Bao of Space

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 28 of 30

2010-03-29T20:53:00.000-04:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 28 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/27_20030120-2.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 27 of 30

2010-02-04T21:09:00.001-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 27 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/26_20070109.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 26 of 30

2010-02-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 26 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/25_20070124.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 25 of 30

2010-02-02T20:41:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 25 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/24_20070413.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 24 of 30

2010-02-01T09:56:00.001-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 24 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/23_20070920.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 23 of 30

2010-01-29T09:46:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 23 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/22_20080221.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 22 of 30

2010-01-28T22:04:00.001-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 22 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/21_20030421-2.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 21 of 30

2010-01-27T09:51:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 21 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/20_20030519-2.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 20 of 30

2010-01-26T18:05:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 20 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/19_20081216.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 19 of 30

2010-01-25T19:16:00.001-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 19 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/18_20080518.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 18 of 30

2010-01-15T19:12:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 18 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/17_20080317.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 17 of 30

2010-01-14T09:18:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 17 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/16_20050423.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 16 of 30

2010-01-13T20:07:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 16 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/15_20070916.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 15 of 30

2010-01-12T19:23:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 15 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/14_20080112.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 14 of 30

2010-01-11T08:55:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 14 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/13_20050404.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 13 of 30

2009-12-29T23:06:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 13 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/12_20080201.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 12 of 30

2009-12-29T23:05:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 12 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/11_20071024.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 11 of 30

2009-12-25T09:15:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 11 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/10_20070603.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 10 of 30

2009-12-24T09:49:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 10 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/09_20030207-2.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 9 of 30

2009-12-24T09:48:00.002-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 9 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/08_20081007.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 8 of 30

2009-12-24T09:48:00.001-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 8 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/08_20090209.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 7 of 30

2009-12-21T22:04:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 7 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/07_20080512_loadbearing.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 6 of 30

2009-12-19T02:52:00.001-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 6 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/06_20071220.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 5 of 30

2009-12-17T18:33:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 5 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/05_20061104.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 4 of 30

2009-12-16T09:24:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 4 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/04_20080823.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 3 of 30

2009-12-16T09:23:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 3 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/03_20080108.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 2 of 30

2009-12-14T19:03:00.000-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 2 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/02_20081106.gif

SMBC - Favourite Comics - Day 1 of 30

2009-12-13T12:57:00.002-05:00

I recently started reading the web comic SMBC, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It took a few weeks but I finally looked at the first 1600 comics :) Since I'm not using this blog that much, over the next 30 or so days, I will choose my 30 favourite "safe for web / mostly safe for children" comics.

These 30 comics are not in order. This is day 1 of 30. I recommend firefox extensions Linkification and/or Text-To-Image. Enjoy!

http://www.baomon.com/blog/smbc/20070501_u.gif

Scarecrow Joke

2009-09-23T23:49:00.002-04:00

This is one of the best jokes I've heard in a while. Jon told it to us today during dinner.

Why did the Scarecrow win the Nobel Prize?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Because he was out standing in his field!

Draw First, Play First

2009-07-10T11:35:00.002-04:00

Okay, so David and I had a mini-discussion the other day, but it was more like a one-sided argument, so basically I'm setting up a discussion here about the advantages of Drawing First over Playing First.

Long story short, I would never choose to Draw First, and now someone has to tell me why some people would do it.

It's pretty obvious why aggressive decks go first; the sooner a creature comes out, the sooner it can attack, and the earlier it will deal damage.

But other decks? Don't they want to go first too? I know if I was playing a deck with a bunch of counterspells, I would ALWAYS want to have 3 lands before my opponent gets to 3 lands. Never in a game of magic will I let the opponent purposely get more lands before I do.

More lands = More Power; so you can counter stuff, kill stuff, cast spells, etc. I would always want to reach X lands before my opponent reaches X lands.

So... why would anyone choose to go Second?

Because You Have To

2009-05-04T14:31:00.000-04:00

When Ravnica was about to come out, there was a preview card: Watchwolf. In the article, it said that "every green/white deck should run Watchwolf, unless the theme is so tight that you can't run Watchwolf." Basically, Watchwolf is a very, very efficient creature, and it should always be in a deck. However, if the deck has a theme, then putting a vanilla 3/3 creature in the deck won't help the theme out, and therefore you won't run Watchwolf.

Similarly, I was just thinking to myself, how can Vinh's "clash" deck be better? In case you're wondering, the deck is based on the "clash" mechanic in Lorwyn. The deck is a red-green-white deck, and it was created when Lorwyn was out and hasn't been greatly modified since then; a few Naya-lands were inserted and some Vivid lands were taken out, but not much else. So I thought to myself... the power level has obviously increased since Lorwyn, so should we put in Naya cards? Well, yes. Put in Woolly Thoctar!

Like Watchwolf, Woolly Thoctar is amazingly efficient, and a very scary card on turn 3, or basically on any turn. The problem is, Woolly Thoctar, like Watchwolf, does nothing to help the "clash" theme. So, there's an obvious conflict.

If you want to win more games, you put in more Woolly Thoctars and Watchwolves. But a goal of a theme deck isn't really to win; it's to play out the theme. Winning should be a consequence of having the theme work. So on one hand, you'll feel good if your theme deck wins because of the theme. On the other hand, it's frustrating and annoying when your deck keeps losing.

So... yeah. There's a conflict. You want your theme deck to do well, so that other decks will have both fun and a challenging time when facing it... but you don't really want to detract from the theme.

Anyway, there's another card I wanted to talk about, because it detracts from themes. Like Watchwolf and Woolly Thoctar, it's a good card that should be in any decks that could run them. That card is... well, it's not just a card. It's a whole type of card. That type is... removal.

It's really annoying to have to put in removal cards in theme decks. The other day I was talking about making a deck with Time Sieve, and how there are cards in it to help you activate it, and other cards that help you find it. So there were cards that help with making artifact tokens. Then there are cards that help you find and cast those artifact-token-makers quicker, earlier, and more reliably in the game. There are cards that help you draw cards; that said, drawing cards is almost always good, no matter what the theme is. But I digress.

With all these cards helping one another, it's really annoying to have to put removal into the deck. Removal does nothing to help you find and cast Time Sieve, but you know that you'll need it if you want to win games. It's... so annoying though!

That's basically what I wanted to say in this article - removal is good, like, very good, like Woolly Thoctars, but it's hard to find a place in a theme deck. Anyway, I would stop this article here, but I thought about it some more, and there are a few solutions to this problem.

The first, which is something that Wizards has to do that we can't, is to make cards that are removal, but also deal with the theme. Like, you wouldn't run Lightning Bolt in a clash deck, but you would run Lash Out; it acts like a Lightning Bolt, but it also clashes, which goes with the clash theme. Or you wouldn't run Cone of Flame in my Necroskitter/Wither deck, but you would run Incremental Blight. So, there are cards that Wizards make, that are removal, but also deal with the theme.

The second thing is... make your theme such that these necessary cards also help your theme! For example, if you have a typical Naya deck that cares about creatures with power 5 or greater, you wouldn't feel bad for running Woolly Thoctar, because it helps with your theme (but you still won't run Watchwolf). If you're running a re-animation deck, removal like Knollspine Invocation is quite welcome. If you're running a deck with Kresh and Hissing Igunar, you'd also love a lot of removal.

Maybe it's these decks that are the most fun. They have removal and big creatures, which are both great factors in winning, but they also incorporate a theme which works very nicely with these cards.

Time Sieve Annuity

2009-04-27T11:59:00.003-04:00

I'm trying to think of a deck that can use Time Sieve properly, without already having won the game. I mean, in Type 2, in order to have a lot of artifact token creatures you would most likely need a Sharding Sphinx. In order to have a perpetual Time Sieve, you need Sharding Sphinx to make 5 tokens a turn. In order for that to happen, you have to deal combat damage with 5 artifact creatures every turn, which probably means the opponent is dead already, or they will die the turn after Time Sieve is activated, in which case Time Sieve is just a different "take another turn after this" "SORCERY" rather than a "turn taking ENGINE", which is something which we are trying to abuse, rather than just use once.

So in that case, Time Sieve is a win condition, but I don't think that's what we're trying to do. So instead of thinking about Time Sieveing every turn by sacrificing 5 new artifacts every turn, we have to think of a deck where we can have a reliable Annuity. I think that's what it's called.

What I mean is, is if you put $100 in the bank and you get 5% interest per year, and then at the end of each year you take out $5.00, then you can do this infinite times. But what if you only get 3% interest? Then you can do it a lot of times, but not infinite, but since I don't think you plan to live infinite years, this might be a good solution for you. 1% interest? Same thing. 0% interest? Well, now you're living on a clock, because you'll run out of money in a finite amount of time.

So, what I'm saying is that you don't plan to take infinite turns in a row. In order to win the game, you probably don't need infinite turns; maybe four additional turns is enough. Maybe two additional turns is enough. So you build your deck around that.

Of course, in this case the $5.00 is the number of artifacts you sacrifice, and the % interest is related to the number of new artifacts you make each turn. The $100 is a bit wrong, since you don't control 100 artifacts, but I digress. So instead of making 5 new artifacts and sacrificing 5 artifacts each turn, maybe you can make 4 new artifacts, sacrificing those and 1 of your own, or making 3 new artifacts and sacrifcing 2 of your own. So if you control 6 artifacts and you can make 3 new ones every turn, you can still take 3 extra turns. And that's useful enough. Although on your last turn you probably have nothing left in play...

So what makes artifacts? Well, you can read the Time Sieve article, but basically, in Type 2, you have Sharding Sphinx and Court Homunculus. Both of those should make it into the deck. If possible, we try to get Sharding Sphinx out as soon as possible, so that requires Etherium Sculptor or Master Transmuter, or Tezzeret the Seeker or maybe even Sharuun the Hegemon. Also, it will help if we draw a lot of cards.

Of course, when we find cards to help Time Sieve, we should also find cards that help those cards, or combo well with them; and then we find cards to help these new cards. So, as an additional win condition for when Time Sieve is activated, I turn to Sludge Strider.

I'll call it the "Drain 10+" win condition. Basically, when you activate Time Sieve, 5 of your artifacts leave play, so you can spend 5 mana on Sludge Strider and Drain your opponent for 5 life. And then you get an extra turn! On that extra turn, if you need to, and if you can, you can sacrifice another 5 artifacts and drain for another 5. Thus this could be a win condition too.

So, in a weird way, this Time Sieve deck is more of a Sludge Strider / Master Transmuter / Esperzoa deck; Time Sieve is a nice bonus at the end. I suppose you could take out the Esperzoa to concentrate more on getting Sharding Sphinx and Time Sieve into play, but that extra life drain or Kaleidostone "draw a card" synergy is pretty hard to pass up.

Sorcering

2009-04-21T15:59:00.001-04:00

Sometimes when you look at cards, and you want to determine whether they are good cards or not, or whether they would fit into a particular deck, you have to imagine them as other cards. Also, while I'm playing a game, I have to think about "Sorcering" (the topic title), and see if that's effective. But before we get to Sorcering, let's talk about the other examples.

In the Lorwyn block, we got

Enchantment - 2B [U]
Whenever you play a spell during an opponent's turn, you may have target player lose 1 life.

So the first thing you you should ask yourself is, how many times will I trigger that, and how many times do I need to trigger that to make the card worthwhile?

So, you might want to change the spell, into something like

Sorcery - 2B
Target player loses X life.

Now, we have to determine X. Would you use this card, if X was:

1: no.
2: no
3: maybe in limited, but probably not
4: probably in limited, maybe in constructed
5: yes

So now you ask yourself, how often, in a game, will this happen? Remember, you would play this enchantment on turn 3, so it does use up your 3rd turn, AT BEST; if you draw this late game, there's a good chance you won't play as many instants after you play it, compared to if you played it on turn 3.

Anyway, so what I'm saying is that I would not use this card, because I don't think I will play that many spells in an average game, on an opponents turn, providing that this card is in play.

Example 2: Where Ancients Tread - 4R [R]
Enchantment - Whenever a creature with power 5 or greater comes into play under your control, deal 5 damage to target creature or player.

So once again, think of the spell differently.

Sorcery - 4R - Deal 5 damage to target creature or player.

Or

Sorcery - 4R - Deal 5 damage to target creature or player. Deal 5 damage to target creature or player.

I would play the first one in a limited deck, and I would play the second one in any deck. Now, what are the chances I play a creature with power 5 or greater, after turn 5, OR after I play this card? If I play this card early, I'm pretty sure I would end up playing 3 or more huge creatures afterwards, so this card is that amazing. If I draw this late game, I can probably still end up bringing a big creature out, and thus this card will be worth it for me.

Of course, there are a bunch of other cards which you have to think about differently. If you want an exercise, look up these cards and think about them: Polluted Bonds, Dire Undercurrents, Fable of Wolf and Owl, Prowess of the Fair, and Mighty Emergence.

Sorcering

I guess I shouldn't call this sorcering, cuz I thought of a few other cards that we can think about differently. First, to define, Sorcering isn't really about Sorceries... but it is about playing something slower than you normally would or could, to act as a surprise card. Another Sorcering term is thinking about an enchantment as a sorcery, so it would be an enchantment except the effect only lasts for one turn. I will get to one of the main points of this article at the bottom, but be patient. So... just a few questions here and there.

Look up Wound Reflection. The card's been done, as a Sorcery, that costs 1 less. Now it's an enchantment so it lasts longer, which is awesome.. but would you still use it if it was a sorcery? I think you would. I think it's great enough that you would.

There's a preview card currently, called Knight of Alara. Check it out. So it would make sense to play it early and your creatures will have awesome power and toughness for the rest of the game. But consider playing it on the turn that you win? Would you play this?

2GW - Sorcery
Choose 2 target creatures you control. They each get +3/+3 until end of turn. All other creatures you control get +2/+2 until end of turn.

I think that card's pretty good. You may want to play it as a sorcery on some turn at the end of the game, rather than as a creature early game.

Relentless Assault. Great card. Whenever I think of Relentless Assault, I think of attacking with six 5/5 creatures, and then untapping them all and attacking again. But have you ever considered using it on turn 5, to just attack for another 4-5 damage? Even then, Relentless Assault is a usable card. Similarly, you think about doing great things with Temporal Extortion in late game, but you may want to get the tempo advantage on turn 5. It's not too bad.

Last but not least - playing Equipment as Enchant Auras. The neat thing about equipment is being able to play it early and have it do nothing, and then next turn equip it to someone and be awesome. The problem is, during that turn where it's doing nothing, your opponent will see it, and they will respond accordingly. That 0/2 ornithopter on your side wasn't a threat before, but now with the equipment, it's kinda scary. So instead of continuing with their aggressive ground attack, the opponent will play his willow-wisp and your attack is ruined.

The great thing about Magic is that your opponent doesn't know the cards in your hand a vice versa, so you're able to deploy trickery and glory at different parts in the game. The above example of playing an equipment kinda ruins it; the opponent will see the equipment and react accordingly.

So this is the real sorcering; playing equipment as enchant auras; that is, instead of paying for the equipment in one turn and equipping it the next, you do both on the same turn. It's rather quite expensive, but sometimes it's oh very worth it. What equipment am I talking about?

The one and only... Quietus Spike.

Equipment cost 3, Equip cost 3; Or, Enchant Creature Aura for 6 mana; and once again, you can Sorcerize this. Would you take:

Sorcery - 6
Target player loses half of his or her life.

Yes. Yes you would. Quite often would Quietus plans be foiled if played as an equipment, but played as an aura... it's dirty, so very dirty.

Neighbor's Barking

2009-04-02T22:10:00.003-04:00

So... I had two articles about Magic, and then I stopped posting... hmm...

Partially is probably because of the comments... so basically I was just writing for myself, and to David, so... I dunno. I wanted to write two articles, about Scarland Thrinax and the Doublestrike/Lifelink thing... I was going to do something convoluted about the "race to 20", which basically just states that in most magic games, it still boils down to the "race to 20", or whoever can deal 20 damage to the other guy the fastest.

And then (in the same article) I was going to write something about, like, if your opponent is attacking with a 5/5, then should you block on a 2/2 or take the damage? Basically, if you just twist some terms around, then you can pretend that you can't block the 5/5, and your 2/2 becomes an artifact that has "sac this: gain 5 life". And yeah, you might want to keep your guy so you can attack with it, if that's what you need at the moment....

ANNNYYYYWWAYY.... So I haven't written Magic for a while, so as usual, whenever this blog has some inactivity, I end up posting a joke:

Neighbor's Barking

Chris and Pat are in their residence listening to the
neighbor's dog, who has been in the backyard barking for
hours and hours. Finally, Chris jumps up and says, "I've had
enough of this." He rushes downstairs and out the door.

20 minutes later, Chris finally returns and Pat says, "The dog is still
barking; what have you been doing?"

Chris says, "I put the dog in our backyard. Let's see how
our neighbors like it."

6/6 vs 1/1

2009-03-15T00:53:00.001-04:00

Doublestrike is awesome. Just imagine, attacking with a 4/4 doublestriker and your opponent can't block it. That's 8 damage instead of 4! Instead of taking 5 turns to kill him, you only need 2 and a half. So instead of from 20 to 16, then 16 to 12, you skip the intermediate step and you just go from 20 to 12. It's amazingly powerful.

Then there's lifelink, which I used to call "the poor-man's doublestrike". After all, instead of knocking an opponent down from 20 to 12, it just knocks him down from 20 to 16, and springs you up to 24 from 20. So the life difference is still 8, like double-strike, but you will still take 5 turns to kill your opponent. Sure, your opponent will take longer to kill you (see my article next week, "The Race to 20"), but the doublestrike method is so much better.

BUT... what happens if your opponent has a creature to block with, or even worse, a recurring creature to block with, like a saproling maker? Well, that's what today's article is about, entitled "6/6 vs 1/1".

The 6/6 is your creature, which you are attacking with. The 1/1 is the saproling on the other end. Now, a 6/6 is already great on its own, but what if it had other abilities? Imagine, 6/6, doublestrike deathtouch. OMG. So... so... the same?

Yes, the same. A 1/1 blocking a 6/6 will die, whether or not it was vanilla, or had deathtouch, or doublestrike, or whatever. So, there are some abilities that are useless on a 6/6, if it were to be blocked on a 1/1. So we have:

Miscellaneous/Evasive Abilities: Vigilance, Persist, Haste, Protection, Flying, Shadow, Fear, Shroud, etc.
Most of these are on a different level of judging. But in this case, Vigilance is ookay, Persist does nothing, Haste can't really be judged, and the other 5 are mostly used for Evasion. If the 1/1 can still block it, then the Evasive qualities aren't important.

There are a billion other abilities which I didn't mention... I guess most of the Ravnica ones and some of the new Alara ones are unimportant in these cases.

Bad: Wither, Deathtouch, First Strike, Doubestrike, Flanking, Bushido, Horsemanship, Indestructible, etc
These are bad qualities because in this case, a vanilla 6/6 being blocked on a 1/1 would be the same as a 6/6 with one of these abilities.

Good: Lifelink, Trample
The only good ones in this case are Trample, which gets damage through to the player, and Lifelink, which gains you the 6 life no matter whether or not your creature was blocked.

So... score 1 for Lifelink, 0 for Doublestrike! Note the above only counts for single abilities. Doublestrike AND Lifelink together would've been nice, but if we could only choose one, then Lifelink beats Doublestrike.

In the next example, we'll have a 1/1 attacking into a 6/6, or a 1/1 blocking a 6/6. Note the above also works for when a 1/1 wants to attack into a 6/6.

Persist is bad, because it's a 1/1. Vigilance is bad because no matter what, it can't block the next turn. Evasive ones are still evasive, but protection is good because it won't die, although technically it won't be blocked.

Bad: First Strike, Doublestrike, Trample, Flanking, Bushido, Horsemanship - none of these do anything

Good: Wither, Deathtouch, Lifelink, Indestructible

Pretty self-explanatory - and you see, Lifelink has been Good in both scenarios! Sure, you only gain 1 life and your guy dies, but the point of a 1/1 lifelinker has been done, so it counts as successful. And there you have it. I used to call it the poor man's doublestrike, but because of analyses like these, it's unfair to say that it's worse than Doublestrike, as it is clearly a contender.

Maybe we should've used a 3/3 so we could've given points to doublestrike and persist... but then we're getting too far beyond the scope of this article. But yes, a 3/3 doublestrike against a 6/6 is better than a 3/3 lifelink. But if you're on the winning side, you'd probably have that 6/6 and you're fighting against much smaller creatures, in which case Lifelink will always work out in your favour.

Magic: Card of the Week: Scarland Thrinax

2009-03-11T15:16:00.001-04:00

Okay, I haven't been using this side of the blog for a while, ever since those two guys stopped using my tutorial... so anyway, we're back in full swing with magic now, so maybe I'll write an article once a week, or twice a week, about various parts of the game, or things that I have on my mind. We can discuss stuffs too. So... here is my first Magic article here... I have 3 or 4 articles planned so far, and then maybe I'll spend some time telling you my favourite cards and why they are my favourites...

Card of the Week: Scarland Thrinax

Best friend: Sprouting Thrinax.

Recently made a deck with it, very nice. At first glance, Scarland Thrinax just looks like a 3-to-cast 2/2 that has a flexible Devour mechanic. It Devours only for 1, which is kinda small. In practice, a Gluttenous Ooze never ends up growing past 4/4, so is this any better than that? It also bears resemblance to the Nantuko Husk, an important sacrifice outlet. So... this card seems kinda meh.

But after playing with it, it's actually really amazing. Below are a few reasons why this is Card of the Week. I wrote out some explanations for each, but then I erased them, in case you guys want to figure them out for yourselves...

//////////////////

Very good Hissing Iguanar enabler.

AMAZING against Lifelink.

Avoids Control Magic.

Grows pretty big pretty fast, especially with help from Best friend Sprouting Thrinax.

There are plenty of smaller other reasons why this card gets "Card of the Week". Tune in again in a few days when I post another article, about how sometimes Lifelink is better than Doublestrike, and then again next week when I find a different Card of the Week.

Flash Tutorial: Breakage

2009-01-15T13:43:00.002-05:00

Well, it seems neither Jia nor Vinh have continued doing Flash through/after Christmas, so any more writing into this Flash tutorial will fall onto deaf ears, or blind eyes, or however the saying goes. So I'm taking a break from this tutorial.

And I present you with a funnie:

Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle, outside of London, is directly in the flight
path of Heathrow International Airport. While a group of
tourists was standing outside the castle admiring the
elegant structure, a plane flew overhead at a relatively low
altitude, making a tremendous noise.

One particularly annoyed tourist whined, "Why did they build
the castle so close to the airport?"

Flash Tutorial: Part 5 of 21

2008-12-09T16:28:00.002-05:00

Classes

Today we're going to talk about classes. Don't worry, we're still talking about Flash... and while you can program Flash like you do C++, we won't, and instead we'll use "class" as something we make up. So what's our definition of class?

Well of course it's similar to a C++ class. A class is a group of functions and methods and properties that are common and often used when dealing with a specific subject. So for example, we could have a Particle Class, Enemy Class, Item Class, and so on. Then the specifics of that class (a specific enemy for example) will "kinda" inherit these methods from the class. But we we're not going to deal with inheritance, and we will kinda define a constructor but you don't have to look at it that way.

We're going to make this lesson pretty brief... actually, what I mean to say is, I'm not going to write a lot, and a lot of the lesson will be you trying out different things, and reading code to see if you can understand it.

Today we're going to cover the Particle Class in detail, and then a little bit about the Enemy Class and the Item Class.

