Messages

1

Off Topic / Elite Dangerous

« on: January 05, 2013, 04:00:08 AM »

I was looking for an Elite IV Dangerous thread here but I couldn't find one.
They are fully funded now so yaaay!
Looks interesting for those of us that like emergent co-op style gaming. Plus I am sure there are those among us that are Elite veterans from the amount of people that have downloaded my Elite Galaxy Names file for AI War.

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Off Topic / Re: FTL: A space based roguelike

« on: September 29, 2012, 11:36:32 AM »

Well, having played it a bit more it has gotten to the stage where I have found various 'holes in the wall' and it is easy to beat now. There are various 'achievements' to work through now. Hasn't stopped being fun, yet...

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind 2 - a full sequel free for existing customers - is coming.

« on: September 29, 2012, 05:55:58 AM »

Arcen Games remains awesome. 
I never did find AVWW compelling to play, don't know why really. LIked the sandboxyness and comcept but just not into platformey side-scrollers. Which is a terrible reason to not enjoy such an amazing game I know, but still....
Looking forward to AVWW2 anyway. You. Guys. Rock.

4

Off Topic / Re: Procrastination is a terrible habit.

« on: September 23, 2012, 07:28:56 AM »

One helpful tactic I learned (or at least heard) in stated from Chris is to find something you need to do but want to do even less, and procrastinate on that by doing the other thing that you were previously procrastinating on.

I found myself accidentally doing that today. I have to teach a particular class tomorrow and I have been putting off preparing for it for weeks. Today I am still procrastinating the prep but now it has gotten to the stage of me actually doing other things that I have been putting off for even longer as an avoidance tactic.
Now I am procrastinating that by visiting this forum again.
Hi everyone!
 

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Off Topic / Re: FTL: A space based roguelike

« on: September 23, 2012, 07:22:21 AM »

I have been really enjoying this game. A lot of it doesn't make perfect sense but then that is part of the fun in a way - it fits in with the entire presentation. A bit like Firefly, you end up not caring that it makes no sense because of how much fun it is.
I think it would make a great android game. There is a similar but more sandboxy game for android called Star Traders RPG, the good thing about that is that they are continually adding new ships and stuff. I kind of wish they would do that with FTL because it does get a bit samey, Almost by default I don't read the mission text any more.
Anyway - A really fun game. Really like how the challenge completely changes when you are flying different ships or even the same ship with a different layout.
Haven't beaten it yet, just the first or second stage of the flagship.
Loads of reply value though.
Right, back to the Engi Cruiser.
<edit> Well, having played it a bit more it has gotten to the stage where I have found the 'hole in the wall' and it is easy to beat now. There are various 'challenges' and 'achievements' to work through now. Hasn't stopped being fun yet... <edit>

6

AI War / Re: Engineers not healing Mercenary ships when they're in range

« on: July 13, 2012, 05:52:10 AM »

There are so many reasons an engineer might not repair that maybe it needs to show a psychologist's report or something like that.

"This engineer cannot get motivated because it lacks a support structure." (supply)

"This engineer is working very slowly because it feels underpaid." (lack of m+c)

"This engineer remembers the Great Depression and can't bear to not save the m+c" (threshold control)

"This engineer doesn't want to risk getting close to the patient so soon after the trauma" (target recently damaged)

"There's nothing stopping it, but... but... the angst of an engineer with no control node" (video courtesy deMangler)

LOL. 
I forgot about that whole thing!
Thanks for reminding me. I haven't played AI War for a few months, will give it some play-time I think before I forget how uniquely good it is.

dM

7

Off Topic / Re: Aurora

« on: January 04, 2012, 09:46:32 AM »

While browsing the Aurora forum, I found this post

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,2187.0.html

Which seems to be the devs response to the 'Why VB?' thing.

I thought I would share it here as it is a good post, and also I feel a bit responsible for the thread diversion into the pros and cons of VB, but really every case is unique and the Aurora devs view is the one that counts in this case....

There ya go anyway.

8

Off Topic / Re: Aurora

« on: January 01, 2012, 11:16:56 PM »

The problem is that you still have to be a skilled programmer; you have to know not only about the language but about good programming techniques also. I have known a lot of programmers that have no business being around any language and some that would be all-stars no matter what language they touched. So would you be judging the language or the programmer?

