Maker Bot & Leap - from floating 3D hologram to printed out Iron Man suit

When the MakerBot becomes common place in the future, I may be able to, literally, email you a chair.

So what's a MakerBot? It's pretty much a 3D printer, you give it a 3D model and it will separate it into layers and print it out for you in plastic. You can print things like model prototypes for engineering projects, or print out 3D models of characters you've made in Maya. This is great for rapid prototyping. You can print out anything, but in reality the objects have to obey the law of gravity. Not everything that is printed will hold up against gravity and you'll know right away.

Three dimensional modelling software like AutoCAD and Maya exemplify direct manipulation in their design by allowing for the user to deform and change a virtual and  continuous representation of the model. However, even though 3D modelling software uses direct manipulation design heuristics, something like Maya can still be so very un-intuitive to use. Wouldn't it be more incredible if you could move virtual vertices in reality? Something similar to what is seen in the Iron Man movie, where Tony Stark pushes and pulls portions of a virtual representation of his Iron man suit.

(Noessel, 2013)

The nice thing about sci-fi is that things can move from science fiction to science fact, and the technology has already arrived. With release of the Leap finger tracking device, the ability to use hand gestures to control the pointer on a computer (or multiple pointers even) is so intuitive we're probably all going to throw away our mice in the near future. I would very much like the ability to have more than one mouse pointer to help me move multiple points in Maya, speeding up the modelling process. Not to mention this thing uses infrared LED technology (Baldwin, 2012) which has been around for decades.

Of course not all actions in a 3D modelling suite can be performed in reality. An example would be that it would be easier to give the user an undo button to press when they make a mistake while modelling, or when someone gets in their way (same sensation as destroying a sand castle but with the reversibility!). How would a user gesture they wish to undo an action? A gesture doesn't really exist for this intention, and mainly comes in the form of someone verbally communicating that they wish to undo. Voice recognition is always a possibility, but we're kind of getting out of scope here.

There are some flaws in the Leap Motion though, such as the fact you need to hold your hands over the sensor (Baldwin, 2012). This can be very tiring to do more long period of times, and a system that merges the Kinect and Leap together would be easier to use. This way the whole body can be detected, and the fingers precisely detected while allowing for the user to hold their hands in sight of the sensor, but in a comfortable position.

In the future, everyone could become designers, engineers, or sculptors with the use of these technologies. They can create without any restraints, and prototyping can be quick and extremely cheap if you never print it out (pay your electricity bill and that's it). If anyone ever wants to make their idea real though, they simply have to push a button and out pops their 3D in reality.

Baldwin, R. (2012, May 05). Why the leap is the best gesture-control system we’ve ever tested. Wired, Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/05/why-the-leap-is-the-best-gesture-control-system-weve-ever-tested/

Noessel, C. (2013, March 01). What sci-fi tells interaction designers about gestural interfaces. Smashing magazine, Retrieved from http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2013/03/01/sci-fi-interaction-designers-gestural-interfaces/

Pettis, B. (Producer) (2012). The makerbot replicator 2 - announcement [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o6pcbhylmQ

Augmented Reality

From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary the word augment means to make greater, stronger, or more intense and the word reality just means something real. Something that is a more intense version of reality seems to make the phrase augmented reality sound like an oxymoron. How could something be even greater and more intense than real life? Maybe the phrase should of have been coined assisted reality or digital overlay software or something else since much of AR is seen as a way to assist humans. Maybe in the future AR will simply be reality, and then we can talk about the intensity.

What is augmented reality? What augmented reality isn't is something like the Matrix, where reality is completely replaced by a digital world (Di-di-di Digimon).

Here's one possible example in the distant future:

http://youtu.be/i93_rRdnYvA?t=18m30s (please click the link since the whole episode is 23 minutes long, and if it doesn't jump straight to the 18:30 minute mark please try to navigate there)

A city that has no substance other than a rock base, the rest of the city was all digital and rendered to its inhabitants through their digital terminals. Some of the inhabitants were never actually ever in the city and only existed through proxy, because they could not move from life support. I will say that his show "Fractale" has some bias against AR and stars a main character who likes to live in the good old ways, in a real brick house and hoards real objects. (Spoilers: they also sort of destroy the AR system, and humans have a few years to relearn all their skills to return to reality). This is a very extreme example of augmented reality, where the whole entire world is covered by a digital overlay, but does give you and idea of what it's about and what it can become.

Augmented reality consists of using a computer to take in input from reality, processing it, enhancing it, and then outputting the enhanced version to the user. Enhancing is the most ambiguous part, as most AR is seen as enhancing the image (sight is our most dominant sense anyways), but can be used to enhance sound and possibly other inputs that we cannot even sense. There are digital sensors for radioactive substances, ultraviolet light, heat, and in a sense night vision glasses are a form of AR since their creation. Though night vision glasses completely blanket your vision with heat sensors, and is not so intuitive for normal people to understand how to use.

Nowadays AR is mainly used to supplement reality rather than replace it. Google glass is something that comes to mind when talking about augmented reality. It overlays extra information to supplement experiences in reality, such as information concerning buildings that you see in front of you. The good things about this is that it will be context sensitive, and also very powerful for education and maybe even advertising. It is also designed for a normal user, and tries to be as well hidden and immersive as possible; only pops up when you need it and disappears when you don't. UI designers for the Google glass project could learn a few things from UI designers of immersive games.