Particle Class

What is a particle? A particle is a piece of graphic that is made, and then it usually travels in some direction, and then it dies. So it could be a fireball, or a rocket, a glitter, an explosion, and more. So to figure out what the Particle Class should look like, we need to figure out what a particle generally does.

All or most particles are created dynamically; most of them travel in a direction; and most of them die. Some of them might change colours, or accelerate, or rotate along their path, or create other particles, or attempt to hit the player or enemies.

So particles have this kind of life cycle:
(0 - initialize)
1 - come to life
2 - live
3 - die
And sometimes, it has death animation, so it might have
4 - death animation
5 - die for real

Perhaps there's also birth animation, but we won't deal with it now. If you really want, you can do that later.

Once again, like we did on the first lesson, we'll use less-efficient methods right now. I might not even teach you the more efficient method.

Anyways, you should already have a particle. You know which one? That's right, the bullet. The bullet is a particle. Make a copy of the bullet movieclip in your library, and call it "particle_class".

The bullet is a good start. On the first frame, it probably already has something like

var xSpeed;
var ySpeed;

And on the second frame you have something like

stop();

this.onEnterFrame = function()
{
        _x+=xSpeed;
        _y+=ySpeed;
        //(and then you have some boundary conditions)
}

And you already have a constructor, or the thing that "constructs" it: the CreateBullet function.

So first, you want to be able to make particles... so copy the CreateBullet function, and call it createParticle, or whatever you like. Give the proper linkage to the particle_class object. Also, in the function, include parameters about the origin of the particle, because it's unlikely that all particles will be things that come out of your body.

Now, remove the boundary condition, or cut and paste it into a temporary place, because chances are, the boundary condition wouldn't be used in all particles.

Okay... so let's do this and test this in steps. For now, we'll make particles when we make bullets, so instead of calling CreateBullet, call CreateParticle. Remember to update parameters as necessary.

Test 1: Test to make sure it still works. It won't have the boundary conditions, but the rest should be okay.

Now, if you already changed your player to have that "graphic" movieclip, the next step shouldn't be too hard. You want to make it so that when you fire a bullet, it will randomly fire either a blue bullet or a red bullet. They will both behave the same way, except one is blue and one is red.

Here's the code I want you to put in, and if you remember your previous lessons, you'll be able to apply it quite easily.

var particleType = 1+random(2);

newbie tip: random(2) will choose a random integer, either 0 or 1. random(1) will always return 0, I think random(0) also returns 0, and so on. So in this case, particleType will receive a value of either 1 or 2.

this variable can be anywhere.. ideally, in the end, this will be a variable you pass into the CreateParticle function.

On Frame 1 of the particle, you'll want another variable... if you want. Something like

var particleType;

In your particle class, move the onEnterFrame frame to frame 3, and on frame 2, you'll need something like

graphic.gotoAndStop(particleType);

Test 2: Try it now. If done properly, you'll get the desired result of randomly shooting red bullets and randomly shooting blue bullets.

Now, go into the graphic of your particle, and you should have 2 frames. Make a new layer, and put actionscript in each of the two frames:

function EveryFrame()
{        trace("whee");
}

Actually, for one frame, put trace("whee");
and in the other frame, put trace("homunculus");

And... can you predict the next step?

In your particle, in your onEnterFrame, alter it so it looks something like

_x+=xSpeed;
_y+=ySpeed;
graphic.EveryFrame();

Test 3: Run the program. If done right... well, you should know by now what it means.

Change the everyframe's to something more practical. NOTE this:

function EveryFrame()
{        _parent._y++;
}

You have to use _parent, or else you're just modifying the graphic, and not the actual position of the particle.

And thus, if you want you can get back the boundary condition:

function EveryFrame()
{        if (_parent._x > 640)
        {        removeMovieClip(_parent);
        }
//and so on
}

protip: I recommend keeping certain particles separate from the particle class, including bullets. If you have enemies checking for bullets the way I have it, you'd rather have the enemy check for 1-10 bullets rather than 1-200 particles. But for now, keep it so that when you press Space, a particle appears rather than a bullet.

protip 2: For testing purposes, feel free to add more frames wherever necessary in the particle class. Later when you want to make it functionally better and also look better, you can change things around.

Challenge 1: Make a new particle that's like an explosion... you can do this in several ways, but I want a circular, yellowish-orange object that grows bigger and fades, and then disappears.

Challenge 2: Make it so that when you fire a red bullet, an explosion appears by the bullet. Do not modify moveTimer or globalcode for this. You may need to use Protip 2 above, as well as make a new function.

Challenge 3: This is probably easier than Challenge 2, but make it so that when you fire a blue bullet, it leaves a trail of explosions. Also, for the blue bullet, make sure it has a death condition so you can get rid of it.

protip 3: For particles, I usually have the x,y spot in the center of the particle, rather than the top left as I do with most of my other objects. Generally, if an object rotates, it's easier if the x,y is in the center.

protip 4: One of the things that keep the game from massively slowing down is the proper removal of movieclips, or in this case, particles. Make sure objects remove themselves properly. If you experience massive slowdown, one cause might be improper movieclip removal.

Challenge 4: If you got Challenge 2, you can probably do this one. Make it when the red bullet dies, it creates an explosion where the bullet is.

http://www.baomon.com/blog/particle_sample_0004.swf

This was a sample project I put together that shows how my particle class works. Note it has many more variables than your particle class.

particle_tutorial_flash8.fla

Here is the FLA - it should be openable in whatever flash you have. Note that if you run it, you'll probably get some errors, but you can see most of the programming - check the globalcode, and check the particle_class.

Enemy Class

enemy_tutorial_flash8.fla

This is an example of the enemy class that I'm using in my current game. Note if you run the program, nothing should happen, but you should still try to understand what the code does. I omitted one enemy, that guy from MM3 that throws the ball and you can only hit him when his eye is open, because his code is somewhat unique and different. For a basic lesson, having additional code for one enemy could be confusing.

That said, this enemy class is a good starting point but it might not be good enough for your game - maybe you have a lot of guys that are "different" like the green MM3 guy.

Note how the "extra" variables are dealt with in this Enemy Class as opposed to the Particle Class. Part of it is personal preference, part of it is how enemies are coded into the game as opposed to particles.

Item Class

Challenge: Create an item class.

What's an item? An item is an object your player can get, like a piece of food to recover health, or a gold piece to add to your inventory. What it does is it is put on the map (usually programmed by the programmer, or have an enemy drop it), and it stays there and waits to be touched by the player. Some items disappear after some time of nothing happening.

Challenge 2: Have it so that when the game starts and you start moving around, 3 different items appear on the map, each of which do something different.

Brain Logic Challenge Time

Here are a series of challenges that will help you learn some concepts and useful things in programming. After this Brain Logic Challenge, you'll learn something useful. It might be frustrating while you try to learn it, but afterwards you'll feel good and you'll have something useful.

Final Challenge Result: Create a game where you have a turret, and you can move the mouse around, and then when you press space, a bullet will fly out of the turret and travel toward the mouse cursor.

Task 1: Make a new project. Put a dot at 200,200 and call it "turret". Put another dot at 400,300 and call it "enemy". Make it so that when you run the project, it will trace("the project is running");

Challenge 1: Make it trace the x distance between the two objects.
Challenge 2: Make it trace the y distance between the two objects.
Challenge 3: Make it trace the diagonal distance between the two objects. Positive or negative, doesn't matter.

Task 2: Make a button, click on it, and open up the actionscript window. Note that this window is different than the timeline actionscript. Type this:

NOTE: when you edit the button below, the autocode will help you out. I can't put "left-arrow SPACE right-arrow" in html so I can't write it. You can do it yourself.

on (keyPress "")
{        trace("space is being pressed");
}

Run the project, and hope it works.

Task 3: Move the code into the button, so that when you press Space, all that trace happens.

Task 4: Instead of using the enemy, we're going to use the mouse now. So references to the enemy's x and y are now replaced with

_root._xmouse
and
_root._ymouse

protip: In your actual game, you might use _root.main._xmouse, or whatever.

Test the project. Move the mouse around, and hope it works.

Task 5: Put a nose on your turret.

Challenge 4: Make it so when you press Space, the turret rotates so that it points to your mouse cursor.

This challenge might be tough, or easy. You may need Math.Sin, Math.Cos, Math.PI, and if statements. Also I hope you remember how to convert from radians to degrees.

Challenge 5: Make it so that when you press Space, a bullet is created and it travels toward the mouse cursor, at 12 pixels per frame.

And you're done!

And now you know so much about Flash.

In the lessons to come: Arrays, more about user inputs, color, preloader, user interface, a little bit about sounds and graphics, and artists

Flash Tutorial: Part 4 of 21

2008-12-03T22:43:00.005-05:00

In this Lesson: Multiple Walls, "Quadrants", Scrolling, Flash Placements, and Wait

if (Key.isDown(Key.LEFT))
{            if (CheckWalls(-moveSpeed,0) ????)
            {            MovePlayer(-moveSpeed,0);
            }
}

The ???? up there can be any number of things. It could be == true, == false, or, what I am using right now, is > 20.

Protip: If you have a boolean value, you don't need to compare it to anything in an if statement. I mean, if(amIDoneYet == true) is the same as if(amIDoneYet).

Newbie tip: Useful syntax for if statements include ==, >, <, >=, <=, !=, &&, and ||.

In the last lesson, you used the square brackets to tell flash to modify different objects' properties, where the object's name was a combination of constant and variable name (for example, "enemy"+i).

So if you can modify a property like that, you can surely access the object like that. So instead of using hitTest with ledge, you can now do it with ledge0, ledge1, ledge2, etc. Therefore, you now modify your CheckWalls method to look something like this below. I'm using the method that returns an integer.

function CheckWalls(xs,xy)
{
            var hittingWall = 50;
            _root.main.player._x+=xs;
            _root.main.player._y+=ys;
            for (var i=0; i < _root.gc.numLedges; i++)
            {            if (_root.main.player.graphic.hitbox.hitTest(_root.main["ledge"+i]))
                        {            hittingWall = i;
                        }

            }
            _root.main.player._x-=xs;
            _root.main.player._y-=ys;
            return hittingWall;
}

//you can return true, or false, but I'm returning an integer instead - because it's more useful than just a boolean value. You can do whichever you want.

Protip: This is a tip that I know about, and I SHOULD use more, but I don't... but I should >_>. By now, your code would probably be a bit different than mine. I have _root.main.player.graphic.hitbox, while you might just have _root.main.player. So what can you do? You can use a variable. In your first frame of globalcode, or if you want, first frame of _root, you can try:

var gamePlayer = _root.main.player.graphic.hitbox;

That's right. You can put objects or movieclip refernces into variables. Try it out if you want.

and of course, the MovePlayer function is

function MovePlayer(xs,xy)
{            _root.main.player._x+=xs;
            _root.main.player._y+=ys;
}

Try it out. Make multiple ledges (maybe 4-10) and see if it works. Make them different sizes, make some of them connect, do whatever. Remember to name them properly and assign any variables correctly.

"Quadrants"

I'm not sure how other programmers deal with this, but I call them quadrants. Long story short, if you're making a big game, you'll probably have over a thousand walls.. and you're not going to tell Flash to check for a thousand walls every frame. That's 30,000 operations per second, which is pretty inefficient, considering that you'll probably only see 1-20 walls on the screen at any given time. My solution: Quadrants.

A quadrant is a section of the game, and each quadrant has a finite amount of walls (among other things). So when you do the loop, instead of checking for 1000 walls, maybe instead you'll look for 10, 15, or 20. If you're making a zelda game where each screen is unconnected to other screens, maybe 1 quadrant is one screen. If you're making a sidescroller, maybe your quadrants aren't as specified.

FIRST, if you're already making another game that wouldn't need to use quadrants, save it as something else. If you're going to use this tutorial to the fullest, you're gonna want to make quadrants, but there's no point doing that if you're having a game that doesn't need it. If you've already started on another game idea, you may want to start a second game idea that would use these quadrants.

Now, we can start implementing quadrants. First, go into your globalcode, and use one of these:

var cq = 1;                        //current quadrant
_global.cq = 1;                        //current quadrant

The above is for the sidescroller. If you're make a zelda game, you may want to use this:

var cx = 1;
var cy = 1;

or

_global.cx = 1;
_global.cy = 1;

//note you can use 0 instead of 1, it's up to you

If you're making a zelda game, you'll probably need a 2dimensional quadrant... space... thing...

Next, you'll want to rename your current ledges so they make use of this information. So some ideas are:

q1ledge0
q1l1

or

q1x1yledge0
q1x1yl0
q1x1yw0

or whatever. Ledge, Wall, whatever. Only bad thing about ledge is that the lowercase L looks like a 1, so you may want to start using the w.

FROM THIS POINT ON, WE'RE WORKING WITH A ZELDA GAME, so WE'LL USE THE TWO-DIMENSIONAL QUADRANT SYSTEM.

Now you need to apply it in the code. I would usually apply a CHALLENGE here, but instead, I'll type it out. However, you should have a good idea of what you need to do before you scroll down.

The old usage was: _root.main["ledge"+i]

The new usage is below - try to figure it out before you scroll down:

_root.main["q"+_root.gc.cx+"x"+_root.gc.cy+"y"+"w"+i]

The +"y"+"w"+ is redundant above, but I just wanted to break it down for you. Fix it to just +"yw"+, unless you like it the old way.

After this, try out your game. If done correctly, everything should still work.

Now we're going to test other quadrants. Change the names of the some of the walls so that it has a different quadrant number, so for example, change
q1x1yw3 to q2x1yw3.

Test the game, and you should be able to go through that wall now.

Now, make a new object, like a rectangle or something, put it into your main, and give it the usual onEnterFrame loop, with

if (this.hitTest(_root.main.player.graphic.hitbox))
{            _root.gc.cx = 2;
}

And another one to change it back

if (this.hitTest(_root.main.player.graphic.hitbox))
{            _root.gc.cx = 1;
}

Test the project. If it works properly, then you can just hit the new object and it will change quadrants for you, and thus enable and disable different walls for you.

For the time being, you probably don't have to worry about quadrants too much, unless you want a big playable level. At least, you should do some scrolling first.

Scrolling

Task 1: Go into your main and place your player at the center, which should be about 300,220.

Challenge: Make it so that when you move around, the player stays at the center of the screen, and everything else scrolls.

Hint 1: Edit some code in the moveTimer.

Challenge 2: After you get this to work, you can try to make scrolling work the way you want it to.

Flash Placements

I'm not sure how other programmers deal with this either... but long story short, the flash stage editing document... doesn't have infinite width or height. I mean, if you zoom out, you can see the boundaries. You can try putting some walls around, try moving them off the boundaries, and you'll make the bounds a bit bigger, but eventually, it stops.

Of course, you don't want to stop the level there. You want it to keep going. How do you do it? Mass Moving.

You create a portion of level where you can, and then you use code to move it.

First of all, in main, make a second frame, with stop(); at the top. This second frame is a keyframe for the actionscript, BUT NOT for anything else. Everything else should just be there on frame 2, not have a keyframe.

This is a precaution we're putting in... flash is a bit confusing with things existing in different frames...

For now, this code can be used on frame 1, so we'll put it there. Ya know what... I'll give you some piece of code, and I'll just pretend you can understand it.

for (var i=0; i < _root.gc.numLedges; i++)
{            this["q4x1yw"+i]._x+=3000;
            this["q4x1yw"+i]._y+=700;
}

Quite straight forward I think, or I hope.

Wait

Wait is another function made by me, which I learned from other places. I think you can use it as a function, but I just retype the whole thing whenever I need to use it. We use this when we need to time something, or we have a cutscene and we need it to stop at a part for a few frames, and so on.

Anyway, for this part, make a new project. As usual, Actionscript 2.0, Flash Player 7.0, 30fps, etc.

Make an object (circle or square or whatever, doesn't matter). You can make a moveTimer, or you can put code into the object itself, doesn't matter since it's a test project.

Our goal is to make a little movie, where the circle starts at the top left corner, waits there for 2 seconds, then moves to the right for exactly 2 seconds, and then stops and waits there for 2 seconds, and then goes down for 1 second, and then stops.

You might already know how to do this. Anyway, we're not going to use the moveTimer for this, and we'll just put everything into the movieclip itself.

On the first frame, just declare a variable:

var timeWait = 60;

protip: If you want, you can put the 2nd frame in the first frame, but for organization, we'll do it this way.

When the movie clip plays, it will play the first frame, and then get to the second frame. On the second frame, we stop it, and:

stop();

this.onEnterFrame = function()
{            //do nothing
            timeWait--;
            if (?????)
            {            ?????
                        ?????
            }
}

Take a few minutes or seconds to think about it, then scroll down.

stop();

this.onEnterFrame = function()
{            //do nothing
            timeWait--;
            if (timeWait <= 0)
            {            delete this.onEnterFrame;
                        play();
            }
}

So for 60 frames (2 seconds), you do absolutely nothing, and then you can go onto the next frame, where you might have

timeWait = 60;
stop();
this.onEnterFrame = function()
{            _x+=2;
            timeWait--;
            if (timeWait <= 0)
            {            delete this.onEnterFrame;
                        play();
            }
}

Get it? Good.

Challenge: Complete the rest of the steps to make this move as described, or do whatever you want!

Protip: In all cases so far, we've used this.onEnterFrame following a stop(); You don't need to use stop();, but for our purposes, we've used stop(); Maybe later on you can try it without stop();.

Flash Tutorial: Part 3 of 21

2008-11-27T15:20:00.005-05:00

If you have skipped lessons, use the PREVIOUS POST bar on the right side to navigate to the correct lesson.

There are no pictures in this post yet (as of Thursday, Nov 27). I will make some up if I feel like it later, or if someone tells me some part is confusing.

Welcome to Lesson 3! First, we’re going to organize our project a bit more. Some of these are optional, but I recommend doing them all.

1.1 – Timeline frames
First, instead of having the project timeline only being 1 frame, I would make it have more, say, 7 frames. So add frames, and turn frame 7 into a keyframe, and move the code and objects there. Now when you run the project, the first 6 frames will be blank, and on frame 7 you can finally see the character and move him around.

The reason for these 6 blank frames in the beginning are for furture game objects, such as the title screen, the title menu, any cutscenes, and the flash preloader. I usually set aside 10 frames for those, but for now, you can have 6 frames… or 3 frames… or 10 frames… or 20 frames… it’s up to you.

Protip: For now, since there is no preloader or titlescreen, you can save a bit of time each time you test the project by going to frame 1 or 2 and put in
gotoAndPlay(9);

so you don’t have to sit through frames 3-8.

1.2 – Timeline layers

On the timeline, create and add a few more layers, and create a keyframe on frame 10 on each. Name these layers as follows: “code”, “gc”, “code_objects”, and “main”. In the future you can add more layers. Move your “main” to the “main” layer, and the moveTimer to the “code_objects” layer. Move the actionscript code to the code layer, and move the code layer to the topmost layer.

I generally like to keep the code layer blank, and just have the actionscript there.

1.3 – MoveTimer

Make another layer in the moveTimer, and separate the code and the image into the two layers. Now, we’re going to make a slight change to MoveTimer. We programmed it one way in the previous lesson to make it more understandable, but now we’re going to change that so it works better.

In Frame 3, remove the code, so that it doesn’t go back to frame 2.

At the top of Frame 2, write

stop();
this.onEnterFrame = function()
{

And at the bottom, close the bracket.

}

What this does is it will stop Flash at frame 2, and then the “onEnterFrame” code will run, and it will run on every frame. It does the same thing as the first method, except that it’s easier to use, later when we might want to stop the moveTimer. Run the project to make sure it works the same.

Those are enough organization changes for now.

Wall Touching

I hope you’ve been working hard on the wall problem. So after experimenting with it, you probably have noticed that you can’t just use hitTest to detect walls, because once you detect a wall, it’s already too late.

So maybe you can undo your move… so you might’ve had something like this:

if (Key.isDown(Key.LEFT))
{ _root.main.player._x-= moveSpeed;
if (_root.main.player.hitTest(_root.main.ledge))
{ _root.main.player._x+=moveSpeed;
}
}

So you would move the player left regardless of whether or not he was touching the wall, and then you check if he is now touching the wall. If he isn’t, then no problems. If he is, then “no way buddy! You’ve gone past the line. Go back to where you came from!”

So that’s great. Note that instead of +=10 or ++, we’ve upgraded to use a variable. Declare and initialize the variable in frame 1 of moveTimer, and then you can use it as you please.

Now, let’s turn the above into a function, and make it more robust so it can be used for both the y direction and x direction. So back in frame 1 of moveTimer, declare this function

function CheckWalls(xm,ym)
{ _root.main.player._x+=xm;
_root.main.player._y+=ym;
if (_root.main.player.hitTest(_root.main.ledge))
{ _root.main.player._x-=xm;
_root.main.player._y-=ym;
}
}

And you would call it depending on your different directions with parameters (moveSpeed,0), (-moveSpeed,0), (0,moveSpeed) and (0,-moveSpeed). Got it? Good. Test it out!

If it works, great. If it doesn’t, I hope you find your mistakes. In the future, you’ll have to make this function be able to work with multiple walls. Read the challenge section at the end of this article for more details. I mean, I could tell you how to do it now, but isn’t it better to make you learn it?

Globalcode

We’re going to use this soon, so let’s make it. Make a new movieclip symbol, in the same way like moveTimer, and put it on the stage on the gc layer. Unlike all the other objects in the timeline that only exist on frame 10, make globalcode exist on all frames.

Open up globalcode, and put a keyframe on frame 100. on it, put

stop();

Give it an instance name of “gc”, and we’re ready to continue.

Dynamically Creating Movieclips

Before Dynamically making something, we’re going to create a regular bullet and test it out, and make it act like we want it to act.

Task 1: Make a bullet (could be anything, for example, a green circle). For now, test it out by putting it on the screen, and make it move horizontally quickly. Do not modify moveTimer for this.

Newbie help: In MoveTimer, if we held a button down, every frame moveTimer would tell _root.main.player’s _x property (or _y property) to change. We can make it so that an object can tell itself to change. For that, we can use this._x or just simply _x.

Test it out. If it doesn’t work, then… umm… you did something wrong, or you’re missing something. Try again!

Challenge 1: Make the bullet accelerate.

Task 2: Modify the moveTimer so that when you press the space bar, the bullet resets itself to the player’s position. Feel free to nudge the bullet up and down and left and right as necessary*.

* - more on that later

Challenge 2: If you made the bullet accelerate in challenge 1, then make it behave as you want here.

Now whenever you press space, the bullet will reappear where you are, and then travel right.

Now, it’s time to teach you about dynamically making movie clips. We’ll do this pretty quickly without getting into too much mumbo-jumbo.

First, open your library, and right-click on your bullet, and select “Linkage”. In the window that appears, select “Export for Actionscript”, and then that other thing will automatically get selected for you. You can type in anything you want in Identifier, just like you can type anything you want as an instance name. For now, keep it bullet.

Go back into moveTimer, where you hit Space, and replace the code in there with

_root.gc.CreateBullet();

Why? Because I think bullet creation is a generic thing, and that it shouldn’t belong in the moveTimer. This function will get more complicated as we continue, and we don’t want to complicate the moveTimer too much.

Go back into your globalcode, and create a function:

function CreateBullet()
{
trace(“I’m making a bullet”);
}

See if it works.

