Protoshell

Donations Finished

2007-06-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

As it was, in case anyone was interested, the $220 ($200 saved from not eating out and $10x2 from page hits) raised from the $10 for 2 weeks experiment was donating recently to a group that directly buys and gives out bags of necessity items for the poor. These bags include everything from canvas bags, to food, to toothpaste and toothbrushes.

Thanks for your support, but don't forget what we did or who really lives off that much everyday and doesn't have the option of only going 2 weeks.

Fear and Loathing in the US

2007-06-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

First off I'd like to preface my subject today with a short disclaimer. No, you know what? Fuck that, if your offended by anything at all, you are better off shoving a firecracker in your eye socket than continuing to read this. I will say this though, you can view this next part as either a "zomg liberal/or/neocon" or "zomg batcrackers" or "hello fellow human being on the internets". I would prefer the last one as it leads to more interesting discussions.

I just finished reading a nice article on the modern terrorist and how different pieces of our society have reacted to it. I'm not going to summarize, that eats up paragraphs of possibly useful discourse so go read it you lazy git.

I'm waiting.

Not all attacks on US soil are terrorist in nature. Sure, they might be perceived as such, but terrorism can be so widely abused as a term that we don't even know the difference anymore. Ooo, look, someone with a grievance about the government who attacks a US military base, must be a terrorist! Someone planned to blow up the Sears tower, zomg terrorist! Did you hear someone almost cut down the Brooklyn Bridge?

Whatever happened to, "Wow, that guy is crazy"? Did anyone notice how much more often just plain crazy acts are being attributed to terrorism? I don't like to draw conclusions without good solid evidence but did you notice the rather large spike in "terrorism" related incidents along with the passing of bills such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006? You know what, it's almost irrelevant to fart around on the internet making connections because the people who are on "one side" are going to agree with you and the people in the evil camp of "others" will most likely flame/troll/hunt you down and paint cats on your door.

How about the news agencies? Hell, they don't even wait for the full story to be out before jumping to the easiest possible conclusion. I used to remember people stopping to think about what the hell was going on, even on the news during crisis times, but blamo, a building falls down and we just open our mouths letting the first fleeting thought that comes to mind droll out without so much as a two second pause. When did it become acceptable to stop apologizing for misinformation and then trying to do something about it?

The state our country is in, socially, is rather despicable. In fact, if we weren't such lazy fat bastards we'd be no better off than the current fuckups in the Gaza strip or Darfur. Since when did people dehumanize the other side into "them"? I mean, last I heard that type of treatment was reserved for warring nations, not your goddamn neighbor. That's right, I heard 12B was a LIBERAL. Did you know 4A voted Republican?

Stop being so goddamn arrogant and AFRAID of your "enemies". Nothing spells fear like being in a position of utmost power and saying some really stupid shit to support your strongly backed factual argument like "I'm the decision maker". Either that or utter stupidity. I'm aware at the most visceral level most arguments come down to discussions about the nature of humanity, but damn man, don't blow it on your first level argument on "Why are you sending more troops to Iraq when slightly more than half of everyone you preside over doesn't support you?".

Honestly, I don't know who would be the best president in 2008, but I do know one or two people who sure as hell don't deserve to be within 100 feet of the White House lawn. Most of the people running on BOTH sides of the proverbial fence don't deserve to run much less win. I'm of the opinion the person most able to get elected these days should be the absolute last person allowed to have the job. Why don't we solve some of these differences by allowing multiple presidents? Perhaps a three or five person group formed from varying political factions instead of red or blue? Or would that confuse people too much?

Maybe we should just scrap the whole shebang and start over.

I can only wish.

Arena Tactics

2007-06-13T05:52:00.001-07:00

Arena Tactics is a small game I've been whipping up on my own time. It has a Swing interface and will most likely not include any animation or database work. I coded about a fourth of it yesterday on my day off and was rather pleased with the meager results. I'll be releasing the code into public domain usage when I finish up with it. It's just meant to stretch my skills and as such most of the code will probably look rather ugly so don't judge too harshly, however I appreciate all constructive critisism.

The simple premise is that you create a character to fight in the "Arena" and get to buy a weapon and armor, compete in fights and level up and assign your stats. As the game has no database, you will create a new character every time. It's not a daunting task for most programmers but it's something I feel I have to do to keep myself fresh and up to date. I wouldn't classify myself as a master programmer either so it's also a good learning experience.

Re-wired Protoshell

2007-06-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

I decided to take my site back today since it had been in limbo since I dumped my old host Fuitadnet.com. I won't go into the long winded host bashing others do, I'll just say I wish they had kept up their customer support the way they used to before they were bought out and moved to India. That should about clear it up.

I've got a few games in various stages of not working currently, including Protoshell. One of the other games is just a practice game to try out various programming techniques and the other one might turn into something eventually.

Protoshell Wiki

2007-05-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

I've put up a links section which currently only holds the wiki I'm planning on doing. It will be for everything from design to gameplay. I stored most everything on my computer when I switched over to here instead of my old host. I find it easier to handle not having to worry about my host going up or down (Google is pretty reliable) and with that in mind I chose PBWiki for my wiki host so I don't have to worry about the software side either.

