Category: Geek / Technical

Categories
Games Geek / Technical

My Continuing Knighthood Story

The following story could be described simply. I was attacked by Viscountess Melissa twice. One attack was a failed attempt to conquer me, and another was a failed attempt to seize a vassal of mine. In return, I attempted to seize her best vassal, attacking her wall four times. I tried one more time for her second best vassal, and I was successful. Now her attack rating has dropped so she’ll leave me alone, and I get a relatively strong knight in my service once the rescue period has passed.

The next day, I received a Facebook message from a person playing as a vassal of Melissa who is apparently playing the game for her while she is away, or not. Whatever the case, I get a letter in character asking me to release the vassal I seized. I agreed, released the vassal, and received 100 gold coins as thanks.

Now, reading the above text was a rather dry telling of the tale. It mainly dealt with the mechanics of the game. Here’s how I saw it, though.

A courier entered my kingdom and presented a message from Sir Kellen, vassal of the Lady Viscountess Melissa and acting steward of the Kingdom of GodHand (OK, that part is comedy gold):

My Lord Baron Gianfranco

All the realms know of your nobility and valor. I have come to call
upon you but to ask of you one small favor on behalf of my liege the Lady
Viscountess Melissa for whom I am serving as Steward these past few
days.

It has come to my attention that the gallant Sir Gordon has fallen into
your service. I know not how such a thing should have come to pass
since all know a noble as gallant as you would not stoop so low. No doubt
some rebels in your court did seize him without thine knowledge.
However it came to pass, Sir Gordon is a great ally to my Lady and a dear
dear friend to us all. Would that you could find it in your heart to
release him from your servitude know that both our kingdoms would be
eternally in your debt.

Perhaps then we can talk of an alliance of our kingdoms or of at least
a mutual friendship and cease fire, my lord. Though my own holdings are
small, my Lady’s kingdom grows very strong. Though she has only been
playing for a short time, already she is ranked amongst the top 2500
nobility in all the Realms of Facebook. Rest assured her meteoric rise
shall continue in the coming weeks and with your assistance no doubt we
can see all of our kingdoms rise in glory to become the envy of all the
realms.

What say you my lord? Can our kingdoms begin this today to embark upon
an era of friendship and cooperation between our peoples? Or shall we
go a darker course?

I patiently await your most wise decision.

Sir Kellen
Vassal to the Lady Viscountess Melissa
Acting Steward of the Kingdom of GodHammer

Let it never be said that Baron Gianfranco has a stone for a heart! I sent the courier back to his liege with the following message:

Sir Kellen,

I am pleased to have received your message on behalf of the viscountess. It seems that perhaps a grave misunderstanding has occurred. I was under the impression that your liege had tried to conquer my kingdom, for her armies had to be dissuaded twice by my defending army. As retaliation, I sent my own forces in to take her best knight, but being that Sir Walter was too difficult to obtain without much bloodshed, I settled for Sir Gordon.

Assure the Lady Viscountess Melissa that I mean no ill will towards her or her kingdom, and that I was merely protecting my vassals from potential future attacks. Sir Gordon has been enjoying his stay in my tower in the past day, and already I can see why your liege would appreciate his return. He is a fine and loyal knight.

I do not wish to deprive such a brave soldier from the honor of serving his liege. In light of your most civil message of peace, I shall release Sir Gordon, and I hope, should our paths cross again, that we meet with tankards rather than swords.

Baron Gianfranco
Sovereign leader of the Capital of Gianfranco

I released Sir Gordon from his hold in the tower, and I presented him with the following message:

Sir Gordon,

It has come to my attention that you have mistakenly been spending the past day in my tower when you should be with your liege, the Lady Viscountess Melissa. I have released you, and you may return to serving the viscountess.

Baron Gianfranco,
Sovereign leader of the Capital of Gianfranco

Once Sir Gordon had been returned to his former liege, I was surprised to find the courier had returned with a payment of 100 gold coins as thanks from Sir Kellen. The amount wasn’t significant, but the gesture was. While I have no intention on joining into a formal alliance or swearing fealty to the viscountess, I am sure that our future interactions will be more peaceful. That is more than I could say for either Viscount Iain or Baron Nathan, each of whom are missing a major vassal as punishment for daring to attack me. Their vassals will be in my tower until their loyalty belongs to me. Lady Cami and Sir JD should make for good subjects in my kingdom. Fortunately, there is room in my tower since Knight TJ, formerly of Viscount Fred’s service, had decided that he preferred my kingdom much sooner than I expected.

