessimism about this move in the face of what BAB had to say in his post. Getting gloomy about corporate hand outs in official emails is one thing. Staring that much enthusiasm in the eye and say "your wrong", well, thats just being contrarian.

So, Ill go ahead and retract what I said earlier. Im willing to take BAB's word for it that this is a good thing, because he hasnt steered us (the fans) wrong before. Time to whip out the frying pan and prepare to eat some crow.

NCSoft acquires City of Heroes/City of Villians from Cryptic

2007-11-06T19:21:00.000-08:00

This is something of a surprise. And, when it comes to a game Ive been playing and loving for... years... from its first beta... surprise isnt something I like to experience. At least, not this kind of surprise.

And worse, this move comes with bribes. Clearly bribes, because NCSoft is an MMO veteran distributor and well knows that players are a fickle and superstitious lot (like me), and will jump ship on an MMO for any reason at all, including one as slight as a change of ownership. So they are bribing players, plain and simple.

CoH players can now play CoV. CoV players can now play CoH. Very nice, but of course, Ive had both games from their individual beginnings. This actually makes me, that representative of the core, loyal fan, look like a chump. Im not a fan of being a chump. Thats the whole reason I stopped hanging out with harpists. Yes she wants you to help her move that honking great (not to say expensive and fragile) thing. No, shes not going to put out because you do help. Or even show interest beyond the point where the harp reaches its destination. Or even say thank you. Thats the definition of chump. The chump carrying the harp. No, Im not bitter. Of course, all those players that couldnt be convinced to buck up for another $50 for the other side of the game now have a reason to stick around. And I understand that there are a lot of those kinds of players. So, of course, bribing that large segment to stay around is pretty smart.

So, Im feeling a little chumped. But theres more. Theres going to be a... wait for it... Debt Wipe. Meaning, at some point in the future, all your accumulated debt will be zeroed. Now, this is easily the most useless, cheesy, crass bribes Ive ever seen. Note, they are not saying they are getting rid of the debt system (a catastrophic move that would certainly signal the end, much as it did for Auto Assault. Even though Auto Assault never really had a beginning...), no, they are just saying they will zero out whatever debt you happen to have at the time this happens.

Debt, in CoX (yes, its a fun way of saying CoH/CoV. The X is a variable. The similarity in sound to a word that has a certain juvenile appeal is probably not coincidental. The PR folks for CoX never use it. Several of the Devs slip up and do though. Cause its that kind of infectious meme.) is a passing fancy. You get a little debt when you die. Die a couple of times in a row, and you'll hit the debt cap. Problem is, it only takes a few missions, maybe an hour or two of play, to clear even the debt cap. So, NCSoft is looking to keep you playing by bribing you with... an hour or two of time. In an MMO. MMOs being games defined by playing for days in a row. Im floored at their generosity. Of course, Im not a casual player. Someone with only an hour or two a day, or worse, a week, to play sees debt as a major obstacle to enjoying CoX. And of course casual players are a huge and important group for any MMO. Casual players pay the same amount of money a month as any one else, but their play habits allow for a higher number of players per server (effectively, virtualization), because they have such low resource needs. They allow for much higher returns on capital expenditure (here, the capital in an MMO is its servers and bandwidth) and are what let MMOs run at the kind of profits that they do. Bribing the casual player is pretty smart.

And finally, they will be giving Super Groups 200,000 prestige for every member at some point in the future. With the increase in the membership cap to 150, that can be a cool 1.5 mil in Prestige. This is actually a nice little bonus. For Guild Masters and those they allow to play with the Super Group base (Super Groups are, of course, CoX version of Guilds). Not that those bases are worth much besides quick transport on the CoH side (not really needed on the CoV side) and as walk through works of art. But its a nice gesture anyway. And of course its targeted squarely at the people most influential in keeping players in the game and paying their monthly fee. Guild Leaders. Super Group leaders.

Super Group leaders are the ones that recruit, cajole, and incentivize (its a word, shut up. If my boss can use it, I can) players. SG Leaders often create content of a sort, by setting up role-playing opportunities, arranging for group members to access content difficult or impossible to access solo, and by creating that most essential of qualities in an MMO: camaraderie. Having people that you know, even if only through the game, to play with, who you know arent total fools and wont lead you into a string of frustrating deaths and wasted time, is pure online gold (see my rant on Tabula Rasa for how this can affect a game in the negative). SG Leaders are the miners who unearth that gold. Bribing them directly so that they stay is just plain smart.

In fact, its all hideously, coldly, brilliant. Manipulative. My memetic defenses are screaming. I almost want to quit JUST BECAUSE I feel like Im being bribed and manipulated to play a game Ive otherwise enjoyed for 3 and a half years. Which is ridiculous. And yet there it is. Because MMO players are a fickle and superstitious lot, and Im no different.

Sadly, I think NCSoft forgot a bribe here. They forgot to bribe the hard, core, dedicated player. Ill grant, that group is probably not as large or as influential as any of the other three bribed, but its the group I belong to, and the group everyone I play with belongs to. And my cheeks (pick one, of the four) are feeling a little stung here. As if Ive been slapped. Taken for granted. Why would we quit over something so silly as a new owner? We've been playing for 3 years, why quit now? Why indeed. Of course we wont. These bribes arent about making players feel good about the new owners. These bribes are about business, pure and simple, and for some reason that sends a dark chill down my spine for the future of a game I love.

Lets hope events prove me wrong. Because I had dreams, before this, of a perfect world, where I had WAR for Fantasy, and CoX for a more modern feel, and maybe W40K MMO for some Sci Fi, and I was a happy MMO player. And those dreams just soured a little, and all over some silly bribes.

WAR delayed to 2nd Q 2008. Weeping commencing right away.

2007-11-02T06:25:00.001-07:00

The October newsletter came out yesterday, and with it, a State of the Game address by EA Mythic pres, Mark Jacob. WAR is being pushed back by another quarter, to allow time for "polish".

Sad news indeed, even though I am forcing myself to believe that everything is still fine. It would be the height of hypocrisy for me to bemoan delay in WAR if it means the game is released in a solid, polished form (given that that is exactly what I recommended Tabula Rasa do...). So, Im not going to bemoan it.

I will bemoan the fact that Im not in the beta. And that I now either have to make Mass Effect last me 8 months (unlikely) or find a few other games to play. 8 months of Team Fortress might permanently damage the speech centers of my brain however, given how much I end up talking like the characters in game...

I did pick up a Wii 2 weeks ago, for which you can blame my delay in posting. And Wii Sports is easily on of the best packaged games to come with a console since, well, Nintendos very own SNES (and the unbeatable Super Mario Bros). Certainly, I havent even cracked the glue on Need for Speed: Carbon that came with my Xbox360, but Im actually getting a bit of a gamers workout with Wii Sports. Boxing in particular really gets the heart pumping (and your arms) and the sweat forming. The motion sensor in the Wiimote can be aggravating at times (its something on an art form getting it to recognize what you want it to do), but the difference between swinging your arm and mashing a button is profound, once you get over that hurdle. And honestly? That hurdle is no more severe than learning what buttons to mash in the first place. Its just been so long since I had to learn button mashing, that I dont really recall.

I also picked up Metroid: Corruption, which has a very pleasing setup of Wiimote and Nunchuk, giving a very immersive experience. Using the Wiimote to aim and interact, and the nunchuk as a "hand" to throw your grapple, manipulate levers (by literally pushing, flipping, or twisting them!) and who knows what else that I havent been "trained" on yet, sucks you into the game in a way I wouldnt have believed if I hadnt tried it for myself.

So, I expect Ill have something to do, what with 2 consoles to shop around with, while waiting for WAR. Of course, if the PS3 would ever bother to release a game worth dropping $500 on, I might have 3 consoles, but it doesnt seem like Sony is going to manage that in the next 8 months. Which is fine, because I havent missed the blue-ray player in the PS3 either, the movies Ive badly wanted all coming out on HD-DVD (or both). With the holiday shopping season well on its way here, I have to say that Nintendo has won the next-gen console war hands down, Microsoft in the middle, and Sony is playing a game of cathup. Given how well the PS2 did (and how badly the Gamecube did), this is a dramatic reversal in gaming.

The only good thing about this WAR delay is it gives me more time to work on the costume, which I have been quite lazy about. Hopefully, my next post will be on that, to help round this blog out a bit.

Bioware working KOTR MMO?

2007-10-24T07:00:00.001-07:00

So the substantially confirmed rumor would have us believe. This presents a quandry. Bioware vs EA Mythic, decisions decisions...

You see, this is a tough decision because Bioware, though it lacks experience in MMOs specifically, does make really excellent RPGs. My lust for Mass Effect, for example, has been well documented.