If you don't know what Protoshell is, it's a game I've been doing on and off ever since I made Visions of Darkness which had only one good release back in the day. VoD was a PHP browser game which has since been deleted since my host wasn't any good and there wasn't any real reason to keep the code around since it was nothing spectacular, and in fact quite bad since it was coded without an ounce of design or OOP involved.

Protoshell is the child of that project which I've kept as a hobby of mine in mind for release sometime this year. It's a cyberpunk based game which I find exciting since there is so much more you can do with technology that hasn't been done a million times over, than fantasy. Not that I'm claiming the project is 100% original, I'm sure lots of sci-fi games exist, they just don't get the recognition of fantasy games these days. Anyway, it's currently being written in Java which was a learning process for me. I've come a long way from disliking the language to realizing all languages have potential in one area or another.

As I said, I hope to have more up on the game soon and I'll be diving into all sorts of topics including game design, programming and a dash of opinionated self-righteousness :)

Final Day

2007-05-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry I missed yesterday, I was running around with the wife.

Yesterday we we're feeling the cravings (not hunger) of normal food since it was a day away. Today we're just relaxing as much as the other days though, not feeling too bad. Overall, we both look forward to eating vegetables and other produce as well as real meat (hotdogs aren't really meat). If we were on this any longer I think we may have started to suffer from some deficiencies without vitamins or supplements of some type.

I have to say, americans are damn lucky we can spend the amount of money we do on food and such. For such simple foods we really pour out the cash just for the convenience. Perhaps part of our lack of distinct cultural food stems from the fact we really take for granted what we shove in our mouths everyday. And that leads to a concern about other areas of our lives and a disregard for the problem of other countries, or even other americans who can't just go out and buy a double-whopper with fries. It's just so simple, and so 'cheap' to us that we can't imagine someone going hungry.

There are some figures on the net that state if all the 1st world countries of the world donated an average of 1% of their income to hunger the problem would be solved altogether. I believe the US hovers around 0.1% currently and that's pretty close to the bottom. Even if you feel you can't donate a few dollars here and there, you can donate your time, just an hour at a soup kitchen or setting up tables and chairs at your local shelter or food pantry. Just one day a month, take that $20 you were going to blow at the bar/pub/6-pack and donate it to someone who needs it a little more than you do. Make it an event, make it easy to remember by having a party when you do it, make other people aware that they can help with just an extremely small sacrifice so other people can climb out of poverty and into the rest of the world.

As for us, we're going to turn our monthly Wii parties into Wii-Hunger parties as it's an event most of my friends come to anyway and an easy way for people to pass on awareness without barely eating for two weeks. I hope the rest of you have learned something new throughout this blogging experience and try just a little harder to be aware about suffering in humanity. Take just a little longer looking at all that food in the grocery store for a moment today, realize how easy it us for us to pick up a tomato and that others can't do that, or buy a steak, or a burger. Spend just a little more time taking stock in what you have.

Good luck to all of you :)

(I'll be continuing my normal blog of game design and opinions from now on)

Day 12

2007-05-11T19:12:00.000-07:00

I didn't have any Ramen so I didn't eat till dinner (rather starve than eat oatmeal again). I've saved up a lot of eggs and still have 4 hotdogs so I'm going to indulge myself this weekend :)

By the way, go see 28 weeks later, now those people are starving...raving rage zombies :P

Day 11

2007-05-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

I've eaten the last of my Ramen today. I don't know what I'm going to eat for lunch tomorrow since that's what I've been surviving on at work. Might just go hungry or eat more oats. Oats are begining to wear on me, they don't taste very good. I've got a lot of sauce left so I'm thinking of using it up the next three nights on my spaghetti.

I feel like I learn something new everyday on this trip of ours. Instead of just grabbing whats easily available, we're really thinking on how to survive the next day, and the day after that. We feel as if there's a lot more time in the day than we give credit for as well. Instead of just rushing into a store to buy what you need next time, plan it out or at least take more than 30 seconds looking and comparing your options. You'll find most purchases you make take less than 10 seconds, which is why I suppose all those marketers went to all that trouble to figure out where to place the most profitable items on the shelf and what color and shape to make their fancy boxes. While we as an american culture feed on the quick and easy, it doesn't mean we have to settle for less. Don't just grab the first thing you find, take a look around and find what you need at the price you're willing to pay for it. I'll almost gurantee you've got a lot more options than you think you do.

And don't let the rage zombies get you :P

Day 10

2007-05-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

I've been doing good on food as expected, I have something else to address today that's been on my mind.

First off, I'll preface this by saying I dislike partisan politics altogether, however, I am currently leaning in favor of the democrats (by a pretty large portion). I was in a discussion with two and a half people who were very staunch supporters of the republican party in general (the half because one really didn't care but was siding with them for the sake of argument which is ok IMHO).

Anyway, the argument obviously surrounded the Iraq war policy. It was a rather heated debate especially since I had to talk over two people but I've never been one to back away from a debate. Their argument was one I had not heard of although it came down to two points. One person believed, honestly, that the republican party had a secret plan which they were not telling ANYONE else. Some type of secret plan to somehow "finish" the job in Iraq that would be enough to convince everyone they had somehow done a good job the whole time.