I don't really want to hijack this thread with that debate, although  I will happily discuss it on another thread if anyone likes. I love a good debate and while I normally avoid some issues on forums because it can degenerate quickly - one of the things I like about this forum is that it is consistently good for a non-degenerative debate.
To answer that question though - obviously to establish a meaningful comparison between languages a lot needs to be taken into account. As you say - there is the skill of the programmer(s), also are the techniques they are using appropriate to the task? Is the language they are using a good choice given the objective? Is the project just badly designed from a 'lets design this project by commitee' point of view?
Blaming the language would be easy for a programmer to do when faced with a problem, just as blaming the tech-support guy is easy for some office drone wanting to know why his macro isn't working. I have seen cases where a problematic VB deployment has been blamed on the programmers, or the designers, or the purchasers, or the consultant that reccomended it, and on and on. At what point do you just have to say that it is a problem with VB?
Having been involved in many projects over the years as a programmer, systems analyst (design), tech support guy, troubleshooter of failed systems, trainer, etc etc, blah blah, I can say without a doubt that the there is a 'VB problem' It is the wrong tool being used for the wrong job. Is it un-fair to label this as VB being a bad language? Probably, but it helps to do so if it discourages people from choosing it by default instead at least exploring other options and then choosing VB, based on an understanding both of VB and the needs of the project. I have seen this so many times with VB being chosen by default, by commitee, and then a project ending up needing to be scrapped at an often huge cost and re-designed using something more robust, it is like seeing the symptoms of a disease, eventually you have to ask 'is it a problem with VB, or is it just that VB get's mis-used a lot? What, then, is the place for VB? What is it's purpose?'
Dammed if I know, maybe for knocking up very small front ends for simple repetative tasks for data entry for office temps who are likely to make too many mistakes with something like excel. To be honest, that is about it for VB. That is it's niche.  I have seen it used for this and it works well.
Anything else, use..... well anything else..... Anything.

<edit>
To specifically relate this to Aurora 4X (and disguise a thread-jacking) - this is a one man project where he has developed this over the years from a game assistant into a simulator into a game. He has stuck with it and it has turned into a monster. Nothing wrong there - I have a few projects like that myself.
He has shared it with people and it is really enjoyable. I would not expect it to look good under the hood, and when I say that the dev is to be congtratulated that it works as well as it does I am taking this into account and not just VB.
He is working on a new version not in VB and that is where I would take it too, now that it has been prototyped and he knows more where he wants to go.
My rant about VB is really coming from deferred frustration from the VB disasters I have seen, the stress it has caused real people in real life, and my feeling that I need to somehow reverse my previous failures to help people avoid these VB disasters, so Jesus will love me and I can go to heaven and chill with Dennis Ritchie, drinking endless martinis, and enjoying endless virgins.



<edit>

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Off Topic / Re: Aurora

« on: January 01, 2012, 05:47:56 AM »

Visual Basic? Why? Omg why? That hellspawn of a "language" should never have been allowed to see the light of day.

For you information VB6 was a huge success for Microsoft back then. It was the first RAD (create a form, drag and drop some controls like text boxes and buttons, and wire-up events and you are done). Everything since then is improvement on this basic concept. Of course in the modern days there are *much* nicer environments to program in, but VB6 was huge for its time.

Arrrg....somebody got me started....
I was using RADs way before VB6 so I know they existed. Perhaps many of them might be better called IDE's, but they definitely were strucured as RADs and performed as such. Thinking about it, back to the '80s for the really primative ones. Really though, you are right, the first VB-like interface for designing software for end users rather than professionals, I have to say probably was...well... VB, but I would say that was another example of microsofts E-E-E methodology than a design innovation.
The example I quoted was VB4 (maybe 3.... dunno hazy memory...PTSD...), at least two or three years before VB6. I have heard that a lot of the problems were ironed out by the time VB6 came out. My only real-world experience of anything VB derived since has been with VBA. Eventually that whole system had to be redesigned from scratch using a more robust solution because VBA just was not consistent enough in the way it handled data. Actually diablolical.

