New layout for the blog.

Updated the look. I felt like the old layout was missing something important, so I added some blood. Enjoy.

Learning ActionScript3.0 and Unreal Tournament 3 Editor.

During the past 3 months I’ve been learning ActionScript 3.0. I’m actually having a lot of fun with it and at the same time it has the tendency to really piss me off. There seems to be a common problem with the corruption of files and that eliminated nearly a months worth of work. It almost made my mind explode in anger but then I realized that 3 weeks worth of work during the process in which you’re new to the program will commonly turn into a about 6 days worth of work after you’ve gotten a bit used to the program and the syntax. I’m not entirely used to it yet but I’m pretty sure I can now move forward and eventually regain what I’ve lost. I’ve been making a game called Spectrum and I’ve completed demo of a mini-game mode for the game which is essentially a re-make of Asteroids(Asteroid Fight Mode).

There is one book that I give most of the credit to. ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University written by: Gary Rosenzweig. It is an awesome book and I’d recommend it to anyone that wants to begin making games using Flash. I’ll eventually post a link to the game but it needs a lot more work and I have a lot more studying ahead of me.

A good friend of mine, Chris, will be helping me out and we’ll transform Spectrum into a more interesting and intense shooter.

I am also studying the Unreal Tournament 3 Editor. I am still going through the tutorials but I look forward to becoming more efficient with it. It is exciting to turn things I’ve created in Maya and Max into something useful. I can’t wait to begin learning to manipulate physics, weapons and particle effects but that seems to be on a level beyond where I am currently at. Give me a few weeks and maybe I can begin with the more advanced stuff. Give me 3 months and hopefully I and the DRD team will have some previews for the Haven’s Fall mod.

Election Year…

So later this year you’ll hopefully be voting. It generally isn’t incredibly important in terms of the presidential election for myself. (McCain or Obama will win, I’d never vote for either) It is very important to consider local and state level representatives. Instead of blinding voting for your favorite party take the time to research what they stand for. Even consider putting into office people that aren’t part of the two major parties. Independents are good but also take a closer look at the Libertarian, Constitution and Green parties. I don’t think voting for these parties would be a waste of a vote (I actually think it is more meaningful than voting for a Democrat or Republican). But of course the best thing to do is to just research the candidates. If you’re upset with the results government has produced understand that the two major parties don’t really plan to change anything. You’ll get the same terrible results if you keep putting these fools into office.

Start doing research now! Don’t wait for the candidates to come to you with their campaign, go to them and do your research. If they are an incumbent be sure to check out their voting record to see if they deserve to be in office.

How to fail by studying Jack.

“Actually, I’m rated A/V by Martindale-Hubbell, which is the highest rating possible for a lawyer as to ethics and skill. The reason why the video game industry is “obsessed” with me is because I scare the crap out of them and with good reason. Be very afraid.” - Jack Thompson, Attorney to me.

Let me take a moment to have a good laugh. It is important to laugh! So Jack stopped by my blog in March and left me that comment. I thought it was pretty funny but in light of recent events it managed to give me another laugh. Maybe if he spent less time doing internet searches on his name he may have been more prepared for his disbarment.

Here is audio of JT storming out of court. http://www.dailybusinessreview.com/Web_Blog_Stories/June/Thompson_Bar_Discipline.html

Here is the transcript.
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/06/10/gp-exclusive-read-transcript-jack-thompson-storms-out-court

You could probably study all his courtroom behavior and make a course for students of law entitled “How NOT to conduct yourself in court.” Probably would be an introductory level course. I’m no law student but I think its fairly obvious that there are more efficient ways to conduct yourself in court.

So as far as Martindale-Hubbell goes… I’m not incredibly familiar with them but I’ll bet if they are a credible source they might want to take a look at their broken rating system. But Jack is right, he scares the crap out of people. Everyone will be especially scared if he ends up getting that “enhanced disbarment”. I might be speaking out a little early as this situation won’t begin coming to a close until later this year.

RP Fighting, DBZ Fan-Fic MORPIMUD and proof I’m a nerd.

So ever since I had access to the internet I’ve become a really big nerd in the sense that I’d do nerdy things. Role Play Fighting was one that was extremely fun and actually turned into my first game built with a group of people. So basically it is forming statements that describe actions that are enclosed in brackets, colons, or any other kind of symbol really. The way I recall doing it::

Say Jon and I are in a chat room.