And Bioware has been bought by EA. Which means they can tap veteran MMO developers from both the Ultima and Mythic camps. Which means sometime in 2009, we might actually see a Star Wars based MMO that doesnt suck.

Im glad I have a few years to ponder this. Im not sure what I would do with myself. Supporting two great MMOs at the same time (here, hypothetically, it would be WAR and this Bioware title) can be tough. I dont know if it would be considered good fortune if one or both of them suck...

Nah, better the hard choice between many good options than the default choice of "abstain" when faced with bad options. Primary voters? Are you listening? I said "better the hard choice between many good options". Please take this to heart.

This and more bits of info about Fallout 3 have greatly increased my hope factor. With Orange Box coming out and being a well polished jewel, I havent gotten my monthly recommended dose of soul crushing despair, gaming wise. I suddenly fear for Mass Effect...

Exhibit A: Brain Damage, gaming style

2007-10-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

In case you wondered what the hell I was talking about, regarding Portal, heres the ad:

Some of what they show there didnt make it into the final game, but it gives you the idea of what your going to go through while you play. Prepare to completely redefine how you think about surfaces, gravity, up and down (and side to side), and the path of objects.

And then take that new thinking up against a bunch of sadistic fuckers who have been thinking about it for quite some time, and who live to build levels that will bend and twist your gray matter until someone calls the cops to stop the screaming coming from your room.

I guarantee youll have a blast. Doesnt agonizing cerebral pain sound fun? After all, at the end, there will be cake!

At the end of my third time through, I kept mumbling to myself: "The computer is my friend. Only mutant commie traitors would hate the computer. Your not a mutant commie traitor are you?".

I have absolutely no idea why I was doing that. And neither do you, Citizen, at your security clearance.

Portal hurts my brain

2007-10-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

So true to my word, Ive been playing the Orange Box games until my eyes bleed. Team Fortress 2 is hilarious, and an excellent team frag fest that just might get my friends back together to do competitive gaming again. HL2:EP2 is a good story that really wrenches at your heart. I think I cried. But Portal. I played through Portal in one day (not a detriment, just a lot of hours in one day), and I was dizzy. I had a headache. I was exhausted. It was awesome.

Portal will twist your perception of the virtual reality in an FPS. Listening through the developer commentary on the game (a great feature Valve stole from DVDs and I hope to see other developers copy), you realize the kind of expert design needed to make this unique game. Any gamer owes it to themselves to play this game, it will be one of those defining games of its time.

I cant wait till someone makes a Half Life 2 mod, where I (attempt) to play through all of HL2 with just the Portal gun and the Gravity Gun...

Warhammer Age of Reckoning Beta delayed

2007-10-08T16:54:00.001-07:00

According to a report from Ten Ton Hammer there has been a post on the internal beta boards stating that the WAR beta will be on hiatus until December.

Now, lots of people are going out of their way to say that this is not a cause for panic, that there is no pattern here, etc etc. I, however, will not be one of those people.

WAR has been hemorrhaging staff, albeit non-developer staff. It was delayed from its original release date. And they are putting the beta on hold.

There is a pattern, and while panicking does no good, a healthy dose of concern seems warranted. See, we have seen this kind of pattern before. And while EA having bought Mythic does add considerably to the war chest of EA Mythic, its not like EA hasnt killed off popular titles its purchased in the past.

Do I believe that WAR is circling the drain? No. Do I think that something fell off the rails, something central to the design of the game? Yes. And Im willing to bet this means either a) the game gets delayed... again or b) its released before it should be. My bet is on a). Once youve delayed past the Christmas buying frenzy, its not particularly hard to continue delaying as needed right up to the NEXT Christmas buying frenzy.

Which is what Im afraid of. Delays into the middle of, or into late, 2008. Because I had just managed to hammer out my game play plan until WAR came out, and if theres that big of a gap, I could be in trouble. Not real trouble mind you, its an invented kind of trouble. But trouble nonetheless.

Of course, Occam's Razor states that everything I wrote is hooey. The timing of the shutdown of the beta is awfully suspicious. Oct 10th is a Wednesday, not a Friday or a Monday (the two days you might expect a beta to shutdown. Particularly Monday.) Maybe the devs or at EA Mythic have the same "game plan" I do?

Orange box: All the Vitamin G(ame) you need!

2007-10-05T11:55:00.000-07:00

I had asked the question earlier: What to play, game wise, to tied me over to Nov 20th and Mass Effect? I am beginning to believe the answer will be "The Orange Box".

Now, the Orange box is a pretty good deal even if, like me, you already own Half Life 2 and Episode 1. With EP2 prices at 29.95, you only need to want to buy one of the other games in the package (Team Fortress 2 or Portal) to make the investment either a break even or a savings of about $10.

For me, the various videos release on Team Fortress 2 convinced me to make it my choice, pushing me over the edge to pre-ordering the Orange Box. The preview videos are hilarious, and the game play appears to be dynamic enough to suck me back into a team based FPS for the first time since Counter Strike was released, ages past. I never was much into Tribes, sadly.

Now, it can be rightly said that I suck at FPS, especially when pitted against the unfeeling, iron reflexes of your usual FPS player. I consistently show up in the middle of the scoring, attracting neither fame nor notoriety for my play. I can hold my own in a sniper duel, and with some familiarity with the map under my belt, I can capture the flag or control point, or at least kill as many times as I die. This is as true for TF2 as it was for any of the other vs FPS' Ive played.

Now, the hard part of my decision on the Orange Box came about because I already own Shadowrun, another team and role-based FPS with fun and interesting ways to counter various strategies (the core component of any team based FPS). So whats to draw me to TF2 over Shadowrun? The answer, sadly, comes to "the players". Actually, to be specific: "My friends".

Shadowrun's developers made the dubious choice to limit their game to the XBOX360 (not a huge deal) and Windows Vista (dumbasses). For my several friends, this set the bar for entry to either the price of an Xbox (~$400) or the price of upgrading their gaming rig to Vista ($lots and lots, most of that cost coming charged to time and not money). And without a solid core of friends to play with, these team games suffer from the same sad problem that MMO pickup groups do. To wit: Random groups of strangers found on the internet can be counted on to do only one thing, and that is serve their own self-interest, badly.

So, the prospect of playing a little team FPS with my friends in TF2, combined with a deep and abiding love of Half-Life (I would have bought EP2 regardless), makes the Orange Box an easy choice, despite previous purchases in this realm (Halo 3, Shadowrun). If I where to recommend just one thing to purchase in the FPS arena so suddenly crowded with viable options, the Orange Box would be it. Shadowrun is fun and dynamic, but suffers for lacking any kind of solo play at all. Halo 3 is the big franchise, but its play style bugs the hell out of me, and you are exposed to a considerably seedier crowd if you play online, due simply to the large number of people who like Halo 3. The Orange Box gives you a solid single player game (HL2:EP2 + Portal), and a top notch online-only game (TF2), without forcing you to upgrade your machine and ducking a fair chunk of the pre-teen and teen (and should-know-better-but-act-like-a-teem adult) crowd still hammering away at their achievements on Halo 3. The last reason probably cannot continue for long, attention spans being what they are, but at least TF2s rewarding of team roles (Doctors score bragging rights by healing, Engineers get credit for healing from dispensing stations and kills form their turret) means that even if your hip deep in teenage snipers, you can pull a sense of accomplishment out of the fiasco that is your team having its ass handed to it by a more mature, coordinated group.

And who knows, its coming up on Christmas season. There may be some nice dark horse game lurking in the "to be released" hopper, waiting to latch on and strip my boredom away!

Why yes, I do think a woman who plays MMOs is hawt, why do you ask?

2007-10-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

I direct you to Sanya's Gamer Purity Test. Im Risque-Intense, which as it turns out, is reasonably rare, if comments on other blogs are any indication.

I liked the quiz, and I think it probably put me in the right category. I think it could use some gradations in the questions though. I mean... I would LIKE an SO that shared my interests, to include playing MMOs, but since I lack one, how does one answer those questions?

And yes, Ive hit on a game company rep at a convention. I was shot down in flames, of course. But she was hot, and she spent half the time we talked discussing all the places to go drinking in town, so I thought I was safe to make a play. Such is life :)

Also? There appears to be no way to indicate a preference for being in a guild, being able to raid, but spending most of those 12 hours+ at a time playing solo. The vast majority of my time in any MMO except DAOC has been spent solo. Its a quirk of having a job and only being able to play to 10pm. 10pm is when most raids _start_, if they dont start later... At the very least, some questions that establish your bed time/play time (I can play weeknights until bedtime, and all weekend. Some people can play any damn time they like, and some will stay up late despite work because their priorities differ) would be nice.

