I’m done with college. For now and ever more. So, as a projects blog, I’ll give you now a rundown of my situation and what I’ve got on my plate, or at least planned.
Tag Archives: games
Fast & Loose Roleplaying, etc.
I’ve been working on one of my roleplaying projects again and I think the groundwork, the basic system, is finally pretty much under control.
For a long time the working title of this game has been FaLoR (Fast & Loose Roleplaying). That’s one of the things I’d like to change at some point in the future. At the time I came up with it I thought it was short and had visual balance. But the more I read it the more it sounds like a cross between Valor and Fallacy, plus it’s got this weird EvErY OtHeR LeTtEr CaPs thing going on that is bugging me a bit.
Review: Star Wars Battlefront
I was inspired to write this after reading dick’s gripe about 1st person shooters. Because I feel his pain, and no one should have to put up with that (crap).
But first, of course, the digression:
WTF: Cthulhupunk
When did this happen?
Nintendo Midis
As per bear’s request, I checked out the possibility of converting NSFs to Midi format, specifically the Spelunker theme for his cell phone. After quick consulting with my Minibosses friends I found there is quite a nice app for that called nsf2midi that not only does a great job of aproximating the sound from the NSFs, but also lets you tweak everything from there. For example, when converting the Spelunker theme it set a closed high-hat or something instead of a snare, but I was able to just change all that with a drop-down menu. So, if anyone needs a conversion, it looks like I’m open for business.
Roleplayer Blues
So generally I spend most of my free time messing around with pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Although I don’t know if “messing around” is exactly the right phrase to describe what I do. Maybe it would be more accurate to say “wallowing in them and obsessing over them like a junkie with his drug of choice”. There are a lot of people who suffer from this particular habit apparently and I usually get encouragement in my addiction from the good people over at rpg.net.
Some of these people do actually seem to be decent, well balanced folks. But when I say “good people” here I am of course using this phrase ironically or at least as flattery. I mean “good people” in the same sense that western Europeans of centuries past referred to the fairies as “the good people”. Basically in that many are wise or impressive, but also strange or unkenable and likely as not alien to the narrator’s cosmology and morality. The sort of creatures that should be referred to as “good” out of politeness lest they take a malign interest in the you and curdle your milk or worse.
These good people keep me engaged with their threads on roleplaying matters. But after awhile the really compelling threads stop coming so I’m forced to turn to my own devices and get back to the actual RPG design that I claim to be some kind of minor expert in.
I Hate First Person Shooters
We all loved it when Wolfenstein 3D came out, followed by Doom 2, finally allowing us to shoot people in 3 dimentions. Such a revolution in gaming has been followed by, well, it hasn’t been followed by anything but the same. The recent “revolutionary” releases of Doom 3, Half Life 2 and Halo 2 have shown us that not a goddam thing has changed in recent gaming except for graphics.
To illustrate my point, here’s an anecdote: Bear and I borrowed Hordak’s Xbox for a couple days just to play the original Halo. I thought to myself, “Oh, cool, with 2 players cooperating, sitting right next to each other, this could lead to really good teamplay.” This image was quickly shattered as the height of teamplay became Bear yelling “GRENADE!”, me fumbling with tunnel vision to find where on the ground he threw it and, a couple seconds later, taking the full blast from under my feet.
This is the frustrating thing about first person shooters, yet it brings up a more fundamental issue about video games and games in general. All games are designed to simulate something and make it “easier” than before. Now, the sense of “easier” here means alot of things, including less expensive, less dangerous, less tiring, quicker or just possible in the first place.
Consider sports for a second. These are physical games that simulate combat to some degree. Boxing, wrestling, rugby and football are more direct in that effect but even badminton and swimming involve physical competition with a declared loser, and losing symbolizes death. Sports as competition invoke physical aspects of parties and declares winners, usually without any necissary harm to anyone involved. This, less dangerous, is one sense of “easier” stated above.
Back to video games, they simulate taking on challenges that no one is ever up to. Shooting guns, flying planes or slaying dragons are all less expensive, easier and, in the case of the dragons, only possible in the first place through video games. Mario and Luigi can jump forward and land a few steps behind. The dude from Grand Theft Auto can steal cars with the press of a button and the player at home really doesn’t get arrested. That’s not to say that everything in a video game is easier than anything in life. It’s that the parallels should be easier. Here’s a checklist for first person shooters and how they compare to real life.
- Shooting a gun = easier, less expensive, less dangerous
- Movement = quicker, easier, less tiring
- Being on a space station, fighting aliens = only possible through games
- The ability to glance down at your feet, taking in 180 degree peripheral vision = COMPLETELY NON-EXISTANT
This is exactly what’s wrong with first person shooters. Until this is seriously addressed, there will be no more “revolutionizing” of first person shooters, unless you’re the kind that counts graphical facelifts.
M.U.L.E. Online
What I’ve been waiting for since soon after I got a computer is finally here: We can now play M.U.L.E. on the internet. M.U.L.E. is renown with gamers and game developers alike for its non-zero sum game strategy and simple interface. M.U.L.E. pits 4 players in a Monopoly-like experience that simulates planet colonization, dealing with economic principles such as supply and demand, price theory, economies of scale, learning curve theory of production, diminishing returns and more. Now keep in mind that M.U.L.E.’s interface only includes Atari joystick controls, 1 control stick and 1 button, meaning no keyboard to actually input numbers, but it still manages to handle a complex economic production and trade system. Also keep in mind that multiplayer games with multiple levels of interaction came decades ahead of its time with M.U.L.E. in 1983. Expect more on the game itself later.
An online friend from a M.U.L.E. forum put some time and effort in and figured out how to work an Atari emulator, Atari800Win, using Kaillera, a net connection system, to play M.U.L.E. over the nets. The end result is a zip of all the needed files that’s under a meg large and a budding online community that we are trying to expand. Notable is also that it’s possible to play with all 4 human players, which is exicting since the less AI in the game, the more unpredictable the games get.
Of course this is only for Windows machines, so we’ll have to see if we can get this working with any other OS.
kareshi’s Ghosts and Goblins: Part 2
As I promised, here are kareshi‘s final videos of how to beat, as he says, the “difficult” part of the toughest game ever:
Level 5
Level 6
Final Fight with Lucifer
Apparently it sends you to a second quest cause the whole thing was an illusion. Not much changes except the red devils get 2 shots instead of one, which is very important to level 3.
Ghosts and Goblins: Master Class
A guy, who goes by kareshi, whom Loki and I met in person at Magfest has decided to put up videos with commentary of how to beat, what has been dubbed by many as, the hardest game ever: Ghosts and Goblins. Here are the links to the first 3 levels:
The bitch is that he makes it look so easy. Try it yourself if you haven’t lately.
More to come.
kareshi is mostly known for his piano renditions of vintage Nintendo tunes.