And I have a feeling I would have enjoyed Ultima Online if I would have played it. B-)

Categories
Game Development Games Geek / Technical

My Knighthood Story So Far

Knight Corvus sent me an invitation to join him in his army, and I could not refuse. I joined him as a squire, intent on moving up through the ranks of Knighthood. Of course, I had my own castle to run, and soon enough, I had built up a formidable army of my own. The market was healthy, the workshop was busy upgrading my defenses, and the walls, palisades, and watchtowers kept it all safe. As a knight, I served as a strong arm for Knight Corvus. Once I gained the title of Baron, however, I knew it was time to leave my liege and strike out on my own.

I was sovereign now, but I was attacked by more than a few people attempting raids on my treasury. More and more of my friends joined my army at my invitation, and my castle was much more secure due to their help. Still, the raids kept coming.

Looking at the numbers, I knew that if I didn’t find a way to add more bodies to my castle, my army would be weak in comparison to other armies, especially in the face of alliances. I was continually attacked, occasionally losing money, but thankfully I never lost a vassal. I realized I needed to seize my own vassals if I was to stay ahead.

My first attempts were unsuccessful. Perhaps I was new to the kidnapping game, but I could not capture my first target. After multiple attacks on my part, I gave up. My next attempts were more fruitful. I pressed the attack on Knight Ajdin’s capital until I was to emerge victorious: Knight Chris was now my vassal. Though he is still loyal to Knight Ajdin, he has become a very productive member of my workshop. Perhaps by the end of the next day, he shall give no second thought to swearing fealty to his new liege.

Soon to join Knight Chris was Lady Lainey, formerly of Knight David’s service, and Knight Moti, who I am sure Knight Art shall miss. Then again, perhaps not. No attempts to save these vassals have come.

Knight Geoff has been somewhat more concerned about his former vassals. Knight Carl and Knight Tim are spending the next couple of days in my newly built Tower. Knight Geoff has attacked me multiple times in the past day, and though my defenses hold strong, I do not want to take any chances. There have been random attacks by other armies as well, and if fortune goes to Knight Geoff, he may find that my army has weakened before he arrives with fresh attackers.

My strategy seems to be working so far. I have not lost so much as a single piece of gold to a raiding army, and as I gain more and more vassals, I’m sure I will be able to continue to support my fortifications while also expanding my capital. Still, I fear that all of my efforts will be for naught. I do not have the heart to dedicate all of my waking hours to my castle, and in the face of strong alliances, I do not see how I can hope to become the highest ranking knight in all of the kingdoms.

For now, however, I will enjoy sleeping, knowing that Knight Geoff’s cries of anger are echoing in his streets. I left him his best knight, though, and I wish he would show a bit more gratitude at my generosity. Perhaps if our paths cross again, I will allow him to join my army as a reward for amusing me with his persistence.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical

Racism in Phantom Hourglass?

About a month ago I purchased The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS. Since I don’t currently have a TV, my other consoles are useless to me, and the game sounded fun.

I came across the Isle of Frost, and it turned out that there were two races of people here. The Anoukis were apparently in control and had banished the Yooks to the more frigid areas. The more I talked to people on this island, the more I felt concerned for the Yooks. One of the Yooks had decided to take matters into his own hands and kidnap an Anouki, stole his identity, and lived in the comfort of the Anouki’s home. The Anoukis suspected that one of them was really a Yook in disguise, and you have been asked to figure it out.

After solving that puzzle, the Yook was revealed, and he left, but not before blasting me with some super breath that knocked me out of the building. When I went back to the leader of the Anouki, he thanked me for helping and then mentioned that I could go get my revenge on the Yook and also take out my aggression on any other Yooks I find. His words were dripping with hate, and the entire affair bothered me. So he asked me if I wanted to get revenge.

My options were either “Well…” or “Maybe…” Wow. Link would get squashed like a grape if he continues to be so ambivalent. Now, it turns out that it doesn’t matter what you say here, because Ciela, the fairy, decides for you:

“Hmmm….YEAH! Of course we want to get revenge!” What? No, we don’t! NO, WE DON’T! She does not speak for me!