Augmented reality in gaming makes me think of the 3DS with their AR cards, and each card activates a mini game that the user can player. Rather than using AR to supplement the user with information, AR is simply a game overlaid in the foreground and reality acts are a background for it. The interaction with reality is kind of lack luster with AR games at the moment, as you need specific cards that are used to represent digital entities in the real world. These cards can be placed anywhere in reality, but the user is always constrained to using these cards to play the game. The next step would probably be to scan real life objects and simply make games out of those, allowing for all sorts of things to be augmented and turning anything into a game.

Merriam-Webster. (2013). Augment - definition and more from the free merriam-webster dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/augment

Merriam-Webster. (2013). Reality - definition and more from the free merriam-webster dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reality

Human Augumentation

There was a dispute over whether the "blade runner" (Oscar Pistorius) should be allowed to compete in the Summer 2012 Olympics, even though he qualified for the able body competitions. The reason was due to the concern that his prosthetic legs could be giving him an advantage over other athletes. Maybe those prosthetic legs give him more spring in his sprint? Does this somehow give him an unfair advantage? (Though some athletes have longer legs than others...)

This brings us to the idea of human augmentation, so please turn your attention to this video of Sarif Industries, world leader in human augmentation.

Buy a prosthetic arm... become the next football star! That is, unless they ban you from entering the league. But human augmentation is something we've already be exposed to, take for example glasses that are used to enhance vision. Glasses, unlike the prosthetic limbs promised by Sarif, are used to correct something that is seen as broken, while Sarif's augmentations are there to replace your limbs with something "better". We as humans always want to better ourselves, one of our prime goals would be to eliminate aging, disease, and other biological factors that limit our ability ([H]+). One way to do this is to replace all our biological functions with machine functions, the other way would be to bio-engineer DNA.

One thing that was talked about in class was human memory, something that is extremely faulty, almost like if human memory was a computer, each episodic memory when stored was like a lossy super-compressed video file. Every time you open that video file, the file gets more corrupted, and soon your memory of an event is completely wrong. However whenever you remember an event it always feels correct, unless you look at a photo of the actual event, and you notice differences in your memory and the photo recording. This could be remedied by human augmentation with... cyber-brains (GITS reference)! Rather than storing memories, you store actual files, and not only would this eliminate the fuzzy information, but would also speed up access time. No more "hmming" and "haaing" as you try to retrieve that specific memory, access the file instantly! No more forgetting things, not when everything is saved onto a 500 terabyte hard-drive connect to your head! Of course before we can do this, we'll have to decipher what every portion of the brain is used for, and what brain activity means what. Not to mention, having a computer attached to your brain, or replacing your brain, poses some serious questions about the continuation of your consciousness. It may be a death and rebirth whenever someone goes to get a cyber-brain installed.

Similarly other human senses can be enhanced using technology, but this all rides on the ability for us to understand the human brain. We cannot interface with these sensory replacements if they do not send the proper signals to the brain. So augmentation of sensory organs will still be a long way away.

There is also a funny thing about the human eye, have you ever wondered why humans have a blind spot in their eye? The reason is because it was hereditary, and something we inherited from our ancestors. The blind spot does not actually need to exist for us to have correct sight, even though our brains have already adapted to it. The giant squid eye, does not actually have a blind spot, because rather than having the light sensitive cells pointing backwards (in the human eye), the light sensitive cells point forward and the optic nerves are connected from the back, eliminating the blind spot within their eye (PBS).

PBS (2012). Giant squid [Television series episode]. In Inside Nature's Giants. Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved from http://video.pbs.org/video/2247683791

Biometric Controllers

Let's talk about Dr. Lennart Nacke's most favorite thing, as stated by him in class: biometric controllers. A biometric controller would be a controller that reads impulses sent by your brain, or more familiar things such as your heartbeat rate, your facial expressions, and eye-tracking or head tracking. These controllers can allow for more intuitive inputs to be sent into the game, and also some inputs you were not even aware of. This can change the game play in ways that were never imagined before. A horror game that can measure your heartbeat would know what things scare you the most, when to give you a break, and when to throw in the monsters. Facial expression technology may be seen in MMORPGs, allowing for games like Second Life to be even more realistic, as players can communicate with more than just text, but their real life facial expressions. You may have to fake a laugh in the real world if you typed "lol" even though the joke you just heard was stale. Dating deception on all levels of reality! Eye tracking and head tracking can make first person shooters so much more easy to control. There won't be a need for that really awkward second analog stick used to turn the camera in-game, just turn your head, or focus your eyes on the thing you want to see. As Gabe Newell put it, biometric inputs allows for more bandwidth between the player and the game, as doing these things comes naturally and does not interrupt your game (Sottek & Warren, 2013).

I was actually allowed to try NeuroSky's MindBand (pictured below) during the summer, when the development team for AntiMatter was integrating it with their game. The readings were a bit unusual to understand, they connected the "concentration" reading to the max number of bullets the player could shoot per second. I'm not sure what constitutes concentration, but thinking about nothing seemed to ramp it up all the way to 100 for me.

