Posts published during March, 2009
I’m having a hard time coalescing all my thoughts into a single post. Lately, I’ve been on something of an information overload, but it wound up perfectly timed to coincide with my running out of caffeine. I’m sure in the next few days I’ll undergo some sort of mental reboot and be back and ready to talk or something, but fore now I’m just completely sunk.
See you all in a bit.
I’ve decided that I’m tired of beating my head against the brick wall on programming. So I’m looking for a C# programmer who would be willing to help me out on Ronin Beat.
Requirements:
C# programming skills, obviously.
Twitter
Skype
6-8 hours a week.
Additional Ideal Qualifications:
Rock Band 1 for the 360
Call of Duty 4 for the 360
Genius creative ideas.
Shader programming experience.
So what am I offering you in payment… nothing up front. Sorry I’m broke. If we agree to monetize the game, it’s straight up 50/50 split of revenue. Otherwise it’s all pretty much interest driven.
Why should you work with me? Well for one because you’ll be working with me. For 2, I’m terribly disorganized, have no set schedule, and get side tracked on every interesting thing that crosses my desk… In other words, you’ll be the one setting the rhythm of the project. When it comes to programming I’m not a total idiot, for the most part I get it. Finally, because I care. No really, I do.
Was doing some reading and watching of good presentations. I started storyboarding this, and even though it’s not even close to being done I thought I’d share it anyways.
Agent Elise says, “Welcome to Dark Queen MUSH. I am agent Elise, this is agent Green, we are here to help you adjust to your first moments here in Dark Queen. As you play the game, you will spend most of your time talking to fellow users, so the first thing you’ll need to learn is how to speak. You can speak using the ‘say’ command, simply type in say then the message you want to speak, e.g. ‘say hello’. In order to continue beyond this tutorial, you will need to say ‘begin intro’ now.
It’s not exact, but that is the basic gist of the first part of a tutorial I wrote for a mush I was working on before it got completely wiped out. Without context it may not be so easy to see, but you may have noticed that the move commands are not explained at all. Before I would teach a new player how to move, I would require them to know how to speak. As I remember, the intro began with some quick notes on how to contact me for help as well.
Chatting is a fundamental system to all MMOs. In fact, even for solo players I would posit that you cannot play an MMO for any significant length of time without chatting. This should also be important to producers, since the amount of chatting a player does in their first few hours can be an overriding element in new player stickiness. Of course most players work these things out in-spite of the developers miserly hoarding of the information, but you never want to put yourself in a situation where a player is joining the game in-spite of your best efforts not because of them.
Also this wouldn’t be such an issue if the chat interfaces were simple, but in MMOs they tend to be rather complicated. Even more so, unlike MSN or Skype where the added complexity is added in a manner that partitions it away from the act of chatting itself, in an MMO all of the complexity is based around the basic chat line. You’ll need to manage tabs in order to view different channels you may be chatting on, which may or may not effect which channel the next message you type will go to. Talking across multiple channels may be a matter of mouse clicking to a different channel, a different tab, or the use of a / command which in turn may be ‘/[channel]‘ or ‘/[channel],’ and may or may not be capitalization agnostic. And all of this is required just to learn how to say something to the person you actually meant to say something too rather than the entire zone or even the entire world.
Yesterday a linguist, today a city planner. Tomorrow a programmer. Every day an artist.
God I’m tired.
Brief Translation of a First Year Ventrair Languages Class at Ventrair University’s Mokiin School of Law
For today’s lesson, we’ll delve into a single sentence of Late Isovedian. (Eye-so-ve-D-an) The sentence is the motto that surrounds our city’s official seal.
Matre u tch iiy uch kooam ututnua grio.
Literally translated to, Mother’s eye kind order maintains. Or more fluidly, “A mother’s kind eye maintains order.” This is in reference to the third paragraph of the Articles of Foundation in which Mokiin writes, “It is considered a simple truth that those who govern the children of Matre are not to be their rulers. The wisdom of Matre was to bring us the fundamentals of parenthood, and we hold it to be right to follow these principles in governance as well as daily life. Within the walls we have built, let no child stand as ruler over another, instead let the wisdom of the elders be looked upon as a means of guidance.”
So let’s take this a word at a time.
Matre is a word carried over into our language from Late Isovedian, though only as a proper noun. Nobody knows how it was carried over exactly, but the word seems to have survived primarily in the vocabulary of the Angels. It is in all likely hood from the those first Angel Children that Matre became the proper title that it is today. It’s important to remember though, that in Late Isovedian Matre was neither a proper title, nor a proper noun, making it a more general reference to all parents*.