And I dont mind some naughty words in guild chat or voice chat, I swear like a sailor myself. But childishness (using the word "gay" as a generic insult, as opposed to actually meaning "Hey Liberachi, you dropped your feather boa". Being a sniper and camping is not gay. Saying you really liked Brookeback Mountain for the interaction between the two leads... is...) is right out. I take a fairly dim view on harassing women online too. Hard enough to get them to play. Making the whole experience unrelentingly hostile because teenage males have no constraint in an online forum hacks me off. And if your not a teenage male and you act like that? You might need to have your attitude readjusted.

But I like where Sanya is heading with this. Picking the right style of guild is critical to the enjoyment of any MMO (some more than others. Tabula Rasa is likely unplayable without a guild. WoW is close. Eve, definitely unplayable. CoH/CoV, on the other hand? As solo friendly as they come) And who better to trust with determining the kind of guild you like than someone who has observed the MMO community from the very beginning, with a professional eye?

"You can no more tame a child than you could a python"

2007-10-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

The quote above is from a rather disturbed Doctor in the game Bioshock. But I was suddenly reminded of it while reading this article. It coincided with a thought I had been rolling about in my head since reading a string of novels written by, and from the point of view of, women.

Now, this is the internet, and this is a blog, but Im going to get this out of the way first. The American Thinker article does no great service to the cause of "Saving Boyhood" because its dismissive and frankly insulting stance abandons reason. Which actually makes it a masterfully crafted example of the very point the author is trying to make. It is the continuing cry that "Life is hard, and we do our children no good service by hiding them from hardship". Dodge ball to not getting a trophy because you didnt win to suing bullies instead of learning to deal with them (though I will admit that my preference would be to do both!) Childhood has become, for lack of a better word, wussified. So, I agree with the sentiment, if not the presentation, of the article quoted. While appreciating its tone as representing its point throughout.

I, unlike the author I link to, dont lay this at the feet of women. There are any number of male members of our society who would be more than happy to strip society, both in childhood and in adulthood, of many of the tense and aggravating conflicts that have been present for generations. This isnt, as it turns out, a gender issue, except that young males stereotypically express many of the traits that are being stamped on with such enthusiasm.

Selwyn Duke's article reads in an offensive tone, belittling his opponents (real or fictional) with diminutives that proclaim them lacking in manliness. Which I find is, deliberate or not (and I fear it is quite accidental), quite a sly demonstration of the problem. There are boys and men who naturally incline towards aggressiveness, competition, hierarchy, and dominance. And these traits have all been termed "bad". The question, I am forced to ask, is why?

To me, perhaps the most obvious answer will suffice. The purpose of society, in its ever evolving form, is to provide for the safety and wellbeing of its members. Everyone works towards that goal, either directly (as you might see in a tribe or gang, where individuals provide some service that supports every member), somewhat directly (Feudalism, as it is romantically conceived, had those who fought served by those who where protected), or entirely indirectly (as in most modern governments, through taxes). While working towards the goal of universal safety and wellbeing, certain courses of action (not to say rights, as it involves to long an argument) are given up.

Initially, members of society give up making war (as an individual or small group, here to mean the state of unfettered "the strong take what they like from the weak" via violence), and generally this is quickly followed by the controlling body of the society reserving the ability to use force to itself. We are familiar with this in our own society, and it is still argued today. Do we have to give up the ability to use force in our own defense to the police, or can we intervene if we see someone harming an individual in our society. I think it obvious that, especially lately, the bar has been steadily sliding towards "No, let the police (ie: society) handle that".

I find it somewhat amusing (even ironic, with a taste of Alanis Morissette) that this shift in value is attributed to "liberals" (here, I suppose, to mean those to the left of American politics, to include most Democrats) but is most effectively accomplished by "conservatives" (by which I mean our current crop of neo-cons, who I will not deign to call Republicans, even if I have no great love for Republicans anyway). Just as the wussification of boyhood is not to be laid solely at the feet of women, neither can it be laid solely at the feet of "liberals".

It can, however, be laid at the feet of fear. The American people are afraid, and worse, it comes hard on the heels of a time when we where also afraid, but allowed ourselves to relax because we had won. We won the cold war, and I think it safe to say that most Americans no longer fear death by nuclear armageddon. That fear has been replaced by one of death by a smaller scale destruction, but one made far more personal, and seen as far more likely.

The article quotes experts warning that the Columbine shootings mean we have to change how we teach children, that we must be careful about instilling the thought of violence into children, lest they grow wild. Teenagers after all, scare the living shit out of people. Which is horse hooey.

Children, even teenagers, are not what people fear. Shootings at high schools are no more frightening, no more tragic, and no more to be guarded against than someone "going postal". Its the same behavior, it may even have the same cause. And even that is not what people fear.

People are afraid of the fact that right now, we do not trust our society to protect us. I think it obvious to most people that the police cannot stop someone from pulling a gun on you, and shooting you dead for your wallet, because they are angry, or because their faith drives them to do so. Worse, we now are forced to confront the fact that this attack may happen on a larger and more impersonal scale, but one still well within the grasp of the imaginings of any competent human. Suicide bombings, September 11th 2001, and many other examples lead us inexorably to the conclusion that the contract we made is not being kept. We, the members of society, do not feel safe.

We're not stupid either, but there is no obvious answer to these concerns. We have begun the inevitable trade of giving up more avenues of action (we must carry some form of ID and surrender it upon demand now. We cannot carry certain items on airplanes. Our conversations may be monitored without our knowledge or even the permission of a court) in the hope that we will receive safety in exchange. And we have also begun to attack the problem wherever we feel we can, because doing something makes us feel better than not doing something.

So, if a child points his fingers at you and shouts "Im going to kill you", the response these days has nothing to do with the child, and everything to do with the black well of fear inside each and everyone of us. How else to explain charging an 8 year old with assault for such an action? Every instance of limitation enforced on children that Selwyn Duke bemoans (rightfully, in case my position on this issue wasnt clear) has its root in fear. Irrationally so.

And all of these actions we take to attack our fear are, of course, a devil's bargain. They are the desperate actions of a irrational and desperate people. But we cannot undo these actions, or reverse the tide, by attacking the perpetrators (and thus, increasing their fear and, of course, becoming the focus of their fevered actions ourselves), or by addressing each new limitation and indignity individually. No, the only way to set this trend backwards is to address the cause of the fear.

We must return faith in the compact of our society. We must grow the strength of America not in arms (where there is no question we are strong, but such strength provides no comfort against the fears we currently face), but in its structure and common cause. We are no longer revolutionaries with a common enemy, thus enjoined to hang together, but now a maturing society going through an awkward young adulthood. We need not a cause, but creed. We must see that each of our actions strengthens our society and thus makes us safe through the compact that we subconsciously understand.

What could give us that creed? This is not an answer that comes out of the writings of a blogger, but instead grows from the actions of the people. But we are planting a bitter crop at present, and I do dare to make some suggestion on how to change the seed we use to produce a more robust and sustainable harvest. Independence from energy sources that we dont control, so that we can remove ourselves politically from areas of the world more frightened and desperate (if you can believe such a thing) than our own. A focus on the future to provide for growth that does not resemble a zero-sum game, and as a pressure valve. And yes, a acknowledgment of our fears and a conscious effort to not engage in the practice of wussification that is only aggravating our situation.

Which brings me back to the beginning. Men and women are, as anyone without an agenda can tell you, different. Reading several novels by women, from a womens point of view, has outlined this in stark contrast for me. I think it entirely reasonable to assert, in the general case (while being careful to not over apply this in the specific case) that men are more aggressive, competitive (in the solitary sense), and dominating than women. Women build communities, groups, and consensus. Men strive to lead or follow, but they conflict naturally as they do so. And my conversations with women, and even my readings of the aforementioned works, leads me to believe that women actually like men to be that way. But only if they feel safe. What is endearing, even attractive, quickly becomes uncomfortable and frightening when times are uncertain.

So, if there is a gender angle to this issue at all, it comes to that. Men do not object to women building communities and consensus when they are afraid. Women, however, DO object to how many boys and men act when they are afraid. And so they are the ones driven to act. And there are men who, lacking that inherent bent towards aggressiveness and lacking any particular fondness for it (be they feeling safe or no) who are driven to act out of fear as well.

Men, if you think this is a problem in your life, or for your sons, my answer can only come to this. Make the people in your life feel safe. Not just the women, all of them. The safer your community feels, the more boyishness they will feel safe in allowing.