Picture of the MindBand (NeuroSky, 2011)

Judging from the experience I had with the MindBand, biometric controllers still seem a long ways off before they will be able to reliably give you good readings. However, VentureBeat believes that 2013 will be the year when all these technologies will coalesce and build the foundation of "NeuroGaming" as they call it (Lynch, 2013). The success of these technologies will be up to game designers, as they will be the ones to tweak the parameters, allowing for the technology to be actually usable. I for one am probably most excited for head tracking, a controller that probably can't go wrong.

Lynch, Z. (2013, January 17). Let the neurogames begin. Retrieved from http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/17/let-the-neurogames-begin/

NeuroSky. (2011). Neurosky mindband europe. Retrieved from http://www.home-of-attention.com/en/shop/1/flypagetpl/shopproduct_details/4/itemid-12

Sottek, T. C., & Warren, T. (2013, January 8). Exclusive interview: Valve's gabe newell on steam box, biometrics, and the future of gaming. Retrieved from http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852144/gabe-newell-interview-steam-box-future-of-gaming

Technological Singularity

Please turn your attention to this sci-fi short movie called R'ha.

The premise is one we've seen many times before in movies like: Terminator, The Matrix, and TRON: Legacy. The premise being that a sentient AI decides to take over and/or destroy all of humanity, with different degrees of cruelty and success. So what makes the short film above different? This was made entirely by a single student named Kaleb Lechowski, 22, in 6-8 months (sources vary). Another thing that stands out is that the protagonist is alien, which brings an idea to mind. Is it possible advanced alien races have already destroyed themselves? Will our reliance on technology bring about the same fate? But now that's getting off-topic, we're here to talk about Human-Computer Interactions (HCI).

In the above short the alien was able to communicate to the robot through speech, so the Artificial Intelligence(AI) has speech recognition. This may have been due to the fact it would have been less dramatic and extremely awkward if the captive had to use a keyboard to type in answers that the computer prompted as text on a screen (though in Matrix this happens with great dramatic effect near the beginning of the movie). However, speech recognition allowed for speedy communication between alien and machine. The AI also shows a deep understanding of the alien's thought process, which in HCI is actually very desirable. Wouldn't it be nice for a computer to continuously learn from your mistakes, and therefore be able to adapt to your common mistakes, quickly correct them for you, and therefore speed up productivity? Of course in the case of the short film, the AI uses this advantage to trick the protagonist, and lead the machines straight to the race's refuge point. (Though I have to wonder, with such advanced technology wouldn't the AI have access to mind reading, thus making this whole charade kind of pointless?)

Let's now move to the virtual world of Oz within the movie Summer Wars, in a much more familiar solar system.

Oz is accessible from multiple platforms from computers to cellphones to a Nintendo DS clone, making the virtual world extremely portable, and the controls must be translated to these very different interfaces. The controls are very important, as there is also a gaming community within Oz. However, it may be impossible to translate all the in-game controls, and many hardcore gamers in Oz are restricted to using a keyboard and mouse (I assume so since the only gamer uses the keyboard throughout the movie). The rendering must be done in the cloud, because smart phones and other portable systems probably don't have enough processing power to render millions of avatars. (Spoiler: which happens to be required during the movie when 20 million gather in a certain place for a certain awesome reason). This means that the player's view into the world of Oz is pre-rendered on the server and streamed to them. (Or it may be the case that it is the future and all cellphones have an nVidia Geforce GTX+ 9999). The world of Oz also has instant language translation, allowing for people all over the world to access this community. Streaming graphics and instant language translation are some extremely accommodating features that allow for Oz to be accessed by anyone on any platform, regardless of technology specs and language barriers. This universal usability may be one of the reasons why Oz has so many users from all over the planet (or because it's just the setting for the movie).

The trailer above is misleading, Summer Wars also features a program that was created by humans and accidentally ends up being hellbent on destroying them. The program is a genetic algorithm that likes to continuously learn from its surroundings, by playing games. It probably uses a form of machine reinforcement learning, but now we're getting off-topic again and talking about AI. But wait... AI I believe is a very important part of HCI, and will be even more important as the technology improves. Not only does AI allow for easier, faster, and more efficient ways for interfacing with humans, it has the potential to build upon itself. Take for example voice recognition, this is a part of AI which allows for speech to be recognized and a set of instructions can be built for the program using only speech. This is a very fast and intuitive way for humans to interact with computers, because it is so similar to interacting with other humans. AI learning also allows for instruction sets to be implied, and the computer do things that you never asked directly for, but the computer learnt are regular occurrences. An example would be commanding your computer to make you some coffee. After doing this for a week at around a similar time, say 6PM, the computer implies that coffee is probably needed around 6PM everyday, and makes it anyways, even though you did not ask. "Why, thank you," you'd probably say to your computer, as it kindly produces a mug of coffee as you arrive home. As technology improves, human to computer interaction becomes human to robot interaction and then human to pseudo-human interaction.

As we continuously improve AI, we may reach a point where AI can in itself propagate better AI, this creates the technological singularity. Technological singularity may be the end of mankind itself, or the beginning of the infinite expansion of knowledge and understanding. Computers that understand humans even better than humans understand themselves, something that can answer all of our questions. This would be an infinitely more awesome way for humans to interact with computers.

Games teach you Life!

