Quote of the week - Hey Fool!

"

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

                               "
-- Martin Fowler

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Understanding Games

Wow, its been a long time since I've blogged.
Academia life took too much of my precious time :p

Now, for the interesting links I want to share:

Its a series of Flash games that introduces the basics of games.
Understanding Games Part 1
Understanding Games Part 2
Understanding Games Part 3
Understanding Games Part 4

Done by Pixalate, it teaches the wonderful world of game design while playing some simple Flash games.

Definitely recommended for all to try. Because its both educational AND entertaining :D


( ._.)Ø

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God knows...

guitar by KURIKINTON FOX (Satoru Kousaki)

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Removing Busywork

Richard Garfield wrote an article on how busywork is removed in games and the examples from the history of famous games.


Click on Read More for the full post.



LINK to Full article

"

Busywork in a game are the things done that are necessary to play, but not really part of the fun. As with most definitions, this will have some gray areas, but to illustrate, some of the things that I would consider busy work are:

• Shuffling and dealing
• Banking in a game like Monopoly
• Setting up a complicated board game

Where it starts to get muddy is when the busywork is incorporated with play. An example of this is a game in which one player is so far ahead that they are definitely going to win; playing that game out to its bitter end would be busywork. Also, one could argue that the beginning of a game like Monopoly has a lot of busywork. If I am going to roll, move, and buy if possible then the game in some sense starts at the point the first decisions are made: trading, buying houses, or at least choosing not to purchase a property. What happens until them could be called busywork, though players may enjoy seeing the “start” of the game unfold.

The historical drive to remove busywork has made it so that most classic games play pretty efficiently relative to modern games. Some examples of where I would say history has driven out busywork would be in backgammon and chess. In backgammon, a game in which you race your pieces around the board and the first person to remove all their pieces wins the race, the ancestors had you start with your pieces off the board. Later, the game was played where pieces began on the board. Later pieces began on the board in an advanced position. Later the doubling cube was added which made runaway games possible to truncate. In chess, originally the pieces did not move as far as they do now, where they sweep across the board. Also, the difference between eastern and western chesses are defined mostly by how the games handled the pawns gumming up the works – eastern chess removed many pawns so there was room to move, and western chess created the “double move” that you can do when you first move a pawn.

Often there will be resistance to removing busywork from a game on many grounds. Generally the people playing the game have made their peace with whatever the mechanic is, or have even learned to enjoy it. It is certainly easy to believe that some modest amount of busywork can be worth the cost for whatever benefit is being given. The tactile pleasure of shuffling a deck may be worth the shuffling. The awe of looking over an elaborate military game might be worth the setup time. However, frequently when the busywork is removed there will be a lot of new players interested in playing, and a lot of old players who don't look back. This has happened very recently with prepainted miniatures in the hobby market. In Wizards there was a group of game designers advocating them long before they became popular, and they never managed to overcome the people entrenched in the old system where all miniatures needed to be painted. After all, the old school believed that was one of the big appeals of the game form. That may have been true, but the ability to buy decent looking prepainted miniatures opened up the game form to far more people. I imagine there was similar resistance among the players to changes in chess that moved it along – undoubtedly some players enjoyed the original game, which by modern chess standards plods along, and resisted changes.

The gaming form that can most learn from this is computer gaming – specifically, but not limited to, roleplaying games. From the early days of MMRPGS I have longed to see the “busywork” removed – the travel time, the boring combats, the tedious inventory management. Cynics have responded that once you remove all that you are left with nothing (try playing progress quest, a free online game, to see the most succinct argument to that end). I personally don't believe that – I think some care needs to be taken, similar to the care that one could imagine being exercised in chess where someone might advocate doing away with all the pawns, or making them move like queens. Entrenched players often respond that they like these elements, and somehow can keep a straight face saying that while holding the move button down for ages as they lumber around an artificial world. They claim that getting rid of the travel would hurt their feeling of immersion. They say this as their character dies and they respawn and go out to search for the corpse.

In recent years you can see the forces that remove busywork playing out here as well, however. Every generation of these games introduces more and more tools to speed travel up or keep combat and other play experiences fresh and interesting. What I am waiting for is for one of these games to be designed with reducing this busywork being not something done incrementally, to be a little better than the competition, but boldly making it the foundation upon which their game is built, jumping directly to the endpoint of this evolutionary process. But, as it is, it looks like I may just have to wait for the game form to crawl there.