But she does. You are sent to get revenge against the Yook who blasted you with his bad breath, and any other Yooks who get in your way. It’s all about finding the pure metal, after all, so it doesn’t matter who gets hurt.

I was sure that something would happen that would reveal the Yooks to be just as hateful of the Anouki. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this whole section would be a bit of commentary on Isreal-Palestine issue.

Oddly enough, the Yook aren’t just a different set of villagers in a different area. They’re enemies. You can’t talk to them. You just attack. And kill.

Once you do everything you set out to accomplish, it turns out that the Yooks were under some kind of mind-control. They actually prefer being where they are because their fur protects them from the cold. They apologize for trying to hurt you.

Apologize to ME? I killed a large number of you! Why aren’t you upset?

And why wasn’t I given a choice in the matter? Why did Ciela decide to take the Yook’s attack so personally and go along so easily with the Anouki leader’s call for revenge? I’m surprised I wasn’t asked to perform genocide!

It was a very strange situation, I thought. To me, the appeal of revenge and of hate was raised without a strong argument against it in the game. Why doesn’t Ciela become repentant? I don’t need a happy ending, and I felt the way the situation ended was a cop-out, but did anyone else feel a bit uneasy playing through this part of the game?

Categories
Geek / Technical

Darn Internet…

You know what’s frustrating? You find a blog post that was interesting, then someone comments on said blog post, and you reply to that comment.

And then you forget what blog it was on. Because Google doesn’t let you search for comments in blogs, it’s pretty much impossible to remember where you were, especially if your browser history automatically clears when you shutdown the application.

So if you have seen GBGames post a recent comment on your blog, could you let me know? Thanks. I’m really curious to see if there was a response to my comment.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical

YASD, the First for 2008

I was a tourist, exploring the dungeon with my yet-unnamed feline companion, when I found a ring. I put it on, and it turned out to be a ring of invisibility! How awesome is that!

I managed to get fairly far at a low experience level because enemies just couldn’t find me until I already hit them with my +2 darts or kicked them. I was sitting in a room after making it to a new level of the dungeon, inspecting my inventory, when a friend came over to my computer.

“What’s this?”
“Oh, this is NetHack. My cat keeps getting in my way.”
“Uh, huh…wait, what?”
“Here, let me show you. Oh…wait. Let me take off my ring of invisibility first.”

I took a moment to look through the help to figure out how to take off a ring. I’ve never survived long enough to want to take one off before!

“Ok, so this at sign here? That’s me.”
“Uh…”
“And that f? That’s my cat. These are the walls, this is the floor, and this is the door out of the room.”
“Where are your enemies?”
“Probably on the other side of this door.”

I opened the door, walked down the dark corridor, and made it into a room with a fountain. Just as I was about to describe that I was near a fountain, an iguana appeared in the doorway. I showed my friend the text that appeared at the top as the battle waged between the iguana and my cat. My cat was victorious.

“Uh, huh. Well, I’m going to go back to my world where things are tangible. Like, with graphics.” I joked that the graphics came from my imagination, and I pushed my glasses up my nose.

I continued to play. I decided to drink from the fountain…and water moccasins streamed out! There were three giant “S” characters looming before me on the screen. They were between me and the doorway out of the room.

And I was still not wearing my ring of invisibility!

I put the ring on, but not before they took a few bites out of me. I tried to move out of the way, and they started swiping at the air. Phew!

But then I walked forward, and they apparently got lucky and hit me five times before I could move. I was poisoned, but it didn’t matter since I was killed by one last bite.

Ah, NetHack.

Categories
Game Development Games Geek / Technical

SimCity Source Is Now Under the GPL!

Found through TIGSource, which found it through Fear and Loathing:

This is the binary and source code for Micropolis (A.K.A. “S*mC*ty”: see the GPL License and additional terms, below), which is released under the GPL.

The One Laptop Per Child laptop is going to have an official and original SimCity game available for it. Don Hopkins has cleaned up the code and removed references to the SimCity trademark. Now the source to the original SimCity is available for everyone to study, play with, and change!