This secret plan was to be released at a political crisis point (aka the 2008 election) so as to rally sudden support for the republican party since the american public has a notoriously short attention span and memory. My argument against this was, this would destroy them and all their credibility. Never mind that keeping a secret in congress is like herding cats with arthritic mice, but arguing this point for the sake of arguing, this secret "plan" would be the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. Support is so thin for them (except in my line of work) that withholding information at this point and then saying "Oh, wait we can fix this like THIS" later on isn't going to pass muster on even the slowest of the voting populace. Pretending to not have a plan until a crucial point is what fiction stories do, not real people.

The other (and more realistic) plan is that there is no plan. Not only that, but there doesn't NEED to be a plan to withdraw from Iraq. We're going to go into some history here (and I'm going to generalize for the sake of being brief). The Vietnam War was about two seperate peoples, who wished to kill the crap out of each other. It was quite clear they wanted to kill the crap out of each other. There were some large countries who were on one side, and some who were on the other. The US split the country down the middle and told them to go to their respective sides. Lo and behold, people stopped killing the crap out of each other. We still have bases and some military in Vietnam as protective measures, but nowadays, mainly for show.

One could theorize that a group of people in Korea wanted to be protected and we provided that. When we were done, we split it and slowly withdrew after we realized that not everyone thinks like us or wants the same thing. This argument I was being told was different though, that we should just sit down in Iraq and be the "world police" (he actually used that term). We should babysit them indefinitely until Iraq was a thriving city like Japan (yes he used that example). Never mind that occupations by foreign nations have never been successful, he believes that we can intimidate the nation by sheer force into stopping their suicide bombs through schools, education and roads.

This is where we split. I think that's an unrealistic expectation. It's another culture, the only way to completely be sure of their intentions (i.e. they won't go and blow each other up the moment we leave) is to BE the culture, not some random outsider looking in. That or brainwashing and forced cultural adaption. Anyway, I could talk on this for a while, but basically, I disagree, I think we should split the country and be done with it and damn what other countries think because they didn't screw it up in the first place.

My wife is making me run to Lowes, seeya tomorrow :P

Day 9

2007-05-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Had some good rice with eggs today, shared it with the wife since she's nice enough to share with me. That and she cooked it for me...with my own food :) I've still got quite a bit of food left and I think I'll make it just fine the next few days.

Day 8

2007-05-07T16:23:00.000-07:00

I just finished up a nice meal of spaghetti for dinner. For some reason, I just don't get tired of pasta :) My wife is doing well, I think she lost some weight as well (which any woman is happy about) and is doing pretty good with her wide variety of foods.

I had to run 3 miles today in about 85 degree heat (F) which wasn't the most fun thing ever. I didn't feel any more tired than normal though, which leads me to believe my body is already getting used to the lack of calories. Can a body get used to 1000 calories a day that fast? I think I probably took in at least 2000 a day before, possibly upwards of 3000 on weekends and every now and then. I'm not taking in almost any sugars as far as I know.

Anyway, me and the wife planned on donating all of the money we would have spent on food over the two weeks to a world hunger association, which comes out to about $200 we figure. I've also earned $5.92 since this was posted to Digg, so I'll be adding that and whatever else I earn up till then. Don't think we're stingy though, we donate a good 2% of our total income to charity over the year to various organizations. I wish we could donate all of our money but it's not feasible, so we also help out by donating our time which I highly encourage. I mean, what are you going to do, play video games ALL weekend? You did that last weekend, try spending just one day, or just a few hours helping out at a food pantry/kitchen. One of those people you help out could inadvertently help you out or someone else later in life.

Day 7

2007-05-06T10:35:00.000-07:00

I've spent a little more money now on some chicken broth and eggs. I'm not sure the chicken broth was the best idea at $0.39 but it should taste good at least. I think the eggs are a good idea though, they've got lots of protein and I've got enough to last until next week at two a day (starting tomorrow).

Something I've noticed about our food choices is that we are making a lot of our own food from pretty base materials. My wife has made soup, hash browns, french fries (mmm those were good), and various other concoctions from almost nothing. Almost makes me want to get into the food industry seeing how much they charge for what is probably the cheapest part of their whole restaurant. We spend about $30 for a meal out somewhere and get ONE meal. A breakdown might include:

-Vegetables ($2.00)
-Beef ($1.00)
-Flour Tortilla ($0.50)
-Drink ($0.50)

Total $3.00

I'm being pretty generous with the numbers too I think. That's for one person's meal at a normal restaurant. I spend about $10 on that meal and it's still a 300% markup. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of bulk food buying and subsidized meats going on too bringing the price cost closer to $2.00. Maybe someone in the food industry can fill me in on something I'm missing? Heck, I used to not clean my plate every meal even.

I'm sure this isn't the only industry to do this either, it's making us rethink how we go about our lives and what we buy everyday. It appears with a little extra work and some thought into our everyday lives we can not only cut costs, but save quite a bit of garbage we build up.

