GameLog 189 - 195

Wow, 6 weeks since a GameLog.

Shogun: total war 2 (95h) - Played througha couple of campaigns to get the feel of it, and have just about finished a legendary campaign for the Shimazu. I'm afraid that the Tokugawa are only a couple of turns away from winning though. Plays really well, and feels like a well polished version of the original.

Grepolis 2 (15h) - High Notes alerted me to a new version of Grepolis, but I missed the start due to teaching. I'm 4 days behind, but keeping pce with the leaders. Currently 400th on server. Virus seems fresh and active, so I think that'll make the game stay in rotation for a while.

League of Legends (10h) - Off and on again relationship with LoL. Pretty much only play with brothers or at LANs now. Versus AI has been a nice change and I'm surprised they are offering IP for it.

Hoard (9h) - Been following this for the 360, and it's finally made a debut on steam. A little bit buggy, but an excellent LAN game.

Dragon Age Legends (3h) - Facebook game from Soren Johnson. Plays Ok, but still is a little light on for me to take it seriously.

Minecraft (3h) - Little bit of LAN filler. New versions are coming out a lot more regularly now, so it's good that it's getting more assets and ideas. Feels more and more like Dwarf Fortress ...


Feels like I'm missing a few, but that'll do for now ...

Factor Friends v0.2

Ok, main look and feel all done. If you select any of the cards in your hand it is highlighted in gold, and all possible places where you can put the card on the board are also highlighted. The check to see if one is a factor or not (one of the key parts of the card-based game for year8 maths) is probably going to be the shortest function in the whole program.

Next up, moving the selection to the board if it's a valid choice, then swap the players. All the back end is done for player hand rotation, all I need to do is flip a turn counter and refresh the hand area.

Might even be able to get a quick end-game check in there and have a fully functioning game for next revision (albeit with pre-determined cards).

Factor Friends v0.1

After a couple of days of solid game playing, I feel back to normal. The last couple of weeks have been so crazy marking and preparing for classes that I've hardly played a thing (I guess I should get back into GameLogs too).

I woke up this morning with a hankering to code. Might have been some of the TopCoder vids I found on youTube, or just something in my mind wanting to relax in a different way. Anyways, I've found myself happily coding away for the past 3 hours (with a splash of Grepolis).

One of the students at school is working on developing Factor Friends for the iPhone (or Mac at least), but I thought I'd give it a go too using some stock VB stuff. The aim would be how much of the game I can get done in a day.

Well, so far so good. I have the basic game board laid out using buttons and another set of buttons for the player's hand. The pic to the left shows some test data overlaid onto the buttons (showing the coordinate system used for the underlying array) as well as a sample starting hand.

There are 6 arrays so far that store the data for the game: BoardValue, BoardValueOwner, HandValue and HandStatus for each player. With these in place and the refresh subroutines built, I can now simply call RefreshBoard or RefreshHand to display whatever the game logic dictates.

Biggest hurdle so far has been attempting to use pointers. I wanted to store a similar sized array of pointers to the buttons so that I could refactor the refresh code into a simple loop rather than having many repeated lines of code for each array position matching up to the correct button. Wasn't a big deal at the start, but once there started to be 7 or so lines per button, the code looked pretty unmaintainable. Searched around for a bit, but nothing seemed to allow me to reference the buttons using a stored pointer or the like. I eventually came up with a new subroutine that accepts a button, and the current staus and value to set it to. Worked a treat and much neater.

With the board in place, the next thing to do is to get the player interaction working.

Looks like I can bind multiple buttons actions to the dame subroutine, and I can also reference the sender to the event handler as the button clicked. That will make the hand and board UI pretty easy.

I'm also hoping to have the clicked card eventually track to the clicked board position (if legitimate, need to get a validation routine working too), then disappear from the player's "hand". Should be pretty easy using a timer and some slide-in, slide-out animations. Not sure what happens to the button when it's in transition though, can I lock the whole UI down until the animation is finished?

GameLog 187 & 188

Champions online (10h) - Just gone F2P in time for the Saturday LAN. Plays a lot like City of Heroes, and seems to have enough to play without bouncing off the paywall.

Football Manager 2011 (7h) - Currently ~10th in Conference Premier with a fairly good run under our belt. Team is confident, but a mid-table or slight chance at playoffs could be all that's achievable this season.

