{Phfr}

Babbies edition

{pretty}

{happy}

Four-and-a-half, and already a master of the dual-shock controller.

{funny}

I took Damien to his first movie the other day; he did fine, but I think I enjoyed it more.

Damien's rendition of Potter Puppet Pals' "The Mysterious Ticking Noise"

{real}

Covered in small creatures.

Let's Code - CPM2DoB Part 3: Purpose

There are 2,771 results for "Chess" in the Google Play store. Googling "Chess app for Windows" returns about 10 million results. There's even several open source chess engines. So why am I writing a chess program again?

Well, aside from "for practice", I wanted to do something different. What if the pieces had different moves? What if queens could move like knights, or knights weren't limited to one hop and could continue to move along their path, like bishops and rooks? What if the pieces started in different arrangements? What if they were in a wedge formation, rather than abreast? What if all the pawns were replaced with queens? What if the victory conditions were different? What if you had to capture both king and queen to win? What if the board had special properties, like wrap-around edges, or was 10x10 instead of 8x8? What if it was a hexagonal grid? What if pieces had health and damage? What if it took several attacks to kill some pieces? What if others could heal their teammates? What if pieces had auras that would enhance the abilities of pieces near them?

By now we're hardly talking about chess, but some strange turn-based RPG strategy game hybrid that just happens to have chess pieces. Oh, that's a good idea, too. What if you could change the look of the pieces?

That was the idea behind a Chess Pirate Mercenaries 2D of Battle. I wanted to write a chess program with user-definable pieces and moves, that could handle all sorts of different board configurations and rules. So now, I can show you the rest of the Options dialog that I fuzzed out in the last update:

Friday Quicktakes (2/15/13)

...and I'm sick again. I think this is the sixth or seventh time in the last year. Can't tell if because of kids, I'm getting old, or I have AIDS.

I almost dodged this one. The Murloc got it first, which is unusual, and it looked like I was avoiding it. Then, well, something happened. It's a funny story, but... it's probably not suitable for sharing on the internet. Just think of the punchline to your favorite joke instead.

Hehe. Half a cat.

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True story.

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I came up with a good one today (well, yesterday, if you're reading this the day it goes live; who knows when if you're from farther in the future, in which case, greetings future human! Are you enjoying your flying car and personal jetpack?):

"Yo mama's so dumb she tried to defrag a solid state drive."

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Ah, EVE Online, that most interesting of MMOs, where an in game battle can cost nearly $25,000 real-world dollars. Eurogamer and Destructoid have the tale.

The battle destroyed 717 billion ISK worth of ships, and since in the game, you can purchase ISK with real-world money, and also convert your ISK to subscription time, this means there is a real dollar figure attached to virtual destruction.

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Shamus Young has been discussing Zombie Plans. Basically, what would you do in the event of a zombie apocalypse?

My zombie plan is really the same as my general apocalypse plan. I'm not thinking short term, like where to scrounge for guns, and what weapon is best against zombies. Most zombie stories only look at the days or weeks immediately following an outbreak. I'm thinking longer term. Like one, five, ten, or twenty years out. Where do you grow more food once the stocks of canned food have been used up? How do you preserve human knowledge through the collapse of civilization? Where do you go for support while rebuilding society? My answer is the same for any doomsday scenario: the abbey.

If you look back to the last time Western Civilization collapsed, it was the monasteries the preserved it, then built it back up. I figure, for the long haul, that's the place to be. St. Michael's is a half-day's walk from where I live, so accessible when the roads are clogged, or if cars are not available, and without any intermediate stopovers if we can only travel during the day. It's somewhat secluded, with access to education and the Sacraments. With a lot of strong, young men, it would be easily defensible. Open land around for hunting and farming.

So, you know, if the apocalypse happens tomorrow, you know where to find me.

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I close with this free-of-charge pro-tip: Never say "d as in dad" on the phone.

Star Pirate Space Wars of the Old Republic

Let me share some screenshots of one of my Star Wars: The Old Republic characters:

Here stands Captain Jacc Flynt in front of his XS stock light freighter which, unfortunately, the game does not allow you to name Redemptrix. He is a smuggler by trade. (Both the first name "Jack" and last name "Flint" were taken. I don't know if by the same person, but that would be kinda cool.)