Expenditures Today:
-Hotdogs $0.69
-Broth $0.39
-Eggs $1.19

My remaining cash is now down to $1.31

Day 6

2007-05-05T18:08:00.000-07:00

I ate pretty well today, had some beans and rice for breakfast, some spaghetti for lunch and I made a deal with my wife for some food for dinner. I'm going to be splitting a pack of hotdogs with her and she also gave me two of hers along with some fries so that I would spend the money for the pack of dogs.

Good deal for me, and she even cooked dinner for me :)

Day 5

2007-05-04T19:24:00.000-07:00

Sorry the post is late first off.

Second off, I am never doing this again. I'm not hungry per se, but I CRAVE food. Like real food, and a full stomach. I would love to be able to sit back after a meal and go "Ahh, that was good, I'm full", but I have a whole bunch more days of not eating normal food.

Another thing, to those who misunderstand, don't understand or don't want to understand the reasoning behind our experience, I'm done with you. I tried telling you but I don't think even talking to you in person I'd be able to explain our reasoning, we just have different personalities, if you don't understand, I'm ok with that, and I'm sure you are, not everyone "gets" everyone else (I don't get Picasso :P). To those of you STILL going on the attention whore/yuppie/donate all your money trip, I salute you for being so pervasive, but I'm not going to bother responding to you anymore. Your vengeance for punishing those doing something they think is right is laudable, but I think your talents would truly be put to better use doing something useful. Go get that rage out on a video game, or join the army or go boxing, just do something more useful than attempt to troll on the internet :P And finally, to those that misunderstand, please try reading the question/answer section a few days ago, it answers just about every question I've seen reposted at least 3-4 times :)

Meals for today were:

Breakfast: Oatmeal (with stoled sugar packets! rawr!)
Lunch: Ramen (salty goodness)
Dinner: Lentil beans (not so goodness, but I needed protein)

Day 4

2007-05-03T15:03:00.000-07:00

So...weak...hungry...food.

I'm actually not all that hungry, looking back on it, day 1 and 2 were by far worse. Now that I'm taking in more calories I don't feel that bad. I've decided to use scrounged sugar packets for my oatmeal after the debacle this morning.

I brought my food to work and "cooked" my oatmeal...wrong. It was all soupy and nasty but I didn't know what else to do but eat it (I think I may have not cooked it long enough or used too much water). It was pretty gross, but knowing that it still contained calories made me choke it down. Man, poor food is NOT fun. I mean, it can be, but I just don't have the skills to spice it up (with available and 'allowable' contents).

My wife is trying to help me and give me some suggestions on how to make better food so hopefully it won't be as nasty next time. I had ramen for lunch and now I'm looking forward to my spaghetti dinner with SAUCE!

If more people tried this out, even for a few days, I'm sure we'd see a large increase in the amount donated around the world.

Day 3

2007-05-02T06:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I had spaghetti, which was rather good I must say. But I also have to confess, my wife was cooking up some of her rice and beans and I couldn't stand it so I took a bite. It was just so good I had to, not the whole thing, just a few bites. Overall, I haven't been feeling hungry but I have been feeling the urge to get food that I normally would eat.

I pass by a sign for nachos, I see popcorn at Kmart or Target, I smell the food court at the mall (that grease makes me drool) and I really have to restrain myself from going and picking up one of these things for a quick bite to eat. It's surprising finding out how often I used to eat and how much. I'm about average weight, 150lbs, but my metabolism is still pretty high so it's going to be rough later on if I'm already getting these urges now.

And to my wife, thanks for sharing some of your beans with me last night :)

P.S. Little known fact, I don't know how to cook, so this is doubly rough :P

Question and Answer

2007-05-01T06:09:00.000-07:00

While there is an overwhelming support for this experiment there are some questions I'd like to address:

Q. What does this have to do with saving the homeless, the hungry, the poor?
A. While it's easy to donate money, how often do you do it? When there's a show on TV? When you see someone by the side of the road? What is comes down to is, how much MORE would you be willing to donate if you actually knew what it was like to live like that?

Q. $10 seems like a lot/little/too much/not enough/etc.
A. $10 is an average amount made off of what we thought a daily wage in their country might earn them. $10 is not meant to be $10 in Africa, it's mean to be the pennies a day they earn in contrast. I am quite aware $10 US would buy them a small house, a pony, some cats and food for a month. It's still an estimate, but I think it's about what they would have to spend on food.

Q. Your a yuppie.
A. Thanks, that was constructive, and for my next trick, I shall become...a kittie!

Q. You should have bought farmer's market unpackaged goods.
A. I would have LOVED to have gone to a farmer's market, but alas, we did not have any in our area, however this may have skewed the experiment since I could probably barter myself a fridge full of food.

Q. This is only 2 weeks, you can't understand it unless you become homeless for reals.
A. That's called camping. But aside from that, I wouldn't be able to post, I can't exactly quit my job and while the experiment is about understanding poverty, it would kind of ruin the point if I actually became part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

Q. It's nice to live in a house with a $2000 computer and air conditioning with your SUV and clothes!
A. I've got a nice computer, worn, but useful clothes, a roof over my head and a very gas efficient Scion XB. If I gave all these things to someone else, I would be in the same position as they were wouldn't I? I do donate my time and money to the homeless however, even though I'm not what you would call "well off".