Spent  (http://playspent.org/)

This game is about living at the poverty line in North America, and pretty depressing. The whole point of the game is to make it through the month without starving, losing all your money, or getting sick. The game likes to throw a lot of random events at you, such as you bringing a pet into your down town apartment, your kid needing something, or being fired from your job, which happens a lot. Actually the game likes to give you an event every single day, which is a bit unrealistic I think, but the events are quite believable (though condensed into a month). Also you're a single parent, but you can't collect child support from the mother/father, so I'll assume they are dead, or that the USA has different laws concerning child custody.  None the less child support comes in monthly and doesn't really help in the span of the month that the game takes place in.

Now that I'm done ranting, my experiences with the game. The game is about meaningful choices, but the meaning comes from your morals, and the difference between what you can do, what you want to do, and what you cannot do. You are a single parent so your child will want things from you, though not as regularly as if it were a spoiled child, actually your child is really well behaved from what I've seen (blame my 7 year old brother... but he's a good kid). I felt that I had to at least try to give some happiness to your child in the game, so the first few play-throughs I'd buy them the present, the field trip and also give them the extra $3 for lunch, and what not. The first few play-throughs though I was unable to pay for their club activities, which made me kind of sad. Also note I never bought them that $5 ice cream when the ice cream truck came around, felt it to be a bit spoiled. On my fifth play through I actually got really excited that my child may have been gifted, and even more excited that I was able to pay for the materials for them to continue their education. I hope my child gets a future brighter than mine, err... not that I have a real child at the moment, maybe in the future.

On my first 2 play-throughs I was fired from both of the jobs I had, a week into the job. I found this to be really detrimental, but somehow I got through the month on both tries. All subsequent play-throughs I never got fired, due to knowing what gets you fired, or that the event never came up.

The three "life lines" on the side of the game took be three play-throughs before I even noticed they were there. The use of space in the game is a bit sparse, but I assume it's because of my monitor's resolution being much bigger than the default resolution needed to play the game.

Really nice game, that opens up this perspective to the player.

You really only get one chance. Seriously. Unless you get a new computer.

One Chance (http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/555181)

Every day that I could check, I checked to see if the player could jump off the top of the building. None of the days allowed for the player to jump off the building.

For my one play-through of the game, since the game only allows for one play-through (unless you wipe your cookies and domain or something) I went to work for all the days, except the day you witness your co-worker jump off the building. I ended up with the ending where on the last day the main character creates the cure, and saves himself, though I'm not sure if he saves his daughter (her eyes are closed when they are in the park).

The game felt very unusual on the first day, when it is announced that the world would end in six days, but when you go outside to read the newspaper it said on it that you had discovered the cure for cancer. All and I the wish to repeat this one chance is probably what the game wanted the player to feel, and I sure feel it.




The other games were either too easy or simply nice, but didn't evoke as much emotion. American Dream was really easy, and definitely not a good representation of stock market, but that's not the point any ways. It just made money and partying seem to easy, maybe it is? As I Lay Dying had a weird feel to it since well the girlfriend was not exactly in shock that her boyfriend had just killed himself, albeit accidentally. But the whole game revolves around transporting his corpse, which didn't really stick out for me. Prior I did not understand. I played it twice with two different endings, and I still did not understand fully, but understood a bit better since I saw the two different endings. The End of Us felt really nice, but felt more like an experience rather than a game, since there was no goal. Flight I only skimmed through since I had seen a friend play it before. It was simply a throw, and upgrade game. Distance, I didn't get into it much, but it seems to be on a similar strand as the End of Us.

Create Your Own Magic Card

Here are the three Magic: The Gathering cards I created:

Wisp Faerie is a very basic monster, I wanted it to be extremely weak since it comes and goes like a wisp from a candle wick. Since we can't have any effect monsters I just made it a 1 White mana monster, giving it a cost of 3 in total and I put 1 more into defence than attacking since it's a wisp, a fluff of air.

The Guardian of Embersky is inspired by the Studio Ghibli film Tales of Earthsea which is based on the series of books by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since it's a dragon I assumed it had even toughness and power (due to dragons in Pokemon doing this with their stats) so I made it a 6/6, and since it's a Red creature it will have a total benefit of 13, so 1 Red mana and 9 Colourless mana balances the cost of the card (1 Base + 2 Red + 9 Colourless + 1 Bonus for having over 5 mana cost).

The third card Earthborn Priestess is a dryad that is more geared towards being defensive, but since calculating extra effects were not taken into consideration I couldn't make it a defender card and give it a power of 0. Since it was a Green monster and has a mana cost over 5 it has a cost of 9, so I made the power 1 and toughness 8 to balance the cost.

That is all.

The Progression of Ragnarok Online

You may have heard of this MMORPG, it was the first Korean MMOG to make it big outside of South Korea. It's name is Ragnarok Online, and fits in the time frame between first and second generation MMOGs, making it almost guide less (no quest chains, minimal tutorials), and very "grindy". Do note this is a historical post, as Ragnarok Online recently went through a "renewal" and much of this information was changed.

Sometimes known as Lagnarok Online, Final Fantasy Tactics Online  , or that game with cute sprites with 3D backgrounds.

The speed at which characters leveled had to do with many different things: which class the player was, how good their gear was, how much they were able to spend on supplies, what their stats were, what their player skill build was, and if they wanted to play solo or in a party. We shall select the cookie cutter build INT/DEX Wizard build that I know best... since I remade that same character about 4 times over the course of a year.