Its as simple as that. If you, as an aggressive, dominating, hierarchical, competitive male where doing your job, none of this would be a problem. It is, so you arent, and Im saying get cracking. You only have yourself to blame if you dont act.

Mass Effect, November 20th. Gleee!

2007-09-24T15:59:00.000-07:00

Mass Effect comes in a close second as my most anticipated game of this year. This will be Bioware's latest RPG offering, from a company with an unassailable reputation for creating RPGs.

The previews for this game reassure Bioware fans by showing that what we have come to expect is in there. Significant choices in character development, the ability to choose good or evil paths (and come to different events in the game by so doing), romance options for your character, both male and female.

And they have added more. Taking advantage of the power of the Xbox360, the graphics for this game have been taken to a level only previously seen in Half Life 2. Faces that finally make it past the facial recognition gap, a new take on the classic "three choices conversation", where you are presented with your response while your still listening, which allows the conversation to proceed in an almost natural fashion. There is a hint, also, that the game will be very free form, allowing the player to go and do what they like, progressing the plot at their own pace and in the direction they choose.

Now, wide open games like that can back fire in a big way (Battlecruiser 3000, Im looking at you), but when it works, it is the stuff of legend. I can only cross my fingers for Mass Effect, as we have seen effectively nothing at all about the big picture game play.

Ive read the prequel novel, which was decent but not excellent. I think its main failing is that its written very clearly in the form of a game script, and not a novel. Which leaches a lot of the tension out of the various action scenes in the book and jars the reader out of their immersion. However, what it DID give us is a glimpse of the style and substance of the game itself. And that glimpse promises a rough ride, albeit a fun one. From a bad guy who thinks nothing of genocide, to action scenes that hammer at the participants with savage brutality.

Which leads us to the last little goody Mass Effect is promising us. The game, much like its predecessor in spirit KOTR, has you playing with a group of 3 characters. In KOTOR, you had an acceptable system for switching amongst your various party members, but it was nothing that hadnt been done before. Mass Effect is showing glimpses of a system that promises to aid the flow of combat in much the same way that the conversation system aids the flow of a conversation. By selecting tactics and locations in a wonderful looking interface, and then letting the AI take it from there, the player is promised a chance to focus on the fun of the encounter, rather than dealing with the inevitably slow process of plotting efficient actions for more than one character.

So, November 20th will be the date to wait for. Bioware hasnt disappointed me yet, and so the only question left to me is this: What will I play until then?

Scribbling on Tabula Rasa

2007-09-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa, in case you have been living under a rock, is the latest MMO offering from the Grandfather of MMOs, Lord (nee General) British. And it shows.

Tabula Rasa is, forgiving its still beta nature of course, an interesting mixture of extremely old school with some more modern elements thrown in. I was gratified to note that General British has given up on unrestricted PvP (it killed the original Ultima, in my opinion.) I was happy to note that he has adopted instancing. The story is absolutely top notch, and the "Logos" that you attach to the eponymous Tabula Rasa that is your character are an interesting addition to a relatively generic loot system. Well, to be fair, Logos arent loot, per se. More like quest rewards. They remain an engaging addtion, regardless.

But for all of that, this game seems to missing an inherit spark. After the first few levels, about the time you've first branched your character class (possibly also taking advantage of the unique and welcome Cloning feature), the game becomes unrelentingly group oriented. Except that the rich story line begs for a careful step through the game, and anyone who's played an MMO knows that pick up groups are the last place you go for any kind of careful anything. You want to see whats going on in this latest instance and walk through the missions as the designers intended, and half of your party, bored because this is their umpteenth time through this instance, are just looking to do it in the fastest and most "efficient" way possible. And letting you know that the way you want to play is suboptimal with a wide arsenal of terminology culled from recess playgrounds the world over.

This problem is aggravated by an apparent lack of any assistance in getting a group that might match your preference. I wont go so far as to say the game actually lacks such a feature. It just isnt obvious, or apparently much used. A problem for such features by no means unique to Tabula Rasa (its Richard Garriott's, btw, and Im not going to keep typing the whole damn title out.)

We then come to my personal pet peeve. The game has, in the end, 8 unique character classes, and 3 sets of skills with which to customize those classes. Except that 2 of those 3 sets are deliberately weaker sets, because they belong to "classes" that you out grow. Wearing a particular armor type well requires a nice investment in skill points, but if that armor is not one of the types worn by the 8 end classes, its protective value and stat bonuses will be lower, across the board, than those of its higher class compatriots. Given that its understandably rare for someone to "customize" their character in a way that results in a suboptimal build, there end up being far fewer choices to work with than is even apparent from the initial limited selection.

There are exceptions, of course. A midtier set of armor that provides a run speed boost can be a useful investment in skill, even if it provides less optimal protection, if you happen to have a character oriented to offense than defense. Thats nice, but it remains the only exception Im aware of. And its a flaw, in my opinion (and thats what you get around here!) to allow false choices like that.

Now compare Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. At heart, there are actually only 4 classes, rather than 8. Tank, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, and Healer. But those 4 basic types are varied across 6 different armies. And oh how they vary! Ranged DPS could be a mage type nuker (Bright Wizard, Magus), or a missile weapon weilder (Engineer, Squiq Herder). And each of those variants has options within the class so that two Chaos Magus can be quite different from each other. So, in truth you have 24 classes and several optimal and significant differences amongst each class itself. Even World of Warcraft provides more meaningful choices than Tabula Rasa, and thats damning because WoW is the default yard stick.

Hell, Ultima's skill based system had dozens of viable builds, once people worked their way through the possibilities. Which is why I wonder what went wrong with Tabula Rasa. Its not a lesson Richard Garriott and his team needed to learn, or so I thought.

Tabula Rasa does strive for the underdeveloped Sci Fi market, which I applaud. It does it, as most before it have done it, by wrapping a Fantasy system in a Sci Fi blanket. Logos is magic, you have to level up to be able to pick up and use a particular gun (not use it well, by the way. No, you cant use it at all unless you are a member of the correct class, with the correct skill.) I suspect Sci Fi based MMO's are going to suffer for as long as they strive to force Fantasy MMO tropes into the Sci Fi genre. For an idea on how Sci Fi can have its own tropes, I remember fondly Jumpgate.

Sadly, it doesnt look like Tabula Rasa will either be my Sci Fi fix in a land of Fantasy, or even the game to tied me over till 2008 and WAR. Ill have to make it to November and replay Mass Effect a lot for that.

Robert Jordan, Rest in Peace, September 16th, 2007

2007-09-17T05:51:00.000-07:00

Robert Jordan, perhaps Americas greatest modern Fantasy writer, died yesterday. It was well known to fans that he was ill, as he had been fighting cardiac amyloidosis.

Im a big fan of Robert Jordan (his pen name, but the one I knew him by, so the one Ill use), both of the Wheel of Time series and his Conan works. His death was announced on his official blog, Dragonmount, which is down right now.

Robert Jordan brought us a fully realized world, with an enormous cast of characters (perhaps too many, but I was given many a nights entertainment keeping track), and an epic conflict between good and evil. With a side dish of an epic conflict between men and women :).

Ive been reading Robert Jordan since nearly the time I began reading. His works have been a companion to me for most of my life, and while I do not know the man behind the pen, his presence will be sorely missed.

Bioshock, part 2

2007-09-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

So Ive now beaten Bioshock twice, in both the "standard" ways. And I find myself still thinking its a great game. Which leaves me wondering what all the hubub is about.

Apparently there is controversy. And what is the internet without controversy? Bioshock is too easy, apparently. Vita chambers take away the pain of death. Blah blah blah.

This is an odd kind of whining, because Bioshock ISNT too easy. Or it doesnt have to be. Second time through, I cranked the difficulty and chose the "harder" path of saving the Little Sisters. I was feeling it, especially towards the end. But my experience with the game had me dying less than my first time through, because I knew when I was in over my head (especially as regarded the Big Daddies).

I think, if I where up for a real challenge, Id do my third time through using just the wrench. Which would even be possible because I would be planning on ignoring every Little Sister I could. Still no idea if I can bypass the first one. Though with the right attitude, and enough research with the camera, you could wrench a Big Daddy to death... You'd have to come back to the first couple of Big Daddies, but you could do it.

I do hear the other complaint about Bioshock, which is that all your choices tend to bring you to the same spot. Thats a fair complaint, but Im going to give it a pass myself. Yes, the actual play of the game is straight forward. But it is bought and paid for with such a beautiful, immersive experience that I find myself incapable of complaint. You can get at least two interesting play throughs on a game that clocks about 20 hours, and thats more fun and enjoyment than I get out of most games.