Shogun: total war 2 (2h) - Played through the 5Gb(!) demo

League of Legends (1h) - LAN starter

GameLog 185 & 186

Football Manager 2011 (30h) - Steam reckon's 70 hours this fortnight, but I know there was times I left FM11 going while I did other things. I'd even had it going in the background as Cam played Civ, so I'm thumbing about 30 hours of actual play time.

Finished Conference South in 2nd and managed to claim the promotion spot. Now with 18 new signings we're settling into a mid-table position. Hopefully there's some extra spark to take the team further, but even a year in conference won't be too bad as div2 looks a big step up indeed.

Dungeon Demo (2h) - Played the demo to see how it compared to notorious. Couple of interesting takeaways:
- They have an avatar in the game constantly
- area is controlled instead of assuming it is yours
- Heroes are encouraged to take treasure to mak them happy, then you bleed them of happiness to power spells. A somewhat convoluted way of converting money into mana.
- Instead of blocking off dungeons ala TD, dungeon structure is more about enticing the heroes further in.

Rift (2h) - New MMO I'm betatesting.

Vintage display ensures Woking victory

Woking 2 - 1 Dover Athletic (Blue Square Bet South Playoff Final)

Woking taught Dover Athletic a lesson at Kingfield Stadium this afternoon.

Striker Leighton McGivern gave Woking the lead with a real poacher's effort in the 21st minute. An error from Dover's Tom Wynter allowed centre-back Adam Doyle to score a good header from just inside the six-yard box. Striker Adam Birchall had a chance to score from the penalty spot for The Whites on the 38 minute mark but missed his spot-kick.

He was able to make amends for his miss however by scoring an accurate finish after 77 minutes.

Talented manager Veeyar Bones has been at Woking for 7 months, having joined them in October 2010.

Attendance: 3,705

Bones praised by Woking faithful
Fans of Woking were justly proud after the team gained promotion from the Blue Square Bet South.

Fans and pundits alike were unanimous that the person responsible for the team's success was Veeyar Bones.

One fan commented that with Bones at the helm he felt that anything was possible.

Starting unemployed, I joined Woking at about October with the promotion candidates languishing down in 15th. Cleaned up the Back-room staff and brought in one or 2 players to turn the season around, with a comfortable 2nd in the league and an easy 5-2, 2-1 finals campaign to get the promotion. Now to clean house with the players to get the finances back on track.

Teaching week 2 & 3

It seems like Friday of week A has enough spares that I can set time aside for reflection, so a bi-weekly summary might be enough until I can get everything else under control. Hopefully this will be a couple of updates a week once I settle on a format I'm comfortable with.

With week 3 done, most classes are now firmly into the topic for the first term. I've had to take a reality check with most of the subjects, as I'm simply unable to implement all the changes I wanted this year. For some classes I might have another opportunity to get stuff ready by 2nd semester, but for now I'm a little disappointed that I have to 'lean' on textbooks to get through.

The reason for the cutback is pretty simple. Time. My initial intent was to stay back after school and prepare everything for the next day before heading home. I seem to work well in a work environment, even if it means working until a problem is complete rather than working up to a certain time. When I used to work from home as a contract programmer I found it hard to get going (too many games?), but once I'm in the zone late at night, I'd work into the wee hours of the morning. With a rigorous timetable, the late nights will need to go...

Time. The first couple of weeks were pretty crazy with a lot of extra time devoted to getting changes to the work program in place, but I was expecting it would settle down by, say, about now. It doesn't look like it's happening though. Most nights I'm still here after 6pm just covering the basics for the next day or responding to issues or emails arising from the day. I need to bail by then so that I still get to have Dinner with the kids, but even that's been missed more often than not. I'm left with an option I wanted to avoid, take work home. Recently it's also been exacerbated by meetings for school council and youth ministry cutting short the preparation time at the school. There's more meetings on the horizon too, so it's only going to get worse.

All the new teachers to the school gathered on Monday to discuss any issues, and although there were a dozen new teachers to the school, only 2 of us were first year teachers. The prognosis about the workload seemed to be confirmed: Yep, that's natural when you're starting off. You will get better at it, but it might take a couple of years. Probably 5. Holidays also came under the firing line and it was revealed from long-time teachers that only the Christmas holidays allowed you to actually relax. The other times you're still in 'teacher mode'.

Getting used to this 'teacher mode'. Always a teacher. Always...