You create your character, name it Bob the Magical Wizard, you pop into the world, and are promptly dropped into the Novice Tutorial grounds. The class progression always starts you at the Novice class, which has only one passive skill that gives you basic abilities (using emotions, sitting, creating parties, opening storage, class changing). This is a mediocre part of the game, as a future Mage you started your character with 9 points in INT, 9 in DEX, and the rest in either LUK or AGI, and are restricted to do melee damage with a character that has only 1 STR. No worries, it's cake, a bit slower than someone who would make a Thief or Swordsman, but cake. It would take about an hour or two to reach job level 10 (RO splits levels into Base levels and Job levels, base levels give stat points, job levels give skill points). It's time to leave the tutorial zone, and go into the clueless grind that is RO.

The game will throw you into the town of your choice, and you must finish the class change quest to change into a Mage. Once you class change into a Mage, then it is time to shine. At the beginning both the Mage and Archer class have it easy levelling as they both have powerful ranged attacks, and can get away killing monsters without ever getting hit. It also helps that there are quite a few monsters that don't move at all, and as a Mage all you have to do is stand there and drop magic on them from a distance, so the monsters never retaliate. Levelling at this point is fast, and quite enjoyable. Stats wise the Mage would pump INT, and not invest in any other stats, skill wise the Mage can get defensive skills like Fire Wall which allows them to fight moving monsters, or some disabling magic like Frost Diver which freezes and immobilizes monsters when it succeeds. The levelling soon becomes slow though, since in general the EXP needed to level goes up in bursts every 5 levels, and soon even strong monsters would give less than 0.01% of your total EXP. Once the Mage reaches either job level 40 or 50 (or any number in between) they change class change to Wizard. At this time the Mage has probably maxed out their INT at 99, and are now working on pumping DEX, which increases cast speed.

When the Mage class changes to Wizard the job level is reset to 1, but they keep all their Mage skills. Since the job level is reset, getting the first few job levels is very quick and easy, and accessing new powerful Wizard skills opens up many new ways to level. The monst powerful skill Storm Gust can almost be used as a blanket all AoE damage spell, and also disables monsters by freezing them. Levelling in a party now becomes very viable, and the speed of gaining job levels is very quick, while base levels are not as quick, since base level is not reset when class changing. Once Bob the Magical Wizard reaches a high base level (90+) the EXP required to gain a level increases drastically, almost quadratically. By this time the Wizard would have already maxed their job level at 50, and will painstakingly need to take hours, either solo or in a party, to gain a tiny bit of exp. To put it in perspective the easiest monster to solo is a Sting which gives 4081 base EXP, and at level 91 the Wizard needs 11,649,960 EXP to gain a level, so 2855 Stings equals one level. One Sting would take about 30 seconds to kill and maybe 15 seconds to find another one on average, so about 35 and a half hours of grinding for a level. It gets even worse after the player reaches base level 95 as shown in the chart below:

The last level from 98-99 takes 99,999,998 EXP, a 72% increase from the EXP required from 97-98. There is no wonder why the first person to reach level 99 on RO was a botter... seriously. 

 It also does not help that if a player dies they lose 1% of their maximum EXP, which can be hours and hours of play time if they are at a high level. This game can be very soul crushing, but also very rewarding, as much of the stats work quadratically just like EXP progression.

The stats all progress linearly until they hit a break point, where the stat would jump up quadratically. These break points happen for STR ever 10 points (DEX if you're an Archer/Hunter), and INT every 5 and 7 points for maximum and minimum damage and gives a bonus of x^2 damage, where x is Stat/Stat Break Point. More graphs (from iROWiki):

So from this progression, it is no wonder why the developers decided to overhaul the whole entire game, and attempted to change all these formulas to a linear progression. If they had kept going the way they had players  would be completely over-powered, and the game would be either one-shot them or you get one shot. The developers actually continued the trend for a few years, and the end-game guild siege called War of Emperium was pretty much a one shot fest. It wasn't until recently that they changed the whole system to accommodate growth for the game, though the game is over a decade old, so the developers may have not foreseen this at the start.

Personally I think that a logarithmic growth, or any sort of progression with diminishing returns would have been better for the progression of the game. This would of allowed for long time growth, and also encouraged players to mix around their stats rather than remaking their character if they messed up their stats and missed a bonus break point. Diminishing returns would mean that the lower stats would give good benefits, but adding too much may not be as desirable, and let the player decide which other benefits they could work on, or simply just add to the already very high stat.

The "renewal" of Ragnarok Online actually changed many of the resources to increase linearly, with 1 INT meaning 1.5 MATK, and 1 STR equals 1 ATK (though there is a bonus...but let's not get into that). Playing the game with these new mechanics does reduce the importance of stats quite a lot, and allows for the game to pump out new content that would of been completely unbalancing using the old progression, such as gear that gives +4 INT, when back in the day +2 INT was a giant boost to damage if it hit a break point.

In the end the renewal system did what I wanted, the progression of the game is much more linear, even the levelling is quite linear now. The only problem that still unbalances the game is the racial and elemental resistances, and the use of consumables to recovery health, but one might say it is what makes the game unique. None the less, the game will continue to stack these gear resistances, until it will reach a point where one resistance in particular: Demi-Human resistance which also encompasses other players in PvP, will reach 100%. This will cause every player, if they wear these gears, to do no damage to any other player, making PvP unplayable. These resistances should be looked into and reduced along with damage in the game, since the game right now, to offset these huge stacked resistances simply gives players skills that have massive damage multipliers (100000%+ sometimes). The developers should of scaled the resistances so they were much smaller to begin with, maybe starting with only small gains like 1% or 5%, rather than huge gains like 30% and 10%. The developers could also just removes these entirely, but this would take away from the game, since it was always a crucial part of the usefulness of gears.

