A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

09:48 pm - Draw six, discard down to four

Lately, sitting at my desk, I feel like I'm playing Race or Cribbage, and all the cards in my hand work together so well that I really can't bear to discard any of them.

And, yes, as a result, I sit there sighing, rather than playing the goddamn game!

04:05 pm - I've been playing games

So, a lot's been going on. Good things!

I've been playing a lot of role-playing games lately. I hosted a game of The Shab Al-Hiri Roach a couple of weekends ago, and yesterday I helped classicaljunkie host a play-through of The Immortal Murders to celebrate her birthday. In both cases I found that I'm capable of playing storytelling RPGs, but also found it a draining activity rather than an energizing one. However, I'm not sure how much of that was due to the act of playing and how much was from the additional stress of hosting.

I prefer narrating to literal role-playing, and it was interesting to discover the difference between the two. (Roach, a tabletop game, allows both styles. Immortal Murders is more like a LARP, so either you're role-playing or you're not playing at all.) With both styles, though, I felt on-edge and tense the whole time my character was on the scene, like I need to be ready to jump in at any moment. After only a couple of hours of this, I was pretty exhausted. Compare to a board game, with its regular cycle of high and low periods that I can ride for many hours (if the game is compelling enough). It could be that I'm just not playing right.

03:33 pm - IF meetup tonight @ MIT

I'm going to the Boston interactive fiction meetup tonight, 6:30, at MIT 14N-233 (Nick Montfort's office). Guest: Steve Meretzky. Come join!

(Ha ha, that was totally my first-ever pasted-in Tweet, suckas.)

http://groups.google.com/group/boston-if?hl=en

01:14 am - Come roach with me

Dear Local Gamers,

Would anyone be interested in a game of The Shab Al-Hiri Roach at my place on Sunday the 31st? Starting at, say, around 3PM? Currently need at least a couple more players.

It's a one-shot RPG, and I intend it to act as my own introduction to narrativist role-playing games. I don't expect any other to have played this game before, either. I have no idea how it's gonna work, but I'm putting Vegas odds on it being a blast.

12:12 am - Jmac's Arcade #6 - Pac Man

If you see a little icon instead of a video player, clicking it should make it appear... (Blah LJ)

10:59 pm - A really good Memoir 44 game

Another exciting Memoir 44 game, playing scenario 40: Breakout at Klin, part of the Eastern Front expansion that classicaljunkie got me for Xmas.

M44 has kind of become "our game" - we have a reputation among some friends for liking it a maybe a little too much - but we hadn't played it in months after I got kind of burned out on it over the winter. Early summer rain combined with a good work-day put me back in the mood.

Anyway, you'll be pleased to know that even though I boasted on Twitter about how I expected to make short work of Amy's russians, she turned it around. I think I made a mistake my throwing units at Golyadi right at the start of the game, figuring I'd be able to hold them for the duration. Amy correctly focused on knocking them out for an early lead, and that kept me off-balance for the whole game. Duh: occupying territory is an endgame move in Memoir, not an opening gambit. I deserved what I got.

And, as always with Memoir 44, it really helps to remember to roll the dice well. I kept forgetting to do this, clearly. It feels like I kept rolling flags, allowing Amy's units to flounce away from all my attacks, and meanwhile she kept rolling tanks, neatly taking apart all my Panzer units.

It came down to one of those ridiculous situations where it's mutual game-point and there's two adjacent units chipping away at each other until one of them finally rolls the right symbols. But that's war for you.

10:29 am - Ludo-whatnow?

Just had reason to touch up my LinkedIn profile. Re-aimed the Volity link to the increasingly useful company page Zarf made, changed my profile's headline from "Software Consultant" to "Software Consultant and Ludocentric Entrepreneur", and added this graf to my description:

I am also the president of Volity Games (http://volity.com), a little startup I run with a few friends. Through various experimental web-based projects, as well as a blog and occasional TV show we produce, we study games as a communication medium, and seek innovative new ways for people to come together through play.

07:11 pm - Game stuff I wanna do soon

Since starting to reclaim some life-space due to paring away extraneous projects and applying some long-overdue organization to what's left, I've been feeling the urge to move my game-playing life in new directions.

