Monthly Archives: January 2006

At What Price Progress?

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Today (or I guess, yesterday) was the first day in a long while I’ve made real tangible progress with my work, instead of just doing research or clerical and maintenance work. So instead of downloading and installing and re-installing and [...]

Today (or I guess, yesterday) was the first day in a long while I’ve made real tangible progress with my work, instead of just doing research or clerical and maintenance work. So instead of downloading and installing and re-installing and reading documentation and uninstalling and re-re-installing, I actually wrote a good bit of code.

About 12 hours’ worth of code, by my calculations.

Now, while I’m pleased that I actually have something to show for my work, it would’ve been nice to see some daylight today other than the bits and flashes I got while out smoking. This was pretty much my M.O. at my previous jobs, too — long periods of brainwork (which looked to the casual and ignorant observer like inactivity) followed by a consolidated way-too-long chunk of work time that actually gets results.

Do normal people grow out of their college work schedule, or am I doomed to cram sessions for the rest of my life?

(Incidentally, my friend and once-again-coworker Chris reminded me the other day about my last project at LucasArts, which was a total failure of a scripting language that was supposed to be a combination of lua and C++. Turns out that JavaScript is exactly what I was trying to make, but I didn’t know that at the time. My version was still a failure, but it’s nice to see that I was on kind of the right track at least.)

One of the sites I’ve been reading a lot lately (other than the java online documentation) is Lifehacker. It’s a blog that’s filled with tips and recommendations that will supposedly make your life more organized. For me, though, it always ends up taking up more of my time. They’ll recommend some huge time-saving new application, like Path Finder or Quicksilver or Yojimbo. I’ll download it and install it. I’ll try it out, add my stuff to it, get a feel for how it works.

I’ll invariably fail, and go back to doing things “the old way.” But not just the old way, I’ll go back all the while knowing I could be doing things more efficiently. So every one is like an added weight.

I think what I really need is a true personal organizer — not some PDA or desktop widget or does-everything organizer app, but a real organizer. Somebody who’s really on top of things and can make sense of the 48 hours worth of stuff I want to do in the 12 or so hours I’m actually awake each day. Somebody who’ll pay my bills, get caught up on my e-mails and personal obligations, point me to the internet stuff I’m actually interested in and filter out the rest, who’ll teach me how to play the banjo and speak Japanese and draw, all while I’m playing World of Warcraft or getting caught up with my Netflix queue.

ASIMO, I’m waiting for you, buddy.

Strategery

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I don’t like real-time strategy games. You’d think I could just accept that and move on, but they keep putting in stuff that makes me think I’m going to like them. This one lets you build things! You like that [...]

The Rebel Transport and AT-AT were my favorite toys.I don’t like real-time strategy games. You’d think I could just accept that and move on, but they keep putting in stuff that makes me think I’m going to like them. This one lets you build things! You like that SimCity game, don’t you, Chuck? This one has samurai; who doesn’t like samurai? This one has “an RPG-like campaign mode.” You like RPGs! Buy it now!

Sometimes when I’m weak all they’ve got to do is advertise elves and dwarves and shit. I don’t even like elves or dwarves as a rule. Who would?

The most insidious way to trick me into liking an RTS, though, is to put a bunch of AT-ATs and AT-STs and speeder bikes and rebel transports into it. Star Wars: Empire at War does that, which is why it’s evil. The game demoes very, very well. After watching the tutorial, I was already hooked. Hooked and disturbed, because I don’t like the thought of living in a world where LucasArts is making good games again.

Once I got past the tutorial and into the game part of the demo, the universe settled back into its recognizable form. Bad-ass spaceships aside (and none of that Naboo shit, either — this is a real Star Wars game), it’s still an RTS and I still don’t get the appeal.

It could be just because I suck at them; I’m not exactly Sun Tzu when it comes to strategy. Hell, I’m not even Sonny Bono when it comes to strategy. I’m not even Chastity Bono when it comes to strategy. I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. What’s happening? Since when did I start writing a weblog? Are you there, internets? It’s me, Margaret.

So yeah, anyway. I get easily distracted and don’t do good with the strategy games. Put a whole bunch of soldiers and tanks and a selection rectangle in front of me and all of a sudden I’m like the eople who say, “You work in videogames? I played Tetris!”

So Empire at War looks bad-ass and is tempting and all, but seeing as how I can’t win the demo, it’s probably not the game for me. I just hope I can keep that in mind the next time I’m in the game-buying place and I see the spaceships on the box and my eyes glaze over and my hand goes to my wallet. Every time I think of the unused copies of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft and Warcraft 2 and Rise of Nations it just bears out my secret shame. I don’t like real-time strategy games.

Merge Right

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When Robert Iger showed up at that Apple announcement last year to bring “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” to the iPod, people were saying it showed that Steve Jobs and Disney were close pals now that Michael Eisner was gone. Maybe [...]

When Robert Iger showed up at that Apple announcement last year to bring “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” to the iPod, people were saying it showed that Steve Jobs and Disney were close pals now that Michael Eisner was gone. Maybe there was something to that, because Disney finally bought Pixar.

I guess things were going in that direction for a while, so it was inevitable. I couldn’t be less of an insider as far as the film/animation studio business goes, but at least from a surface assessment (Disney animation needs more innovation, Pixar animation needs more market profile) it makes sense. I also like seeing press releases that mention billions of dollars of stock transitions and “imagination” and “dreams” and “the child in everyone” all on the same page.