And my question to any of you, do you know where your homeless shelter is? Your local food pantry? If not, find out!

Day 2

2007-05-01T04:36:00.000-07:00

I poked around a little this morning and found this: http://www.poverty.com/ which has some detailed information about how many people die of hunger as well as some donating statistics.

Yesterday I had to do a workout which was sweltering to say the least (about 90 degrees here). When I got home I had to remove the insulation from my attic fan as well. Let me tell you, forgetting your lunch when you can't buy any is a BIG no-no. I ate ramen noodles (I don't feel compelled to take a picture of that as everyone knows what it looks like). I decided to go for the soup option instead of draining the water like I usually do just in case there were missed nutrients seeping out of that noodle froth.

Before I go on, my wifes blog is here: http://jadedcapitalist.blogspot.com.

I basically came home semi-tired, nothing too out of the ordinary, but I did fall asleep about an hour earlier. As I write this it's about 6:40am and I'm feeling pretty good right now eating my oatmeal (yah, I remembered breakfast!):

Sorry, I made some oatmeal but I eated it :P

I'd like to say thanks for all the support as well. When this was posted it had about 8 diggs and I didn't get a chance to check it till this morning. This being a two week stint, I don't have to worry about scurvy or too much malnutrition. I definitely understand being health enough to post and survive the weeks is important, but part of the point is awareness of someone who doesn't have access to a Walmart and a Walgreens down the road. Most of these people don't have the money for simple medicines that we take for granted like a daily vitamin. Rest assured, we have easy access to medical advice and support if need be.

On a side note, as I was surprised to see that my $30 bag of cat food was actually more nutritious than my food, especially since it was handily put together with a mix of natural foods including dried fruits and veggies. Damn you cats!

On a down to earth note, on day one I already found myself thinking about how easy we have access to food. I have a snack room right down the hall, I have about 20 motomarts on my way to work, I have 6 grocery stores, including one less than a half a mile away (Aldis).

The point is, I HAVE.

Surviving Two Weeks on $10

2007-04-30T04:07:00.000-07:00

My wife and I, inspired by recent awareness and charity programs aimed at poor and destitute families here and in Africa have decided to do our own little part. I encourage everyone to try this out with the consultation of your doctor. I will be posting daily as much as possible on this event.

We each gave ourselves $10 for food and must survive the next two weeks on that food only. We are not allowed to share the food. The rules are that we cannot purchase or use anything that would normally be outside the reach of one of these families. What this means is we can use condiments that we have in the house (salt, oil, pepper) while things that add significant changes or calories are not allowed (honey, brown sugar, syrup).

While someone can say they feel bad or think it's sad that millions of people are forced to live off sub $1-a-day wages, I don't think you really know quite how good you have it going for you unless you try it out yourself. Now obviously we still have our internet connection, car and other amenities or else you wouldn't be reading this post.

Here is what I have come up with so far:

- 5 Ramen : $0.13 each - $0.78 total
- 2lb Rice: $1.00
- 42oz Oats: $1.39
- 2lb Spaghetti: $0.95
- 26oz Sauce: $0.95
- 1lb Beans: $0.56
- Apple Juice Mix: $0.79

Current Total of: $6.42

and my wifes choices:

I don't know her exact content but she has spent $9.38 of her $10, leaving her not much leeway in the coming weeks, but she says she has a better plan than me so it must be true :P (you can click on the picture to get a much bigger view of everything).

I also have to work out three times a week so I know I'm going to be burning quite a few calories, so I made her promise to do the same. I have a normal job which I have to go to, activities I participate in and a home life (just cats though, no kids).

This is Day 1.

Making Games Harder

2007-04-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

I agree with the concepts of making games harder (MMOs specifically). There is no reason to die in most MMOs nowadays, other than being lazy, such as not gathering the proper group before a mission/quest. I was getting excited for Lotro since it had no specific "healer" class, but the minstrel pretty much fits the bill. If you've ever played a single player FPS through to the end, you'll find you either die at least once, or come very very close. There aren't enough significant challenges to players and therefore people feel the need to come up with self-imposed restrictions or challenges.

According to Theory of Fun by Raph Koster, people like patterns, and the most fun they have is when they are grokking a pattern and for a short time thereafter. The problem with this being, that MMOs nowadays have already been grokked by the majority of consistent MMO players, since the mechanics haven't changed significantly to the point where they have to learn something new. Your point, make games fun by switching classes, will only temporarily feed your fun factor. It's true, players DO have fun while learning something new, and learning something new is always good (survival of the species). But overall meeting a different pattern that never changes isn't going to make players happy in the long run.