Tommy types: ::runs over to Jon and swings his right fist at his jaw::

Jon can dodge by typing ::dodge::

Or I can hit him by typing ::hit::

Now there are rules that are usually set in place before you start such as minimum amount of words per attack and how many times you have to hit before you defeat/kill you opponent. Killing is up to the fighter, its generally considered an asshole thing to do. But there is more to it than just attacking and declaring a hit or a dodge. You also have to compensate for the environment you invent along the way.

Example:

Jon and I are in a chat room again:

Jon: ::Runs over to Tommy, performing a roundhouse kick to his chest:::

Tommy: ::Block::

Jon: ::Hit::

Tommy: ::Catches his foot and uses it to throw him through the wall::

Tommy: ::Hit::

Jon: ::Evade::

See now, what happened here was that I blocked a kick (because I typed block before he did) and then I used his foot to throw him through a wall. I declared a hit before he declared an evade so I not only achieve a hit but I have to now walk into the other room to perform another attack. Or Jon has to come into the same room I am to perform an attack on me. So it can get very interesting depending on who is fighting but there are some flaws. One; You have to be an efficient typer. Two; There can be disagreements on spelling and its always better to have a ref there to be sure the rules agreed upon were followed. Three: one person becomes dominate by simple being the better typer/writer.

All of these flaws, and a few other minor ones, were noted and from that a group of friends that would use AOL Instant Messenger to enjoy this Role Play Fighting created a Dragon Ball Z Fan-Fiction Manually Operated Role Play Intensive Multi User Dungeon. Yes, DBZ Fan-Fic MORPIMUD. That is what I call it now but what we called it then was DBZ RPG because of the RPG elements that were present in the design. We removed the element of the game of “who can type faster” but kept the general format of typing your attacks into colons and or asterixs or slashes. We created mathematical equations for each attack be it a special energy attack, a physical attack or a mixture of both. You had a collection of stats such as Energy, Physical Strength, Intelligence, Stamina, Speed, Physical Defense and Energy Defense. You added all of this up to get your total “Power Level” and after every fight you’d earn more points to distribute to your character as well as money in which you could use to purchase items or special training. Training was important and it happened on a weekly basis. You train for a week and you earn points, so technically you don’t have to fight but if you want to be competitive then you pretty much have to. You could purchase items to assist you in battle, in training or even during Journeys. Journeys were used to find the Dragon Balls and were nothing special. Basically it was simulated dice rolls to see if you found anything and if you did find something they determined what you found. If you are familiar with Dragon Ball Z you know if you find all seven Dragon Balls you are granted a wish(Three if you are on Namek). We had limits though, such as you could only wish for so much stat increase and money to ensure the game didn’t get thrown too much out of balance but it wasn’t very common to attain all seven Dragon Balls so it never became an issue. The Dragon Balls were awesome to keep the members fighting for purpose because if you win a battle you can either have mercy, kill, or steal an item. So if you had a Dragon Ball you would probably not be killed, instead you’d lose a Dragon Ball. In the world of DBZ death is handled differently. You don’t stop playing, your character survives in another world. You can still train and fight in that world, but only with people that were also in that world. Everything we did in terms of design decisions were taken back to the DBZ series so since we were all really big DBZ fans we already had all the research and knowledge required.

Surprisingly the game worked and it worked well. There wasn’t really any balance issues but before it ended we were talking about adding bounties to add another element to motivate people to fight. We did test it a bit before allowing other people to join but that didn’t take very long at all. Since it was a fan-fiction game we also took the members and wrote Sagas. So yes the narrative was mainly taken from the show Dragon Ball Z but we made up our own DBZ world with our own Sagas and stories to tell. We had our own NPCs and even allowed every single member to take part in the story and to have their own personal back-story. I know I’m probably missing a few elements of the DBZ Fan-Fic MORPIMUD in here but essentially that is it. It was operated through instant messenger services and JavaScript chat rooms. It was hosted on Angel Fire though we used the blank HTML editor box to make each page. It had a wide variety of classes with special abilities, a large list of items that were used in different ways, a list of planets and locations for the members to travel to, and even gave members the chance to customize their own attacks and weapons. I’m honestly surprised it worked so smoothly but I think a lot of it is the fact it seems that DBZ can be so easily translated into a RPG type game. There are still some websites similar to the one we ran but after a search through them I honestly have to say the one we operated was much more detailed and allowed the users to do more.