U means eye. In the writing system of the Isovedians it was symbolized by a low line with a slight downwards tilt. Though it’s debatable whether this was a new invention of Old Isovedian, or left over from an even older ideographic language, the connection is quite clear.
The tch particle is used to assign a word to the before it. In this case it denotes the fact that the eye belongs to a parent. It’s important not to confuse the letter tch with a combination of the letters t, c, and h, though those letters will probably never be used together. Like the letter tre, tch uses a softer tuh sound, made by placing your tongue against your upper teeth rather than the roof your mouth. While tre, nua and gr have been adopted into modern Angel as sound rules, Demon still uses short hand letters for them. TCH and uch however have not survived to either language, as they existed solely in the use of particles which have been either replaced by suffix rules or removed completely.
The adjective iiy means kind and follows the y rule of double i adjectives. The entomology of iiy is still in a great deal of doubt. Unfortunately the section of the library ruins which housed the books on entomology was on the west end, which remained exposed to corrosion for roughly ten thousand years longer than the rest of the library.
The letter uch was used to denote that the word before it was an adjective or adverb. However, with language rules like the i rule, the y rule, for adjectives, it was instead simply wrapped into the u adverb in Angel and the uj suffix in Demon.
Kooam and ututnua can’t really be explained independently of each other. The words are only used in the context of governance and kooam is almost exclusively used with ututnua or atnua. Kooam refers to more than just order in the traditional sense, but order as an ideal of behavior in which the individual contributes to the flourishing of society around them. You can have, atnua, kooam, or maintain, ututnua, kooam, but rarely is it ever used as a stand alone subject. Also note that kooam is not a proper noun, it’s always considered plural and only exists as on the level of a concept. I’d recommend finding a translation of Ngra Amitte’s “Commentaries On Justice and Society” if you can, Oringa’s translation is my personal favorite as he’ll often explain where the Isovedian mind set differs from our own. Also Mokiin’s “Gathered Translations of Isovedian and Onos Philosophy” should have a section entitled “Kooam Atnua es Vern”. If you couldn’t guess from the Middle Onos in the title, the article focuses on differences in fundamental concepts between Isovedian law and Onos law.
I won’t go into kooam ututnua any more here, but as you can tell from it’s inclusion on the seal, it is an important concept to Ventrair law. There is a required course on it in the legal philosophy major even and more than a few of your professors are going to be looking for papers on it. Second year it’s going to be considered basic knowledge, so if your looking to impress one of those hard grade professors, you might want to fully understand it as soon as possible.
The sentence ends in grio, which means the preceding word was a verb. This was a rare word to use in Late Isovedian, and only came up in highly formal, and impersonal communication. Very much in line though with a governmental seal, or during an official governmental edict. If a city official were to write an open letter to the city’s police for instance it might have grio, however, if the empress of Isoved were sending a letter to, say for instance their top general, grio wouldn’t make it. Basically it means that the target audience is more important the level of formality, a relatively known audience wouldn’t have it, but an audience of unknown size or identity would have it.
Any questions? Yes, in the back.
Student: I’ve been interested in Isoved for a while now, I know it was named after one of their mythological heroes, Izoval, but I had heard that the names were once identical, is that true?
Yes, actually, we have found some corroborating sources that prove that the name of the country and the hero were exactly the same at one point. It ruffled some feathers among the fans of the united drift theory, that was a fun few months to be a languages professor, believe me. But back on topic, it has been found that in Old Isovedian the name of the country Isobal, is identical to the name of the hero at that point. It’s likely that towards the end of Old Isovedian, as the rules were beginning the shift as to what particular sounds implied, the ed sound was at some point considered to be a governmental sound. When exactly the s and z changed is unknown, however by the later end of Middle Isovedian we can see from their entertainment literature and plays that is was completely deprecated for fictional characters and iz was almost universally adopted instead, with only a scattered use of ix to compete with it.
Well, it looks like our time is about up now. If you have any further questions, just visit my office, the hours are in the syllabus.
*Translators note: The Ventrair have no concept of gender permanence, to them the words mother, father and parent are all relatively interchangeable. Also to refer to someone using male, female or neutral pronouns is generally more of an observation of how feminine, masculine or androgynous the person looks.
Well, I just got back from watching the Watchmen. (Yes I watch the watchmen, so that answers that question.)
I’m not sure I can really….. It’s going to take some time to articulate my feelings on this. I definitely loved the movie, but I loved it because of having read the book. Also there is some of the opinions of people who haven’t read the book going around that kind of give me epilepsy when I try to find the rationale behind them.