Game design, it's very complicated.

Reading Raph Koster's opinion on the difference between rules and mechanics, and from what I gather he says that rules are parts that make up a mechanic. He uses the action of jumping in a plat-forming game as an example: rules are things like gravity, inertia, discrete values that can be removed or added, mechanics are the "black box" that encompasses these rules. Mechanics would take in player interaction from dynamics, in the Mechanics->Dynamics->Aesthetics framework of games, and then using the discrete rules, is able to vend out a value, like say the player will jump 24 pixels up after taking in gravity and previous velocity.

More deadly things in one screen than I wanna be the Guy. Rules wise the enemies have a radius of 1.0f or a bounding box of size 24x24, mechanics wise getting close to them means death!

A game designer needs to have a grasp of things on the atomic level of the game, made up of floating point numbers, boolean, and integers. Tweaking these things tweaks the rules of the game, maybe make a monster easier to dodge by shrinking the collision box, or make the player walk slower by turning down that floating point number which controls speed. The game designer can spent hours tweaking these values (the above game is a tuning game, where you can tweak some numbers to clone jumping aesthetics in a game like Mario) to get the feel they want for the game.

We should probably have a playable game first though...

Keltis

Keltis is a multi-player (2-4 players) board-game with an Irish theme where the goal is to get the highest score at the end of the game. The group I was in played with four people, and it took us about 50 minutes just to finish one game, as we found the rules difficult to understand.

In Keltis the aim is to get one of your coloured stones to the highest position along one of five paths. This is only one way to rack up points though, other ways include collecting "wishing stones", landing on a direct score spot on the track, and not having one of your pieces on the first three spots of a track (which awards negative points). Due to the difficulty of calculating points at the end of the game with the existence of the direct score spots, there is a score keeping stone and a score keeping path along the perimeter of the game board.

The way a player moves down a certain coloured track is by playing cards of that colour in either ascending or descending order, but once they pick one order they cannot change to another order with that coloured track. An example would be that a player has a hand with two blue cards that are numbered 1 and 2, and three yellow cards that are numbered 10, 8, 7, and a three other cards of different colours. The player would most likely either want to start by playing a blue card in ascending order, so first the blue numbered 1 card, and on their next turn the blue numbered 2 card. Or the player could decide to play the yellow cards in descending order, so first the yellow numbered 10 card, then 8, then 7, allowing them to move one of their pieces up three steps along the yellow path.

The game ends when either the deck of unused cards runs out, or there are 5 pieces on any of the tracks that are in the top 3 spots of the track (spot with 10, 7, and 6 points). The player with the most points at the end wins!

- Things I Liked:

Probably one of the first things that stuck out of my mind was that in the rules it was stated that the first person to play would be the one who most recently travelled to Ireland, this allowed me to go first.

Another thing that allows for re-playability was that the direct score, wishing stones, and extra move spots are shuffled for ever game. So one game the movement spots might all be down one path, so it would be very easy to get one piece up to a high spot on that path (probably use the doubling score piece). Or more likely all the pieces would be spread out and depending on what cards that player draws that round they must pick which path is best to go down, without one path being blatantly obvious that is was a desired path.

I liked that the game moved quite fast after we ironed out all the discrepancies in the rules. The most important aspect of the game would be to plan ahead, and if there are no favourable moves, pray you get the card that you need. Other than that plays per player would be simply placing down one card and moving one piece (or more if they land on a movement spot).

The fact that there are negative scores for landing in the first three spaces of a track, and also for not getting any wishing stones means that the player needs to spread out their strategy, even though the best way to play the game would be to get to the highest place on a few tracks. For players who aren't able to get to a high spot in a track they should attempt to cover up their weak spots by getting more pieces to a mid point in the tracks, and they can still win. I actually fell into this trap while playing the game, and ended up with a piece in the negative zone, that caused me to place in second. I was the first one to get to a high point on the track, but I kept stalling and decided to put a new piece in play, but the game ended promptly after, and I lost 3 points.

I liked the fact the board was mainly green... since it's my favourite colour. The art was also nice, the board is covered in Celtic art.

- Things I Disliked:

The board's score keeping path does not have negative spaces, and since we were all newbies, many of us started down multiple paths at the start, resulting in up to -20 points. It wasn't until we passed roughly the mid point of the game before any of us got a positive score.

I also disliked how the board was shaped, the starting point was converged, but the pieces didn't all fit on the starting zone. Also the paths can really only fit up to 2 pieces on one spot, so playing with 4 players leads to pushing and shoving of pieces on the board.

I dislike the inclusion of the wishing stones since they give those who climb faster an advantage, and they already have an advantage of more points. The wishing stones are a removable game piece, so only one person can receive it's benefits, and whoever climbs faster is more likely to get more of them.