The most interesting part of Bioshock has to be picking a way to kill Splicers and Big Daddies. Plasmids and Tonics combine in interesting ways, and some combinations work with different weapons, and different ammo types, in surprising ways. There are obvious combinations that they introduce you to right off (stun and club, freeze and shatter), but the first time you see a security bot set off a gas canister and blow three splicers to hell, you'll realize the potential that exists in this game. And its just cruel to light a Splicer on fire, wait for them to run into the water to put themselves out, then electrocute them. Its cruel, but its fun.

Best Plasmid has to be Telekinesis. Its good on offense and defense, and its your only really reliable way to mess around with your environment. Its also cheap, Eve wise. I never found myself with much use for either Target Dummy or Enrage, since neither is particularly useful against Big Daddies, and I never think that hard about killing Splicers (theres to many of em, really, so you settle on patterns).

Hacking is wonderful, and Ill let Splicers run just to watch them pound on a hacked Health station and scream "Why?!?" as it kills them. Hacking also lets you use the cameras and turrets to cover your back, as the game will spawn in Splicers in areas you've cleaned in response to you advancing the plot. If you have the security systems on your side, you'll come back through to a bunch of dead bodies that you can loot at whim. The mini games that represent actual hacking attempts get a little repetitious, but the max difficulty ones are not guaranteed solvable unless you use a lot of Engineering tonics, so that can keep you on your toes.

Best Tonic, in my opinion, is the Chameleon Tonic. Being able to stop moving and hide is enormously useful, and the fact that you can use the sound of a cocking gun to attract the attention of a Splicer (and then club them to death with your wrench when they turn their back), I find its amusement factor to be high as well.

I found the end of the game to interesting up until the end fight. The end fight, sadly, is a straight forward "boss" fight familiar to anyone whos played a few FPS in their day. I didnt find it particularly challenging, as its relatively obvious which weapons and plasmids you need to use at each stage of the fight, and so the final battle represents my only gripe with the game. But its such a small part of the game, and at that point your just looking for the last cut screen to tie up the story anyway, so dont let that turn you off this game.

All told, Bioshock is a must play game, and I recommend you play through it at least twice before Halo 3 comes out. You owe it to yourself as a gamer.

Costume comfort

2007-09-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

When you start getting into full body costumes (or armor!), there are two issues that greatly impact ones overall comfort while wearing it.

Getting too hot.

Getting out of it. Or, alternately, just going to the bathroom.

Getting too hot comes about because most of the material one makes a costume out of, especially things like formed plastic costumes, are really good insulators. You have some kind of full body suit made out of a (likely synthetic) cloth. Much like a presentable set of long john underwear. You have some kind of outer shell covering your arms, legs, chest, and (most importantly) head. Much like a full set of winter gear. Then you go to a convention in the Midwest or Southern California in the middle of August.

Wearing winter clothing with long johns on a day that, with humidity helping, has cranked its heat index to 113 F is a good way to actually die. I guarantee your going to be utterly miserable. There are ways, however, to beat the heat.

First: Carefully pick what you make your long johns out of. Personally, Im becoming damn fond of Underarmor. It comes in a variety of colors, including white if you want to try and figure out how to dye some kind of 100% synthetic fiber yourself. Mostly though, it comes in Black, which works with most full body costumes to begin with. It wicks sweat off of you with vicious effectiveness. It was designed for use by athletes who, as it turns out, wear something very much like a full body costume. Which means there are options available for Underarmor clothing that might just help your costume out. Looking for a way to hold on a pair of thigh pads for your costume? Theres a pair of shorts with pockets available for just that kind of thing.

You get the idea.

If you dont like Underarmor for whatever reason, REI sells some T-shirts that might do okay. Otherwise, my recommendation, if your objection is synthetic, is a set of honest to gawd silk long johns. Silk deals with moisture reasonably well, silk long johns come in lightweight versions sufficiently thin to fit under a costume, and silk reduces chafing, a feature not to be underestimated.

All of that deals with what you would put right up against your skin. There, the features of most import are that it doesnt cause any kind of ugly rash, it gets moisture away from your skin (so you dont get any kind of ugly rash...), and preferably doesnt add significantly to your overall insulation. In other words, it breaths well. The next thing is to get something that can actually deal with all the heat your body is dumping, plus all the heat coming in from the environment. For that, you want a cooling vest.

I use a Heatshield II vest from ClimaTech. I picked it for several reasons, but probably the most important two is that its affordable and available now, and the replaceable inserts let me handle a full day at a convention or ren faire without having to carry my full heat management load all day. This is basically a fancy way of carrying around a set of ice packs with you, laid up against your chest to bring your core temperature down. It feels like wearing a vest soaked in cold water (due to condensation of sweat, which is why the Underarmor, above) all the time. It works great.

The Heatshield II vest is a little bulky, but for the kind of costuming and armor that I wear, thats okay. Either I wear the carrier vest they provide straight, as my chest padding, or I sew velcro strips to my gambeson, undersuit, or what have you, and attach the inserts directly (the inserts have a strip of velcro on them, very convenient.) A friend of mine even attached a set of velcro strips to an Underarmor t-shirt, put the cooling inserts on that, and then wore another Underarmor t-shirt over the whole thing to keep the inserts firmly against her body. It works great as a slimline way of getting cooling under something less bulky than a full costume. She uses it under a chefs jacket while working in a kitchen. Which gets hot, you might imagine.

There are other options, though most of them fail on either usability or availability. You could try to get away with a couple of It's Kool's products, on your neck, forehead (if you have a helmet/hat), wrists (or shoulder/armpits for short sleeves), groin and feet. The battery life isnt great, and your going to have to come up with some way to turn them all on/off that doesnt involve you manually turning each one on and off...

Theres a couple of options that are essentially variants on the Heatshield II vest, check out a brief listing here. As the link suggests, motorcyclists use these, so their tested, but I find that they are very limited because you cant just swap inserts to get more cooling. You have to manipulate the entire vest in some fashion. Also, the vests that involve soaking up water are less than optimal for full body costumes. First, they only really work if they are the outside layer, with nothing much between your skin and the vest (meaning, youd have to use the cooling vest as the basis of your costume, not a great choice.) Second, they are absolutely hell on metal, especially the kind of steels used in costume plate or chain. Aluminum or titanium (as if!) would be fine, but steel is going to rust with alarming rapidity when presented with a combination of evaporating warm water and a little bit of salt to help the process along. Be warned.

Finally, you'll see ads for forced air vests or fluid chilled vests. You can read a brief summary here. The canny will already see the problem with these. Its difficult to take them into a convention or ren faire, unless your costume includes somewhere to hide an industrial air compressor and/or vapor condensation equipment. These vests are also pricey as hell. But if you can make em work, they work great.

I recommend building your costume with an eye towards incorporating your cooling solution directly into it. It will greatly add to the comfort of the costume and the effectiveness of the cooling system.

And speaking of designing your costume around a feature... When your building the pants of your costume, you need to keep your eye on how your going to get them on, and how your going to take them off. Cause three meads after that hearty El Diablo chili lunch you had, you might become keenly interested in getting out of the lower half of your costume, in a hurry.

Here are a couple of hints from hard experience (with full plate armor, no less). The first actually concerns your arms. Make absolutely sure that whatever costuming or armor you put on your arms lets you reach all the areas of your body from your belly button to your knees. Front and back. I shant elaborate in to much detail as to why, but trust me on this.

Okay maybe I will. First, convention and ren faire bathrooms are often nasty. Often, your in a very cramped stall or porta-potty, looking at a "seat" that appears to been last used by someone who managed to hit everywhere but the bowl that he was supposed to hit. Getting any of that on your costume, much less your skin, is going to seriously piss you off. Which means your going to need to be able to maneuver your costumes lower half in such a way that it frees your biological self to do its thing, and is also sufficiently out of the way to not make contact with the gore all around you.

Second, your going to need to perform your own task without repeating your predecessors mistakes. I suppose you dont have to do so, but Im asking you to, because damn people... its gross. So you need enough mobility to aim, both your front side (for guys) and your backside (for everyone). And guys, dont think your going to be able to get away with just a clever access system to Mr. Hose. The El Diablo chili takes pity on no man, especially when your overheated, dehydrated, and further abusing your system with high proof alcohol. This is just a basic fact of human biology, and you shouldnt kid yourself about it. This also means that there are going to be times when, wearing your nice costume, your going to go through a deposit process that could at best be described as "explosive". Your going to want to be able to get all of that shrapnel off yourself, and if you cant reach, well, your SOL, in all kinds of ways.

So make sure your arms have a good range of motion. You'll thank me later.

