Sierra Kilo

It sounds like Nerf and Psycho came to an agreement. I think the answer to the question, “Is allowing more character flexibility the answer?” is “Yes.” Give players the tools and let them do with them as they please. If they want to go kill things, fine. They’ll find the best way to do so. The best thing the developers can do is give choices. Faster attacks with less damage, or slower attacks with higher damage? That’s where strategy comes in.

In a skill-based system, you’ll always have skills that will be used more by players simply because they’re more fun. The threat of being mauled by a wolf in combat is more fun than the threat of rendering your cloth useless while crafting (to some, at least).

I do like the idea that Psycho credits to Raph. Where players can master everything, but they are limited to what they can do by what they can carry around. D&D (at least 2nd Edition) has this notion. You can’t memorize Wizard spells without your spellbook, so you need to carry that with you. You can’t cast Priest spells without a holy symbol, so you can’t lose that. You can’t pick locks without a set of picks (or an improvised tool). You can’t do much damage without a weapon. And you wouldn’t be able to be a Wizard/Priest/Thief/Fighter multi-class because you would be too encumbered by all of your equipment to put any of it to use. It doesn’t matter if you can cast Power Word Kill if you can’t memorize it because you had to leave your spellbook at home. You memorized it before you left? Okay, so you only get to use it once.

The more I think about it, the more I think equipment should be more valuable in this case. You’re not the world’s best archer if you don’t have any arrows. Sure, vendors have arrows, but who do they get them from? Someone (a fletcher) has to make them. But where do fletchers get the materials? They either have to collect it themselves or buy them from (i.e. offer a quest for) the players. Each tier adds a markup to the value, so pretty soon young archers will learn that it’s cheaper to build their own arrows, so they train their fletcher skills. Soon after that, the vendors go out of business and players are forced to either fend for themselves or run the economy. They’ve got the skills to do both.

So, balance is assisted by the economy, in a sense. Plus, you’ve opened up a reason to have player-owned (or rented) housing. It’s a place to store your belongings. It’s also a place to re-equip before heading out.

MAKE magazine’s weblog has a post linking to this site. This guy wrangled MSN Messenger and Windows Media Center to allow a user to schedule recordings by sending IMs. This was always an idea I’ve had, so congratulations, Casey.

My idea also included the ability to tie into a calendar and task list. You could add events by sending an IM to your PC, “event Meet Joe at coffee shop 7pm tomorrow reminder 15 min,” and it would parse it, recognize it as a calendar event, stick it in Outlook or Google Calendar, and set it to send you an IM 15 minutes beforehand as a reminder. You could send, “events,” and it would tell you the upcoming events for the next 5 days. You could also send a message, “todos,” and it would send back your task list. You could put your grocery list on there, too. “groceries” would list everything you need. “groceries add milk” would add milk to the list. This could all be done to/from your phone. Most phones use AIM. Some count AIMs as SMS text messages.

I’ve got several AIM screennames. One at my home PC, one on my laptop, one on my work PC, one for my phone, and another one or two that I planned on using as “bots” like this. Maybe one day I’ll actually do it.

http://www.halowars.com/

First, congratulations to Ensemble Studios (based in Dallas). I look forward to seeing how this one comes out. An RTS (real-time strategy) game based on the Halo games might be pretty fun…

…that’s why I was looking forward to Halogen, a modification to Command & Conquer: Generals that was shaping up nicely. The 3D models they had were very nice. I think their problem was that it was taking them too long to release it. I’ve known about it for over a year, if not two.

So, the big bad Microsoft corporation swept in and basically scrapped all of their hard work. One would hope that they would buy the assets developed by these folks. The IP was Microsoft’s and Bungie’s, but the time the team put into developing the 3D models could be put toward another game. It’s a shame that money stifles creativity. I guess that’s the name of the game in a capitalist society, though. “Put your money where your mouth is or get out of my way.”

What’s worse is that this game will probably become a part of the movie marketing. Sure, the Halo movie production team is probably working very close with the Bungie team and trying to stay as close as possible to the existing universe, but it’ll probably become just another LotR. I loved the movies, but the games do nothing for me. They’re marketing fluff like “collector’s edition” cups from Burger King. Let’s hope not.

http://pandora.com

Check out Pandora. It’s like a build-your-own internet radio station. You enter an artist or song name and it creates a “station” that plays music that is similar to what you entered. It’s pretty accurate, too.

It’s Flash-based and is pretty quick. I haven’t figured out the bandwidth requirements yet, but I don’t think it streams. I think it might download the entire file into Flash in the first few seconds of playing it because my network monitor doesn’t show any traffic after the first few seconds. The quality is good, too. I’d say around 128kbps.

I’m not exactly sure how they get it to match so well. My “AC/DC” station plays some AC/DC, Van Halen, Scorpions, and other songs that sound similar. It doesn’t do it by genre, it does it by what the song sounds like. It’s cool, but sometimes it’s so good that it almost seems like you’re listening to the same song over and over. This would be great for parties. I entered “YMCA” and it started playing disco classics from the Bee Gees, the disco-esque Jamiroquai, another song by the Village People, the Jackson 5, and even Kenny Loggins. Laura would dig this.

Now, iTunes (or another music library) should incorporate this functionality into a Mood Shuffle feature. If you listen to at least 75% of a song, it should recognize that you’re in the mood to listen to Disco, for example, and choose the next song at random from songs that have been labeled as Disco. Don’t base it entirely on the Genre tag, but on whatever system the Music Genome people are using. If you skip a song in the first half, it’ll get more random until you find something that fits your new mood.

I hereby claim ownership of such a feature.