Here is Captain Jacc Flynt on the bridge of his ship, surveying a map of the galaxy. Perhaps he is trying to plot a route between Ceres and Callisto in less than 12 parsecs. Come to think of it, plotting a route from Ceres to Callisto that would be more than 12 parsecs would be quite the feat indeed. (Ok, so you start at Ceres, head towards Callisto. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Then just before you get there, veer of course, head to Vega, and come back.)

Here is Captain Jacc Flynt talking with his companion who is, unfortunately, not named Yosef Lwanga. He is, however, the hired muscle and handy with a gun.

Captain Jacc Flynt looks over the shoulder of his crew mate who, come to think of it, doesn't really look like Regina Burke. Miss Burke has blue eyes, not merely lots of blue eye shadow.

At some point, apparently, Captain Jacc Flynt froze someone in carbonite. Tim Sikorsky, perhaps? Seems awfully cold of him (yuk yuk yuk).

Apparently, Captain Jacc Flynt now has a droid. He purposely removed the three laws programming so he could tell it to kill people.

The Build from Hell: Part VI: Batman: Arkham City

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't tell you that your log in information is incorrect. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't have to enter your 20-digit hexadecimal product code to complete the call. You turn a knob on a faucet and don't get a message that you've used water in the maximum number of approved sinks.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

Back in part I, I mentioned that one of the things I wanted to do on the new HTPC was be able to play vidjimagames. A nice new processor, with a good graphics card would make it faster than my desktop, and ideal for playing any games that support a controller.

Around this time, I was working my way through Batman: Arkham City, sequel to the game-of-the-year Batman: Arkham Asylum. I loved Arkham Asylum and pre-ordered Arkham City on Steam as soon as it became available.

The Resident Batman-lover, that is Anne Marie, forbade me from playing either game without her present at every moment. This usually meant me sitting at my desk, with her sitting behind me, looking over my shoulder. A workable solution, but not ideal. This seems like the perfect game to be able to sit on the couch and play with my wireless controller.

So I install Steam on HiFi and begin downloading the many billions of bytes necessary to play the game. While it's downloading would be a good time to explain Steam Cloud.
Valve, in their infinite wisdom, has implemented a feature in Steam called Steam Cloud. Basically, game data, such as saves, preferences, and configurations can be saved to The Cloud, or on Steam's servers. The advantage to this is that you can then move from one computer to any other computer and retain your saved games, or keyboard configuration, or player customizations. Arkham City supports this, so I can easily move from my desktop to the HTPC, and pick up where I left off in the game.

And this feature works exactly as advertised, so after I install Arkham City on the HTPC, I try to play. This is where I crash head-first into the dark and shady side of what is otherwise such an amazing piece of game design: Games for Windows Live.

Shocked and Appalled

Star Wars: The Old Republic launched about a month ago (motto: "What Would WoW Do?"). There is much that can be said about the game, like EA's general jackassery, the fact that it is simultaneously the fastest-selling MMO and failing to meet sales projections, whether or not a game of that scale is sustainable, how successfully Bioware integrated their "fourth pillar" of story, or myriads of other topics. Many others are talking about such things, and perhaps I will weigh in later. But for now, I wanted to focus on one particularly shocking and appalling aspect of the game.

The artists at Bioware decided, it seems, to give one of the six Star Wars movies particular attention. One scene from one of the six movies. One costume choice from one scene from one of the six movies (I think you see where this is going).

Slave Leia costume, seen modeled here by the Murloc's cosplay friend Christy Marie.

Apparently, Bioware thinks that this costume comprised fully three quarters of the Star Wars films, despite the fact that the costume only has a combined 150 seconds of screen time, "including facial closeups and shots of stunt doubles and visual effect images," according to Wookieepedia. Every planet in the game has at least one scuzzy dive populated by alien slave girls doing erotic dances while wearing this costume.

Please Do Not Plant Bombs in the City

So the Murloc and I have been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. For those of you not in the know, it's  the Star Wars version of WoW. I may talk about it in more depth later, but for now, there's a particular quest that caught my attention and I had to highlight it.