I switched back to Delphi for my windows dev (before VB6, again by a few years) - it was a huge relief after the incursion into VB I can tell you. Since then I have used many IDEs and RADs, and I have had to work in the same office as people who have been using one or other flavour or implementation of VB, they were all having a bad time because of needless stress caused by the bad design and general inconsistency of VB - so this clouds my judgement. True - to begin with, many of them defended VB when I asked what  they were doing - lots of them reflexively defended it with a quick twitch before I had even asked them why they were looking so hunched and haunted.
An example that comes to mind is that some Pianos have wheels, and if you have always used a piano to get from A to B, then it might seem like the way to go - especially if they had been marketed successfully as a conveyance and taken up and used by many as such. I am sure people would go on about how great they were and how good the keys were and how shiny the lid, and how much easier it was with the wheels rather than having to walk everywhere..... Personally I would rather use a bike, or my legs, or a car, or even crawl, or something. But only because I am lucky enough to have had that experience of not having to ride a piano everywhere, so I naturally gravitate to those things....
Anyway... blah blah - I got started on a rant and am in danger of hijacking the thread. Sorry.
VB is used by lots of people so that is up to them. They have their own experiences and reasons and it is not up to me to judge them - I am merely sharing my experiences, and exposing my psychological scars.....

AS far as Aurora 4X goes - I am enjoying it more and more. It is a really rich and immersive game.
Oh - and happy new year!

10

Off Topic / Re: Aurora

« on: December 30, 2011, 06:42:38 AM »

Visual Basic? Why? Omg why? That hellspawn of a "language" should never have been allowed to see the light of day.

That it is... The Aurora installer does do some strange things too. I personally am keeping the whole thing in an XP VM isolated from my main system completely. VB runtimes are not getting anywhere near my main system.
From what I read on the forums, the next evolution is in development and it is not in VB.
The dev is to be congratulated and admired for getting it to work as well as it does. The last VB project I was involved in, probably around the mid '90s, was a two-man job that nearly drove us both insane. Purely because in order to get your head around the way VB actually does stuff, so that you can debug it, if nothing else, requires you to do very bad things to your brain indeed.
Needless to say I have never touched it since, I do have other horror stories of what I have seen happen to rather nice people who tried to use VBA in a live office environment. Not pretty.
Anyway, don't get me started.
Back to my spaceships, not thinking about VB.. lalalaaaaa singing a song. Can't hear you.

11

Off Topic / Re: Aurora

« on: December 30, 2011, 02:53:28 AM »

I have recently started playing this. Loving it so far.
Me being from the generation that whenever you learned new software you learned a new UI helps because I don't automatically feel that non-standardisation in a UI is bad. Having been a designer of  front-ends, and a VB (*twitch*!) programmer (this game is in VB, shudder!) I know that sometimes UI standardisation is a compromise you wish you didn't have to make. Looks like this guy is doing his own thing for his own reasons, and having played with it a bit I must say I like it for all it's quirkyness.
In any case, having spent some time with this game, I am very glad  I bothered with the learning curve. There is defintely a steep one. And it is on-going. It is part of the fun.
Also I love the way the whole thing is a structure for your own imagination, without too much graphics to get in the way. There is just enough information provided to give you the game (and it is a good one), without spoiling your immersion with thier idea of how things should look. This is something I like about AI war also.
Mind you - me being one of those types who entertain ourselves by, I dunno, reading books, and stuff, probably helps with the creating an inner world out of text and graphs too...... 

As far as it being the DF of  space 4x's goes..... I can see why that comparison comes out. The universe pretty much gets on with it's immensely complex thing, and your job is to be a part of making the whole story work out for your civilisation, as a kind of head governor. Actually the micromanagement is not that bad, you can set up a lot of conditional automatic stuff when you get the hang of it, and I am only just scratching the surface at the moment.
However, the fact it is turn based is a massive difference from DF. It makes for a much better contemplative strategy experience.
Anyway - Good reccomendation. Having lots of fun. I haven't played Skyrim for days now....
Back to my little people now... Click Click, 

12

Off Topic / Actual Enders Game Film News

« on: December 24, 2011, 04:29:48 AM »

Looks like it might not murder the book (fingers crossed)

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118047827

dM

P.S. Hi again community.......   

13

Off Topic / Re: Billions and billions...

« on: April 24, 2011, 05:31:26 PM »

Amazing.

The best impression I have had of how immense, empty, and full of stuff the universe is.

 

dM

<edit>
here is linkage to the guys youtube  - there are some demos there, I am playing around with version 0.9 beta and it is pretty cool:


http://www.youtube.com/user/space0engineer


<edit>

14

Off Topic / Re: Sequels and Fans

« on: March 29, 2011, 10:49:37 PM »

There seems also to be a creep away from core game originality towards common demographic generic-ness.... type thing, across sequels.