PvP aspects change this by letting players invent their own patterns and compete/compare them to others. This has a somewhat unfortunate sideaffect of pushing away players who find changing patterns to be too hard to grok, and therefore no fun. This is pretty much the only reason players don't DEMAND PvP in every game they play. Players WANT patterns they can grasp, but one they've grasped them they leave or demand more content so they can continue having fun. PvP patterns are by their very nature, unpredictable, which some people have grasped and find fun learning and exploring new patterns on a daily basis, while others will simply can as unreasonable patterns that they will never be able to completely grok (which is true in most cases) and unfortunately, bash for a variety of reasons which they never explore to find the true reason, the game is too "hard" for them to understand on an abstract level.
So there's my rant, take it or leave it :)

Power Gamers and Roleplayers are still just People

2007-04-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

I think any arguments about "power gamers" or "min/maxers" or "number crunchers" or whatever you want to call them are ridiculous. All the major MMO games, at least the popular ones, have number systems. They don't just show a bar (at least not by default) they show a healthy amount of numbers ALL OVER your screen. Games are about numbers, they are math at the nerdgasm level (It's $0.10 to quote that). They pollute the environment with numbers that most every player I know uses to play their game in some fashion. To classify people into stereotypes with the intention of derision is more pompous assholery than even I could stand. Sure, poke fun at a min/maxer, but don't go classifying games "better" or "worse" than another because they "allow" such behavoir. You are fooling yourself if you think there's some legion of gamers just craving a non-stat based roleplaying game.

If people wanted roleplay, or story mode, there wouldn't be two or three roleplaying servers there would be two or three stat based servers. People want to see how much damage they are doing at exact levels so they know enough to use X skill instead of Y skill. They pride themselves on being "mana efficient" or a good "dpser" or "tank" because they know how to work the game to their advantage.

I'm not saying you can't get anything out of your game other than stats, but the vast majority aren't going to evoke true feeling out of you over the game itself. Sure, you'll get pissed at a few players now and then, or a bug but MMOs by and large aren't going to make you cry or truly happy, or say "Wow, that was a GREAT moment in my life!".

Even at the simplest level you've still got bars that tell you "when this runs out, I am going to die". Your mind does simple unconscious calculations that you transfer to your knowledge of mathematics so that you do certain things to NOT DIE. When it all comes down to it, math is a way of maximizing our ability to not die. Certain people have a stronger will of this in virtual worlds, leading to "mix/maxing" a character and tuning them to the highest effectiveness. Just because you don't feel this way doesn't make you any better or worse of a player, you just have different priorities, which by the way, still doesn't make you any better or worse.

Your just different people, learn to accept your differences and live peacefully with each other, not at each others throats.

MMO Design: Tradeskilling

2007-04-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

Why isn't tradeskilling fun?

Developers set out to create a game, hopefully a game they want other people to play, and something that captures an audiences attention. When developers pour hours and hours of time into creature development, animations, storyline and PvP, how is it that one of the main courses of almost every MMO take tradeskilling for granted and throw in a "throw resources in a pot, set repeat to 40 and go afk for 10-20 minutes"?

Starting back with EQ, some people decided crafting would be a neat thing to have in the game. Instead of making it useful, they threw together some random recipies that really didn't produce anything useful, put items on the vendor that were so expensive as to be obvious money sinks for players who had already maxed out and let you drop your cash down a hole and click 'craft' hoping that what you made wasn't a total waste of time, succeeded and hopefully got you a skill point so you could make an even more expensive useless trinket.

Things improved slowly over time and were revived in DAOC. Crafted items were actually useful, due in part to abysmal drop rates and a large lack of dungeons and content. Items were widely varied and the crafting system seemed to have some thought put into it. Crafters could even somewhat earn a living by doing tradeskill quests from the vendors and trainers you bought crafting material from. This was the forefront of a tradeskill career in MMOs. Finally a young tradeskiller, if persistant enough, could make his or her way through the levels as a crafter.

Unfortunately it was rather boring as it was still click 'craft' and the only improvement was a nice monotony meter which filled up slower and slower the higher skill your crafted items got. Added to this was the insult of not being able to make any profit money whatsoever from the tradeskill quests as you were required to continually reinvest all of it if you wanted to continue to craft.

EQ2 added a mini-game to make the crafting less repetitive and added crafting "quests" that would actually net you a small profit (if you harvested all your own items or bought them at a ridiculously low price). Overall though, adventurers weren't reliant on you and could do without crafters if they all vanished from the face of the earth, with the exception of provisioners as pretty much all food sucks except crafted. Tradeskilling in this game also required you to gather materials in zones that increased in danger level to the point where creatures would kill you if you so much as sneezed in the wrong direction miles away. The mini-game was also fun for only so long before it too became very repetitive with only three (or six if you count both types of skill boosting) buttons to push and only one thing to counter. Switch it up, add some new things to do, or alternative ways to do them later on, or at least different "games" to do.

SWG Classic in what I will refer to as its "Silver Age" (since it never really fixed everything) was the only major (100k+) MMO that I know of to allow crafters to not only survive on their own, but made the process of crafting a cat and mouse game of hunting for the best materials to actually drive a competing market and also make adventurers WANT (and need for the most part) their goods. Even the low level grinding had a purpose, of which was to make interim items for higher level parts and goods. While it did not have an overly interesting crafting process, and even had factories so you could conduct business without going through the crafting process itself, it was still going in the right direction (before it burned like the fires of hell in the process of CU and NGE).

What my point is coming down to is, you made this part of the game for a reason (hopefully) and it should probably serve a purpose. I don't mean one tradeskill class, or one special set of armor once you max out your skills, I mean everything you take time to program into your game.

Why did you do it?
Does it serve a purpose?
And is it fun?