Now, for the pants themselves, Im going to recommend some kind of "hatch" system like you may have seen in old time cartoons of long johns, otherwise known as union suits. Heres an example pic of what Im talking about:

Yes, that looks ridiculous. No, it doesnt have to. Right now, Im trying to sew up a system using velcro seals along the side and attaching at the waist band. I do this for both the back, and the front, allowing me to peel the entire lower half of my suit off almost like a banana (I ask you to master your sniggers...) This lets you choose which direction your going to perform your operation, while leaving the other directions costuming safely attached to your body, and thus not flopping around and contacting someone elses perverse version of modern art. Im running this seal down the outside and inside edges of my thighs to my knees. And using velcro helps with the putting on and the taking off (buttons, clasps, and worst of all buckles are a real pain the ass. Dont use them unless you have a historical reason to do so.) Ill post a pic when Im done, but I trust this should be enough inspiration for some of you.

If you consider these two issues from the very start of your costume creation process, your going to have a lot more fun wearing your costume. Which is the whole point.

iPhone, now 40% off! grump

2007-09-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

I do, in fact, own an iPhone. I bought it a couple of weeks ago, because I was sucked bodily into an Apple store and fell in love with the interface and features. I (happily, I might add) dished out $599 for my iPhone. Why?

Well, Im a pretty simple man. I dont like to carry around a lot of electronics, as having a "bat belt" only really looks cool to me if Im wearing a full up costume. Not if Im wearing t-shirts and shorts. While the weight of multiple devices doesnt really bug me (my own weight will vary over the course of a month by more than several phones worth...) the bulk of them do. Finding pockets, belt space, or what have you to squirrel an mp3 player, phone, and camera (never mind luxuries like a GPS) about my person is far to irksome to deal with.

So, Im a big fan of all in one portable devices. Im also a big fan of speed and responsiveness. Having something that does what it advertises well is also important. Half-assed attempts to get a check box in a feature list annoy the hell out of me.

Now, this is a blog, so Im going to write about the story that led me to buy an iPhone, because I find it amusing. This was the Monday before GenCon (which starts on a Wednesday). Im pondering what to bring with me (I like to pack light), and Im staring at my ancient, 6+ year old 20gb Hard drive based Nomad MP3 player the size of an old school CD Walkman. And Im looking at my room mates sexy Zen MP3 player I bought her as a gift, and how you could fit about 16 of those things into my Nomad with room to spare. So I head out to Best Buy, images of a new MP3 player dancing in my head.

I get there, and I see in the display rack a nice, sexy little Zen (I prefer Zen to Zune or iPod, based on features. Frankly, I like the idea of a voice recorder and FM tuner in my music player. Sue me. And Zune's music comes laden with so many of Microsofts patented "we will tell you how you can use your new toy" mentality to permanently turn me off to it. iPods just do one thing, albiet well, but if Im going to have an extra thing on my belt, it better do more than one thing...). I ask the man behind the counter for one, an the odyssey begins. None up front says he, lets check the back. Wait half an hour. None in back, but it should be in tomorrow. But only one of them (*sniff sniff* that smells of hard sell). Okay says I, put me down for that one, and Ill come get it tomorrow.

Tomorrow comes, I come for my Zen. Oh, says the rep at the pickup desk, that hasnt come in yet. Yes, I see you where told it would be in by now, but it isnt. Come back tonight. Now, Im getting annoyed. Ive been hard selled, Ive been told to come back, and Ive done those things. Someone on the other side needs to be upholding their end of the bargain. But this is Best Buy, and as friendly as some of their people can be, when you get into a situation beyond "Where do I find this that or the other thing" customer satisfaction is about job 15. Job 1 seems to be CYA.

I have other shopping Im going to do, so I reluctantly abandon Best Buy to go do it. In the mall Im shopping in, there is, perhaps of course, an Apple store. An lo, there be a set of sexy iPhones all laid for display so you can play with them. Cant hurt, says I, theres no way they have any in stock. So in I goes to play with them.

Now, Id have been in to buy an iPhone ages earlier but for a couple of raisins in my chocolate. Im already a Cingular (gah, now AT&T) customer. Ive been happy with my little roll over minute, unlimited data plan on my Treo for going on 3 years now, so however distasteful the reputation of the current company, I havent had cause to hop ship. iPhones are AT&T exclusive, but thats clearly no hurdle for me. What was a hurdle is that I had heard that, despite being GSM phones, AT&T wasnt letting iPhones be used in other countries. Now, one of the slick cool things you can do with Cingular is call them up before your overseas trip, and for $5 have them activate your phone in your destination country (most, anyway), using your number and minutes and everything. Thats saved me a mint in convenience and cash over the years, as I tend to take one overseas trip a year. More if I can swing it. Not being able to do that, turned me off of the iPhone.

So Im in the store, playing with the super slick interface, really getting into this iPhone. And the helpful Apple store guy slides up to me, and he starts chatting me up, trying to sink the hook in. He knows the baits good, he just wants to get everything all set, so he goes real easy on me, no hard sell here. And I mention my little concern. Well, he doesnt know the answer, but he knows where he can get the answer, says he. And he picks that damn iPhone up, hops over to Apples web page right there, and navigates to the screen with the answer. Right there on the damn iPhone.

I throw out a last sally, a desperate jerk on the hook. No way, says I, no way you have these in stock. Not the 8GB ones, no way. People where waiting in line. The Apple guy, he just smiles. Oh sure, he says to me, gently, comfortingly, we have those in stock. Want me to bring one out?

Well... so then and there, I was the proud owner of a new iPhone.

When I swung by Best Buy, and they asked why I was canceling my order, I told them. They lost the sale because they where hard sell, and then they failed to deliver. Tough luck.

So what does the iPhone bring to the table? Well, its an phone, an iPod, and a decent (though not exceptional) camera all rolled into one. Its thin and light weight, while still having good battery life, despite that monstrous screen size, wireless and phone all drawing power. Its speedy. Whatever the built in processor is, it clips along at a good pace, not making me wait while it grinds through something. Edge (the data service the iPhone uses if your not hooked up to a wi-fi network) isnt the fastest available network (by a long shot, for that, look at 3G), but Ive clocked 192kbps on a speed test with it, and thats fast enough to make the built in Youtube browser, Google Maps, and of course Safari pleasant to use.

Speaking of Safari, this is how surfing the web on a mobile device should be. Most internet phones use some kind of crippled web browser, so crippled most companies have to build mobile specific version of their website (even Google!). Not so with Safari (or, I hear, with the latest and greatest IE on Windows CE, though my personal experience hasnt been so rosy). Safari, I can do gmail (if I choose not to use the iPhones built in imap mail reader), I can hit sites heavy on Flash and other embeded apps, I can do everything but Java. And I can do it over a wireless link or over an unlimited cellular data link. Its a heady feeling, and one of the best selling points of an iPhone.

Finally, the touch screen is really key to the iPhones success. By being able to hide the keyboard away when its not being used, as well as simplifying the mechanical interface of the iPhone (no scroll wheel or thumb switches or any of that) was key to making that large screen possible while keeping the look of the iPhone within Apples design parameters. Apple is, of course, very much about the looks.

So, why a grump? Well, Ive read Steve Jobs open letter to current iPhone users. And I think he makes several good points. Yes, you gotta buy sometime. Yes, early adopters pay for the privilege of having the cool toys earliest (if youll forgive the awkward phrase :) ). But you generally expect that early adopter honeymoon to last a little longer than 2 months. 6 to 8 months would have been the norm. So, had I waited a mere 3 weeks (in my case), I could have saved myself $200, which would have made the purchase of an iPhone a no brainer (to compare, a 30 GB Zen MP3 player is $250. An 8GB iPhone at $399 is steal in relation).

So I grump. I grump that this announcement has put a little bit of a twinge to my decision to go iPhone rather than wait. I was happy to pay $599, and I would still be happy with it, if I didnt look like so much of a chump. And, because owning an iPhone automatically buys me into the culture of smug that many people associate with Apple fanatics (of which I am not one, by a long long shot), I grump because anyone who knows about this price cut and my buying an iPhone is making sure to let me know Im a chump. It makes them feel better to cut the smug down to size, and frankly, I cant blame them. Smug is irritating. Id do it too, where I able.

For all of that grumpiness, I think the least of what Steve and co can do is throw a hundred bucks our way. Im just saying.