On Frame 1 of globalcode, put in

var bulletIndex = 0;

Now… the new code.

function CreateBullet()
{
_root.main.attachMovie(“bullet”,”b”+bulletIndex, 200+bulletIndex);
_root.main[“b”+bulletIndex]._x = _root.main.player._x;
_root.main[“b”+bulletIndex]._y = _root.main.player._y;
bulletIndex++;
if (bulletIndex >= 300)
{ bulletIndex = 0;
}
}

OKAY, LET’S BREAK IT DOWN.
- attachMovie is a flash code that.. attaches a movie clip.
- _root.main.attachMovie means that we’re attaching the movie clip the _root.main.
- The first parameter of attachMovie, “bullet”, is which movieclip we’re attaching; remember, it’s not the instance name, or the movieclip name, but it’s the identifier we typed in before.
0 The second parameter is the new instance name we’re giving to the bullet we’re making. In this case, the first bullet we make is “b0”, the second “b1”, and so on. I hope you understand this >_>
- The third parameter is the Depth of the new object. Let’s take a minute to talk about depths.

///////////////////////////////

Everything on the stage has a depth. The depth determines how it will appear to the user, or what overlaps what. Each object’s depth is unique – no two objects share the same depth. If two objects try to share the same depth, the first object ceases to exist.

Movieclips that are dynamically created are assigned depths, between 1 and, like, 1.6 million or something. Movieclips that are already on the stage (such as player, main, moveTimer, etc) have depths between -1 and like, -255,000.

You can find the depth of an object by using its getDepths(); function, or you can give it a Depth by using its swapDepths(someNum) function.

Objects with positive depths can be removed dynamically. Also, objects with positive depths… tend to… linger on the screen. But that’s something more advanced that we’ll talk about later.

/////////////////

function CreateBullet()
{
_root.main.attachMovie(“bullet”,”b”+bulletIndex, 200+bulletIndex);
_root.main[“b”+bulletIndex]._x = _root.main.player._x;
_root.main[“b”+bulletIndex]._y = _root.main.player._y;
bulletIndex++;
if (bulletIndex >= 300)
{ bulletIndex = 0;
}
}

Back to the bullet. So here we give it a depth of 200+bulletIndex, so the first bullet will have a depth of 200, the second 201, etc. Note that the player’s depth is negative, so the bullets (which have positive Depth) will always appear on top of the player.

That completes the attachMovie function. Next you want to set the new bullet’s attributes, or properties.

This is just something you have to remember, when you want to combine a variable and a non-variable into finding an object. So _root.main, as usual, then instead of a period, you open up a square bracket, and type in everything as you want it to appear (so “b”+bulletIndex), and then close the bracket, put the period, and then the property.

So now we set its x and y position to the player, otherwise they’d be zero. You can also set other variables here too. So if on frame 1 of bullet, you have

var xSpeed; //without assigning it

then in CreateBullet you can have

_root.main[“b”+bulletIndex].xSpeed = 7;

Try that out. Declare the variable in the bullet, and assign it in CreateBullet, and use the variable to determine how the bullet moves.

Does it work? I hope so! Continuing on…

Next we increment the bulletIndex. If we don’t do this, then we would just keep spitting out b0’s, instead of going on to b1’s and so on. And then the depth would never change, so our old bullet keeps being reused.

Lastly, we put a limit on the number of bullets we have. We could let it go onto infinity, but… we’d rather not. If you want, you can variabalize the 300 into a variable so you can change it (and refer to it) when you want to.

So… does it work? I hope so!

Okay, so right now, when you create a bullet, it keeps going and doesn’t disappear, until you replace it. But of course, bullets should disappear. You’ve created the bullet dynamically, so it makes sense if you can remove it dynamically. And you can.

In your code which tells the bullet to travel right every frame, you can put in more code, such as checks on whether or not the bullet should die or not. See if you can follow this:

if (_x > 700)
{ delete this.onEnterFrame;
removeMovieClip(this);
}

The delete command is optional in this case, but you can probably guess what it does. The removeMovieClip is another flash function, and it’s pretty self explanatory. It takes in one parameter, which is the movieclip which requires removing, in this case, the bullet is removing itself.

Got it? Good.

Challenge: Make it so that there’s a firing delay of about half a second in between shots.

Challenge: Make it so that the bullet fires in different directions, depending on which way you are facing.

Challenge: If you did the challenge above, then add additional bounds for removing the bullet as necessary. Remember, at this point, you should already be using a lot of variables, so you can easily change things as needed.

Player Nesting/Depth and Animation

We’ll touch briefly on this before the lesson ends. You will probably want to add animation to your player pretty soon, rather than having this blue box walk around. It doesn’t even have a face! So, first, spend a few seconds or minutes or hours drawing or importing the graphics you want. You probably want

Graphic for facing up
Graphic for facing down
Graphic for facing left
Graphic for facing right

Optionally, you can have

Graphic for walking up (and etc)
And/or
Graphic for Shooting up (and etc)

For now, I’ll assume you only need the first 4. Now, let’s talk about Nesting, or Depths.

I was going to make pictures for all of them, but instead, at least for now, I only have pictures for what I'm using in my current game, at the bottom of this section.

It’s really a personal choice, or if you can foresee the future, then you can figure out what’s the best way to do it. So you can have this:

#1111
Your player object can be all the graphics that the player need to go through. So your player object looks like this:

And if you want to change its animation, you would use

_root.main.player.gotoAndPlay(“runright”);

#2222
Each of your specific player animations have their own movie clip. So if you want to change its animation, you would use

_root.main.player.gotoAndStop(“runright”);

#3333
Your player object may have some code, so inside the player object, you have a player_graphic movieclip, which looks like your player from #2222. If you want to change its animation, you would use

_root.main.player.graphic.gotoAndStop(“runright”);

Hitboxes

For now, your player is a square, but if you’re making a 2d-sidescroller, it’s usually not a great idea for a hitbox to encompass the whole player. Part of it is due to the way Flash’s hitTest works; it basically takes the bounding box of the player. So instead we make a hitbox, which is just a transparent rectangular shape, which we'll name "hitbox". But like the graphic, you have several options:

#1111: The whole player is the hitbox

So when you want to have it hit something, you would use

_root.main.player.hitTest();

#2222 There’s a hitbox that’s constant inside the player

So no matter what animation the player has, the hitbox is some fixed area, so

_root.main.player.hitbox.hitTest();

#3333 Each different animation has a fixed hitbox for the entire animation

_root.main.player.graphic.hitbox.hitTest();

#4444 If you’re crazy enough, each different frame in each different animation has its own hitbox.

_root.main.player.graphic.graphic.hitbox.hitTest();

And so on. It’s up to you. For my latest project, I used #3333 for the player animations, and #3333 for the hitboxes.

In the pic above:
1. This is what my "player" object looks like:
2. It's two layers, with two frames total; a graphic at the bottom encompassing both frames (not two keyframes), and two actionscript frames. The first frame is in #3:
3. The first actionscript frame - declaring and assigning a few variables.
4. The second actionscript frame - stop();
5. The graphic layer is just an instance of the object "playergraphic"
6. In my "player" folder, I have, player, playergraphic, and a few other player movieclips.
7. These are some of the sprites I'm using in my game. They're in a different folder than the player folder for better organization.

In the pic above:
1. This is the playergraphic movieclip. It's composed of 3 layers; first layer is blank, just has the different names for the different keyframes. The second layer is the graphic for the particular animation, and the third layer is the hitbox. Note that there is no actionscript anywhere in this movie clip.
2. So, some animation frames just have the bitmap/gif of megaman, because he's not animated.
3. Meanwhile, some animation frames hold different movieclips. If you go into that movieclip,
4. you'll see that it's composed of several keyframes, each which holds an unanimated bitmap/gif. It will loop through these gifs as long as this movieclip is showing.
5. The third layer is the hitbox, which should be transparent but for these pictures I made them slightly visible. The hitbox is different depending on which animation your character is doing.

Challenge: Incorporate the 4 (or more) graphics into your game.

This basically brings us to the end of the lesson. I have an asterisk above which I need to take care of… sigh.

So the asterisk was back when we created the bullet, and it wasn’t centered on the player; it appeared at the top left co-ordinates of the player. FOR NOW, we will keep most of the things like this, but you might have a different opinion. Anyway, there are two… philosophies on this.

Basically, whether or not the 0,0 reference point is at the top left of the object, or at the center. If it’s at the center, then yeah, the bullet would appear in the center of the player, because that is the player’s x and y.

Maybe it’s because as I learned flash, I didn’t know about hitTest, so I used my own way of testing whether or not two objects collided, and it was easier this way. But, whatever, we will keep it like this.

Challenge: Make the bullet appear at the center of the player, without changing the bullet’s or the player’s center reference point.

And that’s it for Lesson 3. Here are all the challenges:

Challenge: Make the bullet appear at the center of the player, without changing the bullet’s or the player’s center reference point.

Challenge: Make the bullet accelerate.

Challenge: Make a firing delay of about half a second between bullets.

Challenge: Make the bullet travel in the 4 directions, depending on which way the player is facing.

Challenge: If the bullet can go in more directions, add additional bounds for removing the bullet.

Challenge: Incorporate graphics into the player so that it has a different graphic for each direction.

Challenge: Multiple Walls. Take note on how we dealt with the special bullets. You might want to make a few more functions in MoveTimer. Use a for loop (or if you want to be extra special, a do/while loop).

Assume 10-15 walls. Don’t go crazy trying to detect 200 walls every frame.

Syntax for For Loop and Do While Loop

for (var i=0; i < style="font-weight: bold;">In the lessons to come: Answers to challenges, scrolling, “quadrants”, Wait, Item Class, Enemy class, Projectile class, and more.

Flash Tutorial: Part 2 of 21

2008-11-26T12:02:00.002-05:00

Common Problems, and Syntax and Naming Conventions

Before we start with the actual lesson (which will be lesson 3), I’d like to talk about a few things. Instead of you waiting from lesson to lesson on what to do with the program, I should give you enough tools and information for you to go on and practice flash on your own, or make a different program using other tools.

In case you missed lesson 1, or you want to check previous lessons, use the "previous posts" panel on the right of this blog.

The other day, I had Vinh and Jia run through my tutorial. One mistake was that WORD capitalized some of my if statements for me, which transferred to blogger, so that mistake was fixed. But there was a problem that Vinh and Jia both ran into, and it involved naming your instances.

Instance Names

So, a movie clip on the stage has two things – what it is, and its instance name. What it is is the thing in the library, and the instance name is what you use to refer to it in code. It might’ve been confusing because for all my things, I used the same name in the library (“player” and “player”, or “main” and “main”), but they don’t have to be the same. The thing in the library could be “bugolgi” and the instance name could be “sashimi”.

So try it out. Go into your main, and change the player’s instance name to “forcystus”, and run the code. It doesn’t work. Your new mission is to figure out how to make it work, without changing the instance name. Once you got that, understanding instance names is pretty easy.

So that was the main problem yesterday. Jia forgot to name the ledge, and Vinh forgot to name the player, ledge, and main.

Syntax and Naming Conventions

This is mostly for Vinh, or new people to programming. Yesterday I asked Vinh to see if he can upgrade the program to make the character move around using a variable, and he wrote this:

var speed = 5

if (Key.isDown(Key.LEFT))
{
_root.main.player._x = _root.main.player._x – speed;
}

There are 4 things I would change about this.

I would put a ; after the variable declaration, so var speed = 5;

Flash doesn’t require you to put the ; there, apparently, but I think it’s nice to have, and it will prevent problems in the future. ; means the line is over, and that’s it.

I would put the variable declaration on the first frame of moveTimer, and assign it there too, instead of having the variable declared everytime frame 2 is visited.

I wouldn’t use a simple variable name like speed. Remember, you don’t want your variable names to be the same as Flash keywords, so usually I would use something a bit more complex, like moveSpeed or playerSpeed.

Lastly, and this is probably something you have to learn that Vinh didn’t know about, but:

_root.main.player._x = _root.main.player._x + 1;
Is the same as
_root.main.player._x++;
Or
_root.main.player._x+=1;

So in this case, I would write
_root.main.player._x-=speed;

Naming Conventions

I will also add here that flash has a convention for their keywords. First of all, ALMOST none of their keywords will start with a capital letter. So you’ll never see If or For or Do or While, but you’ll see if, for, do, and while. Also, if the function or whatever has multiple words, the first letter of each word beyond the first is capitalized, so you’ll see things like
gotoAndPlay, attachMovie, removeMovieClip, stopAllSounds, and so on.

You can create your own naming convention for your variables and functions, but I generally have the same rule for variables; first word lowercase, then first letter of each word beyond the first uppercase, so things like moveSpeed, xSpeed, bulletIndex, etc.

For me, function names the same as variables, except each first letter capitalized, including the first, so GetRotationSpeedX, CreateItem, etc.

Functions

I talked to Vinh, so I was going to write something about how functions are useful, and why you’d want to use them, but he gets the gist of it so I’m not writing it here. But I’ll write a function you might need to use later, so you can see the formatting of it. So for example, let’s say you want to figure out whether a number is positive or negative. You might need this function:

function GetParity(whichNum)
{
if (whichNum == 0)
{ return 1;
}
else
{
var parity = whichNum/Math.abs(whichNum);
return parity;
}
}

Or in general

function FunctionName(functionparameter1, functionparameter2)
{
functionCode();
//and optionally, return statement;
}

And as usual, parameters are private, or, the variables only exist in the function, or in the for loop or whatever.

Getting and Setting

Not in Flash! You don’t usually need Get and Set in Flash, you just access the property directly. Some useful properties that most objects have include _x, _y, _width, _height, _alpha, _xscale, _yscale, _rotation, _currentframe, and more. Play around with those.

Good Classes to know

Flash has built in classes, like String. If you type String into the actionscript, highlight it, and press F1, you’ll get the help document relating to strings. Another class you will use frequently is Math. Check it out. You’ll use Math.abs, Math.floor, Math.sqrt, etc pretty often.

Text Debugging

A lot of times, especially when things aren’t working, you’ll want to put in trace events around to see what exactly your code is doing. So you might want to have something like

trace(“the index is “ + whichNum + “ and the boundary is “ + whichBound);

Textboxes

You might want to play around with input text, or dynamic text, or static text. Static text is just regular text. Input text is a text field where you can input information, and Dynamic is where it displays information. For both Input and Dynamic, they each have an instance name, so fill that out, and access the information like this.

var whichNum = Number(_root.iNum.text);

_root.dNum.text = “The number you have chosen is “ + whichNum;

Comments

Comments are always useful. Here’s the syntax:

// comment on this line
/*
Comment section
*/

So… this “lesson” was mostly to help you experiment, instead of just sitting there, waiting from lesson to lesson. You can probably create a “hello world” application now, and maybe some small calculator application.

Flash Tutorial: Part 1 of 21

2008-11-24T12:29:00.008-05:00

Hello everyone! I've decided to write my own tutorial on how to build flash games. For now, I will host them on this blog.

Introduction:
For now, I'll pretend I'm just writing to my friends, so the language will be less formal than if I was writing to the whole world. So anyway, this is my flash tutorial, with my own methods and all that. You can read other tutorials and maybe their methods are better, but I'm going to try to explain my methods easily and all that so hopefully you'll stick with me. After you're done with the tutorial, maybe you can expand and improve on my methods with your own unique style, or you can adapt to other people's methods and work out which way is the best.

So why am I writing this? Because Jia kinda asked me to - well, he wanted help on how to start programming in Flash, so this is it.

Requirements:
I do not require you to know any or a lot of flash. I know a lot of you don't know flash, so I'll try to make it as easy as possible. For those of you that require flash, let me know, and I can arrange it for you. I have a 60 meg zip file with Flash MX 2004, so let me know if you need it.

After you get Flash, experiment it with a bit, make a few movies, play around with drawing things and making shapes and tweening. After that, you're ready to read this tutorial.

Lesson Plan:
It says at the top "Flash Tutorial: Part 1 of 21", but I just made up that 21. At the end of this tutorial, you'll have a screen, with a player character, and you can control him by pressing the directional keys. There will be an object on the screen, and if you touch it, the object will "disappear".

In this lesson, I will try to get you to make a game as fast as possible. That said, we'll use some methods in this tutorial that are easier to understand, yet less efficient.

Anyway, enough talking. Let's start!

Step 1: Setting up the environment
For my tutorial, you can use Flash MX 2004 or Flash CS3 (or newer). Start a new project, set the actionscript to 2.0, Flash Player 7.0, height and width to 640x480, frame rate to 30fps, and background to white. Actually you can change these to whatever you want, except the actionscript and the flash player, but for now, stick with me.

You can have whatever panels or layout you want, but I generally only use the main bar with the Tools, the Properties Window, the Actionscript Window, the Timeline, the Color/Swatches, and the Library. I don’t use any of those Projects/Components/etc windows that Flash CS3 might start with.

Newbie Help: You can close as many windows/panels as you need, and then in the View menu bar you can choose which panels you want, and then you can drag them and resize them and lock them onto your flash window wherever you want.

Step 2: The Timeline
In later tutorials, you will have many layers on the timeline, as well as many frames, but for this demo, we only need one layer, and one frame. Click on this frame, and open up the actionscript window, and type in

stop();

This will tell Flash to stop at this frame, and not play anymore frames, or repeat this frame, or whatever.

Diagram: My Flash environment; which windows and panels are open, general layout, timeline. The movie clips will be added below.

Step 3: The 5 movie clips

In most of my games, there are 5 movie clips you need to make a flash game:
1. MoveTimer
2. Player
3. Ledge
4. Globalcode (optional)
5. Main (optional)

In this tutorial, we’ll skip the globalcode movie clip, and we’ll make the Main movie clip without discussing whether or not your particular game needs it. In any case, it’s good to have.

Step 3.1 – Main

Main is where I keep all my game objects – players, ledges, enemies, etc.

Newbie Help: Remember, there are 2 common ways to make a new movie clip: you can choose Insert – New Symbol, or you can draw something, select it and right click on it and Convert To Symbol.

For now, choose Insert, and make a new symbol, make sure it’s a movieclip symbol, and call it main. Flash will proceed to let you edit the new movie clip, but leave it empty and go back to the Scene. From your library, drag “main” to the stage, place it at x=0 and y=0, and give it an instance name of “main”.

Newbie Help: To change a movieclip’s properties, open up the properties window. You may need to check the advanced properties – change its instance name to “main”, and move it to x=0 and y=0.

Step 3.2 – Player

Draw a blue square, and set its dimensions to 40x40. Select it, right click on it, and click Convert to Symbol. Make sure it’s a movieclip symbol, and call it “player”. Now that you have it in your library, delete the “player” you have that’s on the stage.

Open your “main” movieclip in your library by double clicking on it. Now you are editing it; drag your “player” blue square from your library onto the main, and place it around x=10 and y=10. Name this instance “player”.
Save and run the project. If you did it correctly, your player should appear on the screen.

Step 3.3 – Ledge

Repeat what you did in Step 3.2 with player, but this time make a 20x20 red square, call it ledge (or wall, or whatever, but for this tutorial call it ledge). Do the same things with it, but place it at x=100 and y=100. If you run the project again, it should appear as expected.

OKAY! I hope you understand everything we did so far. If it’s confusing, I don’t recommend continuing. It’s basic flash so far – make a movie clip, put it on the stage, and voila, it’s there. Or put a movieclip within another movie clip, and it appears. It’s all pretty basic, so if you’re having trouble with this part, I recommend learning some more basic flash.

Now comes the real stuff.

Step 3.4 – MoveTimer

MoveTimer will be one of your most important movieclips. MoveTimer will take care of your player object, as well as most of the user input. So far, everything we’ve done is pretty basic, but after this step you’ll have the first real step to making a game. So, pay close attention.

See, Flash works with movieclips and frames, and if you put code in a frame, it will run the code each time it hits that frame. So what we need in a game is code that tells the computer when a player hits a key, and what to do when the key is pressed. So what we need is code that is run on every frame. There are many ways to achieve this effect, but in this first tutorial, I’ll teach you the one that makes the most sense, at least in English.

So how do you get Flash to read the same frame/code over and over? Simple! You make a frame with code, and on the next frame, you tell flash to play the previous frame! And that is an endless loop, which runs every frame.

So for example, you can put some code on frame 1, and on frame 2, you have

gotoAndPlay(1);

And voila! It works. So we’re going to do just that… with a small change.

So go back to Scene 1, and use the textTool to write the word “moveTimer” on the screen. Make sure in the properties window that it is static text, not input text or dynamic text. Select the word, and convert it to a movieclip symbol, called “moveTimer”. Change its instance name to “moveTimer”, and move it to x=-40 and y=-40.
Remember, this moveTimer is on the root, not in the main movie clip where the player and ledge reside.

Instead of frame 1 having the code and frame 2 redirecting back to frame 1, instead we’ll have frame 2 with the code and frame 3 redirecting to frame 2. So on frame 3, write

gotoAndPlay(2);

So it’s the same thing, but one frame later. We’ll discuss why we did this later.

Diagram: The timeline and the actionscript frame of moveTimer

Newbie Help: To create more frames in a timeline, just click on the timeline, and right click somewhere and you can see a menu of options of what you can do. Choose “insert keyframe” on frames 2 and 3.

After adding the code on frame 3, go to Frame 2 and put in this code:
trace(“this is moveTimer tracing every frame”);

Save the project, and run it. If you did it correctly, then on every frame (so 30 times per second) it would write the above line into the output window. If you did it incorrectly, check the error messages for clues, and make sure everything is spelled correctly and has the right capitalization.

Step 4 – User Input

Okay, we have our Main. We have our MoveTimer. We have our Player inside our Main. We have code that runs on everyframe. We’re ready to start.
First, go into moveTimer, and delete or comment out the trace. We don’t need it. So first think to yourself – what do you want to happen? You want to make it so that if you press a directional button on the keyboard, your player will move in that direction. So, in pseudocode:

if ( I am pressing the up key)
{
Player moves up
}

Let’s first attack the “player moves up” part. Before scrolling down, you should already have a pretty good idea on what the answer is. When you’re ready, read the next line.

if (I am pressing the up key)
{
_root.main.player._y--;
}

Got it? If not:

You want to modify the player’s y position. That’s where the _y comes from.
You want to move it upwards. In flash, that’s in the negative direction. That’s where the - - comes from, or the -= or whatever.
Which _y do you want to modify? The player’s. So that’s where we have player._y.
Where is the player? He’s in the main. That’s where the main is.
Where is the main? He’s on the root. That’s where the root comes from. Putting it all together, we have
_root.main.player._y--;

If you’re coming from other programming languages, or from Actionscript 1 or 3, I hope this is still somewhat understandable.

Now, the next part is probably pure flash syntax and code, so you can spend a while going through the help files, or I’ll just give it to you here:

if (Key.isDown(Key.UP))
{
_root.main.player._y--;
}

When you start typing the K, flash will autocode the rest for you so it’s not so bad. It’s pretty simple to understand the code. Now, fill in the rest for left, right, and down, Save the program, and run it. If it works, congratulations. If it doesn’t, check any error messages and fix them. There might be spelling errors, case sensitivity errors, maybe bracketing errors… but after a while, everything should work.

Voila! You have a working game now. Fiddle around with variables – try to get the guy to move 10 pixels at once instead of just 1, or if you want another challenge, try making a game where pressing the buttons just accelerate and decelerate your character. After you’re done, we’ll talk about the hitTest.

Step 5: hitTest

One of the more important functions in game programming is the hitTest. The hitTest is exactly that – a test whether or not two objects hit each other. So it could be a player hitting a 1up mushroom, or a bullet hitting an enemy.

So back in our game, we have the player on the main, and we also have the ledge on the main, and I assumed you called it “ledge”. For now, think of it as an item or something we can touch. Hit Detection with walls is a little more complicated.