Anyways, short review, great movie, and read the fucking comic book.
Okay so we’re trying to a make an RTS-
A computer game.
-Like I said, an RTS. Now what races do we want?
Do we really need different races? Why not just use humans.
Humans are too boring, mate, and besides we like to see our specialties.
But why does that have to be reflected in the race, they’ll all have different uniforms and design aesthetics anyways.
It’s just a metaphor for different armies right, so why not focus on defining our armies and decide cosmetics later.
Well that’s what I meant in the first place.
Yeah, I’m sure.
Anyways, so offense specialists right, got to have the offense specialists.
Like do lots of damage per unit or lots of units.
I think of big units as more defensive, since you can’t risk them as easily.
True, so offensive army, lots of units… got it.
Well there should be a mix, maybe have bigger units that carry smaller units.
Like walking troop transports… could be cool.
Yeah but you’d need some way for the other armies to stop that, sounds like a pain to me.
Hey guys, why are we designing an RTS again?
Because we want something that sells.
Why not have like the first person story of one of the soldiers in one of those troop transports.
I don’t know, commanding an army from first person is a pain in the ass.
That’s not what I meant-
So yeah, maybe like a big wall the walker has to get over, with anti-transport turrets.
Ahh, that’s a good idea, but how about we make it so regular troops can just walk through it.
Then what was the point of having a big fucking walking transports in the first place.
Well they should still have more health, maybe they can get troops to the wall in the first place you know.
Hey how about we have some troops with anti-wall weapons. That way the transport walks up, and the player drops troops long enough to pound out the wall, then they all get back in and march through the base.
Hmmm, something doesn’t click totally, but sounds on the right track.
That would make an awesome Normandy-esque scene.
Nah the camera is too far back.
I’m still thinking in… oh forget it.
Why not make anti-wall vehicles. That way the troops stay inside all the way, but the player is forced to build a workable attack force.
That’s it, perfect.
So anyone think walking buildings would be an awesome hat for the offensive team? Those transports could just be their defensive bunkers you know.
Yeah, but now we know what the offensive team’s hat is, what about the defensive team? Don’t we need something for them to do about all this?
ECM.
Ahh, ECM.
What, what about ECM?
Well you know, have them shut down the vehicles and shit.
Electronic warfare all around, we can have them give to-hit penalties as well.
So maybe their story could be their a bunch of commandos, we’ll give them a bunch of expensive but powerful infantry and good base defenses.
Works for me.
Commandos vs….
Vs. Corporations!
Eh, sounds about right I guess. Great another game about evil corporations.
Who says they have to be evil, the commandos could be evil.
So evil government, also brilliantly original. Now all we need is the token aliens to unit them until they start discussing salvage rights.
Aliens… not a bad idea.
A very bad idea. No way I’m working on something that overdone.
Okay, no aliens, jeez…
So team three?
Do we need a team three?
Yes we need a team three.
Why…?
Because it’s the magic fucking number in RTS. If you want to succeed you have to have 3 races.
And we’re back on races.
Well hats, basic play styles, whatever. Doesn’t have to be races. (Though it should)
What are you muttering about now.
Nothing.
So team 3, what’s the hat. We’ve got walking buildings and electronics jamming.
Biological tech?
Nah, that would just be crapping all over the commandos.
Robots?
Would be a little too convenient for the commandos.
So how did the commandos wind up deciding what our third team would be?
They didn’t, but it’s not like we can make this in a vacuum.
Mixed forces?
Yeah… standard as all shit, but we may have to go with it. Put it down as the secondary option. We’ll use it if we can’t come up with something else.
Ambushers?
… Elaborate, please.
Well basically, the tech would be based on mobile groups and burrowing tech. Give them some decent mines and make their vehicles cheap and attack oriented.
Could use some refinement, I guess.
Well basically, they would be able to hide from the corporations, but not the commandos. The corps would have the numbers to take them on in head to head fights, while the commandos would have to fight them in almost guerrilla warfare style. Both would have their advantages, and their disadvantages against ‘em.
Works for me.
Yeah me too.
Okay guys, that’s it for today’s meeting. Tomorrow we talk units, let it simmer and hash some stuff in your head. Bring your laptops we may need to excel some figures and formulas.
Righto.
All right see you around… Wait, whose the evil side again.
Make it the new ones.
Shit, evil terrorists. Man we just get less and less original all the time.
Fine, make em all evil. We can just make them all self-righteous pricks and be done with it.