                                                               "

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Eva sama dash! Negima Pani Poni Dash Parody

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Things I Am No Longer Allowed to do in an RPG

hreaper just added our campaign's "Not to do again"s in the 2001 Things I Am No Longer Allowed to do in an RPG.


Click on Read More for the full post.



p.s. I'm the blue-eyed blonde half orc Paladin XD

LINK

"

2972. There's no such thing as a LG blonde half-orc Paladin with blue eyes no matter what his back story is.

2973. Said half-orc Paladin do not have a huge fascination of blood and keep cutting himself in rituals for his deity to the point that the other party members start wondering how much pints of blood he has.

2974. When creating a spell that disarms an opponent by force of wind, said wind does NOT declothe them as well (they called it dispelling gust or wind).

2975. May NOT prestidigitate a deck of 52 playing cards and then imbue said cards with powerful spells thus enabling you to cast it 52 times (imbue spell does not and should not work like this!!!)

2976. IF 2973 and 2974 are ignored, may not prestidigitate a deck of 52 playing cards and then imbue them with dispelling gust of wind and then throw the deck into women's dressing rooms.

2977. Party members should keep an eye on the NE Hexblade to make sure he doesn't start raping any of the dying drows.

2978. When receiving a powerful flying battleship, make sure that the crazy CN Tinker does not dismantle the cannon.

2979. If the CN Tinker did not dismantle the canon, make sure he's pointing it at the right direction and no other party members are in the way when he fires it.

2980. Before firing the canon, the shooter MUST first warn the party members in the blast radius.

2981. Do not leave the CN Tinker alone with a bagful of explosives that he just recently made. Especially when you're in the BBEG's castle and he's off somewhere tossing the explosives around for fun.

2982. Never ask the CN Wild Mage to break the chains binding your hands. You may never know if she'll just call down a Meteor Shower to help you.

2983. If the Ninja happens upon a heated argument between party members, he may not knock out all the party involved (including the innocent bystander), toss them into their rooms and lock them in and say that it's the best solution to resolve the problems.

                                                               "



Our DM just added more "Not to do again"s to the list:

LINK

"

2984. Just because I am no spellcaster and some holy power worshiper, I am not allowed to insult and harass the only party Cleric and then tell him, "Heal me, okay?" at any time.

2985. This also includes during an intense overwhelming battle.

2986. The fact that he has the highest AC among everyone else in the party due to the full plate mail and spells does not mean I am able to do that in the first place.

2987. And because he's the only party healer, I am not allowed to toss him out and shutting the door close to let him confront a group of enemy archers behind wall slits all alone while everyone else is safe.

2988. And also because I know he just leveled up and gain new spells.

2989. I am not allowed to pee on an angel just because I do not believe in them.

2990. After carefully sneaking stealthily into the deep reaches of the enemy temple with the whole party, I shall not leave a note saying, "We're here."

2991. I am not allowed to find thugs in the city alleyways and beat them up just because I'm bored.

2992. And whine on how I am trying to rid the city of evil because of it after getting lock up in the city jail.

2993. I am not allowed to constantly ask anyone new I meet for a +1 Great sword.

2994. And for a +2 Great sword, after getting a +1 Great sword already.

2995. And for a +5 Great sword, after getting a +4 Great sword already.

2996. And for a +6 Psionic Great sword, after leveling up as a Psionic Warrior and getting a +5 Great sword.

2997. I am not allowed to disguise as a Drow, sneak into the lairs of the Drow temple, slaughtering half of the drows on the way, then telling them that I am here on a peaceful diplomatic meeting with their leader to inquire some information on a certain NPC.

2998. I am not allowed to throw shurikens at new NPCs whom I just meet together with the whole party.

2999. Nor when the whole party and NPCs could not understand each other at the moment.

3000. Nor when the whole party and NPCs are trying to communicate using non-hostile hand signals & body language to prevent any hostility.

                                                               "

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疑えば目に鬼を見る("Higurashi-no-Nakukoroni" MAD MOVIE)

by kogarashi



I really like this AMV,
and I'm a really big fan of Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni :D

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