The code for hitTest is really quite simple. So, back in moveTimer, type in this.

if (_root.main.player.hitTest(_root.main.ledge))
{ trace(“my player is touching the ledge”);
}

That’s all there is to it. You can check the helpfile for more info on this, but long story short, hitTest is a function that movieclips have, and it takes in a parameter which is the movie clip to compare it to, and it returns a boolean value, either true or false.

This means that

_root.main.player.hitTest(_root.main.ledge)

Will give the same value as

_root.main.ledge.hitTest(_root.main.player)

But since moveTimer deals with the player, it makes more sense to write it out the original way.

So, save and run the program, and as you expect, if you move your player over your ledge, it will trace that message.

Now we want to make the object disappear, and then the lesson will end. For now, we'll cheat a little. Replace the trace command with

_root.main.ledge._y = -9999;

And then, when you run the project and hit the ledge, it will "disappear" off the screen. Really, it just goes upwards all the way to -9999, but for now, it looks like it disappears.

That’s the end of lesson 1! You now have a character on the screen, and it will move in different directions based on what key you are pressing. You also have an “item” on the screen, and you can touch it. Now save your project, and copy it, so you can fiddle around with it before you move onto lesson 2. We will begin from this point in lesson 2, so you should make another copy of your project which you can fiddle around with.

Between now and the next lesson, I’ll give you a few challenges. If you’re a newbie, read the few paragraphs below to help you get started on some common flash syntaxes, or use the Flash help file.

Challenge 1 – make it so that when you press a direction, the player would move 10 pixels instead of just 1 pixel in that direction.

Challenge 2 – make it so that when you press a direction, the player accelerates or decelerates depending on what direction you pressed.

Challenge 3 – The hitTest works fine for grabbing items, but not so well for walls/ledges. Program the game so that it works with walls/ledges. Note that the answer to this will be given in the next lesson, but it’s a good idea to think about what you have to do.

Newbie help: Declaring variables
In Flash, declaring variables is easy. Sometimes you don’t even need to declare it. Just use:
var thisNumber = 2;
or
var thisText = “Hello”;
You don’t have to tell the variable it’s an int or a string or whatever. If you want to learn how to declare other things, such as arrays, check the help file.

Newbie help: Declaring and Calling Functions
Sometime in the programming of games or anything, you’ll probably need to learn how to declare and call functions. Well, you’ve already used a few functions, such as hitTest, but you’ll want to make your own, so you can re-use code and whatever else.
To declare a function, do thiu:
function FunctionName()
{
//function code
}
And whenever you need to call that function, just type it out, like
FunctionName();
Or
indexNum = FunctionName();
In flash, you don’t need to use void or to declare the return type or whatever. It’s pretty in that way. It’s kinda lousy for error checking, but otherwise it works fine. Also, if you have parameters, you don’t have to declare them or give them any restrictions or whatever.

For other flash syntax, check the helpfile. For the next lesson, if you don’t know anything about for loops, I recommend reading up about those.

In the next few lessons: walls/ledges, arrays, better organization, dynamically adding and removing movie clips, animation, “quadrants”, text, Wait, and a little bit about scrolling.

4 Fives Game

2008-09-18T12:59:00.002-04:00

AAAAAHHHH!!

Okay, so about 10 days ago, I started doing the "4 Fives" Game again. I've also gotten Vinh infected, so he's doing it too, but slower and not as obsessively. Anyway, I started with the numbers 1-100, and then I increased to 1-200, and to make a long story short, I'm now trying to get up to 500.

It's... amazing. First, I was stuck on 6 numbers between 1-100, and then I figure out a formula and I get those 6 numbers. Then later I was stuck on another few numbers, and then I figure something out and I get those numbers! And it's still working! Well, number of formulae are not increasing much, but the application of them is still increasing.

Yesterday night, I counted, and I was missing 52 out of the 500 numbers. Then I worked a bit more during the night, and a little bit more this morning, and now I've reduced it to 33 out of 500. I'm still getting some! I think some of these are impossible, but every now and then I surprise myself, because I find a new application or I overlooked something simple, and I get more numbers!

Amazing, amazing. First, the discovery that you can change a number x (like, 9) into 90-x, so 81, all using one simple formula. And then the discovery of 3 using two fives, and 17 using two fives... wow. And then a few days ago I discovered making 0, 1, 45, 89, and 90 using just 1 five. Great discovery, definitely useful.

Okay, so as it stands, from 1:30pm, September 18th:

001 - 100: All done
101 - 200: All done
201 - 300: Missing 277 and 281
301 - 400: Missing 307, 308, 313, 321, 322, 334, 368, 371, 382, 383, 394, 396, 397, 398
401 - 500: Missing 407, 411, 412, 458, 461, 463, 464, 466, 468, 472, 473, 478, 488, 492, 493, 497, 499

Half a joke: The Salesman's Robot

2008-07-03T07:44:00.002-04:00

The Salesman's Robot

John was a salesman's delight when it came to any kind of
unusual gimmick. His wife Marsha had long ago given up
trying to get him to change. One day John came home with
another one of his unusual purchases. It was a robot that
John claimed was actually a lie detector.

It was about 5:30 that afternoon when Tommy, their
11-year-old son, returned home from school. Tommy was over
two hours late.

"Where have you been? Why are you over two hours late
getting home?" asked John.

"Several of us went to the library to work on an extra
credit project," said Tommy. The robot then walked around
the table and slapped Tommy, knocking him completely out of
his chair.

"Son," said John, "this robot is a lie detector. Now tell us
where you really were after school."

"We went to Bobby's house and watched a movie," said Tommy.

"What did you watch?" asked Marsha.

"The Ten Commandments," answered Tommy. The robot went
around to Tommy and slapped him again, knocking him off his
chair once more. With his lip quivering, Tommy got up from
the floor, sat down, and said, "I am sorry I lied. We really
watched an R-rated movie."

"I am ashamed of you, son," said John. "When I was your age,
I never lied to my parents." The robot then walked around to
John and delivered a whack that nearly knocked him out of
his chair.

Marsha doubled over in laughter, almost in tears, and said,
"Boy, did you ever ask for that one! You can't be too mad
with Tommy. After all, he is ---...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I omitted the ending of the joke! Wanna guess the ending? Good luck!

Dumb Moment of the Month

2008-06-05T14:56:00.000-04:00

Whoa... I had such a dumb moment this morning. So, it's Thursday, so Vinh has Robotics after school, so I'll be driving to work and then picking him up at 5:00. So as I'm about to leave the house, my dad hands me the keys to the car. So I take them, I put them somewhere, and I'm still getting ready to go to work, so I put on my shoes, grab my backpack, put on my jacket, and... 8 seconds later, I'm looking around and... I can't find the car keys.

I can't see them. My dad gave them to me, and then 8 seconds later, I can't find them. So I check my left jacket pocket, right jacket pocket... not there. I check my left jeans pocket, my right jeans pocket... not there. Hmm... I check my jacket pockets and jean pockets again. Still not there.

I remember my backpack being unzipped before I pick it up, so I'm wondering, "did I put my keys in my backpack?" So I unzipped it, searched around, didn't find anything. I unzip the other zippers, even though I'm sure they were closed. Still nothing. I again check my jeans pockets, but still nothing.

I check the room that I'm in... maybe I put it on the black piano, which is stupid because the keys are black. Nope, not there. I check the coat hanger wooden thing... nope, not on there. Maybe it fell? I look behind it... nope, not there. Ooh, my old winter jacket. Maybe I was so smart and stupid at the same time that I put my keys in my winter jacket pocket so I would find them later? I check there... nope, not there.

"Umm... Dad? so you gave me the keys, right?" - yes, he gave me the keys. So, I check my pockets again. Nothing. So anyway, this goes on for about 4-5 minutes; me, being all panicky and stupid, because I was given keys, and then 8 seconds later I had no idea where they were.

And then I find the keys, and I start calling myself dumb. ARGH!! So my dad gave me the keys, and I put them in my sweatshirt/hoodie pocket. It's a good pocket because it's empty and only special things like car keys go in there. So I was still getting ready for work, so I put it in that pocket, and then I put on my jacket, zipped it up a bit, and then I basically didn't have access to my hoodie pocket anymore. In this way, it's like I didn't know these hoodie pockets existed anymore. ARGH!!!

This frustrates me so. And I feel so dumb now.

Live Free

2008-05-24T23:28:00.003-04:00

Alan: "Yeah, I had an HMV gift card, so I bought Fantastic Four 2 and Die Hard 4."
Bao: "Live Free or Die Hard is awesome. I saw it 3 times."
Alan: "Really?"
Bao: "Yeah. Twice in the theatres and once in real life."

Firewood joke

2008-04-29T09:18:00.001-04:00

"Hello, is this the sheriff's office?"

"Yes. What can I do for you?"

"I'm calling to report 'bout my neighbor Virgil Smith. He's hidin' marijuana inside his firewood! Don't quite know how he gets it inside them logs, but he's hidin' it there."

"Thank you very much for the call, sir."

The next day, the sheriff's deputies descend on Virgil's house. They search the shed where the firewood is kept. Using axes, they bust open every piece of wood, but find no marijuana. They sneer at Virgil and leave. Shortly, the phone rings at Virgil's house.

"Hey, Virgil! This here's Floyd. Did the sheriff come?"

"Yeah!"

"Did they chop your firewood?"

"Yep!"

"Happy birthday, buddy!"

WCS: Animals

2008-04-03T08:37:00.002-04:00

mountain lion (cougar): don't run, make yourself bigger (open wide your coat), scream aggressively, throw rocks at it
gorilla: don't run, be docile, don't be aggressive, groom it
bear: lie there and stay still, don't climb trees; if it attacks you, fight back; if you just see a bear, make your presence known (ring a bell works)
killer bees: if they sting you, run away
charging giraffe: climb a tree, or run to a body of water
charging rhino: climb a tree, or stand and shout loudly
charging elephants: climb a tree, or lie down on the ground and don't move
stampede of shoppers: go to the edge, do it early rather than later

Gotta remember this and not mix it up! Imagine if you met a cougar and you decided to groom it? Or if there was a charging rhino and you run to a body of water? That'd be bad! Study this list hard and you'll be okay.

WCS: How to see if you have lost your glasses

2008-03-15T11:39:00.003-04:00

[Prologue:] About half a dozen years ago, I was in an airport and I somehow picked up a book, "Worst Case Scenarios at the workplace" or something like that. It was very comical yet very serious at the same time, which is quite a joy to read, with hilariously real illustrations... haha... so I picked it up and enjoyed it.

The other day I was watching Conan O' Brien and he was talking with the author of these books, and talking about his new book, "The COMPLETE Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook", which is the ultimate WCS book... they showed some of the illustrations (which I'll post later), and they were so funny, and I already like this type of book, so I amazon.caed it and now I have it.

So every now and then I might post an entry from the book and what I think about it... starting with this one... [End Prologue]

How to See if you have lost your glasses
Draw 2 circles about the size of a pair of lenses on a piece of paper. Use a pin or thumbtack to poke at least a dozen small holes in each of the circles, and then hold the paper to your face to see.

I did that.

It sort of works. And after thinking about it, I understand why.

See, when you don't have your glasses, everything far away is blurred, everything closer up is less blurred. So let's say you have the letters A and E together, like

"AE", and if you're nearsighted, it would blur together into a really weird blurry symbol. However, if you have this piece of paper trick, in one tiny hole you'll see the A, and it will be blurry, but by itself it sorta looks like an A. And then there'll be this white non-hole part you see, and in another hole you'll see an E, blurried up, but by itself a blurry E still looks like an E. Therefore, instead of AE being blurried together into a nonsensical mess, you have A by itself, a "space", and then E by itself, both a bit blurried but by themselves, and you can read them better.

It works! Next... gotta try "How to Survive an Elephant Stampede"...

Facebook Wall-to-Wall

2008-03-12T21:15:00.002-04:00

So it's my birthday, and I get all these "Happy Birthday" messages on my facebook wall.. and I'm the type of guy who, instead of changing my status to "bao thanks everyone for their birthday wishes", I'm the guy who would respond to each one with a possibly slightly different response to each one (thanks, thanks long time no see hows it going, thanks we should do stuff, etc)... so I open up a new tab for each wall-to-wall for each person... and it's kinda funny, how most of them look almost exactly like this:

March 12, 2008: Julie says: Happy Birthday Bao!
June 23, 2007: Julie says: Thanks!
June 23, 2007: Bao says: Hey, long time no see, Happy Birthday Julie!
March 12, 2007: Bao says: Thanks!
March 12, 2007: Julie says: Happy Birthday Bao!

Heh.

Food and RockBand

2008-03-07T22:09:00.001-05:00

Last time I blogged about Rockband, the time before that about food. Before I mentioned how "Simpsons" "made me" never go to Arby's... I thought about it, and I know there's one food I don't eat in restaurants anymore. I still eat chicken nuggets and chicken fingers sometimes... but I never order fish and chips anymore. Maybe I just don't care to buy that stuff, maybe it's something that Vinh eats all the time so I don't want to buy that.

In RockBand news... heh. I got stuck on some songs for drumming, so for fun, I had Vinh come by and have him operate the bass pedal while I concentrate on the hand part... and we win songs with that! It's so cheating, like keytarring, but it's funny and... I think it's something we'll have to resort to during the EELS. Vinh's good with the bass pedal, I'm pretty good with the drums, so it works out well. yay. haha.

I Don't Get By!

2008-03-05T17:43:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I sang the first 40%-48% of "I Get By" like, 20 times. ARGH! What a horrible song. The worst (best?) part is that I've convinced myself if I get to 49%, then the rest would be pretty smooth sailing. But I haven't got past 48% on that song. Such a horrible part, that 35-48% part where the guy is like, "talking to himself" in some random melody. So wow... this is being a real pain in the butt.

That said, Vinh says we're probably okay for that song on the Expert Endless Setlist (short form for now is EELS), since you just need to save the guy once at that part. Also, I've tried Foreplay/Longtime once and died at 86%, but the song is shortened so in the full song that's probably 91%, so a nice save there is also good enough to get through the EELS. Well, I haven't tried "I'm So Sick", "Can't Let Go", and "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld" on expert yet, but... well, we'll see.

But that's sorta weird, since I'm going to be the official drum afficianado, so me singing songs is probably not so important (that'll be Eric's job)... but sometimes he might want to take a break or I would want to take a break from drumming, so I would be able to sing or play guitar as well.

There are some other hard songs, namely Blood Doll and Reptilia, but the rest are somewhat doable. Anyway, that's all for now... I'll try some more "I Get By" later...

oh yeah, that reminds me - Practice mode for Vocals is total garbage. In all other modes you can choose parts of the song and you can slow it down, but for vocals, you just sing the whole thing and it tells you how excellent you did. Pure garbage.

::edit 11:36pm, Mar6:: - Okay, so when I came home, I watched a youtube video of someone passing "I Get By" with 5 stars... and then later tonight Vinh and I were playing (vocal+guitar, expert expert), and I passed the song without his help... aww man, the time I pass the song, it doesn't count...

Anyway, so I play it solo later, fail once, try again, and then I pass it, yay. After a while, passed the next 3 special songs... and then... well, it's a good thing I actually LIKE singing Foreplay/Long Time... since it really only gets hard after 80%.. so I sang maybe 7 times, between 75-89%... ooh, 11% left, until I unlock 140 pts worth of achievements :)

Additionally, although on a lesser case, I also like guitarring Green Grass High Tides... sort of. The first time I tried it, I got 85%. The next 10 tries or so, I got below that, between 68% and 78%, but then I finally got up to 91%. Should've switched to the solo keys sooner... anyway, so that's it. So I have 62/64, 62/64, and 63/64 on hard drums, expert guitar and expert vocals respectively. One day, I'll suddenly have an additional 380 gamer points from rockband :)

I'm thinking Arby's

2008-03-04T13:25:00.001-05:00

I have almost never been to an Arby's restaurant. Maybe it's their sauceless meat sandwiches, with nothing but meat and bread. Maybe there aren't that many Arby's restaurants. Maybe whenever there's an Arby's in a food court, there's something better there too. But I think the main reason might be a subconscious one. I think when that girl from Simpsons said "I'm so hungry, I can eat at Arby's", I think from then on, I deemed Arby's as an inferior restaurant. I think from then on (which was a looong time ago), I have not wanted to go to Arby restaurants.

And back to the first point, their sauceless sandwiches do actually look pretty boring, those 2 for $4 or 3 for $5 sandwiches. I think in the new commercials they have some really sauce-ful sandwiches, maybe if I find an Arby's restaurant I will try it, but I somehow doubt it. That said, I did go to an Arby's restaurant once, in a food court, probably in the US. I had some deluxe chicken sandwich with fried chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and maybe bacon. It was a bit expensive, of course, being a deluxe burger, but it was wondrous. So it wasn't of the usual fare that you see on TV, of those sandwiches with just meats in them, but instead it was a deluxe chicken burger. It was pretty good.

Maybe next time I see an Arby's I shall try it out...

Poker: Fate vs Luck

2008-02-29T13:39:00.001-05:00

So the other day I was in Waterloo with Duy and we met up with Wen, and one thing lead to another and we started talking about poker, and how it's luck-ish and I brought up how it's also fate-ish, which started some weird conversation about how... stuff... stuff... anyway, some of you will probably lose your mind reading this, and I'll lose my mind writing this so we both win. So why is poker about fate?

Well... after the dealer shuffles the deck, the cards are determined. That is, they are in a certain order that won't change. If you label the cards 1, 2, 3, ... 52, and let's say there are 4 people at the table, then for sure, player 1 will get cards 1,5, p2 will get 2,6, p3 will get 3,7, p4 will get 4,8, and after the burn cards, the cards on the table will be (burn 9) - 10, 11, 12 (burn 13), 14, (burn 15), and 16.

Okay, so the cards are already in a certain order after they're shuffled, so in a way the cards are determined, as I've shown above, so that's why poker is about fate. It's like, um, "God", he can see what the cards will be. I mean, if, let's say just before the river card, the dealer shuffles the cards, then the top card is no longer determined, and in this way "God" cannot see what the last card will be.

So if you're holding and 2 and an 8, and your opponent is holding two aces, well... it was determined, after the shuffle, that you would get those cards, and if the flop happens to be three 2's, then so be it - it's like, at this moment in history, it was determined that your 2 and 8 will beat the 2 aces. It was determined - you weren't lucky, it just was determined. Maybe it was even more determined if a computer or machine shuffled the cards, instead of a person shuffling the cards? ooh, I brought up a new point... wheee...

So here comes the question - if you can choose whether the dealer would shuffle the deck just before the river card, would you have him/her do it? I think it depends on what you want. Let's say you're holding two spades, and there are 2 spades on the flop. Nothing on the turn. Now it's time for the river, and you're looking for a spade. So you want to know if it was determined that the last card would be a spade. First, now go back to "luck" and probability. What are the chances that the top card up there is a spade? Well, it's one card out of the remaining 40-45 cards. Do you feel lucky that the top single card is a spade?

Or would you rather think that there's a better chance that there or more spades below the top card, and you would feel better if the deck was shuffled so that one of those spades might make it to the top? For some reason, I think if you were in this situation, you would feel better if the dealer shuffled the deck. If they don't shuffle the deck, then it's fate that determines whether you win or not; if you do shuffle the deck, it's luck that determines whether you win or not. And since you're not in control of this fate, you would rather go on the side of luck.

Likewise, if you're holding a great hand and you don't want any surprises on the river, I think you would rather not shuffle the deck. You wouldn't want some jerk holding two spades to get lucky because they shuffle a spade to the top of the deck. I think you have a better chance that the top card of the deck is something non-threatening.

While we're on this weird subject, I think you would feel better if you lost a hand due to fate, rather than if you lost a hand due to luck. Losing a hand due to luck, that's because of bad luck, and you just feel bad. If you lose a hand due to fate, due to the top card being determined to make the other guy win, then you kinda go, "oh well, that's the way it was meant to be". It still sucks, but you feel like you understand the reason why you lost more... if you lost because you're unlucky, it's harder to justify it.

Are you confused yet? I know I am. Anyway, the actual question that I posed was, if I polled 1000 poker players, how many of them would say that they would want to keep the game the way it is, or to have the dealer shuffle the cards before the river (or the turn, or whatever)? I think I decided that most would keep it the way it is, but more interestingly, bad poker players would want to allow the shuffling, and good poker players would want to keep it the way it is. Good poker players understand the game and they usually like to be more certain of the results (and perhaps they would be winning in the hand before the river anyway), and bad poker players like to depend on luck to help them win.

What do you think? Are you super confused yet? Or did you just go "meh" at the whole topic? heehee.

Home is where it's best... or is it?

2008-02-25T16:20:00.001-05:00

So the other day we went skiing up at horseshoe valley, and the first night we were in our lodge, we were watching American Gladiator. But it was a rerun. And it was on a smaller tv. so someone observed, "we paid money to drive all the way up here, to watch reruns on a smaller tv? what a waste of money!" - and rightly so.

I walk around in the cove in Waterloo, and I see games like Capcom vs SNK 2 and Marvel vs Capcom 2, and I say to myself, "I'm not playing these here. I can play these at home for free." And $4 for a Corona? Hmmph! Haha, I don't think so. 4 bucks for a shot of Polar Bear? I can make those at home, thank you very much.

So why go out? Everything is cheaper at home. Plus you don't have to dress up. The bathrooms are pretty nice at home too. So why go out?

To be social. It's a social thing. Sure, you can have friends over, or you can go out with friends. For now, let's just discuss Dave & Buster's, but we can talk about other things later. When you're out, you're all dressed up and you feel prettier than when you are at home, so you feel like a different person. There are a bunch of people around and they're all having a good time, so you're more likely to have a good time too. They're enjoying themselves, drinking and playing games and laughing at jokes, so you start doing the same too.

Sure, you can play games in the comfort of your own home, but it's more impressive in a social environment with other people around. Sure, you can drink at home, but it's more... social... to do it in a social environment. It's much more expensive though, which is a price you pay for social envinronmentation. A lot of people pay a lot of good money for social envinronmentation, which is something that I only recently started doing, but I want to do more of.

Clubbing/dancing? Well, we have music at home, and to an extent with have disco lights and stuff... but once again, in a real club, there are thousands of dancers (girls too! imagine that) and people drinking... and overall it's very social. And that's what it is.

It's all the social scene. You buy a beer at a restaurant to be social, you pay for a group of shots at D&B so to be social, group-like, and you play arcade games because everyone else is doing it and it's fun in a big group social environment. You go out and dance at a club because your basement isn't as awesome as a club.

Puff Puff!

2008-02-15T11:35:00.000-05:00

Yay, I finally got my shotgun of choice in Call of Duty 4. First I thought it was level 21, but when I got to level 20 I checked again and it was 31, so.. yeah. But now I have it, and yay! It's the shotgun that I used during the last level of the single player campaign, and I loved it. I call it (the) Puff Puff - it's a fast firing shotgun, maybe 2 shots per second with almost no recoil, compared to a regular shotgun, which is, what, 1 shot every 1.5 seconds with a lot of recoil? So yeah, the Puff Puff is really strong. Sure, the magazine only holds 4 shots before you have to reload, but if you're a good shotgun player it's not a huge problem.