Here is some stuff I wanna do soon. Not really making plans yet, but I reserve the right to link back to this post later. If you're totally into any of these ideas (or wish to tell me how wrong I am), feel free to make your interest known!

classicaljunkie

misuba

taskboy3000

10:19 pm - Well, that's depressing

Wired reports that unscrupulous players now have the power to disrupt online multiplayer Xbox games by DDoSing individual players. It's possible thanks to some new tools that make it easy to get the IPs of the people you're playing an Xbox game with, rent a slice of botnet time, and willfully firehose the former with the latter.

I didn't know this until just now, playing an otherwise delightful game of TF2 with lediva and a pile of anonymous members-of-public. Playing on defense, we both found our connections had become unusably choppy moments before our opponents' raiding party showed up, time and again - how curious. I was blown clear off the server at one point. Ms. Diva suspected the likely culprit, and forwarded me the article link even as we soldiered on. (We still managed to win, but jeez.)

As far as I know, there's no practical way to defend against this, or even react using the system's reputation tools, other than blanket-voting-down every member of an opposing team - it's impossible to know which of them threw the DDoS at you. This is a real bummer, and rather a wet blanket on the idea that NXE's friends-only chat channel would let you play with strangers online without being exposed to idiocy. Boy if only there were some way to easily gather a group of non-strangers to play together and etc. etc.

11:25 am - Boob tubage

Been on my Xbox 360 a lot lately, both to play games and watch TV...

I learned from "Penny Arcade", of all places, that most (all?) of Doctor Who, new and old, is now available via streaming Netflix, which I am able to enjoy via the Xbox. So, I finally got to watch "Blink". Hooray. Even classicaljunkie liked it! We are likely to go back and start watching season 3 from the start. (I gave up midway through season 2 when Sci-Fi Channel was broadcasting it, either after the Satan-in-space one or the Cybermen ones. It was just too cheesy.)

I finished "Operation: Anchorage", the first chunk of Fallout 3 DLC. Meh. The super-easy combat isn't any harder, and the game once again makes it even easier by pairing you up with a literally invulnerable NPC buddy. (The main storyline has one of these too, but at least you can choose to make the game harder by telling him to stay home.) I had fun with it, but I am unlikely to purchase further expansions for this game. I still have plenty of the main map to explore, should I feel like it later.

I picked up "Castle Crashers" finally. It's stupid fun, as expected. Also lots of poop jokes. I wish 360 controllers weren't so dang expensive or I'd go pick up a couple more, just to be able to host a four-player local game.

My field trip into non-random Xbox Live play last Tuesday evening was a success, thanks to Anthony and Sean. I got to try out the new "party" system, introduced to all Xbox users with last November's OS update, and confirmed that it will dovetail quite nicely with a certain project of mine.

Hmm... I'd better go hit the trenches and finish up what's left of said project, now.

03:39 pm - On Xbox Live tonight

I'm going to be online for some Xbox Live shenanigans at 9PM eastern tonight. TF2 and Castle Crashers are likely to be played, and maybe some Carcassonne. Feel free to join me! Note that I'm going to concentrate on how player-herding menu options work at least as much as on actually playing any games... this is a research trip!

10:59 am - Fancy an Xbox game after New Year's?

Hey XBox Live Gold Account-Havers,

For mysterious reasons, I wish to personally investigate how the "Party" system works for XBL-connected consoles. Anyone up for a game of something in the 2009ish part of the week? Perhaps Thursday evening? Or whenever... I'll be around.

( Games I have )

11:08 am - Happy Xmas

Arrived at Fairfield yesterday. Sometime after I made the Zipcar reservation I became determined to shift my mind into a more graceful posture for this visit, a loose kung-fu pose of good cheer and readiness to casually flip any bad crap over my shoulder and onto the mat behind me. And really, I've been having an okay time! And truth to tell, it helps that Ricky's in fairly balanced humors.

Tried to teach the family Ticket to Ride yesterday. Ricky took to it quickly, and as with other games I could tell he liked it because he started telling stories within the confines of the game's rules. He'd draw additional train-car cards not because he needed to build up his hand, but because his men at the switchyard were getting restless with only one car to work on. Since TtR has such a narrow set of possible actions, you can play like this and still play well. When we play Batttle Cry or Memoir '44, he makes tactically terrible moves that give his opponent an advantage, but it furthers the story he's telling so it's OK by him.