When a game is in its first iteration, there was an idea that was more exiting than the other ideas that came out of the 'what game shall we make' brainstorming session. Other exciting ideas get bolted on to it and the core principles of what make this game worth designing are near the top of the priority list - because they are why the game is being made.

Often these ideas may make into the mix not only because they are exciting but also because they are seen to be marketable as 'new', and 'buy this because it is not being done like this by anyone else'

The game is released.
Then there are loads of reviews and customer feedback, wish lists, complaint lists, etc.

Because this feedback is coming from a sample that includes :
People writing a generic game review with a checklist of goods and bads that is generic.
Lots of players that bought the game because they wanted to see if they would like this new concept, and didn't like it.
Lots of players that bought the game because they like the artwork.
Lots of players that bought the game because it was a new game.
Anyone else who really wanted another gameplay experience or is just unhappy these days....
etc, etc...
And a few players who actually enjoyed the game because the intention of the designers and the game concept were what they wanted.

It will be biased towards the generic.


Mostly a sequel is made so that more money can be made with less outlay than designing a whole new game, with a customer base for this brand already established.

So they say - lets make a sequel, we need to change it like this (referring to the feedback and reviews) so that lots of people will buy it.

Unfortunately the result of this approach to sequel design is to make sure that with each sequel the game approaches a generic.
The Bethesda Arena/Daggerfall/Morrowind/Oblivion series is a good example. Original, clearly defined core concepts that gradually get compromised to player feedback until you get a P.O.S like Oblivion. At least it was very mod-able.

EVE online,by CCP is an example of a poplular game where the devs have stuck to their idea over many upgrades and it has worked (arguably). Incarna may change that though, but considering the history of patches and DLC I have high hopes.

A worse design philosophy is to just have the 'We will design a game that players will want to keep playing and paying for" as a primary design concept.
I won't mention the worst offenders by name, because I will start ranting, but one popular game has become very successful because over the upgrade cycle it has stopped being a game and become a 'skinner box' disguised and sold as a game instead.
This is just EVIL, it is bad enough doing this to rats in cages never mind getting people to pay for it to be done to them.

Usually the creep towards generic is relatively innocent common demographic creep though.

dM

15

Off Topic / Re: Persistent Browser based Space Game that I actually really like

« on: March 25, 2011, 03:24:47 AM »

First of all, thank you for pointing out the game.

Now this is going to be off-topic, but we are in off-topic forum, right?

When reading their site I was quite interested in their "anti-cheating" measures. It seems that for certain type of games, being able to have more than one account in the same world giving an edge ("unfiar advantage") to whoever has more than one account. Interestingly, this is not a problem for World of Warcraft. I have not played pardus (yet), so I have no idea what kind of advantage they are talking about. If anyone has any experience with the game, let me know, what you can do in pardus that you can't do in WoW that spoils the game for others.

Dunno - I hate WOW with a passion. Meta-game I suppose - Pardus seems to be a PVP RPG where immersion seems to be more important than 'winning'
Also, as there is a genuine supply/demand driven player economy multi-account meta-gaming could be very disruptive to the game balance. The game does seem very well balanced.

Bottom line is - I don't know the answer to this question, but those are my thoughts.

<edit> It also occurs to me that the limited turns per time is important to game balance (especially with PVP) and one of the 'features' of the game being there is no real advantage to being on-line more than a certain amount - because everyone gets the same limited number of turns over time. Multi-accounting would spoil this balance if players used the characters as supporting alts.
Also the supply/production chain encourages specialization and interaction There just aren't enough turns to generalize efficiently and compete. Some people have to trade or haul, others have to keep the space lanes clear, others have to pirate... Yarr! Others build. Of course a single player can do all these things, but the turns would be distributed between all these activities and there is a balance that works. If alts could craft/fight/haul/trade for each other it would make this aspect of the game dysfunctional. <edit>

No let's consider what pradus does to stop this. First of all the have a rule one PC - one user. They say that this rule was put in place to make automatic bans possible. Before that it took a lot of man hours to police accounts, and this simple rule resolved it for them. But the ultimate goal is this: one physical person - one account. Compare the rule and the goal, they are not the same. I'm not sure that this goal is really achievable at all, but I'll talk about this later.