I didn’t notice any mention of whether they’re going to keep the Pixar brand name. If nothing else, it’ll reduce some of their ad text, so for parades and rides and such they can finally stop saying, “A Walt Disney Animation Production of a Pixar Studios Film Monsters, Inc.“

First!

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Warning: This post is about World of Warcraft. Like the other 200 million people who play the game, I’ve got ideas on how to make it better. Since reading the official forums just makes me sad, and since there are [...]

Warning: This post is about World of Warcraft.

Like the other 200 million people who play the game, I’ve got ideas on how to make it better. Since reading the official forums just makes me sad, and since there are at least a couple of people who read this blog who are interested in videogames, I’m posting my Genius Plan here.

My biggest problems with the game are:

  • Permanence: Nothing you do has any permanent effect. Enemies respawn, zones stay the same as they were before. The best you can hope for is to give a one-hour boost to people on your side, or inconvenience the players on the other side. The solution is to make your actions as a player have some lasting effect that isn’t instantly negated but also doesn’t ruin the game for other players.
  • Fiction: The game’s good on gameplay, lousy on story. Even if you take the time to read the quest descriptions, there’s not much point because they all pretty much devolve into “Kill ten murlocs and come back here.” Instances and dungeons make a better attempt to tell a story, but you never get the chance to really be involved in it because the people you’re playing with have already done this dungeon (or battleground) dozens of times before and want to get right to it. The solution is to involve players in the story instead of just the mechanics, but without just adding a dozen long text descriptions of the Amulet of Riz’Fal’Ptah that don’t really matter to anyone except the guy who wrote it and imagined it was going to be so wicked awesome.
  • Differentiation: No matter what the whiners say, the classes and races are all pretty well balanced. This means that you end up doing basically the same thing with every character, just in slightly different ways. There is some strategy involved when you’re in a big party in a dungeon, but for the most part you’re just killing monsters and grinding. The solution is to have things that only certain classes can do, while keeping the game balanced.

Plus, it just seems like the game should be more like Warcraft and less like Diablo. Just because that’s its name and all.

So here’s my Grand Vision, presented for free on the internets: emphasize resources and control points. They do this in the Alterac Valley battleground, but that’s a cordoned-off area that doesn’t have any relevance to the rest of the game. I’d like to see that concept carried throughout the whole game world.
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Helpless, Damp, and Warm

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These days when I’m watching my stories, they all start out with the reminder that I could be watching them in glorious High Definition. Why wouldn’t I? I blew a ton of money that could’ve otherwise gone to a charity [...]

TiVo LogoThese days when I’m watching my stories, they all start out with the reminder that I could be watching them in glorious High Definition. Why wouldn’t I? I blew a ton of money that could’ve otherwise gone to a charity on a television that was state of the art for at least two weeks after I bought it. And DirecTV makes entering the HDTV generation easy!

Well, easy if you buy a $600 HD DVR with TiVo. And a two-year service agreement. And the additional antenna to pick on-air HD signals, which because of an FCC ruling, satellite providers like DirecTV can’t duplicate. And you may or may not be able to get the $200 rebate on the DVR if you’re an existing customer; I’ve asked four different people (including a confused woman on DirecTV’s call-in customer support, who didn’t know what I was talking about and had to read the website along with me).

And you may or may not be able to find a unit other than through the company directly, as I discovered when I went to two separate Best Buy stores (I wanted to use a gift card, to help soften the blow) and finally was able to chase down somebody to answer my questions. They didn’t know the answers, and it was irrelevant since they were out of stock on the DVRs and weren’t expecting any more.

Because of the break-up between DirecTV and TiVo, they’re now pushing their own separate brand of DVR. But only for the regular models; they’re still selling the HD version using the TiVo service, until they can come out with their own HD equivalent. But they have just launched a new satellite to support MPEG-4 broadcasts of HDTV — which the current HD DVRs can’t work with. So if you buy one now, you’re spending 400 to 600 bucks on something that isn’t guaranteed to be compatible with the service that may or may not launch sometime this year. Possibly.

I looked into EyeTV and other ways to use a computer as a DVR, but haven’t found one that works with satellite providers. Plus the only computer I could spare is the mini, which isn’t fast enough to record HDTV.

The whole business is just giving me flashbacks to when my brother would chase me down the hall, tackle me to the ground, and tickle me until I peed myself. It’s at the point where even I have to take a step back and just say that the whole business is ridiculous. A stupid amount of effort and money for something as dumb and frivolous as television.

In other entertainment frustration news: I lost interest in “24″ sometime around the middle of the third season, and I didn’t watch any of last season. But I’d read that the premiere of season 5 was spectacular, not to be missed and all that, so I set it up to record. When I got back from LA and settled down to have my socks metaphorically blown off by the gripping adventure, I found a “partial recording” of the last 30 minutes of the two-hour premiere.

I started trying to piece together what had happened, and as far as I can make out, the TiVo decided to record “Iron Chef” and “Harvey Birdman” over the first hour and a half of the premiere. Except that I can’t find those recordings; they only show up in the recording history. It’s almost like the TiVo knew it’d done something bad and was desperately trying to cover its tracks. I still can’t tell what happened, since it’s supposed to be set up to avoid stuff like that. I can only guess that it’s upset about the whole DirecTV deal and is lashing out at me. All I’m saying is I don’t need my DVR giving me no lip.