Why Puff Puff? You walk into a room, you shoot 1 or 2 bullets, and you kill someone. You're a few feet away from a guy and you just walk up to him and "Puff Puff!" And he falls down. I think of it less of a shotgun, but more like... those ZSU-23 anti-air guns that the Allies have in Red Alert. They fire rapidly, and when they fire they emit puffs of black smoke, and they make puff puff noises too, but they're strong as hell.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the shotgun, a lot! Unfortunately, as you probably are aware, it's only good in short range. In most levels, it's better if I use an assault rifle or light machine gun... I think I can main a shotgun and pick up some weapon dropped by other people, and it seems to be working sometimes... but I should probably be smarter and just main an assaultrifle/LMG for those kinds of levels and just main the shotgun for several smaller levels. But once I reach level 37 I can main both! heehee. Not sure if I will though, it'll reduce the number of fun perks I can have... but we'll see.

Other GameTypes

What am I, an instruction booklet? Why am I writing about different gametypes? Well, lately I don't read instruction booklets anymore, and instruction booklets don't really have too many opinions. So of course there are other gametypes than just Team Deathmatch, which we've been playing mostly. Different gametypes give you different kinds of experience (exp points).

For example, in Team Deathmatch, when you kill someone, you get 10 exp (and it counts toward your team total, since the limit rules are 750 points / 10 minutes). In Headquarters, the main objective is to secure or destroy a certain target, so your whole team gets points as long as your team secures the target, and those points count toward your experience too. Since your main objective is not to kill other guys, you only get 5 exp for killing someone, and those 5exp do not count toward your team-winning points, but you do get exp for it.

In Secure and Destroy, when you die you don't respawn - but when you kill someone, you get 50 exp instead of 5 or 10, which is quite sweet. I like S&D, players seem to play more... realistic then. More cowardly you might say, or more sneaky. I think when you play S&D you learn to play better, since you only have one life and you are handsomely rewarded when you take away someone else's "one life". hehe. (once again, I don't think I'll main shotgun in S&D).

Classes

So you can create custom classes so you have multiple to choose from. For Team Deathmatch, for now I'm switching between a shotgun class and some assault rifle class which I haven't fully leveled up yet. As for my perks, for my assault rifle class I have 3x special grenade, juggernaut (more health), and usually last stand (pull out pistol before you die). For shotgun, I'm still starting out, but I have 3x special grenade, stopping power (strong bullets; obviously, shotgun depends on killing the other guy before he kills you)... and my 3rd perk... right now I'm trying better non-targetting accuracy, so I can puff puff without aiming. Or I might have martyrdom (drop a live grenade upon death), since I'm close to people all the time anyway.

For Headquarters... I haven't puff puffed here yet, but I will probably have the same thing as in deathmatch, but more likely to drop live grenades upon death since it works nicely in this mode. I also like the 3 special grenades in HQ since I use them a lot. When I reach level 41 and I unlock 3 frag grenades, would I use that in HQ? Not sure. I'll probably use it in Deathmatch and S&D, but I'm not so sure about HQ yet. In S&D (the 1 life only game), I main either assault rifle or sniper, and I'm a fan of extreme conditioning, which lets you run longer - this lets me be sneaky and run to people to knife them. Shooting them from a far you might miss, but if you can sneak up to him (by running to catch up to him) and knifing him, well, there's that 50 points, and that's nice. Something like dropping a grenade or pulling out pistol on death... nah, since you only get to do it once, I don't really think this is all too useful. It could be very epic, but nah.

Level up! You've been promoted to General! + Call of Duty 4

2008-02-08T11:08:00.000-05:00

Why does leveling up feel so good? Well, it's partially obvious... leveling up makes you better, or, it makes the game more fun. Sometimes you get stronger, sometimes you get a better variety of skills, you get better versions of those skills, etc... and I like it in games when you can level up several things at once... like, you can kill enemies to gain experience, but you can also kill enemies with a certain weapon or spell, and that weapon gets stronger. Also, I like it when there are other objectives than "kill enemies" that gain you experience... like, collect 5 herbs in WOW, or perform 5 air kills or whatever... that said...

I love Call of Duty 4. I found it a bit surprising that you can level up in Call of Duty 4. But it sure brings a lot more playing value to the game. Sure, I can play Halo 3 for hours and hours and have fun, but in Call of Duty 4 you do the same but you feel better since you're 'growing'.

In Call of Duty 4, there are 55 levels. Unlike WOW and RPGs, you don't get stronger when you level up... when you play multiplayer, you can be level 1 or 8 or 20, and you'll fight anyone from level 1 (or maybe 0? I forget) to 55. If you do get stronger as you level up, level 8 vs 40 would be so unfair! Instead... well, first let's explain what you have.

In Call of Duty, when you start a match or respawn, you start with a primary weapon, a sidearm, and a certain number of grenades. Before you start a match, you choose a class, which you customize. In the class, you choose your primary weapon, sidearm, special grenades, and perks. Each character has 3 perks, which can be thought of as Relics in FF6 or Materia in FF7. There are perks such as more life, stronger bullets, deeper bullet penetration (so you can shoot through wood and stuff), faster reload, hold more grenades, longer sprinting, etc...

Each player has 5 custom classes, and you choose which class you want to play before you start a match. So if it's a small map, you might pick a shotgun class with exploding bonuses upon death... or if it's a huge map or you're playing a 'defend a territory' gametype, you might be a sniper with better accuracy... and things like that. That's pretty cool.

So, back to leveling. At level 0, you have a certain number of perks to choose from, and a few number of weapons; 1 assault rifle, 1 shotgun, 1 sniper, 1 sidearm, 1 sniper, 1 light machine gun, 1 submachine gun, etc... so as you level up, you get to choose from a higher variety of different weapons, and you get more perks too. Additionally, after level 5 or so, you open up the 'boot camp' challenges and separate weapon challenges.

Boot camp challenges give you bonus experience when you do certain things, like "kill an enemy with a knife", or "kill 3 enemies with grenades", or "successfully call in an air strike". So you get extra experience when you do these things, but also, while in game, when you first finish a challenge, you get an awesome guitar riff sound effect and a big achievement pops up on your screen. Makes you feel good.

Weapon challenges upgrade your weapon, and they also give you more experience! If you kill with a certain weapon a number of times, you might get a new scope (for better zooming/accuracy), or if you get a certain number of headshots, you unlock some other new feature. Like bootcamp challenges, you also get an awesome feeling of rewardness when you complete the challenges.

You get a lot of exp bonus when you complete these challenges, so I think I'll be rotating between each of the assault rifles, lmg's and smg's and getting all the experience. Wheee... hehe, funny story. I really liked the shotgun I used in the last level in single player, so I was looking forward to it in multiplayer, but unfortunately, you don't start with it. I somehow read that you get the weapon at level 21, so I got to level 20 and I was so happy that I was almost getting it, but then I rechecked it and you get the weapon at 31! Argh! I slipperysloped myself, but that's okay, hehe.

In case you're wondering, nowadays my primary weapon is a Light Machine Gun (when I'm not leveling other weapons), preferably the M249Saw, one of the weapons you start with; pretty strong, but has a huge long reload time. I use it with the red sight scope. I have with me 1 frag grenade and 3 flash grenades (which have an awesome effect on the screen, btw), a pistol (I don't really care which one, until I get the desert eagle, haha), and I'm using extra grenades, more health, and Last Stand. When I die, I usually fall down, pull out my pistol, and lie on the ground bleeding for a few seconds more, but I get to look around and shoot people with my pistol. It's very surprising to some people, and I love surprising them.

This was a long entry, about stuff... anyway, I'm really liking Call of Duty 4. And that's why I like it... it's fun too.

I am So Upset right now!

2008-02-05T23:43:00.000-05:00

I am so upset right now! and I'm kinda disappointed because I was looking for a specific webcomic on a blog to express my upsetness, but I couldn't find it.

Anyway, so I wanted to play some xbox, but my parents were using the tv, so I might as well use the wii - I haven't used it in forever, and there are still games that I have to play/finish. So I wanted to play Super Mario Galaxy.

There are 9 gamecube/wii game-boxes surrounding the wii, one of which was Super Mario Galaxy, and it was empty! And Smarty Pants was in the wii, so I took it out and put it in its box. And all the other 7 games? They had games in them! Smash, Big Brain, Wii Sports, Wii Play, Link's Crossbow Training, Zelda, and Warioware - they all had games in them, except Super Mario Galaxy!

What the fuck? I only want to play that one game right now, and that's the only game that isn't there. What the fuck is up with that? It's like the world is all against me. Logically, all games would be in their boxes, but nooo... the one game I want, is the only game that isn't there. What the fuck?

Fuck.

Life is chaotic

2008-02-02T00:28:00.000-05:00

If a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, it could cause people at the opposite end of the globe to watch a Discovery Channel special on butterflies.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

2008-01-25T21:47:00.001-05:00

This is an extension of something I was writing about on my other blog on Friday, January 25th, 2008. Here is the youtube video again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYD_-A_X5E

I love this video so much. It makes me so happy when I watch it.

Why? Well... it's cool. First of all, it's cool, it looks genuinely hard to do, so I respect the two girls that are doing it. If you watch related videos, there are other similar videos, maybe not with people dancing but with people writing stuff on their hands, but overall this dancing one is probably one of the best.

They are robots, that are girls, that are dancing. How awesome is that? I could imagine, if it was a pair of guys, no robot heads, I could imagine me not liking it. I could imagine if it was two girls, no robot heads, it still wouldn't be as special as this. These are two humans, that are like robots. It's almost as if they are scripted to dance like that, as the words go on in the song, but of course we know they had to work hard to do it.

Part of the charm is that we know they are humans. During the part in the beginning, or in the very middle, when they are relaxing, you can see they are humans having fun. They act like robots, but during the intermission part, you can see them doing the robot and doing a fun dance, and when they do the "high five", that's pretty human like. You can imagine them laughing inside, it's amazing.

The female body is also nice to look at and see it move. An additional charm is that it's women doing it, and we all believe that guys are the crazier people on youtube, so it's a nice change. Anyway, back to the movement... I think my favourite part, the part that makes me think this is the coolest thing, is around 2:20-2:26, when the girl on the left is moving so fluidly, and her body curves like only a woman can curve... and I love the part around 2:25, when she does the transition through "More Than" so fluidly without stopping, as if she's actually dancing with free form. It's so beautiful.

That's probably my favourite part. My second favourite part is the beginning when the lady on the left does "Stronger" for the first time and she plays around with it. Anyway, I really like this video. It makes me so happy, seeing the robot girls dance. Music is good too. Catchy.

On another note, I had two stressful dreams this morning! (or do they say last night? or yesterday? hmm) . One was about this music video. I woke up to show Duy the music video from my favourites, but it turned out to be some American version - like this daft punk thing was the Canadian version, and this American version was totally different, it had a panel of judges and they played a totally different song. It was a nightmare trying to find this beautiful video to show you guys, and eventually I found it somehow.

Another dream (same night) dealt with this weekend... so originally we were going to go to Truffles with Ambrose et al, but then we are going on this skiing trip instead. So in my dream, apparently me, Duy, Ray, and Geoff (the same 4 for the China trip, Ambrose was involved in this part too) apparently we planned a week-long trip to Edmonton, and our flight was on Sunday, January 27th, so it was all mixed up because we're going on this skiing trip, so... that totally messed up our schedule.

It kinda reminded me of the time for the China trip, where we started planning the trip a few months before the date, but we didn't actually make rock-solid decisions until near the end. It felt like this, it's like we forgot about the Edmonton trip so we didn't really plan for it properly.

And... that's that.

A Discussion comparing Internet Internet and Internet Real

2008-01-20T11:33:00.000-05:00

So recently, partly because I'm sick (so I'm spending more time in front of the computer doing almost nothing), I starting posting on message boards again... and then last night as I was going to bed, I made up these terms, Internet Internet (I:I) and Internet Real (I:R) and started thinking about them and how I should change how much I do of either. Additionally, we can expand I:I and I:R to Something:NotReal and Something:Real, but for now we'll talk about I:I and I:R.

The first I stands for Internet, and it represents the activities we do on the internet. Things like that are checking e-mail, writing blog posts, msning people, reading and writing on message boards, reading reviews for games, writing reviews for games, buying things, etc. As I said, you can expand this I into S, which is something, which just signifies any activity, anywhere.

The second I or R (or in the expanded version, Real and not Real) is a categorization of the activity, and what it creates, or how it is helpful. More concretely, here are some examples.

So let's say you're on msn, and you message Ambrose, and you ask him "wanna do something later?" And then there's a discussion about dinner and going out or whatever. This would fit into I:R, Internet -> Real, because it's an event on the internet, and the outcome is that it produces something in real life. You are talking to Ambrose on msn, which is an Internet event, and it produces a plan for what will happen in real life soon. Similarly, buying something online is I:R, and more often than not, reading a review of a movie online or of a product, would also affect you nicely in real life.

However, let's say you're on a random message board, and someone writes a post like, "on a scale of 1-10, how hot is this girl?" and they post a picture of a girl. So you're reading the thread, you see other random people have answers and comments, and then you yourself rate the girl. This is an I:I event. You're doing stuff on the internet, and you are just contributing to the internet. Clicking on the thread, reading the post, saving the picture of the girl to your computer... it doesn't do anything for you in real life, you're just spending time on the internet, doing stuff for the internet.

There are some things in life that are more I:R or S:R than others, and I'd like to call them... the ones that create resources for you. By resources, I mean things that help you out... the most common resources are money, time, some sort of health resource, and perhaps some sort of skill resource. Working gives you money, doing sports gives you health, learning to program gives you skill, eating gives you energy, etc...

So, the next thing that naturally should come out of my mouth is: I:I stuff is useless. To go more extreme, you would also say that things that do not produce resources are also useless. It's not entirely true, but you get the point. It gets a bit more confusing when you add the word "PLAY". By definition, playing is intrinsically fun, and does not produce anything but we still do it because it's fun. Okay, so I don't like to throw entertainment out the window, but we can definitely have less of it.

Then there's the ... "contribution" / "volunteer" aspect. As I said, reading a movie review is an I:R event, but I think WRITING a movie review is an I:I event. You write the review, not generally for real life, but because you want to help others. It doesn't really bring you a resource either. I would classify it as an I:I event, but it is a "contribution" / "volunteer" event, which means you contribute something meaningful or ... you just want to contribute it anyway, so... it might be an exception. Similarly, reading blog posts miight be I:R, writing them is typically I:I, although some of my blog posts have call-to-actions, like "do you want to do stuff this weekend?", but the rest of the blog post is typically I:I.

So... let's analyze me, since that's why I wrote this. I find that a lot of the activity I do is I:I (or more generally, S:NR), and additionally, not resource producing. While I was doing the message board thing this weekend, too much of it is I:I. Reading random things, writing and responding to random topics, nothing really worthy to learn from. There might be a thread on there, like, a person is having trouble with his girlfriend. For that person, it might be an I:R event (if it is indeed real), for everyone else responding, it's an I:I event, or in some cases, it's an I:I:contribute event.

That said, I should probably stop doing the message board thing. It's not bringing in money, it's not bringing in anything real, and in terms of intrinsic fun... it's not that fun.

I like to play games or watch movies. These are the intrinsic fun things, which means I can cut some of them out. People might argue that playing games gives you some sort of hand-eye co-ordination skill, but we all know that's a bunch of bullcrap. Movies enrich your mind, but... far too often they don't.

Creating videos, and putting them up on youtube/etc. This is a hobby, once again, intrinsic. I might say that it builds toward some career, or it's useful for portfolio/resume... and in some cases it is, but in general it's just fun. Building flash games though, that might be better portfolio/resume oriented.

I should exercise more. It's a resource gaining activity. I should eat better food, so it also gains better resources. I know, these are all things that I already tell myself, but now I'm doing it in a different way, kind of. So maybe later today when I'm bored, then instead of visiting some message boards or playing Call of Duty 4, I should just do some pushups or exercise, and see how far I can go. Who knows. Maybe exercise can become fun!

Anyway, that's this post. I'm not going to cut out too many fun things yet, except maybe the message boards thing, that's pretty useless. Maybe I'll make more flash games... or something.... Also, this may be a reason why people don't post in their blogs as often as they want to.

Drumming and PGR/Smarty Pants

2008-01-09T14:13:00.000-05:00

I'd like to address the difference between Drummania and Rock Band, and also ask a question about the feeling goodness of achievements, and complain about PGR's medal system.

Drummania is the Drum-arcade machine by Konami that you can find in places like the Waterloo Cove. On a sidenote, I think this game is superior to the Drumming in Rockband, but we're not going to discuss that today. Today we're discussing the main difference between Drummania and Rockband (drums).

I made a term a long time ago for games like Drummania, which I like to call the "Infinite Octopus". Drummania is an "Infinite Octopus" game, and Rock Band is not. I don't remember, but older versions of DDR may also be Infinite Octopus games. I remember on one of the easier songs of Drummania, there would be a pattern that was like red, pause, yellow, pause, red, pause, yellow pause... so sometimes for fun I would play
red, pause, yellow, pause
red, pause, yellow, pause
red, red, yellow, yellow
red, red, yellow, yellow

So I'll add in an extra beat there, for fun. Or, let's pretend in hard mode, that extra beat actually exists there, but it's not mandatory in easy mode. You can hit it if you want, but you don't see it, and you won't get points for hitting it or lose points for not hitting it, since it's not there.

So basically, you are allowed to hit the drums anytime, and you won't lose points for it, but you will gain points and keep your combo up if you hit the particular notes that appear, and if you don't hit them you'll lose points and life and whatever. If you were an Octopus and you had a drumstick in each hand (minus the one hitting the footpedal), and you hit each drum an infinite # of times per second, you will be able to pass each and every single song in Drummania. That's why Drummania is an Infinite Octopus game.

I think DDR might be one too... if a left arrow appears, and you jump and hit left and right at the same time (or in that matter, left, right, up, and down at the same time), do you get the point or not? If you do, then DDR is also an infinite octopus game. I mention older versions because in newer versions there are hold-notes, which an infinite octopus can't handle.

Guitar Hero and Rockband (minus voice?) are not Infinite Octopus Games. You cannot strum notes randomly when notes aren't there. If you do, you lose your combo and life. In easy modes of Guitar Hero, you might hear 16 notes go by but you only have to (and only can) strum 2. If you try to strum more, you'll lose points and life. People therefore love hard mode and expert mode because they can play with every note they see, rather than the limited weirdness of easy mode.

The same is true for Drumming in Rock Band. At some points in medium you might hear 6 beats, whereas you can only strum 2. The opportunity of hitting those 6 beats creates a lot more fun, which is why hard mode is more fun.

But it's harder. Much harder. But the opportunity to hit those 6 notes... well, it's well worth it. So In a free-style sort of way, easier levels of Drummania are more fun than easier-levels of Rock Band, since you can hit notes that aren't there. And in that way, Rock Band is soo much more strict, you have to hit the notes that are there, and only those notes, nothing more, and preferably, nothing less.

Also, I noticed the other day there are some Xbox360 achievements for "completing the drum career on expert 100%"... hahaha, like I'll ever achieve that. Or we'll see...

Drumming is hard because of the footpedal. It does add a little bit of interestingness, since the foot does so little in regular videogames... but it's hard to use! It's a totally different limb not used too often... also, on another note, there are many songs in Rock Band that have a similar beat, so your hands and feet get into a sort of rhythm... and when another song comes along and has something totally different, it's hard to break away from the mold! and sentence over?

Anyway, more on Drums maybe later, if requested. For now, I need to post about Smarty Pants and PGR. Maybe just Smarty Pants, and PGR as a side note.

The other day my sister and I got into a small argument about Smarty Pants. So in Family Mode, you co-operatively try to answer as many questions as you can in a certain time limit. At the beginning of the game, you select how many questions you want to try to answer. If you answer enough questions in the time given, the game stops and congratulates you; if you fail, the game stops when you run out of time and it makes you feel bad, and tells you how many questions you got and how many you need more to reach your goal.

So for example, let's say in a 5 minute period, you select that you want to answer 20 questions. So let's say after 5 minutes are over, you only did 19, and then it will say "aww, you did 19, you only had 1 more to go! Try harder next time, k?"

And then you try again, and this time you do answer 20 questions, and you have 1 minute remaining (so you spent 4 of the 5 minutes) - and then it says "congratulations! you've reached your goal!"

Okay, everyone still with me? Good, because this is where the argument comes in. Now, for something like Smarty Pants, it's a petty little thing, so it's not too important, but for something as frustrating as PGR (Project Gotham Racing), it's quite annoying, and it's similar to this argument that I'm having here.

So back to the 20 questions - yay, you did it, but you have 1 minute remaining! The game just stops and brings you back to the beginning. Do you wonder about the 1 minute? Wouldn't you feel better if you did 22 questions in those 5 minutes? Because, well, you probably could've!

The only thing is, well, you don't know! You THINK you could've done 22 questions, or 24, since you had a whole minute left - but you just don't know! In other words, you had 1 minute left, but you did not do anything with it. 20 questions was not your highest potential, and I think that would make you feel bad.

So let's say you try again, this time you choose your goal to be 22 questions. And at the end, you fail, and you get 19 questions after the 5 minutes. Does that mean you can't get 22 questions? No! Maybe you could've gotten 22 questions last time, but you couldn't, because your goal was 20 and you've reached it, and the game stops there. Let's say you get a medal for having done 22 questions... but more on that later in the PGR argument.

So, I think my sister gets her pleasure from knowing she reached the goal, or she gets the pleasure from the process as she reaches her goal. "aww, you were 2 away, try harder!" "aww, you were 1 away, try harder!", ... "yay, you did it, you reached your goal" - of course, she had 20 seconds left, so there's some potential that wasn't used up. My sister would be happy that she reached her goal, I would feel bad because we didn't use up all our resources to the best of our ability.

And that's my problem - whenever you reached your goal, it means you didn't use up your fullest potential. For me, I would rather have messages like

"Aww, you only got 21 answers, you need 879 to go!" "Aww, you only got 22 answers, you need 878 to go!" "Aww, you only got 23 answers, you only need 877 to go!" "Aww, you only got 24 answers, you only need 876 to go!" So, my sister doesn't feel happy about this, because she never gets her achievement of reaching the goal, and it's quite discouraging looking at such high numbers. like "1 more to go" and "2 more to go", those are achievable and gives her a sense of purpose and a challenge, but "879 to go" - well, she might as well just give up, she'll never reach it.

But, each time you go, you'll keep getting higher. I'd rather have "Aww, only 24 answers, 876 to go" than "congrats, 23 done, but 20 seconds left". And that's what we argued about.

Onto the PGR argument, which follows the same principle. Let's say there's this event, where you had to rack up a certain number of points in a time limit. There are 5 medals, um, copper, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. Okay, the PGR system really sucks, which is why I'm complaining about it. Moving on... so let's say you need 10,000 points for silver and 25,000 points for gold. Usually in any other game, you'd do the event, and based on the number of points you get, you get a certain medal for it.

In PGR, you choose the medal which you want to go for first, and then you do the event. So, let's say it's my first time doing this event, so I play it safe and I choose a Silver Medal, so I'm going for 10,000 points. Anyway, so I do the event, and I'm racing the course, drifting, doing some awesome precision work, and I end up with 26,000 points.

So of course, PGR being retarded, gives me the silver medal, because I got over the 10,000 points that I needed. So, I say, "umm, I'm good at this, let's go for gold" and I go for Gold, since I exceeded the 25,000 points I need for gold. So I do the course again, this time a bit more sloppy, and I get 19,000 points. And of course, I don't get the gold medal.

Which is totally retarded, because I so deserve the gold medal! I got the 25,000 points, which means I deserve the gold medal! Yet the game doesn't give it to me, which is totally retarded, and I totally hate the PGR system for that. The next 10 times I try, I get 18,000-24,000 points, which is so frustrating because we all know I deserve this gold medal.