GameLog 183 & 184

Teaching-constrained gaming looks like it's going to be the norm for the forseeable future.

Football Manager 2011 (25h) - Finally got the full version. Started off unemployed and landed a spot at Woking in Conference South. I think they were supposed to be conference or maybe even div2, so it's been a pretty easy road to bring them out of the doldrums and almost into promotion contention. Some VERY nice deals landed a div1-worthy goalkeeper and a couple of loaners to prop up the wings and forwards. A bit over budget, but I'm confident we'll do enough to get the promotion.

Rift (15h) - New MMO I'm betatesting. Plays like WAR, but with dynamic public quests. Would be very interesting to explore more fully if I had the time.

Sentimentality: an interesting choice?

Recently Ben published his list of attributes and features for the Game That He Would Like To Play. This is a ramble on one facet; Sentimentality as an item statistic. I don't know where it's going to end up, but it feels like a topic worth exploring.
The trigger text:

Rather than having players continually searching for new better items like in Borderlands I’d like them to all be like the Angband ego artifacts that level up as they are used, slowly getting more magical and more powerful. The longer the avatar uses a weapon type the sharper and sturdier it becomes because the avatar looks after it. This maintenance is a part of the weapons skill.
Also the avatar becomes used to the weight and feel of the weapon and so grows sentimentally attached to it, after certain time periods they notice new places that magical gems can be placed to give the weapon special abilities, like firebrand.

I, too, enjoyed ego items in angband. They were never the most powerful items you could get, but the agency they gave you in helping shape the weapon you require made them very desirable in the mid game, and certainly helped you connect and appreciate the item more. Sentimentality is certainly a neat way of attaching an in-game mechanic to an external feeling. They also happened to be a great money sink as each new ability cost more and more.

One of the problems with ego items from a gameplay standpoint is that if they are too powerful, there is no need to keep looking for other items as you have the best in the game. Each new weapon found from then on in would simply be an inconvenience, or a resource to convert to money at best. If it's inconvenient, then why have it in the game at all?

A while ago I read another article by the developer of 100 rogues on the decision to cut out the store because it didn't actually add any interesting choices. This is kind of the same topic, but from the other side. Keith saw that a game should be stripped down to a series of interesting choices, and attempted to remove any such items or game devices that seemed to get in the way. My comment on 100 rogues was that the removel of the shop didn't increase the set of interesting choices, but simply moved the same choice to the point of pickup, rather than at the point of sale once you know there is no shop.

Once you know. That's another part of analysing gameplay. It may take a number of playthroughs of a game to realise that there are elements that are simply not required. I played many, MANY games of 100 rogues with a full inventory out of sheer habit. True, I didn't come across a shop, nor did I ever actually use anything that I was carrying, but in my mind they were somehow intrinsically useful. I had to make an interesting choice as to whether the item on the ground is better than any item in my backpack (and shuffle around accordingly), with a glimmer of hope that upon completing the whole dungeon there would be a shop or possibly just a highscore modified by the loot picked up. Realising that this wasn't to be the case meant that there was no point carrying items that you had no intention of using, and therefore the item found on the floor lost their interestingness unless it competed successfullly with the items I was currently wearing.

Once you know. I've been playing ToME4 recently and have been noticing that the game is intentionally set up to be replayed. Not only does the game slowly expose other races and classes to play, but knowledge gained in previous plays can change the way you play it on subsequent visits. Once I'd cleared the starter dungeons, Bree is inundated with lightning elementals, which in turn leads the story through to a large boss battle with predominantly lightning damage. My mage had been cruising up until that point, but with no resistance to lightning damage the game got incredibly hard. My next play through as a fighter, I kept an eye out for lightning resistance items to help get past this stage. Items that may have been deemed useless in the first play through are now worthwhile, but do they warrant space in the backpack (and the weight limit) to carry through until they are needed? An interesting choice. I know most roguelikes have this type of player knowledge vs character knowledge mechanic (and some could say that it's the hallmark of a roguelike embodied in permadeath), but ToME4 seems to make it more front and centre with a more scripted experience.

On the point of ToME4, I have also stopped playing recently as a new patch removed the ability to sell items at the store. My lament was exactly the same as with 100 rogues; all it does is remove another avenue for making an item interesting (to gain money for that once-in-a-lifetime deal in a shop), and leaves the decision squarely at the point of pickup. I used to prize a girdle of carrying to give my characters more lugging power, but now you may as well just go for a resistance girdle as the only things worth retaining are gams with 0 weight and artifacts.