I understand now that Ricky's much more interested in rules than gameplay as a whole. This is related to how he became enamored with Catholicism a few years ago, adopting many of its practices - regular mass, the rosary, confession, all of that - and continues to stick to them diligently. So much rigorous ceremony, things he can do every day! I can see the relationship between this and the small, reality-confining space of a game's ruleset, for one with a mind like RIcky's. It's a relief for him to step into, a way to tune himself down for a while, and I can't blame him for being more interested in exploring the rules than trying to win.

11:28 am - Wii Fit

classicaljunkie and I got Wii Fit as an early Xmas prezzie. It's nice! I recommend it if you have a Wii but lack a solid exercise regimen. I'm skeptical about the game's longevity, but it is teaching me some new, worthwhile stuff. If nothing else, it's like a super-interactive exercise video, with feedback.

It's a bit too interactive at times, though. It needs a mode where it leads you through a workout of several linked exercises, rather than letting you choose exercises one-by-one until you feel like stopping. Not only do I not always want to choose, but the break of a minute or two for menu navigation and (unskippable) high-score-list admiration feels artificial.

Sometimes it does suggest a good follow-on exercise after you complete something, but instead of offering you a "Hey great let's do that" button, it leaves it to you to find where in the menu-maze that second exercise is, and start it up yourself. How could they miss this?

It'd also be nice if you could navigate the menus using only the foot device, a la DDR, rather than having to pick up and put down the Wii Remote all the time, often just to press the A button. Really, would puttting an extra A button in toe's reach on the board have been that hard? (It already sports a toe-friendly power buttton.)

And, too bad about the BMI, which everyone (even my doctor) seems to agree isn't a very useful metric, at least in terms of presenting a normal/overweight/obese range that hardly applies to all humans. But we knew about this deal ahead of time, so we're not taking it too seriously. We laugh as the Wii performs its initial judgement on new players, which is invariably HELLO YOU ARE ENORMOUS followed by ploomp ballooning up the player's on-screen Mii, who is like "WTF". whatever

01:06 pm - YOU GIVE TO ME RIDE

I now officially agree wth mmcirvin and rserocki that Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection is a hot little number and totally worth $20, especially if you spent a lot of time around pinball machines during the 1980s and 1990s. The level of simulation is truly amazing, and evident that true pinball otaku had a hand in creating this disc. The tables look, sound and act exactly as their real-world counterparts, as far as I can tell.

Get the Wii version, if you can; the controls are simple and clever, essentially letting you play "air pinball". My only complaint is that the motions necessary to play pinball well emphasize the Wii controllers' assumption that I have smaller hands than I do. My right trigger finger quickly starts to ache from pulling on the too-small B button repeatedly, and my right palm continually presses the 1 and 2 buttons by accident, which in this game changes the camera angle.

Despite this, I have just played Taxi like 10 times in a row. Still haven't managed to pick up Santa. One day.

06:30 pm - Assault Heroes and Catan on sale

Microsoft's having a sale on these two downloadable games for Xbox 360. Assault Heroes, a top-down shoot-em-up with Robotron-style controls, is ~$3.13 (i.e. 250 Microsoft Points); and Catan, a very nice port of Settlers, is $6.25. I already own the latter, and just picked up the former, because hey.

Both support network play, so If any of y'all would like to Xbox Live either game up with me, give a shout.

Gee if only there were some web-based service I could use to announce that I own and enjoy a certain game, and wish to play it online with others. I know, right?

(Yeah, I should make a Gameshelf post about this. I should made a GS post about a lot of things. Doo dee doo.)

Also on sale for $6.25 is Boogie Bunnies, which is Snood except cuter and stupider. I wasn't blown away by its demo, but if you want to play a, er, Snoodlike on your high-def TV and you have 500 Microsoft Points burning a hole in your Microsoft Points Containment Unit, go for it.

07:06 pm - Fallout 3 fallout

After on-the-dot two weeks of calendar time, I finished Fallout 3's main quest.

( Lots o spoilers )

We'll see if I end up starting a new game, creating a completely different kind of character and seeing how much that affects gameplay. I've never bothered to do that with a game before, but I was so impressed by Fallout 3 that I'm really tempted to try. Just not right now.