The key thing here is to peek inside the mind of the original Maxis programmers when they built it. Remember, this was back in the day when games had to fit inside of 640k so some “creative” programming techniques were employed. SimCity has been long a model used for urban planning and while it’s just a game, there are a lot of business rules, ecosystem modeling, social dependencies, and other cool stuff going on in this codebase. It may not be pretty code but it’s content sure is interesting to see.

Categories
Geek / Technical General

Merry Christmas!

On Christmas Eve each year, my parents host a dinner at their house. Being an Italian household, there is an abundance of seafood and pasta. After dinner, the men will usually play poker, the women will talk, and the children will either watch television or play video games.

I brought my Gamecube. I’m not as big a fan of poker. B-)

Also, each year there is an unspoken contest between me and my sister. We each have a stocking up, and each year I put a walnut in her stocking. Occasionally I’ll find it back in my stocking, and we try to avoid being the one with the walnut on Christmas Day. I just checked, and I’m still winning. Another aspect of the game is that since it is never announced, it’s always part of the fun to see if I can make it to Christmas without her even being aware that the game has started.

Christmas 2007 - The Walnut

Merry Christmas!

Categories
Games Geek / Technical Politics/Government

Steam: Further Impressions

I hate Half-life 2.

I hate it because one night I found that I was still playing the game at 3AM, and I was supposed to be waking up in only a few hours to get ready for work. When you have to worry about using the words “tonight” or “today” to describe “now”, you stop worrying about finding a good place to stop (there isn’t one. It’s like a well-written novel that way).

I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on playing this game for so long. I’ve played Quake 4‘s single-player campaign a bit, but it isn’t the same feeling. In Nova Prospekt and City 14, I feel like I’m dealing with a post-apocalyptic world. There’s hope hidden everywhere, and it feels like a idealistic fight. In Quake 4, I had one exciting fight against a giant mechanical insect, and later encountered a similar one while crawling under some tunnels. I remember being afraid as I crawled past it, thinking that at any moment the glass will break and it would be right on top of me. Still, the conversations and emotions didn’t feel real. I felt like I was playing a game. Half-life 2 is a really great game. Well, it’s not as if most of you didn’t already know.

And you know what else I like? That I don’t have to worry about finding my CD when I want to play the game. Unless I want to resort to using cracks, I still need a CD to play Starcraft or any number of games.

One of the things I remember worrying about with Steam was the problem of losing a network connection. When it was first launched, customers found that the network was overloaded and so they couldn’t play the game they already paid for. Well, that sucks for the people who ordered the game through Steam and couldn’t download or update it, but what about the smart people who bought the game at the store? No, they couldn’t play either because Valve decided that the store-bought version needed to be authenticated as well. I had sent an email asking about this, and after three replies in which I didn’t feel I received a satisfactory answer, I was told someone would get back to me and no one did.

So let’s do a test. I’ll disconnect my network connection and try to start Half-life 2. I get a dialog box that says Steam couldn’t connect, but I was able to start it in off-line mode. Nice. Half-life 2 loads up, but when I try to play, it crashes. Huh. Well, wait. Last time I played, I was in the middle of a firefight in “Anticitizen One”, and the game crashed to the desktop. If I use a save game from a few minutes earlier, the game loads fine, and my squad mates are yelling about the man in the mask who is shooting us from the street.

And now it’s 30 minutes later. Oh, yeah. I was running a test. I wasn’t supposed to keep playing.

Also, last night I received an automatic update for the Steam client. Oh. I, uh, didn’t know you were even downloading anything. What if I didn’t want the update? As mentioned years ago on Valve, Steam and DRM:

Steam pushes new versions whether you want them or not. Sure, you can decline to update, but you won’t be playing anytime soon. While this may look good on the surface solving incompatibility between revisions, the reality is much harsher.

The author mentioned Counter-strike 2 and the bots that were being developed for it. He loved them. Then an update came out that removed the bots completely.

Normally, you just don’t update and keep playing like you always did. Now, you don’t have a choice. Your entire gameplay experience is in the hands of some programmer. Whether you thought their previous effort was better is irrelevant. Whether you like an old feature or weapon is no longer your concern. Welcome to the DRM age.

As you can see, the DRM world isn’t as rosy as the pro-DRM lobby make it out to be. Technical glitches and decisions made by the copyright holders are turning the simple act of buying a game, installing it and running it into a minefield of checks, any of which can stop you from playing your rightfully purchased game or software should they fail.