So back to sentimentality. As long as we're prepared to give up a reduction of choice from items, maybe there are other benifits to be gained from having sentimental items? Maybe (in a Daikatana-like fashion) the item leveling is a mechanic itself that allows for lots of variability, and that the player more or less stays with 1 item for the duration of the game? Is making an item more personal and meaningful worth it?

Recently I picked up Football Manager 11. I'd played the demo when it came out and didn't seem to be too much different from FM10, so I thought it'd be Ok to skip this year's incarnation (or at least wait for a steam sale). A number of personality oriented games had me pining for FM again, so I fired up the demo and saw how far the game had come in making the people in the game more alive. In the demo I'd received some recommendations from my back-room staff that a player wasn't performing and needed a rest. With the new interaction system I invited the player into my office for a conversation. I started off by stating what my back-room staff picked up, that he needed to have a rest due to poor performance. He responded negatively and said that he thought his performance was Ok. My options in the conversation tree were somewhat limited in how to respond, one giving an ultimatum, one conceding, and one somewhat concilliatory. Still relying on the advice of my staff, I thought that the lad just needed some discipline so I gave the ultimatum. His tone turned sour. "I don't like the way I've been treated, I'm not sure I made the right choice coming here". Hmm, wait a minute. This was someone I just put on? Upon looking at his record for the month he'd been with us his performance had been Ok. I can see why he's upset and now here I am, stuck in a room with a person that has legitimately claimed to be mistreated. The options in the dropbox weren't pretty either, so I'd effectively scuttled my relationship, and thus the performance of this player for the team by not paying attention and investing time to know the players.

On the other side of the coin were a number of players that, through multiple seasons of winning against all odds and massaging them through games with half-time and full-time talks, had me down as their favourite person. It's hard letting go of someone that has you as their favourite, even if that's the most economically sound thing to do. Both of these scenarios indicate that there is intrinsic value to develop a relationship or increase sentiment with in-game objects without the need for bonuses. Or is the game giving bonuses by allowing players a little extra oomph if I'm their favourite coach? You can certainly help prolong a winning streak by keeping everyone's morale high. I don't get the feeling that a player, through sheer sentimentality, will stay with the team all the way from Conference South up to the Premiership. The emotional attachment still is evident in the game, and the game encourages and rewards sentimentality, but not at the expense of the core mechanic of continually needing to search for the next big star.

Teaching week 1

At the end of Week 1 into the journey of high school teaching I'm a little stressed, a little excited at the opportunities, and tired, very tired. I knew toward the end of last year that I'd be revamping the 11/12 work program, but arriving at the school for the first time as a teacher it seems that the 7-10 work program is also inline for an upgrade.

I knew last year that I'd be wanting to use Moodle for most of my courses. The content is largely self-paced already, so having the course work in Moodle allows easier submission / marking than before. Homework wasn't a strong point in the old work program, so moving to moodle will also allow students to continue their work from home, or catch up lessons if missed. The main reason though, is the hope that moodle community hubs have a very big opportunity to bring the diverse leaning environments I would want in a VLE of the future, and I want to be there either as a course creator, a community hub manager, or simply as a teacher with many more options.

Maths has been a dream compared to ICT/IPT. So structured, so precise. The content is still a little steep to get through, but at least you know exactly where you're going and that there's no real wiggle room. I like wiggle room, but I have that in spades through the ICT/IPT shakeup, so having a couple of courses that are largely taken care of has been an unexpected blessing.

Of the 4 classes that have participated in the "Introduction to Moodle" course that I put together, most have had difficulties with technology at some point through the process. New accounts and password resetting eats up a more time than it should, emails are finally being set up properly, but there are still teething issues with that process, and the login process onto moodle itself is not straight forward and needs direct instruction at critical points along the way. One class was completely derailed by student not having access to their documents directory. I know it's teething issues, and I know from being over on the other side of the phoneline that there are legitimate reasons for the hiccup, but it still wiped out all the progress the students could have made during that lesson to establish their moodle access. When technology fails, it tends to fail specacularly, and that 1-2 minute window you have for attempting to fix the issue before the kids lose patience is too narrow to do anything substantial about it while standing up the front.

Thinkin' on your feet? Yep, need that.