Nerfbat and Psychochild are going to duke it out over game balance. I touched on the subject a little in my latest MMO Ideas article, but this subject is hard to solve.

I think both gentlemen have good points. Nerf says that systems can’t and shouldn’t be balanced for the sake of fun. Think about chess. If every piece was able to move the same, the strategy would be less difficult. It would be like checkers, basically. Still fun, but simpler, less advanced. But aren’t both games still balanced? Each side has exactly the same advantages and disadvantages. The only differentiator would be the side that moves first. (Ooh, I wonder if real-time chess would be fun?) I bet it would even be possible to “solo” a chess or checkers game, though. With the right combination of moves, a rook could pwn the board.

So, it’s quite possible to have balance in a game. The problem is that the rules must remain static once you’ve balanced them. You can’t expand without rebalancing. Hence, the “nerfbat” definition. You log in one day and your sword does half as much damage as it did yesterday. All because someone else’s club didn’t do enough damage. You never know how well your balance is going to be, though, until you’ve seen some test results. So that means that you’re still balancing after you release to the public to get enough results. So, perhaps the best explanation is that balance is possible, but extremely difficult to perfect.

Part of the difficulty is that 80% of your playerbase will be the classic “fighter”. It’s an easy class to play. Find something to kill, kill it, repeat. So do you give more power to the classes that make up the remaining 20% so that they can kill fighters? 2 wizards vs. 8 fighters of the same level would be an even match? Sure, but should one player wield so much power as a wizard? Possibly, but it should be more difficult to wield such power, right? These are the questions that designers must ask themselves when attempting to balance their rules. Is it possible? Sure. Difficult? Definately.

http://wisdump.com/web/top-10-web-20-winners/

According to Wikipedia’s definition, I could see how some of these items could be considered Web 2.0. However, “Web” implies something else in my mind.

“Web”, to me, is anything that is viewed in a web browser. That means HTML with possibly a little Java/JavaScript thrown in. Why? Because the “Web” is not the “Internet”, it is only a subset. It is one port (80) out of 65534 possible ports that your computer uses to communicate with other computers. FTP (ports 20 & 21) is not the “Web”. Skype (port 443) is also not the “Web”. From their own mouth, “Skype does not use HTTP”. That’s the protocol used to transmit HyperText (HTML). HyperText is the “Web” to me.

I will concede that “Web 2.0″ might be an idea. It lets people “collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways.” Fine. By that definition, MySpace could be considered “Web 2.0″. However, my definition restricts it even further, squeezing MySpace out of the running. My definition of “Web 2.0″ is a website that uses HTML and AJAX to emulate native software along with allowing people to collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways. By my definition, here are my “Web 2.0″ winners:

- Digg: I don’t get much of my news from Digg, but the concept is sound.
- Google: Spreadsheets, Writely, GMail, and their other “web applications” are perfect examples of my definition.
- Yahoo! Mail: Not sure if they’re out of Beta yet, but that is another perfect example of my definition. It works almost exactly like Outlook.
- There are others, but I’m tired of writing…these give a good example of what I consider “Web 2.0″

I’ve added a new page to the site. A sense of accomplishment is the next in my MMORPG Ideas series. It touches on content restrictions based on location, common sense, and group skill levels instead of being based solely on character levels.

The Escapist has an interesting article about the design of several games for portable systems, mainly GameBoy Advance and the DS.

It’s an interesting read. The game Mother 3 looks pretty interesting. Too bad it’s Japanese only. A poor Google translation of the webpage reveals some elements, but not enough to get a good idea of what it’s about. What I like most is the artwork. It’s a simple 2D tile-based game with pixelated graphics. I don’t know why, but that art style really appeals to me. Perhaps it is because since there’s not much they can impress you with on the art side, they impress you with the gameplay or the story.

I’m still waiting for an Animal Crossing-like game for the GBA. I’ll probably never get it, either. I’d just like a portable sandbox with mini-games. Minish Cap has some of the elements I’m looking for: side quests, mini-games, and freedom to roam. What it doesn’t have is a way to play the game without following the plot. That’s fine, though, because it’s not meant to. It’s not that kind of game.

Maybe the DS Lite with Animal Crossing is what I need. Part of the reason I don’t play it is because the device is still too bulky. I love the GBA Micro because it’s the same size as my phone and doesn’t look like a childish game player. If the next DS was about the size of my iPod and had more adult styling (black & chrome), I’d probably spring for it. Don’t lose the GBA port, though. I love my single ROM with NES and other GBA games on it. One cartridge to rule them all.

Ooh. What Nintendo should do is create a cartridge that you can download games that you bought for your Wii. Make it large enough to store 3 N64 games at a time. Portable Wii!

There are 10 kinds of people in the world – those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Original Author Unknown

Nice.

Alex Albrecht brought up his D&D gaming again on Diggnation this week. I am dying to get into a game, but I’m not too comfortable with strangers, especially odd ones, which D&D players tend to be. If anybody knows any games in the North-Dallas area, let me know. If I see any LARPing going on, though, I’m outta there. That’s just too creepy for adults to be doing. It’s one thing to roleplay an elf maiden online. It’s another thing to do it in real life.

Worldwide D&D game day is November 4th. I’m trying to get a few buddies to go to one of the local game shops with me for a game. If they won’t go to a shop, maybe we can do it at my place with some 2nd Edition, which we are all more familiar with.

In other D&D news, a Bag of Holding can be had for $27.99! ThinkGeek is selling a messenger bag with a badge that reads “Bag of Holding” and has a 20-sided die. I don’t need a bag, but that’s just cool. I’d like to see what’s next. A +3 Holy Avenger mechanical pencil, maybe?