And that's what I hate about PGR.

Click, #, #, #

2007-11-29T10:27:00.000-05:00

Okay, this is another comment to my WOW post. I feel this deserves another blog post because it's longer than a comment.

To summarize, when I say "clicking", it's my short form for "Click, #, #, #" which is my way of describing WOW's gameplay. You walk up to a guy, you click on him, which initiates the attack. So now your guy is attacking him, and if you have enough energy and the spell is ready, you press #1 to use a spell and deal more damage. If you are running low on life, you press #2. If you are about to finish him, you can press #3 to seal the deal, using a stronger spell but shouldn't be used too often, maybe it stuns you for a bit. Rinse and repeat for every enemy.

That is what I believe to be WOW's combat system. I believe there's not much to it... I think of it too much as a react-response system... low on life, you heal (by pressing a button, an "easy" button if you will)... you need to pull a guy away from a mob, I assume you can do that with another easy button... if the enemy says "charging ULTRA Beam" you concentrate more damage, or you get ready shield/regen or nullification spells.

So I'm watching Duy now, Duy is fighting 6 guys at a time, and he's standing there, hand not even on mouse, and he's button mashing one of the numbers, I think. And the guys just fall like flies after 40 seconds or whatever. Now Duy is looting each and everyone of these monsters... and now he's fighting more guys, training them together so he can face one direction and hit them all. Once again, he's rapidly pushing a combination of buttons. His life bar is at 66%, not bad... block, parry, block, parry... 50%... still good... one enemy left... and done. I was hoping he'd get to lower life and then I'd see him reach for another number and his life would regen back to a high number... oh well.

First, to agree with Ambrose, Final Fantasy's system isn't that involving either. If you are low on life, you also heal yourself with a few buttons, and the rest of the time is spent fighting. Halo 4 player co-op is a bit insane too, since there's no real fear of death, so everyone just becomes a sacrificial zergling, guns-a-blazing.

So what I mean by Click # # #, is not the buttons you press.. but it's how you deal with everything. Take TOTA for example. You are GUY, you approach an enemy, and you press X X X X, down Circ, forward Circ, rinse repeat. Not totally exactly, but close. X X X X are the normal attacks, down Circ if you have the energy to deal more damage, and then forward Circ as a sort of combo ender. If you have low energy then you don't do those.

Healing? Healing is a bit different. My idea of healing in WOW (Guild Wars, and let's put FF in here) is that you can do it while fighting. TOTA, you have to run away, find a safe place for you or the healer for a few seconds, and then do the healing. I'm not talking about pushing buttons, I'm talking about responding to the environment and how to do it.

Smash? Well, Smash is almost no contest - it's one of the most variable response-react games there are, you can do almost anything anytime. There's a lot of visual stimulii that might cause you to change your actions, and... well, I hope I don't have to talk much about Smash... who disagrees? Maybe when you're like, the best player in Smash, it's a bit more response-react. You see Samus. She's off the edge. Then with your expertise, you know Samus' optimal flight path to get back onto land. You are Ness. You can now calculate the best timing to force Samus. But even then, sometimes it doesn't go right.

But that might be your idea - you press forward, hold C-up for a few seconds, and then press down and A at the same time at this precise moment, where Samus is recovering from a bomb drop and you are right there to knock her down. If you become that Robotic, maybe the gameplay in Smash isn't involving for you either.

In response to Ambrose with regards to Halo... well, it depends how you play. The problem with what I do (which is what you described) is that it isn't very effective, and usually ends in a 1:1 kill/death ratio. Obviously, the way I play in halo multiplayer isn't quite the same as I play in single player, you can't do that as much in single player. So is it trigger to fight, melee to finish, and run around the corner to heal? Maybe, but it's more involving than that, with all the factors.

Maybe the other thing I'm criticizing is that... in WOW, I think the stimuli are the: the green bar, the blue bar, and the enemy's green bar, and maybe the spell icons to see if they're ready or not. I can think of Final Fantasy, where I think that might almost be true. You enter a battle, and it zooms in, and you see your life meter, your magic meter, and the enemy's life meter. Let's say the menu is replaced with hotkeys so you can access your favourite spells. The question is, can you finish a Final Fantasy fight like that? Maybe there's a prompt that says "you have not enough mana" or "Fire spell was ineffective", but you get my point. Is it doable?

It's not in Halo. You require to see the level in order to run around a corner, or if the guy moves, you have to see him move so you can adjust your aim accordingly. It's not in Smash. SO NOT. It's not in TOTA, since you have to run around correctly to avoid spells and attacks. It's not in PGR2. And so on... but is it possible in FF? Is it then possible in WOW?

I have another partially related question. Why Meph runs, and, do you do meph runs (equivalent)? I assume Jia is at end game in Diablo II, but pure end game, no more raids, no more harder enemies. So why Meph runs? Stat increase from 233 to 234? Something else? I don't know.

Also, if there exists an end-game in WOW (no more raids, nothing more to play for except bigger numbers), would you continue? I assume they're always releasing new content, but if they stopped, would you stop? If you didn't stop, would your playing be considered the same as meph runs?

Halo: MMOFPS

2007-11-28T18:54:00.000-05:00

Okay, this is a response to my "World of Warcraft" blog post on the other blog.

I may have... fibbed a little - at the time not really on purpose, but I realized something. I do like leveling up and bigger numbers, up to a point. We level up often in TOTA; sometimes out of necessity because a boss is beating us tooo badly, but sometimes just for fun. Sometimes we're a few levels away from learning new magic spells or new AD Skills. And I must admit, looking at my C.Cores and seeing my (Guy's) attack power at, for example, 332+132, it makes me feel good. I look at Jia's (Jade's) attack power and it's like 120+10. Hah. But his magic is through the roof and I have none of that, so we each have a role.

Seeing bigger numbers as you do attacks in TOTA is also nicer, although I do admit that enemies are getting stronger so they take longer to kill, makes me feel... not as satisfied. Leveling up the sword in Ninja Gaiden is fun, or getting some attack increases in games like that is nice. Being stronger in Paper Mario games is always nice, you get that nice level up animation too. Leveling up in Final Fantasy games is always pretty good, makes you feel better, except in Final Fantasy 8, but I digress.

I think the main problem personally for me in WOW, is not the leveling up and the numbers. The two problems for me, are the clicking, and the pace.

Pace is a major one. It takes many hours to level up a level in WOW, and it takes a long time to defeat an enemy, or a boss. In Guild Wars, it was more combat oriented - combat was faster, life changes occur more often, and overall it was a much faster game. In Ninja Gaiden, a normal enemy would die in 3 hits, or one nice combo or something, and similarly, an enemy can kill you pretty quickly too. In TOTA, your change in life can be really quick, and enemies die relatively faster than in WOW. Halo... well, everything is quicker in Halo and other games.

Devil May Cry bosses kinda had this problem - they took a lot of hits, and were more a battle of endurance than skill. Viewtiful Joe bosses had a formula where you had to learn, and then you just had to repeat the formula over and over until they died, that also wasn't that much fun. I like quick turnaround in my games.

So my main problem is pacing, or time. Personally for me, the result you get from playing an hour of WOW is not worth the time. Leveling up is much more satisfying in TOTA, where it happens much more often, and the effect.. well, the effect is okay. But in games like Paper Mario, where you have 30 life and when you level up and you gain 5 life, that is quite significant.

That said... if they made an MMO Halo game, where it's just like Halo 3, but they have some leveling up system where you get better shields, and better weapons... and you go into different classes and you can hold different weapons... that'd be neat. Then there's PvP games and all that, they have that already but now it's more... umm.. restricted, hehe. Then there are instances and dungeons, where you form a party of 4 or 8 or whatever, and it'll be like a SWAT team taking out a rogue enemy dragon or whatever. I think I can play this game.

Similarly, if Smash Bros was an MMO, where you level up and get new moves and abilities (triple jump? longer firefox? double air-dodge? stronger falcon punch? hits both ways?), that would be neat. If they had a mario game with swords? and you level up? Although I think it's called Maple Story? hmm... anyway, I think I can play these games, and level up, and enjoy myself... the thing is, these types of games don't take long times to play. I can be quick in and out of a pvp game in Halo in 10 minutes, or a dungeon in 30 minutes or something.

Hmm... I think that's it. And then comes the clicking, the core of the gameplay. That's another subject. So, for me, it's the pacing, the time effort required to play WOW, and how it takes too long for things to happen. So... does this say anything about me? Am I impatient? Is it a fault of mine? Well, whatever. That's that.

Magic: The Non-Quitting

2007-11-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

About half a year ago, we all decided to quit playing Magic. We said something like "after 10th edition" we'll all quit - or at least, we will play less, draft less... we'll probably still draft each time a new set comes out, see what Magic's been up to, things like that... but we certainly would draft less. Duy quit, Jason quit, so it would almost make sense for the rest of us to quit.

... that didn't happen. We didn't draft less. We didn't quit. I am still in love with Magic, and I continue to draft it with Vinh or with Alan and Vinh pretty often. It's still fun. So what happened?

It would be wrong to say that "the new set is so awesome". That's not true. The new set is good, but so was every set that has come out. It's not like the new set made Magic so awesome that it was impossible to quit. There's none of that hocus pocus going on.

So what happened? Actually... nothing happened. We said we were going to quit, but why? There was no reason to really quit, so therefore... we didn't quit. Additionally, in the few recent weeks, the cost of cards have gone down. Significantly. SIGNIFICANTLY - kind of. The Canadian dollar went up, and there was this cheap wholesale online store that I shop from; now that the Cdn dollar is at par, it's much more affordable to buy it from that store.

I suppose one of the reasons we were quitting was the cost. Before, we would say that the cost of a draft was comparable to going to see a movie in theatres, and the cost for a good draft was... well, more than seeing a movie in the theatres. Well, now that I can buy cards for cheaper, the price of a good draft is less than the cost of going to see a movie, but I digress (sorta). The logical thing to do is compare what is better - drafting or seeing a movie.

You drive to the movie theatre (you have to wear clothes, etc; that alone might be considered another cost), you pay the admission, you sit down, watch the movie for 2 hours. Let's say it was a movie that you wanted to see in the genre you like. You watch it, share the emotions (laughter, fear, etc) with your friends and the people in the theatre, and then you come out. Chances are it was a new movie that you haven't seen before, and it was a neat experience, and now you add to your culture and experience with a new story and vision from the director. You leave the theatre and go home.

For now, let's experience the first draft of a new set.

Prior to the draft, you go out and buy your booster packs and lands; or, the other extreme, you buy all your cards online, and you buy enough cards for multiple drafts so that you don't have to do any preparation work for the next few drafts - which is what I do now. I'm at home, so I don't have to dress too fancy, Alan and David and etc don't have to dress too much either. You get the new packs, you open them, get the new card smell, and you ooh and aah as you look at the cards for the first time. You see new mechanics, ultra powerful cards, and your mind forms new synergies and combos as you look at and study the cards.

If you're drafting with David, the draft will probably take well over 2 hours. After drafting, you construct your deck, which is another fun process on its own - and then you play the cards, and more oohs and aahs come out as you see cards you still haven't seen before, and you see new combos in action. After the draft is done, you have your cards to keep and play with at a later date.

Now let's talk about a late draft... so the set has been out for a while, and you probably know 90%-100% of the cards, and you've had a few drafts and you might've even made some constructed decks or searched the internet for some, so you know most of the main strategies available. And for now, let's say we're not drafting with David, heh.

So you sit down, open the packs, take your cards. If you know 90% of the cards, there's a small chance that you still get some oohs and aahs if you see new cards, and in those cases it's pretty neat to find new gems. But most of the time, you'll see cards you've seen before. After you draft, you make your deck, and you'll play. Without David, the draft can take anywhere between 15 minutes and 45 minutes (or longer, however redundant that may sound).

So it's still fun to play... but the part I really like is finding about the cards your opponents took, or ninja-ing them with the cards you took. There is still mystery before you play with the deck, as you don't know (or shouldn't know) what your opponents have picked, so that little joy from ninja-ing them with good cards is quite fun.

And as usual, after the draft, you have a deck to play with at a future date.

But one thing that I noticed is... often, you don't really play with those draft decks again. So another question is... is it okay? Is it okay, that, even though you get this new deck for later, is it okay to not use it? It does seem wasteful, yes. You bought cards, and you use them for a bit, and then you don't use them anymore. It IS wasteful, but we're talking about entertainment right now. I did say that a lot of the fun from the magic draft comes from the drafting, making of combos, and then playing your cards that your opponent doesn't know you have. Of course, once you play them, they know what you have, and part of the shock experience is gone.

So the whole question is, what's better worth the movie, drafting magic or going to see a movie? And, the kicker is - if drafting is better than seeing a movie, how much does the "deck for the future date" account for? After you see a movie, you don't get anything physical out of it. So is drafting magic so awesome, so that, after you draft and make your deck and play with it, if your cards suddenly disappeared (so that you also don't get anything physical out of drafting Magic), would it still be worth it?

Okay, I'd be kinda sad if the cards suddenly disappeared. You did after all, "work" on them. But, I'm asking because we have dozens of draft decks that are no longer used - should we keep them there, collecting dust? Would I feel better if I played with them more? Are they special so that just having them there as a "reminder" would be okay? Should we deconstruct them into constructed decks? Well, those are some odd questions.

(Aside: Another reason I like Magic is that it gives me and Vinh something to do together. Our interests rarely intersect and he doesn't like doing a lot of things, so Magic is one of the ways Vinh and I bond. That is good enough reason to stay playing magic)

Anyway, I do like going out to movies, and I do like drafting magic. I can't always choose to go out to movies, and I think my resources are pretty well so I can choose to do both (plus videogames, etc.). Sometimes, it'd be nice if I didn't have to dress up and drive to the theatre... well, that's where renting a movie comes in. Renting a movie is a cheaper alternative to going out to see a new movie... but can't always do that either.

So... I didn't really answer my question. I just said that if it's an issue of cost... well, it's not a huge cost, so it's not a huge issue. Anyway, so I didn't answer my questions too well, but maybe you would like to share your point of view.

Bathroom Scales

2007-11-09T09:32:00.000-05:00

joke from:
http://www.gcfl.net/archive.php?funny=20071109

Two youngsters were closely examining bathroom scales on
display at the department store.

"Have you ever seen one of these before?" one asked.

"Yeah, my mom and dad have one," the other replied.

"What's it for?" asked the first boy.

"I don't know," the second boy answered. "I think you stand
on it and it makes you mad."

Magic: The Judgemental Eye

2007-10-23T00:05:00.001-04:00

So right now Wen and I are msning each other, and I'm here typing in gmail about this topic. Is it debatable? Will this become a 9+comment post? Probably not, but I'll still post it.

So, there's that PS3 game "Eye of Judgement", coming out or it's out already or whatever. It's unique because it uses a special deck of real physical cards, a special placemat, a Sony EyeToy, and the PS3. Eye of Judgement is a new CCG (Collectible Card Game), might be similar to Triple Triad, where there's a 3x3 grid and you place your cards down. Your cards are special, they have some sort of special encoding on them... anyway, so you put them down on the mat, and the sony Eye Toy interprets the card and puts something on the screen.

So for example, player 1 plays a Treefolk, and then lo' and behold, on the tv screen, a treefolk appears. Player 2 plays a dragon, and then a dragon appears on the screen. Player 1 "declares an attack and taps the Treefolk", and then you see the screen and the treefolk is fighting the dragon! Player 2 casts a fireball and vamoosh, fireball on the screen.

So that's pretty cool. So from there, Wen asked me, "am I interesting in the game?" Well, I am interested on seeing how it works, but I probably won't buy it. I'm not in the market to start a new CCG, and I can't imagine it (or anything else for that matter) being better than Magic. So Wen followed up with: "If this system works with Magic instead of this new CCG, would you get it?"

Wow. Now that's interesting. Then there were 3 sub-questions; 1) existing cards work with it, 2a) you have to buy new cards and they're the same price as regular cards, and 2b) You have to buy new cards but they are significantly more expensive. Long story short, 1) yes, 2a) yes, and 2b) - I might get the game eventually, but for drafting, we'll stilll use regular cards, but if I'm feeling spiffy or curious or are having some epic something something, then I might go out and buy specifically some cards for this game.

But that's not really what this blog update is about. Next Wen said "Wow, Sony should've totally gone with Magic, instead of some new random CCG". So at first I agreed; Magic is known all over and it's awesome, while a new CCG is totally brand new so it's subject to... failing. But then, other questions rose, which this blog update is really about. For now, we'll assume the fact is close to 2a), you have to buy new cards, and they're priced approximately the same, maybe a tiny bit more. And we'll assume everything is feasible; with Eye of Judgement, they probably have to program 200 card animations and 6 effects for each (attacking, being attacked, dying, etc); with Magic, they'll have to program many more cards and many more effects... but alas, I digress.

So the question is, if Sony made Eye of Judgement: Magic the Gathering instead of Eye of Judgement: umm, Eye of Judgement, would it be more profitable?

Let's see... with EOJ, a new CCG, your target audience is those who like CCGs, newcomers to CCGs, and PS3 users. You are competing against existing CCGs (Magic, Pokemon, Yugioh, etc) and other PS3 games.

with Magic, your target audience is the same, except there's a few exceptions. Those who already hate Magic, will not flock to this product. Those who have been considering playing Magic for a few years but haven't gotten to it yet, I don't think it sways their decision either. I mean, if a consumer hasn't started playing Magic yet, this new product wouldn't really influence them to get it more, would it?

Then there's the weird paradox; those who already play Magic. That said, your competition is still PS3 games, and other existing CCGs, and to a lesser extent, even regular Magic and Magic online is competition. To some people, Magic EoJ is the same game as regular Magic, except you have to buy pre-requisite hardware and more expensive cards.

So I guess it kinda goes back to the question Wen asked me in the beginning; if you were an existing Magic user, will you buy this new product? I probably would, but a lot of people probably wouldn't. And then there's the paradox, where if the product was the new EoJ rather than the Magic version, there would be a few people from "a lot of people probably wouldn't" that would purchase the new game, because it's a new game and not Magic.

But then Wen threw me a kicker that I forgot about: Internet play. Yes, EoJ will feature online play, so you can have your physical deck of cards, your friend in China will have her physical deck of cards, and you two can battle it out.

This makes it much more attractive for regular magic users, but how'bout magic online? Well, a major gripe about magic online is that you have to pay for your cards which you don't even have physically, which is really weird. So now there's this, a nicer alternative to playing online. I think this would be a strong selling point to get regular Magic users and Magic Online users to play the game.

So it's actually a pretty cool idea... the merging of table-top games with videogames, and then being able to translate it to work over the internet, something that table-top games cannot do by themselves.

It's almost time for discussion. So, would it have been better if they just did Magic, or if they did a new CCG? But then (curveball! - new topic) if they use Magic, who gets how much money? Who gets how much money with this EoJ CCG?

And this is where we start the discussion.

Unplayed Games

2007-10-01T11:02:00.000-04:00

Here's a list of videogames, off the top of my head, that I haven't played, or played only a little bit. This list isn't close to complete, but it's a start.

-=-=-=-Unplayed
Lost Planet
Enchanted Arms
Paper Mario (VC) - bought, knew it would be good but haven't played
Xenosaga - bought for cheap
Dirge of Ceberus - Duy,Jia played, unplayed by me
We love Katamari - haven't played
Some game on the pc I bought for 19.99 at Futureshop
A bunch of $2 and $10 games bought around Christmas time
*Devil May Cry - played a bunch before I bought it, now bought it but haven't played it
TMNT - Battle Nexus
Devil May Cry 3.5 (PC) - bought, had problems with my divx so couldn't play anymore on that computer, probably works fine on another
Fantastic Four - Rise of the Silver Surfer - umm, yeah, came free with Halo, didn't play it.

-=-=-=-Played Once or Twice
Super R-Type 3 (VC)
Marble Madness Ultra (XB) - bought near the very beginning cuz I thought it was worth it, but I barely played it
*Destruction Derby (PS) - played a bunch on PS1, not so much on PS3
Jumping Flash (PS) - sounds fun, but only played for a few minutes so far (in the middle of someone's game)
Oblivion - played for a few hours, not far at all
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (got bomb, that's about it...)
Rub-a-dub-dub - played about a dozen stages
DOAX2 - hehe. played once.
Guitar Hero - Rock the 80's

-=-=-=-Unfinished
Ninja Gaiden Sigma - normal mode, up to level 6
Command and Conquer 3 - beat a few missions
Forza 1 - probably about 30%
Forza 2 - probably about 55% - blame on Metroid and Halo :P
Katamari Damacy - haven't beaten it yet.
Dance Dance Revolution - bought for cheap, it's not bad, just haven't played much
Tomb Raider Legend - I thought I was 60% done, but really I was about 33%. Now Mai and Jon are playing it and I'll prolly let them beat it first before I continue.

-=-=-=-Beat Once and then forgotten
Grafitti Kingdom - Beat once, happy with my characters, made a few more, that's it
Zelda - Twilight Princess - I don't have 100% yet, but I beat it once
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - I don't have 100% yet; blame on Halo :P
Super Paper Mario - not old enough to be 'forgotten' yet, but not 100% or whatever, should play more

Anyway, so if I'm not playing these games, what AM I playing?
PS3 - Tales of the Abyss - playing with Ambrose, Duy, and Jia, going through Unknown. Bosses are getting much easier now, so it's losing some of the appeal, but it's still fun. Last time in hard I played as Guy, this time around I'm Anise.
PS3 - Super Puzzle Fighter Two Turbo - HD Remix - I bought it, and I play it about once every 2 days. I'd like to play against Duy and them, but mostly I'm just going through single player normal mode over and over. It's fun, I like it.
And what else... oh yeah...
Xbox360 - Halo 3 - I beat it yesterday on normal mode, it was fun. I'm also playing co-op over XBL with Eric on Heroic, occasionally on vs (with Eric, or with Eric and strangers, or with strangers), but I'm also spending an enormous time making my own levels and also watching replays and taking videos and screenshots. As for the levels I'm making, right now I'm playing around with explosives and making big or spiffy explosions around the level. Hehe, but it's fun stuff, haha. Here, check out explosions here: Halo 3 Screenshots

Xbox Problem Fixed

2007-09-28T20:38:00.000-04:00

Hi. This morning I posted a problem I was having, which I promptly fixed when I got home. From the first post in that thread, even before the solution part, was the answer. The problem in that thread was they were trying to connect 2 xboxes without the problem, so in his 'problem statement' he solved my solution - had to port forward some TCP and UDP stuff, and... voila! Nat status is now set to OPEN.

And I win! I haven't been able to test it yet (by playing the same guy as yesterday), but it should work fine.

Yay. Resolved.

Xbox 360 router problems, pls help!

2007-09-28T13:55:00.001-04:00

Okay, I'm writing this down here so that I can point people to it instead of having to write in msn the problem over and over again.

So anyway, I seem to have a problem with my router so I can’t access certain things on xbox live. I can play in random matches, but I couldn’t connect to you because my NAT setting was apparently set to Moderate, instead of “Open”. I tried to access my router and I can’t find the setting: The only NAT related setting I found was “enabled” or “disabled”, which I don’t think is the answer.

I’ve been looking at this thread on the Linksys forums about Xbox360 Nat problems, here:

http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Wireless_Routers&thread.id=44800&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

It sounds pretty helpful, unfortunately I’m not at home right now so I can’t do any of the testing right now. I don’t know about all of these things about Port Forwarding, TCP, UDP, DMZ, or uPnP, but I’ll probably find out later. Another concern I have is with the Xbox Live Router Compatibility list, found here:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/connecttolive/xbox360/homenetworking/equipment.htm

My router, the Linksys WRT300N v1.1 is not on there, so I’m a little bit concerned. I’ve read a few replies in that thread above where users went and bought new routers and then it worked fine, which I might have to do, I’m not sure.