If you can't answer these questions, chances are, you just wasted your time, wasted money and most importantly, made a piece of your game for no purpose whatsoever. If you wouldn't want to play it, chances are your players AREN'T going to play it.

I'm not going to hand feed you the answers to these questions, because as a game developer your gears should at least be oiled after reading through my post, but I will give you some momentum:

-Why do players like to play adventurers, and how can you apply that type of fun to tradeskills?

-If this class does not make any item (save for one or two) that any player in his right mind will buy, do I really need the class? (the answer is NO if the class' sole purpose is just to round out a "but there are three other subclasses in another field!)

-Do ALL the items serve SOME purpose. If an item does not serve a purpose, or there is a better item available, no matter how many of that item players make, it's a freaking waste of their time AND yours to make it.

-Are alternative items easily and readily available that meet or exceed a tradeskill item? If a player can obtain a level 7 Broadsword +1 on a quest, there isn't much reason for a level 10 crafter to be making level 10 Broadsword +1s now are there?

-Is there some reason for tradeskillers to need adventurers? I didn't touch on this one, but the opposite must be true as well, else everyone would be a tradeskiller. Throw the adventurers a bone and give them something to shoot for in regards to special items to trade/sell to tradeskillers, aka. the Dragon Pearls of SWG (optional item makes a normal item WAY better).

-Clicking a button and watching a progress bar, or animation or both DOES NOT MAKE THE FUN. Clicking blocks and playing Tetris or Bejewled is. Figure it out.

-Wee, I'm a level 10 Warden, but also a level 70 weaponsmith by night. Let's go harvest some ore...in Everfrost...at night...amongst level SEVENTY CREATURES. (see above comment on reasons for tradeskillers to need adventurers)

Hopefully, someday we'll start seeing games made fun again instead of into more work. Next time I'll be hitting on leveling schemes and skill based systems, till then, don't forget to tell your developers to make your games fun in ALL aspects :)

Lord of the Rings Online Review

2007-03-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

The LotRo beta opened for those of you who had pre-ordered, myself being one of them. Is it any good? Does the gameplay stack up against the beast of the MMO world? Is it more full of bugs than a decaying cow? Read on to find out!

(scroll to the bottom for a summary)

Graphics
LotRo uses the same engine Turbine made for DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) with some significant modifications. For one, the bloom isn't all encompassing hiding possibly embarassing rough polygonal structures. It appears to run much smoother in most outdoor areas and dungeons. The exceptions being towns as I hit a wall of framerate stutter entering or leaving one, although smooth once inside. The character models are nothing to write home about, although the armor and weapons give players a much more unique feel than say, WoW. While WoW does offer some variety at later levels, there is virtually no distinguishing xxRogueSlayerxx from ILikepwnies. LotRo appears to give players a variety of choices throughout their leveling careers and individualism appears to start at level 10.

Creatures were of the standard variant, wolves, humans, orcs, trolls. I will give them a thumbs up for the troll animation as it was the best I've seen yet, very realistic and appears to have had much work put into it. The models appear to be re-used with minor modifications as you level up, but there are new creatures introduced every few levels so as not to bore you to death with "a rabid wolf".

Lastly, the GUI was pretty intuitive and very "neat". I say neat because as someone who needs everything to line up in 90 degree angles, this one takes the cake. Everything in the GUI is easy to access and read, while using up optimal spacing and arrangement. The LFF (looking for group) window is a little confusing, but after muddling around with it for 5 minutes you should get the hang of it.

Sound
As someone who has played through each race and class to at least level 10, I found myself dissapointed here. All the intro musics and chapter cutscenes were very drab in musical score. Theres not much to say in terms of skill sounds either. If you play a Captain you'll find yourself wincing at the 400th "RAWRRR!" that you shout out. Don't feel bad though, Minstrels have to listen to a piercing shriek which, trust me, makes you want to pull your eardrums out and beat the sound designers to death with them. This area was quite obviously not polished out as you simply have to play to level 10 to notice things like, "Hey, maybe a long drawn out shriek isn't what players like to hear 500 times a day...". The background music in general while you play is pretty sub-par and loops endlessly as any other would. I just feel it's not well done overall.

Content
If you find yourself without something to do in the game, you're playing a different one than I am. Questing is the obvious route as it gives the most experience, but I also found it more interesting than other games because the quests actually matter and continue a long storyline of other quests. You'll find yourself doing the normal "kill 10 rats" type quests, but with a purpose and a means to an end. My favorite happens to be the deed journal. As you complete quests for certain areas, kill a certain number of creatures, use a skill a number of times, your deed journal tracks this. Once you've completed the pre-requisite number of tasks, you'll either get a title or a trait. Traits are slottable passive bonuses to your character. You get 5 common ones, 4 racial, 3 class and 2 epic. From the ones I've gotten, the common ones have ranks, so that if you have Patience I, you can upgrade it to Patience II by completing another set of tasks that gives you a Patience rank. Some tasks (other than questing) are things such as exploration of certain ruins, discovery of lost knowledge or visiting certain areas. The more traditional type are killing spiders for titles, squishing bugs for bonuses and other kill-for-reward type achievements.