03:34 pm - Still fantastic, a little buggy

Fallout 3 continues to be a tremendous piece of work. I am really having some problems putting the damn thing away. The game's clock says I've put over 40 hours into it, which I grudgingly believe to be accurate. (Hmm, I don't know if it counts time that I spend staring at my status screen, which is how I sometimes leave it paused for a while.) EIther way, this is the most engaging CRPG I have ever played. I like it so much that I am choosing to look past its recent habit of locking up whenever I try to use certain doors, or fast-travel to certain locations. (The fact it has a good autosave system also helps.)

My character has really gotten her ninja on. The first few levels were a little rough (as is so for any PC who voluntarily takes a low-hit-die class) but she became so adept at the snipey-snipey that I've turned up the game's difficulty level. This makes open combat more expensive, and therefore makes all this sneaking seem more worthwhile. I am predicting that when I've completed the game with this character, I'll go back to the start and roll up a big bruiser, just to see how differently the game plays. I don't do this, normally. Crazy.

I sometimes run across other recent, not-quite-buggy In-play oddities, which I assume are the different NPC's scripts colliding in strange ways. Last night I discovered a minor character lying dead in the center of the town my PC lives in. There was no explanation for it, and none of the NPCs were paying any mind to him. After looting his corpse (hey, it's still an RPG), I picked him up and waved him around at passers-by, but they just said their usual scripted "Hello! Nice day!" greetings to me, their friendly-if-eccentric young neighbor. I then had some Weekend at Bernie's fun, propping him up in a chair outside of my house, but he kept sliding off. I settled on taking an empty bottle and laying it by his head: there, it just looks like he's merely dead drunk, now. Much better. Role playing!!

10:53 pm - Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is fantastic. I've been in the mood for a wide-open, American-style CRPG and this not only fills the bill, it may be the best example of its class I've played. I've dropped over 15 hours into it since Monday evening - ouch. It's leaning as hard on my addiction button as my last serious Angband streak did last year. Gonna have to ration my playtime.

I created the same type of character I played in Fallout 2 - a small woman with high INT/CHA/DEX. Dumping most skill points into Sneak, Lockpick, Speak and Small Guns. Trying to play "the stealth game" for real. It didn't work out that way in Fallout2, when I didn't try hard to maintain any sort of character-type out of the gate, and so spent most of the game running around in a bright purple robe zapping people with a customized cattle prod in broad daylight. Being a bit more judicious with character-building this time around.

I like that the game doesn't take itself too seriously; it's full of crazy little rules, especially regarding modifiers attached to items. The setting's got a whole lot of logical inconsistencies, but if you put on a lab coat you suddenly become better at hacking into computer systems, and I love that, so I don't care. (Right now my character is wearing a Solid Snake suit that gives her a Sneak bonus, and a gray fedora that lets her detect enemies around corners better. Yes.)

The writing and plotting are so cool and full of delightful surprises - literally from the very first moment you start a new game - that I'm not even reading the list of possible Xbox Live achievements you can get. I find myself as spoiler-averse to this game as I have been to any recent TV series I've enjoyed. That's rare.

I wish that my posts about Fallout 2 from five years ago were easy to find. They're buried deep in the untagged middle ages of prog-LJ.

10:58 am - World of Goo.

World of Goo is a brilliant game. If you have a Wii, you owe it to yourself to drop $15 on downloading it.

I'd classify it as a cross between Lemmings and a Tinkertoy set. On each level you need to guide cute little critters ("gooballs", in this case) from a starting point, across variously hostile terrain, and then to an exit. But where Lemmings had you assign various worker-roles to some of the critters in order to make a path for the others, Goo has you using them as building material.

The gooballs like to be picked up with the wiimote, and if you drop one near two or three of its buddies, they'll reach out and link up as a lattice. Thus you construct towers, wedges, bridges, and various other structures that non-linked gooballs can walk across to the exit. The game uses a full-bore 2D physics engine, and the things you build act like "real" (in a Flatlandish sense) structures of their shape would, if made out of a rubbery material. A lot of the puzzles involve figuring out how to use up as few gooballs as possible to build stable supports for the up-reaching ones, and it's a real joy to play with.

This is surely the best Wii Ware game published yet, and worth every penny. Go get it. (Thanks to queue for the rec!)