Bioshock

2007-09-05T15:32:00.000-07:00

Been playing Bioshock non-stop since last week. This is an intense game, and it reminds me of the kind of playstyle I enjoyed with the original Deus Ex (and to a lesser extent, Deus Ex 2)

Deus Ex, as any good fan of gaming will fondly recall, allowed you to chart your own course in lots of ways. You could choose which side of the conflict presented in the storyline you wanted to be a part of, which back then was a "of course" kind of thing, but is considerably rarer these days. But you could also choose how you completed the various missions, and the characters and events in the storyline reacted to your choices, even if you didnt know you where making them. If you made it through an entire mission without killing anyone, some characters would be happier with you, and others would think you where a wimp. Become a deadly sniper, and that was recognized in off hand comments. It was an apparently simple trick that dragged the player kicking and screaming into a deep immersion in the game.

Bioshock isnt quite as featured as Deus Ex was, but it brings plenty to the table regardless. You dont choose sides in the conflict presented, but you do get to make several other choices. Perhaps the most obvious is how you deal with the Little Sisters, a core process of advancing your character. Once you have dealt with the Little Sisters protector (the Big Daddies, featured on the cover, wearing the diving suits), you are given the option of killing the mutated little brats to get as much goodies for yourself as you can, or rescuing the poor, abused darlings for a considerably smaller reward. What isnt as obvious is that there is a third choice, which is to leave the Little Sisters alone completely.

Now, not availing yourself of the Adam that the Little Sisters provide, in either form, would make the game extremely difficult. But you can get several upgrades to your character without ever touching a Little Sister (primarily found laying about in flasks, but also acquired through the research camera, a fascinating game play addition). While I havent beaten the game this way (yet, I intend to try), Im fascinated to discover if the game will recognize the achievement.

Couple that core choice with a fascinating array of options both in the upgrades to your character (in the form of Plasmids and other bio-additions) and upgrades to your weapons, and you have the opportunity to play the game in a pleasing array of styles.

But its not just game play that makes this game so addictive. The designers have put together a visually stunning and consistent world, patterned off the 1940-50s, and the retro-sci-fi feel of the environment is very convincing. Taking advantage of everything modern graphics cards (and the Xbox 360) have to offer, this is one of the most visually appealing games Ive ever played. Its only competition, this year, is likely to be Mass Effect.

Bioshock is one of those benchmark games that I find myself hoping designers everywhere study and try to emulate. More games could stand to provide the kind of experience Bioshock pulls off so well.

Move and Counter Move - Making Good RvR

2007-09-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

More on WAR. Impressions on the Chaos Magus and PvP.

Its hard to overstate how much RvR is key to the success of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. EA Mythic (and by extension, EA itself) are using RvR as their "killer app" to go up against the juggernaut that is WoW. And I cant blame them. If theres one place that WoW is pathetically weak, its in its PvP (there is no RvR, despite a setup that screams for it).

So, I sat down for my 30 minutes of frantic action with an eye towards how this early example of what WAR brings to the table stacks up to what WoW has already brought. So far, things look promising.

It was a good comparison actually, forgiving the fact that WAR is, you know, still in an early beta. We played a scenario which has a very similar feel to a WoW battleground, probably the most popular (if also worst done and most abused) example of PvP in WoW.

Yes, the above does appear to be biased. This is a blog, Im going to give opinion. You want so-called unbiased reporting, watch (*cough*) Fox News.

Two things leapt out at me just entering the battlefield. The first, the scenario we played was on a rather tiny map. It was possible to reach all three objectives, and the enemy base, in very little time. No more than a minute. This lent a very frantic feel to the whole endeavor, which is not a bad thing for something thats MEANT to be intense, small party PvP. The second is that, right now, it takes a long time to kill someone.

Believe it or not, this is a good thing.

I played a Chaos Magus, who is the Chaos based nuker. No armor (well... light armor in the Chaos Magus' case. Bright Wizards on the Empire side are the real hammer armed eggshells of the game), lots of damage. Chaos focuses much effort on debuffing your opponent, and the aforementioned slow rate of death actually gives you a chance to apply a debuff or a DoT and have it feel like it makes a difference. With a system that has death happen quickly, the opportunity cost of doing anything but maxing out your DPS is too high to keep you competitive in PvP. I suspect that, if the design decisions remain stable till release, the slower rate of death is meant to offset that some.

Dont get me wrong though. If three Bright Wizards dial you up and start raining fiery death, you go down fast. But I was gratified to note that my Magus was able to take a beating from an Ironbreaker Dwarf and still have a chance to hit his PBAOE (you can get your disk demon to lash out at everyone around you, and it does enough damage to cause a yelp of surprise from the direction of the Ironbreakers player when I did it...), land a snare and make a run for it.

While there appear to be plenty of slows ('snares') available, I have yet to see anything that prevents its target from acting completely. No stuns, no holds. And thank the ruinous powers for that. Its a clear sign that EA Mythic has learned many a hard lesson from DaoC, and learned them well.

As I mentioned before, it quickly became obvious that the player who has most mastered the various queues, adders, and the rhythm of their class will dominate. Chaos, at least for the Zealot and the Magus, appear to have a steep learning curve in this regard. You have a great deal of options, and determining what your best sequence is will take some time, and several fiery deaths to learn. As a counter point, the Bright Wizard is almost childishly straight forward, since they are so skewed towards offense.

This is ALSO not a bad thing.

I think its important for some classes to require some time to obtain mastery (or, after the pioneers have mapped the territory, the reading of a hint guide or forum post at least), and I think its important for some classes to be straight forward. One is (or shouldnt be) more powerful than the other. I confidently predict that there will be many initial cries to "nerf" the Bright Wizard however. They will appear dominate in early matches, simply because their tactics are straight forward.

Resist the urge to join such calls. It took all of 15 minutes for my team to figure out how to go up against 3 Bright Wizards and an Ironbreaker with only a Zealot, a Magus, and a Black Orc (notice, we where down a player!). The Black Orc simply taunted the Bright Wizards. It sounds almost too simple, but most "tanks" are used to putting whatever taunt they have on other melee classes. This is because most "taunts" redirect melee damage. Not so with the Taunt the Black Orc has. His taunt knocks its targets damage down by 50%, unless they target the Black Orc himself.

Well, those Bright Wizards where very naturally trying to burn down our healer (the Zealot), then our Nuker (myself, the Magus), before moving to the traditionally less threatening Tank. When we clued in to that, we changed the entire nature of the fight.

And that, my friends, is the sign of excellent game design. Our little trick has an easy counter (burn down the Taunting Black Orc), but of course, anything that focuses damage on your Tank is a good thing. Still, Im sure if I had a chance to play the Bright Wizard, I could come up with something to shift things yet again.

Move and counter move are what make a fun game, and Im happy to say, WAR, even in its infant form, has this already. WoW should be taking notes.

Pictures of the Helmet

2007-09-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

Some pictures of what I was talking about in my first post. These pictures show the faceplate mold, and the mold I have in progress of my helmet, which demonstrates using a base object (here, a hockey helmet) and clay to quickly create your costume piece.

This is the front of the faceplate, showing some of the detail hidden under the many layers (I think I ended up with 6) of plaster bandage.

This is an edge on view of the faceplate. I got the thickness by rolling my clay sheet to about as thick as I wanted the mold to end up being.

This shows the two halves of the faceplate mold. The wireframe in the middle is what I used to support the clay while I was sculpting it. I applied the plaster to the front (Where the clay was) first, and used the plaster to support the clay when I removed the wireframe and plastered the back. you should be able to see where I overlapped the back plaster cast with the front. This lets me seal the mold (with tape) for when I actually cast something with it.

Here we have the front of the helmet. Im going to cast the fancy bits (sockets for the horns, spikes, etc) separately because they create a lot of undercuts if you attach them to the helmet. That makes the moldmaking process difficult. Superglue is your friend.

Back of the helmet. Only thing of real interest here is that it clearly shows how easy it is to get a good, solid shape using a base object.

This is a view of the inside of the helmet. Note, you can see the clay I used to smooth out the shape of the helmet as the light red layer. I laid sheets of clay over the basic helmet until I had the size and shape that I wanted. Provided I didnt make any undercuts, I could have gotten a lot more crazy than I did, but Im going for a nice solid base to glue stuff to here.

Sideview of the helmet.

A (fairly torn up) example of a clay sheet. This came off of the faceplate. I use a rolling pin to get the clay nice and even. There tends to be a "default" thickness of about 1/4" or slightly less that seems to work best. This is an oil based clay, so as you work it (and it warms up) it becomes more malleable, but once you leave it to cool, it stiffens up fairly well. Still, sheets like this need support, hence the wireframe.

The modeling clay I use. Typical stuff.

Plaster bandages I use. Also pretty typical.

Let there be WAR

2007-08-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

Warhammer Online is the MMO Im looking forward to the most. Two weeks ago, I got a chance to really take a spin in the Orc, Dwarf, Human and (most especially) Chaos areas of the game, as well as do some RvR.