Gameplay
Most characters can solo reasonably well from level 1-10, although you might find yourself partnering up to complete some high traffic quests (such as killing a single spawn boar). Minstrels are the "healer" class as they raise your morale (hit points) through song. Quests are marked as "fellowship" or "epic" if they may require a group, which quests do more often after 10. There are also "combos" you can perform that will pop up while fighting elite mobs (mobs partly possessed by Sauron). As I have not fought against one of these, I can only go on what I'm told. There are 5 colored bubbles of some type that pop up and you can click them in conjunction with other players. Different combinations will produce different results, and when you complete one, the combo will be stored in your player panel for future reference (with effect descriptions).

Monster play is their replacement for PvP. It presents itself as a well developed part of the game, instead of just some slapped on system. The monster area itself is accesible through most major towns in a scrying pool. You will be able to create a monster of your choosing (automatically level 50) and throw yourself right into the playing area. I hear tell that later on you will be able to upgrade your monster with destiny points, which currently are used to enhance your monster, or when not playing MvP, give your main character temporary buffs. Regular players have an incentive to go into MvP territory since the area sports lots of loot, and rare resources. While the initial area is somewhat boring, I imagine once more players start hitting level 50 and more areas open up it will be more exciting.

There is an auction house although you won't see it till you start needing it (after you finish your first non-newbie town quests). Travel is relatively easy as you can grab a horse to anywhere you've been. At later levels you can buy your own horse as well. Crafting is a dissapointment and seems tacky. You gain 3 skills, but are always dependent on other crafters because the skills you get will never provide you with everything you need. EQ2 did this and it didn't turn out too well in the end. Overall, making bronze bars gets really old, really fast. I prefer to just gather my materials and make my item. Gathering materials is generally a straight rip from WoW (harvesting map popups and simple right-click to gather).

Summary
Graphics
Pro - Detailed environments and customizable classes.
Con - May be too much for non-gamer machines to handle well.

Sound
Pro - You can play your own keyboard when using musical instruments
Con - There's only about 3 notes for each instrument. Also, the next time you hear a minstrel shriek you may feel the urge to rip someones throat out.

Content
Pro - Exploding at the seams for achiever content, you're never without something to do.
Con - Questing is the only way to get xp. Killing monsters nets you about 1/100th of the xp you'd get from questing time/ratio wise. No grinders allowed is what this says (could be a pro for you RPers and casual gamers).

Gameplay
Pro - Monster play offers a no penalty system for getting out your aggression on other players while offering those other players sufficient rewards for going someplace that they will likely get their ass kicked.
Con - Crafting seems rough and unpolished, relying on other people means they damn well better have a working economy system thought up or you'll find yourself sitting in stacks of bars and lumber up to your pointy ears.

Overall Score: 4/5
- A few steps above your average MMO, but not perfect. If you're not an achiever type personality, subtract 2 points. If you need to grind, subtract 1.

Features of EQ2

2007-03-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

EQ2 has addicting and compelling mechanisms of gameplay. They reuse commonplace things such as certain monsters while giving them a slight enhancement and storyline backing to make them more appealing to the average player.

Take crafting for instance, you start out with a wide array of choices to let you choose what you'd like to concentrate on. Later on you learn that certain items are highly sought after which encourages you to progress to the next level so that you can make that item, and therefore more profit. An example is the provisioning tradeskill. The incentives for this are things such as "5 hour" foods and drinks (highly sought after by the level grinders) and double stat boosting items (for the min/maxers).

It's not as simple as hitting just one level though. Almost as soon as you are able to make those items, you start seeing the future profits of higher tier items. These are essentially the same items, but for higher level players. Not only do higher level players generally have more money, but there are also fewer people to compete with your prices (therefore higher and higher profits). The mode of making the items doesn't change too much overall, just larger hurdles to overcome when acquiring the items.

It's an interesting addiction model meant to keep the player familiar with the game, while at the same time changing the gameplay. It's something I'll have to keep in mind when designing my own gameplay. I'll have to think on how changing game mechanics more drastically (aka, "end game" content) affects player subscriptions and modeling.

Friends++

2007-03-22T04:15:00.000-07:00

I invited some friends to do some brainstorming on my designs. I lost a little bit of work since I reformatted and got rid of my old host so I'm redoing all my work in google docs. It's pretty nice since it keeps all my work in an online repository which I won't ever have to worry about losing.

Here's a little unfinished snippet:

Health: Health is a stat the defines how much physical health the player has. If compared to a real person, it might indicate how much survivability a person has before becoming unconscious. In some rare cases it may be used as a pool of power for skill usage. Mainly it will be used as a damage pool for determining survivability and a passive pool for cybernetic implants.
- Health = (Body + Mind) x 5
- Average: 50

We're going through and making object models as well right now. It's a pain in the butt, but I think I can do it. I also just finished watching Black Lagoon (an anime). It's all about pirates and a japanese guy who gets stuck in the middle of a bad trade and becomes part of this outlaw group. At first it was very action oriented but toward the end it tried to be more philosophical which while entertaining, may have led to its downfall (it only has one season).

Anyway, hope everyone has a great Thursday, only one more day till Friday! (woot)