Here's the quest text:

"Dear New Yorkers. Al Qaeda has left several bombs in Times Square. We think we got them all, but if you happen across any, could you please pick them up and drop it off in one of the handy bomb-disposal bins we've left around the city?"

The mission requires that you locate four bombs stuck to walls, lamp posts, and other features of the city and take them to a bomb disposal unit, which deactivates them with the sound of a garbage compactor.

I swear, every time I picked up one of these, I heard Yakety Sax

 Once you've removed the bomb from its place, a one minute timer starts, after which it will explode, damaging you for about half health. The bomb disposal unit is centrally located, a quick jog away, but shares a 5-10 second cooldown with all other players in the game. That means that once one player has activate it, no other players can use it for about 5-10 seconds.

Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb.

This must have been a fun quest to do immediately after launch, when a dozen other players are trying to get the quest done. I imagine a queue of players standing at the bomb disposal unit trying to get rid of them, and all waiting for it to refresh. Sort of like a game of hot potato with explosive consequences.

Diablo III Beta: First Impressions

For all zero of you who are interested.

[Editor's note. I started writing this after first playing it in September. Then I forgot about it.]

So, after a furious weekend [circa Sep. 9-11] of computer-playing, I managed to complete the Diablo III beta with all five character classes. It was hard work, but someone had to do it.

So here are my impressions.

In a word: "visceral". Everything packs punch. Every ability and spell. Every hit and kill has a wonderfully satisfying "thwack" behind it. Corpses flying; blood splattering; stone crumbling; book cases exploding. Everything feels weighty.

Class I'm most unexpectedly impressed by: Wizard. I did not like the wizard when I played her at Blizzcon a few years back. She seemed under-powered and uninteresting. But after dispatching approximately 4,294,967,296 enemies by shooting LIGHTING out of my FINGERTIPS, I am a changed man. And the way the lightning crackles when disintegrating enemies? Magnifique!


Class I'm most unexpectedly unimpressed by: Witch Doctor. I fell in love with the witch doctor at Blizzcon some years ago for one simple reason: Flaming Skulls 'o Doom. Unfortunately, that spell is not available in the beta. While fun, the witch doctor just lacked the oomph of the other classes.

Class I'm most expectedly impressed by: Demon Hunter. Exactly as awesome as I expected.

Design decision I'm most disappointed in: Lack of level-up choices. The original Diablo had skill points, earned upon level-up, that could be assigned to the attribute(s) of your choosing. Diablo II had skill trees which were actually the inspiration for and predecessor to WoW's talent trees. Diablo III? Nuthin. No decisions or choices are made upon leveling up. Instead, you are given a fixed train of progression. You have no choice in which skills you get next, and have no ability to put points into particular abilities. Instead, you are assigned a new skill, and merely have the choice of whether or not you are going to use it.

Add on to this the fact that, in the beta, you only have two, then later three, skills that can be active at once, and there isn't a whole lot of variety in character builds. Of course, in the final game, you'll have a couple dozen skills from which you can choose six active abilities, then customize each one with a runestone. Blizzard has stated the number of possible character builds, and it's somewhere north of the number of elementary particles in the universe.

Biggest adjustment: The concept of "lagging out" of a single-player game. What do you mean I can't play by myself because I couldn't connect to the login server? Why do I need to login to a single-player game? Why do I have latency when I'm by myself?

Exhibit A for why Blizzard should just make the WoW movie themselves, as a CGI film: This trailer, unveiled at this years Blizzcon.


To wit:

Photograph or CGI rendering? Does it matter at this point?

Approximate number of hours I will lose to Diablo III, upon release: 65,536

What's Wrong with this Picture?

I snapped this screenshot of Bejeweled 3 right after the words "No more moves" appeared and right before the gems exploded off the screen. See anything wrong?

Double-ewe tee eff, Popcap. Double-ewe tee eff.

(For those interested in what causes this bug to occur, it sometimes happens during a cascade. In the middle of the cascade, the words "no more moves" appear, yet the cascade continues. When it finally comes to rest, there might still be moves, but the "game over" flag has already been tripped. It appears that their algorithm that checks for game over conditions only checks if valid swaps can be made, and does not check if gems are already matched.)