It had one flaw that effectively breaks the game. It was Manually Operated and that limits how many players you can have. Even with half a dozen “Refs” (Or Game Masters) we struggled to keep the website updated to allow everyone to battle frequently. While it was fun, I can’t imagine how insane the immersion factor would have been if it was made into a game that didn’t require GMs. We already had members logged into the chat rooms during all hours of the day from all over the country but we simply did not have the time to operate it even when I used visual basic to make a battle calculator for the refs.

Funny Addition: I did a research on my old handle I used for this game, which was Rancid Reaper. I found a “History Lesson” from a game that was apparently adapted from our design. http://www.angelfire.com/rpg/dragonswish/History.htm

It is not by any means an accurate description of what actually had taken place. Manatoba and I founded it, Naeo and Haven jumped on board after that and the rest of the description is plain garbage leaving out other people that contributed to the game and giving credit to those who I don’t even recognize. Regardless of how grossly inaccurate it is…it brings back memories and makes me laugh. I use the handles because I don’t know if they want me to use their actual names. I’ve known many of them most of my life and still talk to one fairly frequently(I am actually talking to one as I type this). One is currently in Iraq and another I can’t get in contact with for the life of me.

Acheiving Mastery

One thing I’d like to do in the distant future is to achieve mastery in the art of game design.  I pretty much consider it a requirement.  Now before you can even do that you have to realize a number of things I imagine.  Things such as where you are at now and where you need to be to continue towards the next step on the path toward mastery.

For one thing you need to have the required knowledge to become a master of anything.  So the first part of my goal requires learning, lots and lots of learning.  Its tricky with game design as I find myself disagreeing with individuals that have an insane amount of experience in making games.  And I think that is completely normal because games are supposed to be fun and you are supposed to be creating this fun.  Simply put its hard to label something as fun because what is fun for you might be boring or even agonizing to me.  A perfect example is Trivia games and games that require you to be loud and possibly take part in embarrassing scenarios. I hate them.  Well maybe hate is a strong word, I refuse to play them because I dislike them so much.  They don’t interest me, they make me angry and I don’t want to embarrass myself.  Its not fun for me to play those games but that is not to say that those style of games are not fun.

However, It is important to note that knowledge can never be enough to achieve mastery over a form of art.  Experience is a requirement and probably the second thing you need to seek after knowledge.  You need to actually put your knowledge to the test but that isn’t to say experience is more valuable than knowledge.  This can be traced back to the individual and how they process information and gain knowledge and experience.  While one person can think extensively in theories others have to actually just do it.  Personally I love to create theories and play them out in my brain or with notepad or pen/pencil.  I know others prefer to just start making stuff but it really is rooted in the way your brain absorbs this information.  Either way the truth is you need experience and you need to make games.  It is important to every game designer though I prefer to think creating your own theories will play an irreplaceable part in learning the art of game design.

As you gain knowledge and experience you are also struggling to achieve efficiency.  This is one thing that pisses me off to no extent.  I know that if I had just a bit more knowledge and just a bit more experience I would be able to shave hours off each project and use that extra time to contribute in other areas.  I absolutely despise re-doing work and I can’t stand the fact that after I do something I found another method that would have saved me time.  Though I know these experiences ultimately make me more efficient I just wish there was an easier way to achieve this than screwing up.  Wasted time sucks not only for you but for teammates.  To achieve mastery you have to be efficient in every sense of the word.

After you gain these things I would imagine that you could possibly master the art of game design but really when is that?  Will there ever be a time where you know you’ve mastered something?  And really is there more to mastery than knowledge, experience and efficiency?  There has to be.  Creativity has to mean something and of course natural talent also will be meaningful.

Kind of strange, I have only started my career as a game designer and I am trying to figure out how I can master the art.  It is almost like starting a new game.  You’re the newb and you’re trying to find the best way to become a high level character.  I imagine it might have a similar progression line as it would leveling up in a game.  You gain a bunch of levels at fist then later you start leveling up much more slowly and you also have to work much harder at it.  I really don’t know, this is all speculation.

NOTICE - WEBSITE IS DOWN

If you’re reading this blog and wondering why my website is unavailable it is because the company I formerly used for domain registration and hosting is holding it hostage for a while.  I’m just waiting to move my domain to a new company with a better domain registration hosting package. I’m also hoping they won’t spam me as much as the previous company did.  Unfortunately, even after asking, I am uncertain for how long this domain hostage situation will last so I apologize to anyone that wanted to see my website that badly needed an update.  I’m sure you’ll be happy when I finally get it registered again and update it a little bit.  So for now this is my website.