04.11.08
Posted in Game design, Games at 23:30
I had a great chat with Shane today about protagonists in video games. Basically one of the most important aspects of game design, yet one I don’t like to work with academically because everybody else already has, and I don’t have a Ph.D. with which to back up my analyses. Our debate revolved around the two main approaches to game protagonists: The established character and the empty avatar. The former is a character in the world on par with any other NPC (except usually more important), the latter is a name and a pair of floating hands - the rest is filled out by the player and his or her imagination.
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- Game: Guild Wars
- Music: Dropkick Murphys - Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya
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04.09.08
Posted in Hardware/Technology at 10:37
The indomitable Master_Kale has presently released his FTP program, WormholeFTP. While aimed largely at the IT-impaired, I was lucky enough to secure an early release candidate for testing and have determined that the program is also supremely suited for the lazy (such as myself). Since obtaining it, I have entirely stopped using FireFTP for uploading files to my blog - and because of our implementation of SVN into The Nameless Mod’s organizational structure, I’ve almost completely stopped using FireFTP in general - because WHFTP is simply far more convenient: It just sits there on my desktop, waiting for me to drop files into it at my leisure, and presenting me a direct link in return.
The program is very simple, which is indeed its strength as well as its main feature: You simply drag a file over to the little window and drop it into the wormhole graphic, then a progress bar appears, and once the file is on your server, the progress bar is replaced by a download link. Click the link to open the file in a browser or right-click it to copy it to your clipboard. At my request, it is possible to define the URL in the program’s settings seperately from the upload directory setting, such that the program can give you a functional URL even if you’re using an esoteric subdomain. It really is a splendidly handy program, and at $8 it presents very good value for the price.
- Game: Homeworld (no, seriously!)
- Music: Jerry Goldsmith - Star Trek: Voyager (Main Title)
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04.08.08
Posted in Games at 17:17
I’ve started playing Guild Wars for no good reason except Phasmatis invited me to. We’re only level 4 so far, so all I have to go on for now is first impressions. And my main impression is that I wish it weren’t quite so much like World of Warcraft.
The interface is great, don’t get me wrong. It’s just really quite a lot like World of Warcraft, and I managed to get really sick of that game. The setting also fails to stand out, it’s a pretty standard fantasy world so far, but there’s still time for it to change and impress me. The character system shows a great deal of promise though, as I love the idea of maxing out your character at level 20 relatively early but then continuing to gain new skills forever (sadly I think they’re doing away with that in Guild Wars 2 because people don’t get it). I always disliked character levels.
I think the main reason to stick to Guild Wars (aside from the extremely attractive fact that it’s free to play) is the art in general and the character art in particular, as evidenced by the picture of my character to the left. While sadly not quite as fantastic as the promotional artwork (always strategically featuring beautiful CG women in badass outfits), the art in GW really looks astounding. It’s not significantly more detailed than World of Warcraft, but while Blizzard managed to craft beautiful artwork with limited resources, ArenaNet have created magic.
Expect more Guild Wars posts as the addiction grows in magnitude.
- Game: Guild Wars
- Music: Manowar - The Crown and the Ring
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04.06.08
Posted in The Nameless Mod at 12:45
- Game: The Nameless Mod
- Music: Queen - We Are The Champions
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04.04.08
Posted in Games, Personal at 16:46
My group is doing a survey of World of Warcraft players for our media sociology class. It’s mostly a demographic thing, so no really difficult questions. Shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to fill out, by all means, if you are playing World of Warcraft or even if you just have played World of Warcraft, please take a moment to fill it out so we can get the data we need. Clearly it’s all anonymous.
World of Warcraft survey.
And if you know anybody else who plays or has played it, it would be great if you would let them know about the survey as well. Preferably we need around 1000 participants, so we really need to get the word out 
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04.03.08
Posted in Game design at 21:44
Spectating is a lot of fun. I just played 10 or so games of Co-op Terrorrist Hunt in Rainbow Six: Vegas, with Nick and Chris, and too often did we end up with just one player alive against 20-30 terrorists, with the other two players spectating. Since I was the one with the most armour and the least courage, the remaining player was often me, but I also got to do a fair bit of spectating.
One of these times, it occurred to me that I was really enjoying watching the others play, even though the camera was (to put it lightly) crap. The player model was often in the way of the action, I couldn’t see much more than the player was seeing yet I wasn’t seeing exactly the same (since the camera is third person), and the framerate was terrible as for some reason (performance for the player maybe?), the feed isn’t transmitted with full framerate.
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- Game: Rainbow Six: Vegas
- Music: Nine Black Alps - Shot Down
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04.01.08
Posted in Game design at 09:37
Now that I’ve accumulated a fair amount of co-op experiences (Neverwinter Nights, Splinter Cell 3, Gears of War, Halo 3, Army of Two, Rainbow Six: Vegas), I finally realize that one of the primary attractions of cooperative play is that it offers endless variations of gameplay because every time you play with a new person, the game will change.
For example, this weekend I managed to squeeze in 3-4 rounds of co-op Terrorist Hunt with first Shane, then Chris, and then Nick. Chris cares a lot about tactics, he’ll use cover a lot and throw smoke or flashbang grenades into a room before he enters. Shane is a bit more reckless, making solid use of cover but still sometimes apparently losing patience and charging forwards to shake things up. Nick has an on-going love affair with pistols and refuses to use any other weapon than the Beretta, which forces a somewhat more reckless and humorous play style.
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- Game: Rainbow Six: Vegas
- Music: Limp Bizkit - Take a Look Around
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