Now, Fair Warning: Im in love with all things Chaos. Im 99% certain, unless they screw the pooch on this completely, that Im going to be a Chaos Chosen as my first character when WAR finally lets me play this game for real. The costume creation posts on this blog involve me casting my own, plastic, version of Chaos Chosen armor.

So I a little obsessed with Chaos Chosen. You know, just so thats out there.

They didnt let me play a Chaos Chosen at GenCon, even though I whined and begged like Luke in the beginning of EpIV. They had Magus and Zealots available on the Chaos side, and I tried out both.

The Zealot is nominally the Chaos healer class. Playing the Zealot PvE though, you felt a lot like a nuker. Or perhaps a Shadow-spec Priest in WoW. You had lots of nukes and dots and debuffs, and you where looking for every chance to lay those down. WAR has a neat philosophy about it (several actually), two of which where notable playing the Zealot. The first is that everyone is supposed to get stuck in and kill the enemy. No healbots. Zealots meet that philosophy perfectly. There are heal over times, coupled with the fact that Tanks are plenty tough all on their own, that gives the healer plenty of time to toss out nukes and other toys without feeling like they are neglecting their duties. Also, in the version I played, "mana" or "magic wind" or whatever the supply of thing that I need to cast spells is, was sufficiently high that you wherent paying an opportunity cost to nuke that prevented you from healing. It was a nice feeling.

The second philosophy is more subtle. Part of the design of WAR appears to focus on building up a supply of some resource, and then burning that supply by using abilities that are unlocked at certain levels of reserve. The most obvious example of this is the Morale abilities. As you get yourself into the thick of things, beating on the enemy and what have you, your Morale meter improves. As it improves past various points (25%, 50%, 75%), you unlock Morale abilities that do some fairly nifty things. Nifty in usefulness, and nifty in that not every character is going to end up with the same 3 or 4 morale abilities. But thats not the only example. Most (maybe all. I believe its all) classes also have a class specific resource of a sort. Rage, Hatred, Badassedness-with-a-sword-counter, Waaagh, Faith, whatever. As you pull off moves marked as openers, you increment this counter. This unlocks bridging and finishing moves that use up the counter, but perform some flashy, useful, cool thing. Be that an uber heal or an uber attack or an uber buff/debuff, its usually worth it to get them unlocked and use them as often as possible. The dynamic involved in building and managing these two pools of resources (Morale and class specific) provides a fun and engaging option for variances in tactics.

Do you focus on building morale, or do you focus on your class specific counter. Or are you leet enough to have built a chain of moves that does both in an optimal fashion? The haves of this game are going to be seperated from the have nots not by equipment so much as by the ability to properly time their pools increases and their use of the abilities so unlocked. And thats a good thing.

The last (that I know of) and very much the most subtle incrementer doesnt seem to be universal to all classes, but its very interesting for the classes that have it. The Zealot has the ability to debuff his foes and buff his friends, pretty typical support stuff. The subtle, interesting part comes in his ability to siphon life or mana (or perhaps other things, like run speed or attack rate!) from his Harbringered foes (the debuffs) and use that to empower his Marked friends (the buffs).

Working up a sequence of actions to go through in the heat and ever shifting circumstances of a RvR battle against other humans, which efficiently balances Morale gain, your Class counter gain, and any special features (such as draining life to power buffs) will be the mark of true skill, and will no doubt create a substantial gap in effectiveness between otherwise identical characters.

In short... its a PvP system that involves tactical skill without bowing to twitchyness. Throw in the fact that you cant run through people in RvR (collision detection works great), you cant run, jump up in the air and pull a 360 while launching an attack, land and maintain all your forward speed (kiting at its very worst), and you backup far slower than you run forward (causing characters to cruise around in a far more... believable... fashion than most games) and you get a RvR system that isnt going to look like anything else out there.

The only down side I can see? There are going to be apparent balance issues that are actually skill issues (some classes may be more accessible to the majority of players, as far as balancing all of the above), as well as actual, real balance issues masked by the generally higher skill (or easier learning curve) or a particular class.

I do not envy the Developers their task.

More on the other classes I played (especially since I got a little off track here) later.

Plastic cast armor

2007-08-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

It is reasonably difficult to find good information on creating your own, cast-plastic costume armor. You can read books and take classes on professional special effects work, but the techniques and materials most often used there do not readily lend themselves to hobbyists.

For example: Vacuum forming. I know of lots of hobbyists who use vacuum forming. They have a large section of their garage or basement devoted to the process. Thats fine. I dont have a garage OR a basement... and I imagine lots of potential costumers dont either. Another fine example is alginate and similar casting materials for making your initial mold. Its damn expensive. Yes, it does a great job of pulling detail off of a living subject without taking hours to dry or, you know, causing severe burns. It remains damn expensive.

So, I write to muse about some of the solutions Ive tried, with varying degrees of success.

I think the biggest lesson Ive learned is that a) plaster bandages are actually suitable for direct application on a human being, where plaster casting is (emphatically, not to be stressed enough) NOT, and b) you do need a "release agent", you do need a sealant, and you do need to use both on every mold you want to work right.

I started my process with alginate and a plaster bandage mother mold. Gave up on that due to the cost, though I came away with a really high quality mold (albeit temporary) of my arm. Amusingly, while it was initially worrisome that the hair on my arm could be seen floating through the alginate as the alginate hardened (with the reasonable fear that this would involve a kind of "waxing" process on my entire arm to get the alginate off...) instead, the hair just slid right through the alginate mold. That was a pleasant surprise.

Next was a full body mold using saranwrap as my release agent, and plaster bandages as the mold. Two problems: Saranwrap creates ridges that make taking a casting out of your resultant mold a complete pain in the ass. Its not worth it. Second problem is, you need to work fast, or your model (in this case, me) will suffer for having to stand in the exact same position for hours. I believe that with 4 people who have had some practice with the plaster bandages could do a complete human in 45 minute to an hour, which isnt bad at all.

Another problem with the plaster bandages: They arent thick enough in one sheet to support a human sized molds weight, especially not if you try to cast out of them. They need to be strengthened with a mother mold, either with more plaster and plaster bandages, or something really heavy duty like fiberglass. Me, I just peel the thin original off the model to give them a break, and then start slapping more plaster bandages on the outside till the whole thing is thick enough to support its own weight. Im still looking for a good sealant that will prevent chips of plaster from flaking off and making a mess (as well as ruining any detail the interior of the mold might have captured.

So, I have two next steps that I want to try, and Ill be sure to write it up when I finish them.

The first is taking molds off of items that have already been fitted to my body, and that look much like the costume Im trying to build. I have purchased a hockey helmet for this purpose, and thats working quite well (combined with a non-sulfur oil based modeling clay to create outlines more suited to the costume). You cover the helmet in sheets (use a rolling pin to flatten!) of clay, then mold ridges and surface decorations in clay and attach those to the sheets. Lay plaster bandages over the clay directly (watch for undercuts! If you have undercuts, your going to have to make your mold in multiple parts....). The advantage here is that the purchased helmet has all the straps and padding and sizing done for you already, so your decorative helmet just slips on over that. Saves you a lot of work.

Second thing I need to try is pulling casts of a suit of plate armor I own thats already sized to me. This isnt something you could do on the cheap as a normal hobbyists though, so its not a great solution to the general problem. What I want to create, costume wise, is plate armor like though, and so it would save me a lot of time in modeling the look of the costume in clay.

If I dont use my plate armor as a source of inspiration and casting, Id have to do another mold of my body. If I do that again, I want the 4 people, and I think theres no other way to do it but to bite the bullet and use a vast amount of vaseline as a release agent. Slathering your whole body in vaseline is (besides being a fun Saturday night) the best way to retain detail without creating the absurd ridges and such that the saranwrap did that ruined my original attempt. I also think you could profit by doing a body mold in five pairs of halves (front and back half form a pair). Create a torso part from top of neck to knees and shoulders. Create a set of casts from the knee down, marking clearly where your torso cast stopped. For this, Id use tape applied directly to the models knee and ridged out to form a kind of wall all the way around the knee. You then slather your plaster bandages onto the proper side of the tape to form the "join" that youll use to line up your separate parts. Create the same thing, only for the arms from the shoulder down.

Id do it that way because, while the groin is a pain to cast, it doesnt have the same kind of mold destroying combination of weird angles and possible undercuts that the armpits, knees, and feet do. Never mind hands (which, honestly, I wouldnt bother to mold with bandages. Buy a cheap "starter kit" of alginate and stick your hand in it...)

So... more when I finish the helmet and make an attempt at my armor.