The discard mechanic is also a bad aspect of the game, as discarding is possibly the worst thing for a player to do during the start and middle of the game. The discard mechanic also gives players who are high up an advantage since it allows for them to not put a lower piece into play. An example of this would be that the player has 3 pieces at the last spot of three different paths, they see that their score completely topples the others, and can simply continue to discard a card and not move a piece (not gain a negative score), until the game is complete.

I dislike that there is not a way for a player to stall or really effect the movement of other players other than maybe by picking up wishing stones. Other than snagging wishing stones first the player is pretty much playing by themselves, and watching that the other players don't go over their score.

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The one element I would design differently would be to completely remove the negative points so it would be easier to count points. So the points gained from each spot on a track in ascending order would be : 0,1,2,5,6,7,10,11,14, and the wishing stone points would be : 0,1,6,7,10,14. I might also remove the double score piece as with the increased maximum points you can receive, this would be a very powerful piece to play right, and quickly. Would you keep the double score piece in the game even though doubling the score would lead to +8 more points than the normal version? Should the double score piece, double both the bonus point spots on the track, and also wishing stones that it collects? Would this be game breaking?

Personally removing the double score piece would increase thinking that players have to do, and would encourage players to spread out their advances. This spreading out of advances would keep the game more balanced, and also it may hide certain player strategies. Having the double score piece would automatically cause players to simply look at their hand, and pick which ever colour of cards they have the most and send it down that path, without much other thought. Or the player would simply look at the board and send the double score piece down a path with a lot of bonus score spots, and double the points along that path, a pretty transparent strategy. Many other players would probably follow suite, as there really is no way to play against a player.

Programming, Programming, Programming, and more...

Programming.

It's what makes the game, and as much as I wish that games simply required you to make a bunch of pretty pictures, breathe life into them using your morning breath, and then things suddenly start moving in 3D, sadly it is not the case...

So for the last few days all I could work on was programming. Here's what I did:

High school vector math, seriously... to get a beam (green line at the moment) to shoot from the player character (the ball here) to where you click.

The math used was the simple solve the intersection of a line and a plane:

//the xy plane which the level constrains to
Vector3f planeV1 = Vector3f(0.f,0.f,0.f);
Vector3f planeNormal = Vector3f(0,0,-1.f);

//find the uparam
float uParam = planeNormal.Dot(planeV1-kPos)/planeNormal.Dot(kDir);
Vector3f pointOfIntersection = kPos + uParam*(kDir); //multiply the uparam found to get the point of intersection
pkVBuffer->Position3(1) = Vector3f(pointOfIntersection); //draw the line to this point
pkVBuffer->Color3(0,0) = ColorRGB(255,255,255);
pkVBuffer->Color3(0,1) = ColorRGB(255,0,255);

bool bClosed = false;
bool bContiguous = true;
m_spkPolyline = WM4_NEW Wm4::Polyline(pkVBuffer,bClosed,bContiguous);
m_spkPolyline->AttachEffect(WM4_NEW VertexColor3Effect);
m_stateNodePtr->AttachChild(m_spkPolyline);

The kDir, and kPos, values come from the GetPickRay function from the camera, and fills in the camera position, and a normalized vector towards the point clicked on the viewport. Sadly if you click too many times, the lines really start to add up. Another thing I worked on is the constraint plane, which was evidently scrapped and replaced with one line of code, to constrain the player to the Z axis:


//constrain player to z axis
m_playerRigidBody->getRigidBody()->setPosition(hkVector4(m_playerRigidBody->getRigidBody()->getPosition().getComponent(0), m_playerRigidBody->getRigidBody()->getPosition().getComponent(1),0,0));

You may have noticed the black and white dots in the picture above. It's the particle system that's pretty much a clone of the Particle System example in WildMagic 4. I found it really difficult to make the particles move, since the UpdatePointMotion function was being called in some other function deeply in-bedded in WildMagic4. For some odd reason the moment the game window popped up (not the command console) the UpdatePointMotion would stop being called, so I had to call it manually in the OnIdle function in mainGame.

There's still lots more to do, and the game is due... in less than 24 hours T-T

Better late than never... I hope

Seems to be the motto for my life...

I had just finished modelling and UV mapping Ice Queen, which is seriously overdue. I had been a bit obsessive in making her look good, and would spend hours just tweaking her vertices. Derek telling me that I only had to combine the dress and crown into the model for both UVs and rigging to work for it was god sent, because then I would of had to extrude the dress and crown out of her hips and head respectively. I extruded the hair out of the head, so when it fans out the UV coordinates get spread out more, not sure if I'll lose marks for this, but her hair is a big puff of white.

Nice that Maya .png's have a transparent background =D

I still have to add the skeleton, paint weights, rig the character, and add textures, which will along with programming for game engine design homework, and programming for the game, suck up any possible time I have awake. Though my little brother still insists I play Pokemon Friends with him whenever I arrive home, technically he has made more games than me. 

Cat Mullets in Roms and Braid Advice

Well I've been assigned to do the spline camera control and key frame animation. So I finished the functionality of the spline controls, but the only problem is that I hard coded it into the game. I didn't start this way, I did the whole UML run down and started on my way making three classes: Keyframe; which holds the translation and rotation information of a Spatial node, MotionPath; which has a vector of keyframes and either LERPs and SLERPs, or uses catmull-rom and spline rotation to traverse the points, and finally a Cutscene class; which has a vector of MotionPaths so the motion paths can be played all at once.