Well, so far I haven’t had anything that I didn’t want changed, but the idea that the creator of the software I’m using still has control over what I can do with it after I’ve installed it makes me uncomfortable. Because of these concerns, I would still prefer to play games natively on my Gnu/Linux systems. For the most part, I can trust those computers better. It just makes me sad that I feel like I have to choose between really good games and really trustworthy games.

Also, I haven’t looked into this, but if I plan on purchasing The Orange Box, and I do so through a retail shop so I have a physical product in my hands, is there still a complicated activation process through Steam, or do the games play out of the box without requiring a network connection? I remember Half-life 2 needing some kind of decryption process for the game data that could take hours, although downloading the game in my experience didn’t seem to need extra time after I got it. Also, if I buy a physical product, will it require a CD in the drive to play, or does it associate the game with my Steam account and let me have the convenience that I’ve grown accustomed to?

Categories
Game Development Games Geek / Technical General Personal Development

Catching Up On Life

Since moving into my current apartment in August, I’ve let things get a bit out of control in my life. My last Thousander Club post was in September. My inbox has been looking like a huge chore to get through. My blog comments were an even worse chore, but I hope I fixed that problem (more later). November is National Novel Writing Month, and I had entered NaNoWriMo, only to write a little over 2,000 words out of the goal of 50,000. It’s not that I haven’t had the time. With not working on Killer Kittens or writing blog posts, I had plenty of time. Without going into details, things in my life have been fairly hectic these past couple of months. Frankly, my business, blog, and side projects like novel-writing had to be put on the back burner. That I managed to finish reading a book throughout all of this is an accomplishment.

But I’m finally getting back on track. I’m remembering how to write lists to focus my actions. I’m itching to work on Killer Kittens again. I want to write about games and their development again. But first, I need to work on my backlog of tasks I’ve been neglecting.

I finally reduced my email inbox at the day job to 0, and I have been maintaining it for the past couple of days easily. I still need to tackle my GBGames email. I just installed Akismet, and I should have done so a long time ago. Today I deleted another few hundred spam comments, and a couple of days ago I had over 1,000 spam comments. I didn’t even bother going through it to see if a legit message was in there, so if you had posted a comment that didn’t automatically get posted for being a loyal commenter, you may need to repost.

My physical inbox at home is still a pile of mail, notes, and papers, but at least I finally entered all of the receipts on my desk into GnuCash. My bills are paid. All the urgent and important things are taken care of on this front. I can tackle the rest either all at once or in chunks.

I need to renew my domain names, renew my just lapsed membership to the IGDA, and renew my ASP membership.

And all the while, I need to remember to make lists of Next Actions and Projects.

Oh, and I want a TV. Nothing sucks more than having six different consoles of as many generations without a television to connect them to. Still, I have a computer and a decent network connection, so while I can’t watch Heroes, Chuck, and Pushing Daisies, I can watch Irving Renquist, Ghost Hunter and random cats and elite Starcraft matches on YouTube. Wait, I can watch Heroes and Chuck online, but it’s just not the same.

Anyway, I’m hoping to get back into regularly updating my blog. I might not have a post each day, but hopefully I will have something interesting to contribute more often than not. Tonight I think I will update the books I’ve read and games I’ve played list. Quake 4 is actually fun, by the way.

Categories
Geek / Technical General

The Return of Spam

I’ve been getting a lot more spam comments on this blog. It’s frustrating enough that I haven’t been dedicating the time to writing new posts, but the time I do dedicate to my blog has been spent deleting hundreds of messages at a time.

I’ve found some interesting spam messages. Today I learned about someone supposedly trying to propose to his girlfriend by having everyone forward his proposal. The idea is that it will eventually get forwarded to his girlfriend. Cute.

Otherwise, I get spam about drugs, mortgages, and porn. Oh, and the spam that doesn’t seem to have a purpose other than to give the McLeod Brothers material for their Spamland videos.

I sometimes wonder if I couldn’t do a better job of spamming people. There has to be a better way to get past spam filters than making your message so diluted that no one knows why you’re trying to contact them. Yeah, spamming is easier than actually doing the work to cultivate a relationship with your customers, but how fulfilling can it possibly be?