I will go home tonight and try different variations of solutions, with uPnP, DMZ, etc… although I have no idea what it means, heh. But if you have any suggestions or if you think you can solve the problem, let me know, thanks.

Cheers,

- Bao

So there ya have it.

Scrabulous

2007-09-04T14:33:00.000-04:00

I’m still Scrabulous!

Who knew I loved scrabble so much? Anyway, you’re probably here from the other blog, so hooray, you like scrabble, or you’re curious to see how Bao has gone crazy by analyzing this game or something something.

To be honest, I’m not sure what I want to write about. I screenshotted a few pictures, so we’ll start with that.

Here are a few recent games I’ve had, and a chart showing the progress of the game. The first game was with Alfie, which he won, and most games should look like this. Both scores are pretty even throughout, but in the end, Alfie got a few good words in and won.

I love it when you put words beside other words, or you somehow create a big box of letters that actually form real words.

Anyway, the following game was with a random person on facebook, I think she was in her late 30s or mid 40s or even later, maybe even a grandmother… not sure if these people can or do get facebook… anyway, this lady apparently wasn’t playing competitively… she just put down a few words here and there, forming words, while I’m trying to maximize my points. This is an extreme example of what can happen in a game, but sometimes I do it to other people, and sometimes they do it to me.

And lastly, for now, here’s a game I’m having with Andrew Paton. I like the line chart for this – after the third word, I’ve amassed a great 36 points, while Andrew has a measly 171. I thought I was a goner for sure, but later on I too get two bingos (very nicely placed too – I had to create a few double-letter words to get them!) and I’m now catching up, but unfortunately it’s too late for me.

Anyway, I guess I can post a screenshot of each game and their charts, but why? Anyway, I’m really enjoying scrabble. When I play scrabble, I usually have dictionary.com open in another tab… I don’t think that’s cheating. I usually type in words that sound like they exist, and if they don’t, dictionary.com suggests other words that might sound like the word I want to make, and every now and then it suggests something I could use. For example (this is fake), I might type in MUGEPLANAR and that doesn’t exist, but maybe GENUPLAMAR does, which would work for me, yay.

I don’t use an anagram thingy on the web, which is definitely more cheaty-ish.

Anyway… I love scrabble. Speaking of which, we still haven’t opened our new Spanish scrabble board. We should organize a game and do that…

recent LOL moments

2007-08-22T17:04:00.000-04:00

1. Kirby's Star-Punch: Long story short, we were testing a new combo move in SSB, and we totally announced we were testing it, and yet Captain Falcon (Duy) still managed to get hit by it and die. It was so LOLful. Didn't want to write much about it since you wouldn't find it funny anyway unless you were there and you totally understand these words.

2. Just a few minutes ago, Duy came in (we're at the office), so I start talking with him, and take off my headphones while the music was still playing... and then I open winAmp, and I change the song. But my headphones are still on the table.

One Bone too many

2007-08-14T13:44:00.001-04:00

Okay, I can't stop talking about this, so I'll blog about it.

So our German guest, Jan, was sitting in the kitchen, and we bring in some Popeyes Chicken, and I ask him, "Do you want a piece of fried chicken?" and he says yes. So I open the box, he looks in, and says, "nah, nevermind. Too many bones."

WTH? So I tell him, "... it's just ONE bone."

And he says "yeah. One bone too many."

What the hell? I can't wrap my head around this, it's like the weirdest thing I've ever heard - weirdest plausible thing. I'm not talking about "yesterday I saw a three headed pig flying across the sky" weird, but this is REAL LIFE, and sentence sentence over over.

But wow, that is so weird. He then tells me it's because he's lazy... I don't even know what that means. It's chicken, and it's one BONE! It's barely a bone in the sense of a bone, too. Like, fishbones suck, they are tiny and numerous and they're all over the good parts of what you want to eat. Chicken thighs are a biit annoying too. But a chicken drumstick bone? It's like, the toothpick that holds a sandwich together. A chicken drumstick wouldn't be a chicken drumstick without the bone. It's like eating ribs without the bone... it's just MEAT, lying there.

AHHHH!!!! *goes crazy*

Costs and Efforts of Entertainment

2007-08-10T12:25:00.000-04:00

(semi-ramble and brainstorm)

Going out to a Club: Have to dress up (nice shirt and shoes for man, nice dress or outfit for woman), have to smell nice and look nice, find a ride to Toronto (drive, carpool, public transportation or cab). Get there, dance, be all hot and sweaty (and tired feet from dancing), bump into random people. Dance with girls and guys. Buy beer and/or shots and/or other drinks. Overall a lot of preparation, physical discomfort, and expensive, but you might touch a girl, but probably not in a particularly sexual way.

OR

Stay home and play games/movies: Umm… wear what you are wearing now or less, maybe go out and rent a movie, or turn on the computer and play World of Warcraft. Almost no preparation, very comfortable, cheap, and probably still a lot of fun.

So, these are among the extremes of entertainments, both of which normal people do on Friday nights. There’s the group that goes clubbing, and the group that stays home and plays games. I used to be the guy that stays home and plays games on Friday nights, 100% of the time. Nowadays It’s still like that 75-80% of the time, but I try to go out a lot more often… but is it worth it?

Then there’s another conversation we could do, which basically compares one person playing WOW for a year (Duy), and me, who requires variety and while Duy pays maybe $180 per year to play WOW, I’d probably buy 7 different games to keep me entertained, which is much more than the $180 that Duy pays.

But going back to the first comparison… is it worth it? For me, it might be another Variety issue, since I don’t want to just stay home all the time. It might also be a social-networking thing, which I won’t get if I stayed home. I am, after all, looking for a girl or wanting a girl, and just being near girls in clubs or anywhere-outside-my-home is a step in the right direction. As I said, it’s a lot of money and hassle, but sometimes it’s worth it.

Then a third conversation I’d like to have, which might not be about the cost, but it’s about people getting drunk. At first, I would think an undrunk person would have as much fun as a buzzed or tipsy person, which would have as much fun as a totally drunk person, maybe more. Is it just an experience to be drunk and not know what’s going on, or be totally uninhibited? As an undrunk person watching drunk people go crazy, it’s hard to see why you’d want to be drunk – it’s easy to see why you’d want to watch drunk people be drunk, but to actually be drunk?

Well, as I said, when you’re drunk you let go of your inhibitions, and you are more open… but isn’t that just a psychological thing? Nope! It’s not. I remember reading a debate or a thread on the Internet a few years ago, where it starts with one kid saying that ecstasy doesn’t make you happier, it’s just a drug and it causes weird psychology with you, but doesn’t really make you happier, just crazier.

And then another kid responds and says that ecstasy DOES make you happier, because scientifically, ecstasy releases more endorphins, and thus, through science, it makes you happier, which is a fact about endorphins. So like alcohol, by science, it would do something, which would make you less inhibited, which is scientifically true, so you can’t really argue with that.

So I think I understand why people get drunk… well, I do like to get buzzed and a little tipsy, and the more you drink the more buzzed and tipsy you get, until you’ve crossed that line into drunken-ness. It’s a slippery, dangerous slope/game you’re playing, if you’re trying to get as buzzed and tipsy as possible without slipping into drunkness. But the feeling when you’re all uninhibited and happy while you’re drunk is actually pretty nice, so I think I understand now.

It’s a lot of money to get drunk, but sometimes it tastes really good, hehe. So I think I understand that now.

NOW, BACK to the first comparison… well, I think I already talked about it enough. The entertainment values are different, but I’m guessing the utility is different too. Duy might think it’s just as fun to play WOW, if not funner, than going out partying or clubbing, if he doesn’t like clubbing and dancing with girls and stuff. I do like dancing with girls, so I will continue to expend more effort and money to go out and do that, and maybe I’ll get drunk more. But I am liking the buzz… and I do remember that other time I got drunk, the first time, and the throwing up and all that, and I’d rather not go there. But maybe it’ll be worth it one day…….. huh?

Value vs. Comfort

2007-07-28T02:00:00.000-04:00

Ahh, yes, the epic battle between Value vs Comfort – almost as epic as the Battle Between Good and Evil. So the question is, how often, or to what degree, do you go for Value, or how often or to what degree do you go for Comfort (or Utility?)?

So for example, let’s say you rent a videogame, and it costs you $6, and you rent it for 3 days, so maybe you get to play it for 60 hours if you wanted to.

So if you were going for the most value, you’d probably play the game for the whole 60 hours. Comfort-wise, you might just casually play the game until you get bored or tired or whatever, and then you can try again the next day or just never play it again, if it bores you so much. Or, if anytime something trumps playing this game (like Sleep trumps games, or food trumps games) then you stop playing it…

A more daily example would be the all-you-can-eat buffet. You pay $10 for all-you-can-eat buffet. Now what? Maybe you eat until you cannot eat no more… and then you eat some more. If you want the most of your money, you will keep eating, until you have the most value for your money.

Maybe you’re the type that will eat at least enough to make your $10 worth it. Maybe you’ll just eat until you’re sorta full, until you’re “comfortable”, and then you stop eating. That would be going for “Comfort”. But let’s throw in a bonus question:

Let’s say it was lobster-fest at Mandarin, or something pretty expensive. Do you try to just eat lobsters, or would you eat some lobster and some other food? Maybe if you went just for value, you’d just eat lobsters, and you eat as much as you can until you cannot anymore, and then you’d keep trying to get the most of your money.

Sentence over? I wanted to write about this but I don’t really know where I was going with it. It’s just a question – value or comfort?

Me, I think an equal mix between the two is good, but a little bit more toward value. I don’t think it’s that good to always be in your comfort zone, so sometimes you step out, cuz it makes life interesting and you get more value for your money.

Join me next time when I compare entertainments, taking into account the effort required to do said entertainment.

A Look into the past - April 2005

2007-07-06T16:05:00.001-04:00

The other day I was sorting some of my music files at my work computer, and I came across some stuff I recorded from a while ago from various sources, including stuff from all the way back in April, 2005. So let's go back to April 2005 and see what was happening back then.

So, here are two audio files, which work better as video files but alas, I don't have them at the moment, so the audio will have to do. Back then, around April 13th 2005, let's see... popular headlines dealt with The Pope, Britney Spears being pregnant, and the Michael Jackson case. Reminisce about the past as I did when I re-listened to these after a while (and got a good chuckle out of them).

First 7 minutes of Jay Leno - April 13th, 2005 - 7mb

First 11 minutes of Conan O'Brien - April 13th, 2005 - 10.5mb

Note: The volume on these clips are LOUD, so turn down your speakers before you play them to find the optimal volume for you.

Hehe. Thought you might enjoy it.

Summerlicious

2007-06-27T12:39:00.000-04:00

Okay, so Summerlicious is upon us. Reservations started a week ago, and the festival runs from the 6th to the 22nd of July, and I’m busy from the 7th to the 17th. Geoff will be back from Churchill before I am back from my vacation, so the 18th to the 22nd is good for us. As usual, Ray is going with multiple groups, one of which is going to Canoe so we don’t have to go there, unless we wanted to.

Here’s the site: http://www.toronto.com/summerlicious

::edit:: - Here's the microsoft document I have for the meals, with all the menus and some of my comments, from my top 20 list. This might or might not make it easier to look at and compare the restaurants: Summerlicious MSWord Document ::/end edit::

So I spent a few days looking at the restaurants with $35 dinners, since that’s what Ray would’ve wanted :P I guess if I felt like it, I could look at $15 lunches too, but that comes later. First, I think we’d rather have some fine dinners over some upgraded regular dinners (I wrote about this in a previous blog update about Winterlicious; long story short, paying $15 for lunch is paying price of Hamburger+1 to get Hamburger+2; paying $35 for dinner is paying price of Crème Brulee-2 to get Crème Brulee; one is a discount for fine food, the other is a premium for upgraded regular food)…

ANYWAY, so I’ve looked at maybe 60 restaurants with $35 dinners, and I’ve chosen about 21 of them which have some sort of uniqueness in their menu, or the restaurant is super-well known. I haven’t looked at ambience or location or prettiness of restaurant yet, just the menu.

The problem is that most menus are the same, so for those ones, it’s hard to choose which one is better. Most entrees consist of choices between a fish, a steak, a chicken, and/or a vegetarian pasta, and those ones are hard to judge. So in my list of 20, there are a couple of those, but most of mine have more unique or more different menus.

In my 20, there’s a few famous ones, like Canoe, Truffles, and Rosewater Supper Club. Acqua and La Maquette made it into my 20, but it’s fairly unlikely we’ll be going back to those. Other top choices in my 20 are Flow, Monsoon, Zucca Trattoria, and Bloom.

I guess we won’t discuss much of the other parts of the top 20, but for those curious, they were Richlee, Trapper's, Sequel, Jump Café, Fat Cat Bistro, Celestin, Cataplana, Auberge du Pommier, Bistro 990, Bier Markt, Katsura, and Romagna Mia (Bier, Katsura, and Romagna were the lowest on my list).

If anyone wants to do a cheap weekday lunch, let me know… I can probably take an afternoon off work for that, heehee.

Anyway, I think we should pick 1 restaurant from the famous/past ones (Canoe, Truffles, RSC, Acqua, La Maquette) and one from my other top 4 maybe (Flow, Monsoon, Zucca Trattoria, Bloom).

Anyway, now what to do with this page… I could list all the menus, but that just takes up a lot of room, and you can just find the menus yourself, yes? Hmm… what to do… sentence… over?

Apple, Almond, Arugula Salad: Baby arugula, roasted slivered almonds tossed and tart Granny Smith apples tossed in a Salsero vinaigrette, or
Fried Chili Calamari: chili garlic crusted calamari, crisp diakon + cucumber salad, mango pickle and caramelized soy drizzle, or
Drunken Pappardelle (extremely spicy): seared veal and chicken dumplings, tat soi, Napa cabbage & Thai basil in a concentrated spiced kaffir lime broth

Sea Bream: pan seared bream with new potato and fennel salad, seared scallop + honey mushroom and kaffir lime-ginger water

Forbidden Parfait: Polynesian style forbidden dessert with pineapple + macerated coconut + sweet bean puree topped with Tahitian granita and clotted cream

I don’t know, I think I just want Forbidden dessert :) Anyway, Anyway, if you’re interested, post a comment, and look at the menus, and let me know… we should probably make reservations soon. Sentence Over!

2.5 new SSB Terms!

2007-06-18T12:23:00.001-04:00

After millions of SSB (Super Smash Bros) matches and dozens and dozens of Smash terms, 2 or 3 new terms have recently come up! Two by Jia, and half by myself and Hawk:

Reverse-V: Reverse-V is a move by Captain Falcon and it is done on Peach's Castle, or whatever that stage is with the bumper and triangles. It happens when Falcon does a Falcon Dive in such a way such that, after leaving the dive, the opponent's body goes diagonally up into the bottom of the triangle, and then bounces so that they go diagonally downwards away from the stage.

Artificial Triangle: Artificial Triangle, I think, is done exclusively by Monkey. Similarly to Reverse-V, in this move, the Monkey grabs the opponent and picks them up, ready for a forward throw. Then the Monkey jumps and throws the opponent such that, like Reverse-V, the opponent goes diagonally up, hits the bottom of the triangle, and is sent diagonally downwards away from the stage.

Lastly, the half term is not a term, but instead might be an inside joke, or something you'll hear us saying from time to time. I was Monkey in a 4-player game, in which one of the opponents was Ness, and I told everyone that I would get 7 kills this game. I end up getting 6 kills, and then I say, "If only I killed that child..." - and Isaque suggested it would be funny if you were walking down the street or in the mall, and as people pass you, you would loudly say "If only I killed that child..." ...

Freebird coward and games we (dis)like

2007-05-22T21:43:00.000-04:00

Hmm… it’s 9:20, I don’t really want to blog more now. Actually, instead of writing long articles about tiny things, I’ll write tiny articles about tiny things:

Freebird Coward

Games We Hate into Games We Love

-=-=-=-=-=

Freebird Coward

The other day Duy said “Nobody fights fiercer than someone who hasn’t saved”, in reference to when we fought Legretta. Hehe, it’s funny cuz it’s true. If we haven’t saved in a while, we can’t be as risky – so we’ll use life potions a bit earlier than usual and take less chances.

The same is true for Freebird – Freebird is 9 minutes long, with the first 4.5 minutes being really easy and the rest being pretty hard. So, after playing for 4.5 minutes, it feels like you haven’t “saved” for 4.5 minutes – so if you die, you have to start back at the save point, which is the beginning of the song. So we learned the other day to do freebird co-op expert/expert, we should play a bit… cowardly. So we tend to use star power a bit earlier than usual, for example, instead of waiting for us to be flashing red, maybe we use it at low yellow or first sign of red.

I think that’s how we were able to beat freebird… play cowardly.. haha.

Games We Hate into Games We Love

Hate is a pretty strong word, so I’m just using it for emphasis. Lately, there have been at least two puzzle games that turned into RPGs, which makes the game a whole lot more fun. These two are Bookworm Adventures and Puzzle Quest. It’s easier to emphasize puzzle quest, so I’ll talk about that.

The “parent” game of Puzzle Quest, I think, is Bejeweled, or many other similar games like that. In this game, you have a grid (8x8 or 10x10 or whatever) of blocks, different coloured diamonds or whatever. All you do is click on a block, and then click on an adjacent block, and the two blocks will switch places. If you connect 3 or more blocks in a row or column, they disappear, you get points, and more blocks fall down from above, possibly causing chain reactions or whatever. If you do not connect 3 or more blocks, you lose points. Uhh, I don’t think the game ever ends, unless there are no more moves, and then they give you a new board.

So that’s all you’re doing – you’re switching blocks around, to eliminate blocks, and to get points. What’s the point to a chain reaction? More points. What’s the point to eliminate more than 3 blocks at once? More points. Anyway, I think this type of game is quite boring and unsatisfactory.

But then comes Puzzle Quest – an RPG where you fight bad guys using puzzles. The gameplay is essentially the same, but the goal is different. This time, you take turns with the bad guy on clearing the board, and different blocks on the board mean different things. For example, if you clear 3 skulls at a time, the enemy takes damage; more skulls, more damage. If you get a chain reaction, you can take extra turns. If you clear 3 yellows, you add to your yellow mana bar; 3 reds, red mana bar, and etc. 3 purples raises your experience, 3 gold coins give you more gold, etc, etc…

Just like regular RPGs, you can start with different classes, which gives you access to different spells; and when you gain enough experience points, you gain levels and you can put your skill points in bettering different magics or other attributes.

So as you build your mana up, you can use up your turn to cast different spells, some that heal, some that damage, some that clear some of the board, etc… so… umm… it’s fun. In Bejeweled, you do the puzzle to get points. In this, you do it so that you can defeat the bad guy, to survive, to cast special magic effects.

So, deep in my heart, I know I’m playing the same game, but it’s much more fun now, even though I know I shouldn’t like it so much. The same is true for Bookworm Adventures - you spell bigger words to deal more damage, and you acquire special items to make different words have different effects. Like, there's an item that, if you spell words dealing with "Metal", you get to deal more damage, or if you can use X, Y, and Z's you also deal more damage. It's so much funner like that.

Puzzle end and Puzzle begin

2007-05-22T14:23:00.001-04:00

I will probably post 2 more topics before tomorrow morning. Anyway, for now, here are three possible solutions to the wiki puzzle, and then another puzzle:

Command and Conquer || Mammoth MK2 Tank || tank || tank disambiguation || Tank (the matrix) || Jada Pinkett Smith.

... || Adolf Hitler || Drama Movie || List of drama films || Reign Over Me || ...

... || USA || Maryland || Baltimore || List of famous people from Baltimore || ...

(last one was by Isaque)

Anyway, here's a new Magic related puzzle that I thought of:

Let's say you are playing Type 2, and you have a starting hand with only 1 land, and it is a swamp. By the end of the turn, you will have 1 green creature in play. How is that possible, and what possible creatures can come out?

Anyway, previously there were 4 answers, then I thought of a 5th, and then thought of a bug that could screw up the puzzle. So here are a few restrictions:

- you may only play 1 creature spell
- you may not play non-creature artifacts

Sounds weird, eh? But whatever. Actually, here's a clue or further restrictions if you want help on the 5 answers:

- you may only play 1 spell, and that must be the creature
- if you want, you can pretend your starting hand has no lands at all

And that's it! So, we have 5 answers. Enjoy!

talking with Jia

2007-05-15T10:44:00.000-04:00

Sunday night Duy calls Jia, and the conversation went something like this:

Duy: Hey Jia, are you busy?
Jia: No.... take me away. ... please Duy... please... I.. I need this.

funny e-mails

2007-05-13T22:00:00.000-04:00

oh, man. It's funny - our hotmail accounts are all our junk accounts, but our hotmail accounts are the ones with "good" "work-ish" names, like bknh @, or dknguyenhuu @ . Meanwhile, we prefer gmail or yahoo, but my gmail is baomon, and duy's yahoo is dragonairwapt . oh man...

we should probably get some real e-mail account that we like, like bao.nguyenhuu @ gmail ... oh well.

Anyway, I just thought of this topic while talking with Duy. I was planning to write another entry, but I never got around to it. probably... never. but maybe one day.

Flash Puzzling

2007-05-03T12:41:00.000-04:00

Okay, I’m currently trying to recreate an already existing game in Flash, and I’m having some trouble. I’m trying to use a bunch of nested objects since the objects have an obvious parent/children relation, like branches in a tree. Unfortunately, because of this, it’s sorta hard to get the exact location of different objects in the tree, in relation to the root.

For example, let’s say you have object #5, which is nested inside object #4, which is nested in #3, and so on. If you ask Flash for the x co-ordinate of object #5, it will compare its x co-ordinate with object #4, and say something like “I’m 50 pixels right of object #4”, but if you want to know how it compares to object #1 or the root, it’s a bit more complicated. You need to know how object #4 relates to #3, and so on. So eventually you can find out that #5 is 50 px from #4, and #4 is 100px from #3, and #3 to #2 is 200px, and #2 to #1 is 80px, so using some sort of almost recursive function, you find out #5 is 430 pixels from object #1.

So that’s great and all, but then when you start rotating objects… well, unless I don’t know some special function, it all gets really messy. If you rotate object #5, it will still think that it’s 50px from #4, rather than 50pixels X cos(30) or something like that. So, it’s probably not too hard to figure out how far #5 is from #4… but when you have all these objects nested, I think it’s a bit harder.

Anyway, so now I have this problem, and I don’t feel like doing all the complicated math… it’s making my head hurt, haha. Well, I could work on it, but if you want to help too, that’d be awesome… or if you just want to play around with some math, here’s your chance.

Okay, here are 4 puzzles – the first 2 are practice puzzles, but the real meat is in puzzle 3 and 4. I’ve only done puzzle 2 so far, heh. In puzzles 1-3, you find the co-ordinates of point “a”. So check out these puzzles:

Puzzle 1:

Puzzle 2:

I’ve only done puzzle 2. I think it’s correct… I won’t give you the exact answer yet, but if your x value is close to 7.33 and your y value is close to 5.70 (or negative these values, blah blah blah), then we have the same answer.

Puzzle 3 I think, is the actual way my program is going to work. So a few things shifted, so maybe puzzle 3 is easy after puzzle 2, but I’m not sure, I haven’t tried it yet.