Now, just let consider their rule. They do state, that their automatic ban system has nothing to do with IP addresses. (If this is true, I don't know, it might be not.) They say, that if you have to different physical PCs and your brother plays on one of them and yourself on the other, and you are both in the same household and have the same IP you have nothing to worry about. They also say, that they won't disclose the technical details about their detection techniques to avoid circumvention. But know this, the game does not require anything but browser, i.e. no flash, no java and no other plug-in. It does require cookies and javascript though (obviously).

Let's think is this possible to detect two accounts being played from the same PC, if you are not relying on IP address. The first line of defence is obviously cookies. We can set cookies with user's account number and if user logs in and the account cookie does not match, we warn them and than ban them. But this is pretty easy to circumvent, just clear all the cookies before logging in and you'll be fine. Can we protect against this by checking if user has clean cookie every time they log on? Yes and no. We certainly can detect that, but we hardly can act on this as this is not a prove that the same computer was used for playing two different accounts. When you open the game in a different browser, you cookies will be clean. Also it's not a crime regularly ran anti-malware program that kills all unapproved cookies from your browser.

The first line of defence seems also be the last. But hang on for a sec, have you ever heard about browser fingerprinting? Look at this very interesting paper https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf the rough idea is that, even if you have the same browser there can be subtle changes in the meta-data that the browser sends, depending on system configuration. We can remember that, and compare different accounts fingerprints. But than again, it's quite possible that two computers has exactly the same configuration and hence the same fingerprint so you can't use this method alone and 100% reliably.

It seems that pardus thought hard about using the game from public places, such as schools and internet café's. To be able to support this, they came up with a notion of Identified account. The goal is still present, you can't have two accounts (identified or otherwise), but the rule no longer applies. If you account is identified, then playing from a PC where someone else plays from is ok and the check is skipped. This way, if you know you'll be playing on a PC other people are playing on two, you can get your account identified and be safe from the scary ban. The poor bastard without identified account that will be playing on the same PC in the internet café as you did won't.

So how do you make an account identified? a) you simply pay. If you get a premium account, it is automatically identified. b) you send them a copy of your passport or driving license. and c) you sent them an authenticated digital certificate. (To get one of those you need to pay a Certificate Authority and the authority will also require some form of ID from you). This kind of identification (apart from the paid account) makes sure that there is a unique person (as identified by physical ID) attached to each account. The paid account does not have this guarantee, but pardus thinks that not many people will risk their money should it be detected that they own two different paid account, as these will be banned once detected too.

This all is nice and good and complicated, but the real question, does this help? This all reminds me of draconian DRMs where you have to prove you are not criminal, and you, the legitimate customer, suffer, while the pirates get away with everything.

The last point is this. The goal of ensuring that one user always have one account is unrealistic. Imagine I have two computers at home. I create two accounts, and play one account from one computer and the other from the other computer. I tell pardus that the second account is my cat's. This is absolutely impossible to detect. I can prove that I have a cat, and my cat can confirm, that she is willing to give her in-game resources because she loves me. Ok, not cat. Sister. Mother. Flatmate. You choose.

So pardus, why all this annoyance if in the end you can't do anything to reach you goal? WoW is much more logical and consistent in this respect. You pay for 5 accounts and you can use them all. You can create many characters in the same world and you can trade items between them. Soul-bound items is mechanics that helps control that. It seems it is possible to implement the same thing less... severe.

I have an identified account - it was not at all complicated.
You ask why the annoyance. What annoyance?

Also, I have no idea how they actually implement their policy from a technical perspective. It seems to work though. There are are areas of the universe where the economy is controlled and prices fixed by alliances of players organizing supply/demand and resource control among other things and if there were not robust effective measures to prevent multi-accounting then this aspect of the game would definitely fail.
I know there is always metagaming in MMORPG', however, It is very difficult to maintain immersion in an RPG, especially PVP RPG's once the metagaming aspect crosses a certain threshold.
One of the things I like about Pardus is the enforced IC/OOC distinction in  chat and other game interaction. This is another sign that they are serious in how they want their game to be played - as an immersive RPG.

The comparison with DRM seems inapplicable. the point of this policy is to protect the players and the game balance. Not to protect revenue.

Probably the deterrent aspect of this is quite effective - social engineering and all that... They are quite 'In Your Face' about this policy. You are right that from a purely user agent or browser point of view there are a million ways to have many accounts. But if someone don't want to play the game as it is intended then it is just not worth the hassle so they move on. If they do want this then it is a refreshing change so they stay.

dM