I found this to be slow to code, and Tyler suggested, along with Colin that I just hard code it to see if it works. The creator of Braid according to Colin said that you should get the functionality working and then create a class around it. So the catmull-rom spline works, show below (you may have to refresh your page to see the animation):

But this is only splining between two points, none the less it's quite smooth. Now I've got to extend the functionality back to classes. Extending this to spline through more than 2 points makes me hit a lot of vector out of bound errors... which I know all too well, seen too many, and frankly still have no idea how to make my code robust enough so they don't appear. It also doesn't help that catmull-rom splines like to ask for points before and after the two points you are splining through...

I feel most inadequate ;_;

Oh I don't know why the scene is pink and blue, and the player character is falling off the constraint plane because that piece of code is commented out.

The game... it's alive?

Well the very basic prototype of the game is running:

Now to point out some of the things we have:

1. The main character R3mote as a rigid body which can move through setting its velocity.
2. The main character R3mote can jump by applying a force to it.
3. When left mouse is clicked a sphere is generated at R3mote's position, (A place holder for firing the laser).
4. The platform highlighted in red is a phantom, and when the player collides with it they are pushed up. (A test for collision events and triggers)
5. The player is constrained to a 2D plane in the XY axis of the scene.

Of the list I worked on the constraint plane, which is a constraint class in Havok and I only needed to do some perusing in the demo files to find out how to constrain the player. It just constrains the pivot of the player, which is at their feet, to a 2D plane that is shown by the flat plane facing the camera. Something that needs to be done is that the player shouldn't spin around when they jump, and any collisions with other rigid bodies causes the player to spin onto their head. This can be remedied by using a character controller class in Havok, which sets the player's inertial tensor to infinity... making it not spin.

I also worked on the movement, but those were just four lines of code. Though since the velocity of the player is set to move left and right, the player can just float across the screen. This is just place holder , and will be changed. 

Also checking out the Character Control documentation it shows how to create rigid bodies that would stop colliding when the player state is set to jumping. This would be a great way to make platforms that the player can jump through, but land on. Havok really seems to be on our side.

Completed Logo

Here's the coloured and completed RGBA game logo, from the inked version I posted before:

I find that most of my time spent in Photoshop when I'm "graphic designing" is scrolling through the layer effects, and staring at the picture to see if it looks nice...

Hopefully the game does this logo justice, and vice versa.

Maya Modelling

I very much enjoy the Intermediate Modelling class, and Derek really knows his stuff. I fell a bit behind on the modelling, since I spent a bit too much time adjusting the way the limbs and body look, to make it feel more realistic. I need to finish the face and hair, and UV them by Wednesday.

UVed Ice Queen, but she's bald...

Wire-frame of the same model, I kept all of the faces as quads!

We already started to learn how to create diffuse, specular, and normal maps in Mudbox. I should make a real quick normal map of this model to load into a normal map shader that I am working on. Things are really starting to pile on!

A Game Logo

Well I did a quick sketch for a game logo and inked it in Photoshop. Colin loved it, and Tyler liked it overall, minus the star on top of the b. So I slapped it on our wiki, and hopefully I can get more feedback from the other group members.

Here's the base inked:

Robot Guardian Beyond Awesome

I also attempted to build WildMagicPP in release mode, manually, by trying to eliminate all the errors on the error window. I ended up creating 1632 linker errors... so I may need to start again.

Ice Queen My Way

As part of Assignment 1 for Intermediate Modelling we had to draw a bi-pedal character in three different poses: top view, front view, and side view. Having recently watched Adventure Time, and instantly becoming a fan-boy, I decided I wanted the Ice Queen from the gender-blender episode to be the boss of the Adventure Time level. Here's the three views:

Ice Queen originally is quite a bit more simpler in the show, but I decided to draw it in an anime style because I am influenced by anime. The team also decided that one level would be created by each member, that way the art style would be unified in each level, but different between levels like you would see on TV when changing channels. Next I will be setting up these pictures in Maya and begin to model it in 3D.

Like J.K Rowling

The so called one was sitting on a train, I did not have the luck of being on such a train (the train from rags to riches). But like J.K. Rowling the idea popped into my head while I was just sitting on the bus, and it pretty much went like this:

A quick picture I sketched in Colin's sketchbook when I announced to him during class that I had a game idea.

The basic idea was that the main character was some robot stuck inside of the TV, and had to traverse the channels to escape. Using the electron beam in the centre of the screen (like in CTR TVs), the player would fire beams of four different colours (white, red, green, blue) to vaporize enemies and traverse the level. I wanted the four beams to have different properties (being influenced by RPGs) such as red doing fire damage, the blue beam freezing the terrain and enemies, and the green beam allowed the player to "blink" (become invincible for a split second). Also whenever the player changed beam colours the screen would also be flooded with the colour, and different platforms or paths would be revealed. I also wanted the beam to bounce around platforms, and also amplify depending on how many times it bounced. Another idea I had was that there would be absorption platforms that would absorb beam colours, and one that could absorb all 3 would cause the player to go into "seizure mode" when they charged and landed on the platform.

After explaining this to my group members they all agreed on liking the idea. They started to put in their own input, and after voting my idea over Colin's (sorry Colin...) we put up a wiki and threw all our ideas together.

The wiki link is here: http://tvgameproject.wikispaces.com/