Puzzle 4 has no picture, but it is simply this; add more blocks, and create a (semi?) recursive function to calculate the co-ordinates of any possible “a” points. I’ll give you what I have for the x-value semi recursive.

So each of these blocks is identical, and like the example, let’s call them Object #X. All of them are the same, except object #0, or the very first one. All of the objects above 0 have the function

Function getx()
{ return _x + _parent.getx();
}

So from #5, when you call this function, it returns “50” and its parents getx() function, which for #4, will return 100 plus whatever else is at the bottom, and it keeps doing so until object0, which has a getx function which looks like

Function getx()
{ return _x;
}

So that the semi-recursive function stops there. I say semi recursive because it doesn’t use the same function over and over, although… well, it does, but on different objects. I guess it’s easier to understand than a fully recursive function. So, that’s puzzle 4. You can assume that the blocks know a lot, like _x, _y, _rotation, _width, _height, etc. As an additional bonus to puzzle 4, if you could use variables instead of the constants I provided (2, 6, 30 degrees, etc), that’d be good.

Secret Pet Peeve: People knowing what I'm doing

2007-05-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

Here's another thing that I don't like, that I don't think I've written about before. I don't like it when people know what I'm doing. What I just said was quite vague, so I'll clarify with two examples.

I don't like it when people see me blogging. I'd love for them to see the end result, but I really don't like it when people are watching me type, before the end product is done. It's kinda like, they're watching more than they should be, or they're learning more about me than the blog post is supposed to teach them. And sometimes they might read an incomplete work with errors, and they might judge it in that state, rather than the completed, error-free finished post.

Another weird thing I don't like is, having people infer some kind of... ack, I'll just tell the example. I like to take haircuts on either Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. People would see me Friday daytime, and then I would get a haircut, and on Monday they might forget that my hair was longer, or they just comment that I have a nice haircut, and they'll know that I got a haircut this weekend.

However, I don't like taking a haircut in the middle of the week - so say if I go to work on Tuesday, and then I get a haircut and then I come back to work on Wednesday, people would infer that "bao got a haircut yesterday/tuesday", and for some reason I don't like that. I don't like people knowing that what I did last night - it feels like an invasion of privacy, although in reality it's really not.

So them knowing that I got a haircut during the weekend was fine, but them knowing that I got a haircut "last night" is not fine, because it feels like it should be private info. I dunno, I'm weird like that.

Six Degrees of Wikipedia

2007-04-25T10:40:00.000-04:00

Okay, there's this new facebook group that I joined, which is also a game. It's called Six Degrees of Wikipedia, and you can probably already guess how it works. People post challenges and answers. When people post a challenge, they post two words or subjects, and then people have to find the link between them. So they check the wiki pages, and you have to click on links to 'link' them. I think the way it works, for 6 degrees, is that the two items are also part of the 6 degrees. So for example,

Milkyway --> toothpick

can be solved as
Milkyway --> Earth --> Wood --> Toothpicks, and that counts as 4 links. You can't go from Toothpicks to Milkyway, you have to do it in the order chosen by the challenger.

I think sometimes the challenger finds the answer beforehand, sometimes they just pick two things and that's the challenge. Anyway, I solved a few challenges, and now I posted my own challenge, with my own TWO different answers, and nobody has solved it yet:

Command and Conquer --> Jada Pinkett Smith

There are several pages for Command and Conquer (command & conquer is different than command and conquer)... so I'll give you the links.

From this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_conquer

to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jada_Pinkett_Smith

stumped? well, here's something to get you started... although I don't think it works, haha.

1 - Command and Conquer is a series of games, including the 3rd C&C, C&C Tiberian Wars.
2 - Tiberian Wars features actors and actresses, including Grace Park, from Battlestar Galactica.
3 - The president from Battlestar Galactica is ... umm... that Mcdowell lady.
4 - That McDowell Lady is the first lady in Independence Day.
5 - Independence Day stars Will Smith.
6 - Will Smith is married to Jada Pinkett Smith.
7 - Jada Pinkett Smith.

That's 7 links, so it doesn't work. But anyway, if I found two solutions, you can probably find them, or some other ones. If you want, you can post a few challenges too. It's a fun game, if you have nothing else to do, or if you like clicking random links on wikipedia.

Freebird Structure

2007-04-05T13:54:00.000-04:00

I’m addicted to Guitar Hero. I think I really like Freebird, except that it’s hard, and it has what I call a “Freebird Structure”, which applies when a song starts easy and ends hard. Man, I don’t really like freebird structure songs! Usually, the easy parts are boring to play, and it’s the hard parts that are fun to play, so you have to play so much easy to get to the hard. And since it’s hard, there’s a good chance you’ll die, and you’ll have to start all over! Argh!

There are many songs which are low difficulty throughout and have a difficulty guitar solo near the end, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about where a main part of a song is drastically more difficult than other main parts.

So… Freebird has difficulty level 1 from 0% to 50%, and then after that it has difficulty levels 6-10.
Hangar 18 switches between difficulty 1-2 and 4-6, and then at the middle it gets to difficulty 8-10.
Jordan starts with difficulty 3, ends with difficulty 3, and from 40%-80% has difficulty 8-10.
Fall from Pangaea starts with difficulty 3, and slowly rises to 4, and then eventually hits you with 8-10.

So, now you know what a Freebird Structure is. I hope there are less songs with Freebird Structures in the future! (Although, it’s awfully nice of Freebird to make sure you have plenty of Starpower before entering the hard part)

300 – Ultra Violence?

2007-03-13T11:28:00.000-04:00

People say that 300 is very violent, full of gore, the fighting is the best part, etc… but I didn’t think of it like that. I’d classify Kill Bill as ultra violent, because people are dying left and right, getting stabbed, impaled, de-limbed or beheaded, and there’s all this semi-realistic blood on the floor, and ultra-unrealistic blood squirting out of the body.

But 300… not so. At least, not in my opinion. Sure, there was blood, blood splatter, limbs flying… but…

The movie is very digital, had a lot of slow motion, had good choreography, and is so good because of its special effects. So whenever a sword goes through a Persian in slow motion, and there’s digitized blood spatter… it just feels like a special effect to me.

Take for example, the part near the beginning of the fight, when Leonidas charges away from the narrow passageway, and just encounters a line of Persians, one after another. This is where they first show the digital effects in choreographed fight scenes, so they wanted to show off some nice moves and effects.

So one guy approaches, Leonidas stabs him. Another guy comes, Leonidas ducks and throws the guy over his shoulder with his shield. Another guy comes, Leonidas barrel rolls his attack and then backhands him. It’s all done in a pretty, slow motion sequence. So basically, each of these guys serves a purpose to a digital effect and piece of choreography.

So sometimes it depends on what you think of the Persians in the movie. For example, in say, The Departed, each character is a person with a life, and when such a person dies, it’s pretty significant. In James Bond, when Bond shoots some guard, it… doesn’t feel like a real death, but instead just an obstacle that James Bond had to deal with. The guard had no name, no history… he just appeared out of the blue and disappeared into the blue a few seconds later.

If you are able to think in this way, then the Persians are even less significant than the James Bond bad guys. They appear in the hundreds of thousands, they each have no name, they all look the same, and also, most of them have no face. They’re wearing enough clothing around their face so it’s hard to say they’re even people. So in this case, most Persians are also just obstacles, cannon fodder if you will. And when you get rid of cannon fodder in a stylish fashion, it doesn’t seem so violent.

Okay sure, there were some parts that were more violent than others. I guess the part when that Spartan and the other Spartan’s son were fighting… maybe it was violent, I don’t remember, but it was nicely choreographed too.

But anyway, thanks for reading my ramble. Overall, I didn’t think the movie was very violent, or, I don’t think it should be one of its selling points.

Isn't it friday night already?

2007-03-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

I played poker last night... went well, I suppose. Went to bed at midnight... had a dream, where us poker guys went to dinner, and we were sitting at a round table, making a bunch of jokes about Tony, and Dave was doing his usual laugh... and then I wake up at 4:26 AM.

My brain asks me a question - isn't it Friday night already? You're sleeping, and you were supposed to go see 300 the movie, with your friends? But you have the tickets, and if you weren't there, then the other guys didn't get to see it either?

And then I saw my brain make some calculations, visually taking in a bunch of variables and outputting responses of YES or NOs, and most of them were NO.

"No", says my brain to the other brain. It isn't friday yet, and none of this happened yet.

And then I tried to go back to bed. I guess I'm not tooo sleepy now.

Hate Madness

2007-03-04T13:03:00.000-05:00

Do you know what I hate about myself? When I get mad, I throw stuff around, I slam doors, I make things messy, I hide stuff, I play loud music... but I never break stuff. It's like, everything I do is fixable and just for show, but I can't get past the commitment of breaking stuff.

I think I used to break a few things - sometimes I would throw something and it would break by accident - like I threw a bowl a short distance, and of course it broke... and once I teared a stuffed animal into pieces (never did that since)... but I don't break things. Well, I just threw a scissor across the room and it broke into 3 pieces, but I can't like, break a glass or bowl... ALTHOUGH, I did drop an empty beer bottle from the top floor into the basement (which is carpeted), and it didn't break! It just hit the handrail too, but didn't break. How disappointing.

Wash your hands!!

2007-03-03T23:09:00.000-05:00

It bugs me in tv shows when you see someone in the bathroom, and then you don't see them wash their hands. Maybe it focuses back on the dining area, and they come out and it's assumed they washed their hands, but it bugs me if it doesn't show them.

Your base is under attack... once.

2007-02-28T10:51:00.000-05:00

Ya know what I hate in C&C? I hate it when you leave your base alone, and some jerk comes by and kills you and your units don't do anything. Also, your EVA doesn't tell you enough.

Like, when a Tomahawk and a bunch of tanks are taking out your buildings, and you have a few guys a few steps away, but they just sit there and do nothing because they're not being attacked. They don't see your own building being blown to bits, so they don't do anything and you just lose a warfactory just like that.

And then when they start combat, your EVA tells you that yout base is under attack, so you pause your offense, and you check your base and start making some random defensive stuff, and then you go back to your offense. Like in Starcraft, it doesn't feel like a problem for some reason...

but in C&C, so you continue your offense, and then the next thing you know, you look back at your base and you've lost 6 buildings. I don't know, it doesn't feel like that in Starcraft, but in this game it feels like a lot can happen while you're not looking, and the EVA doesn't tell you enough and... yeah. A lot can happen between 1 look and the next. So I've lost a bunch of games because of that.. It's because units are stupid and they don't attack or defend properly without your supervision. Meanwhile, the computer can micromanage both really well.

And then you die.

Rules.ini

2007-02-26T16:20:00.000-05:00

Recently, we (Jason, Alan, Duy, Jia, and myself) have started playing C&C Generals again. Jia and I found a way to play with just one “C&C: First Decade” CD, so we installed it on 4 computers, and now we are playing it again. So it’s another game we can play when we have lots of people over, instead of the usual Smash and PGR2 and whatever.

Anyway, so we’re having fun, but I’m not talking about that today; I want to talk about the rules.ini. Rules.ini is a ‘rules’ initialization file, that C&C games use – and people make programs to extract and/or edit these files, to edit how the game works. So these .ini files have provided endless hours of customization to the game, and that’s a lot of fun!

So, C&C Generals: Zero Hour is no different – it does have ini files, but instead of just one, it uses over 100 of them, because there are so many different units, weapons, variables, etc. For now, I’m just learning to edit these files again; they’re so complicated, it’s going to take a while to learn how to edit them properly, to get the effect I desire.

So with editing the rules comes a lot of fun. For now, I’m just experimenting with what I can do – change graphics for different sprites, make airstrikes use 10 planes instead of 3, upp the damage of different weapons – that sort of thing. It’s fun, and it’s funny, but it makes the game very unbalanced.

Eventually, after all this practicing and having fun, I’d like to make an ini file we could actually use, that’s still balanced but hopefully makes the game more fun, or at least, for different inis, more different. So what should we do? We could have an ini-set where all units shoot missiles, or all units are 1-hit. Those are easy, but how’bout something more real? We could have an ini-set that has more explosions, so that everything will seem more ‘epic’… hmm, that sounds like it could be fun.

Any suggestions?

Guitar Hero and the Feeling of Accomplishment

2007-02-19T00:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, so a while ago we got Guitar Hero, and us as a group played it casually for an afternoon. Later, I started the career mode on Guitar Hero 2 (to unlock songs and items), and eventually beat it on Medium difficulty. Then I started practicing songs I liked, because it was fun. Turns out, many of the songs that I like were on level 8, the last level of the game, which usually also meant the most difficult (there are 8 levels, each level has 5 songs). So I practiced those a lot, and I’ve listened to most of them a lot, and… it was fun.

So, eventually I start career modes in Hard and Expert. Expert’s reaallllly hard, so we’ll talk about hard mode. Wow, hard mode was hard (duh). But boy, it sure was fun. I beat it a few minutes ago, and what a ride it was. The first 2 levels were tough, but then levels 3-6 were pretty easy. Level 7 brought the pain back.

Boy, it feels like such an accomplishment when you finally finish a song that’s been kicking your ass for so long. Also, it’s really satisfying to beat a song when you were pretty much ‘in the red’ for a lot of the song. Lastly, star power is awesome. Seriously, obtaining star power and then unleashing it at the right time is like a 2nd life. Wasting star power feels like losing a life…

Anyway, so after beating level 7, almost all of level 8 was a breeze, since most of them were my favourite songs! It felt like I was back in home territory, on familiar ground, with my favourite songs. But also it was the grand finale of an epic Journey. I even bought a new ‘skin’ for my guitar, made my guitar feel special, haha. It felt like such a happy moment.

One song kicked my butt though, so I practiced that part and then I won. And the last song, the ‘special’ song… I beat it on the first try, but wow, that was an epic battle. So I finished hard mode. Now on to tackle the next beast… Expert.

No, level 8 on expert will NOT be nice to me…

(On another note, 2nd guitar should be here tomorrow)

Hansel Filler Post

2007-02-14T18:08:00.000-05:00

"I wasn't like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an astronaut, I was always more interested in what bark was made out of on a tree. Richard Gere's a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that. I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot."
~Hansel

The FaceBook RPG

2007-02-11T23:57:00.000-05:00

When I first joined facebook, I thought of it as an RPG, or a networking tool. Well, it is a networking tool, that I looked at as an RPG, and it was fun to play! Or I shouldn’t say RPG, more like, a quest/mission based system. As with most games, it feels like an accomplishment when you beat a level or finish a quest, so that’s what made it fun.

At first, I thought you had to successfully add a friend in order to view their friends list, but it is not so. But back then, it felt like a great mission system, where when you finish 1 mission (add a friend), you can view their friends list and that’s like looking at a whole new list of missions, and it was fun to attempt the right missions. Heehee.

Anyway, enough about that for now… So I was talking to Wen the other day about Facebook, and eventually I asked him if he was going to join and he said “nah”. Then I proceeded to say “that’s okay – your joining of facebook will probably not ‘benefit’ me, so it’s okay.” What that meant was, that… I didn’t know any of Wen’s friends. See, the primary reason for joining facebook is to expand your social network, and also, to seek out old friends whom you have lost contact with from before.

For example, in elementary/middle school, I knew a girl named LISA and a guy named AMISH. When I went to highschool, I went to Graydon and LISA and AMISH went to Fraser, but I still kept in touch with AMISH, and he kept in touch with LISA, but I did not personally keep in touch with LISA. So, when Amish joins facebook, it’s advantageous to me because he is friends with LISA, and thus I can reunite with LISA quite easily through AMISH and FACEBOOK.

So in Wen’s case, he’ll add jimmy and Johnson and imhotep from middle school, but I didn’t know those people so his joining facebook will not really benefit me. More recently, Lachlan joined facebook after I did, and then he seeked out (from his addressbook) some guys that visited us from Germany (and stayed at my house), whom I never would’ve been able to get in contact with, so that was awesome.

Anyway, that’s why facebook is cool. So first of all, facebook is about networking. If you don’t care about expanding your network, or catching up with some old friends, then don’t bother joining facebook.

Nowadays, after the initial rush of adding friends to your network, Facebook is more of an information tool. It’s like an RSS feed into everybody’s life, so you can keep in touch with them and see what they’re up to. Every now and then (like LISA) you can still expand on your network as more network connections are made, and you win more at the Facebook RPG.

Also, it’s weird… I just added an old friend named Stephen Seguin. I couldn’t see his info, so I checked his friend’s list – sure enough, Amish was there, so I was pretty sure this was the right guy… but… Alan was his friend too! So I totally don’t remember the connection, but I find it oddly weird! Small world, maybe?

So anyway, that’s the facebook thing. So I converted from VHS to DVD, TV to HDTV, I got g-mail which is truly awesome, I got started with regular blogging, and now I got converted to Facebook (but I skipped the MySpace era). What should I try out next? Any suggestions?

*poke*

Lord of the Guitar

2007-02-07T09:58:00.000-05:00

Wow. I love Guitar Hero. For the past two weeks, after finishing Zelda, 95% of my console playing time is spent on Guitar Hero. I would come home from work, and then maybe I’ll eat dinner, or I check my e-mails and facebook and all that, or I would watch Heroes or 24 (and Lost comes back tonight, yay!)… sometimes I would do something with Magic, since I laid out a bunch of cards on my desk…

But every now and then, I feel like going downstairs, and playing a game. Sure, I could get more items in Zelda, or play more Wario or Rayman or Monkeyball… I could try out Okami, or TotA, or check out the PS3 demos… I could open Lost Planet or Enchanted Arms and play those… but nope.

I play Guitar Hero. Specifically, Guitar Hero II, because of its practice mode. Just like with Pump It Up, I’ve created an excel spreadsheet which keeps track of how well I’m doing in GH2. Right now I’m playing practice mode, where you can play songs or sections of songs, in any difficulty, in 4 different speed settings, from regular, down to slowest, which I think is about 1/4 the speed. After you finish your song or section, it gives you a percentage, based on how many notes you’ve hit.

So right now I’m practicing for accuracy, rather than trying to score points using combos and star power. I’ll get to those later, but for me to become really good, I have to learn the songs and be very accurate. I’m focusing on about a dozen songs that I like, most of them being the difficult ones. Ideally, I’d be awesome at playing all the songs at full speed, but slowing them down lets me learn how the songs are structured. Being able to see the notes come at you in slow motion lets you learn how the song works.

So it’s fun. You guys should come over and get really good at this game =)

Now to buy a second guitar…

Scratch & Win - 50% to 100% off

2007-02-01T09:21:00.000-05:00

Okay, so we get a flyer from Premiere Fitness, and we scratch it and it says "you get 90% off the 1-year registration fee of $249", and I'm like, WOW! That's pretty good. Maybe we should join. That's awesome. What are the chances of that?

So I read the back of the card:

2,000,000 Scratch&Win cards will be circulated. Odds of winning: 1,960,000/2,000,000 - 90% off 1 year membership. 20,000/2,000,000 - 100% off 1 year membership. 20,000/2,000,000 - 50% off 1 year membership. .....

So like... what the? 98% chance of getting 90% off, so basically... it's almost for sure, you're getting 90% off, so the scratch and win is nearly obsolete - or is it?

So there's a 1% chance you get 100% off. Now, the thing that puzzles me though, is why is there a 1% chance that you get 50% off? (it's not really chance - 1% of the population WILL get 50% off, not that the 1% is independent each time)

So why does 1% get 50% off? Is it to make 1% of the population feel bad? Like, what's the point of it? Those 50%off people will read the back and they will feel outcasted from the rest of the population, and they will feel like they're worth less than the others!! what's with that?

(on another note, the offer's expired..)

Resolution Ideas

2007-01-29T15:57:00.000-05:00

So... new years resolutions? Let's make some just for fun.

1. Don't buy games or movies that you don't intend to watch or play.

This will save me money and space. Space is important because it helps organize things, and makes things look nice.

2. Stop ending sentences with "or whatever", "or something", "oh well", and "or anything like that."

I can modify this rule later, but I hope to overall improve my level of speech, and talk better, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. People say I'm too wishy washy, and I think so too - I'm always undecided between options, and whenever I am to give choices to people, I give them a plethora of choices, so nobody's left out or nobody will say that 'these boots are made for walking.' (inside-reference).

3. Go to more events that involve girls, non-videogames, and/or alcohol.

So far, 2007 is off to a good start, and I'd like to keep it that way. Facebook helps!

Filler post...

2007-01-25T14:45:00.000-05:00

A box of letters and a photograph,
are all that's left to keep our memories

Sometimes I swear that I can hear you laugh,
like a ghost of what can never be...

And at night I will look across the sea,
and wonder if you could be looking at me

The ocean arms me like a symphony,
and plays our melodies...

It’sa mee, Mario!

2007-01-21T21:51:00.000-05:00

… is what Mario would say… is what Alan would say. But no, Wario would say something different. Hahaha.

Okay, so I got Warioware for the Wii, after much anticipation. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s very short. It promises 200+ microgames, and while I haven’t unlocked them all yet, after about an hour and a half, I’ve probably beaten and unlocked most of them. Logically, if each microgame takes 10 seconds, then to beat the game takes 2000 seconds + cutscenes + death&retry.

Of course, the point of the game is not to beat it, but it’s to have fun doing it, and then have fun as you replay the game more. I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet, but by now everyone knows – there’s no simultaneous multiplayer – all the games use only one wiimote. It’s like how Bomberman for Xbox360 doesn’t support offline multiplayer.

So each player takes alternating turns, and you have to pass the wiimote around, so I can imagine that it’ll be much slower paced, or, it will become a risk to the controller. But, the game is still fun in single player, and when we have multiple people over, we can take turns in multiplayer or single player.

So, what about the game? Well, you can already imagine the craziness. As with a lot of wii games, you’re still bound to be amazed by what the wiimote can do. By holding the wiimote in different stances, you can simulate a lot of different moves, and it’s amazing that the wiimote can detect those moves.

For example, there’s a game where you hold it as a remote, and the instruction is “let go” – and you have to let go of the wiimote. Such an interesting idea! So as long as you are wearing a working wriststrap, that game works for you.

There’s another game where you have the wiimote by your hip, and there’s a race, so you have to run on the spot to the finish line. In another game, you have to hula hoop. Of course, the wiimote can’t sense that you are running with your feet, and hula hooping – you probably just have to shake your hand up and down to run. But it feels more natural to actually run, so that’s awesome.

The graphics of the game are still pretty bad, like they’re supposed to be, but I think I prefer the gamecube graphics. The tutorial cutscenes are awesome though. In the early stages, they teach you about new stances as you unlock them. You start off with the Remote Control stance, and then you learn the umbrella stance, the waiter, the elephant, and a lot more. The cutscenes are spiritual, Japanese philosophical kind of cut scenes, with peaceful music and… well, you just have to see them. They’re very nice.

In the gamecube version, the minigames that come up are pretty random. In this one, they give you the stance that you have to use, which causes your mind to say “okay, one of the 8 games that use this stance will come up”. So I’d say it feels less random, because you know what you’re expecting… but oh well.

Anyway, in conclusion, you guys have to come over and play this. After a few practice rounds, I challenge you to the dancing game. The dancing game is amazingly awesome. And funny. It will make you laugh. I promise.

::edit:: more to write - Because of all the motion-sensor games, the "A" button is rarely used now... although some games still use the A button. Also, most of the games are quite intuitive, but some are somewhat ambiguous, so it's quite likely you fail some minigames when you play them. But sometimes finding out what you're supposed to do is the fun part, and then you become so happy when you finish a microgame the first time you play it! ::/end edit::