Drew Clinkenbeard

Okay so since the traveling is done,,, does this even count as a ‘travel’ log? Whatever.

okay so Assassins Creed was a lot of fun. I am happy I finished it before I left for Costa Mesa. Though playing it for three hours Sunday before I left may not have been the greatest idea ever. I arrived here around 4pm on Sunday and I wanted to walk around to scout out places to eat and see what the place looked like. It was kind of cool and over cast, I only brought one warm layer, a hoodie, medium gray. I also brought a knife,, why? Because I always have a knife,, or almost always.

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So many of the systems of yore are now availible under one banner,,, soon the world will be dominated. But the interesting thing is,, it’s competition that keeps things alive,, a lesson that may have finally been learned.

Okay site update: there is a new section: Stories have a gander, read the stories then tell me what you think! Please! There is a link to that page in the header.

edit: comments will have to go here because I can’t get them to work on the page.

other things, I am still feeling all weird I think it is simply the lack of stuff to do. If I don’t hear from that one guy by like say, Wednesday, I am going to start applying for jobs at other places. Because

1. The money would be nice
2. I am bored
3. Work is a good place to meet people
4. It will get me out of the house
5. It will get me out of this funk

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So I am a computer science major, as such everyone expects me to love to program. Let me set things straight right now: I don’t. Well not really. I did enjoy writing a driver in perl that initiated a bunch of sorting algorithms and compared their times. I also like learning new languages I am currently working on learning a bit of Python. Python creeps me out because it does not use end of line characters, at least not that I have discovered yet.
example: printing Hello world!
perl:

print "\nhello world\n";

c:

main() { printf("\nhello world!\n"); }

python:

print '\nhello world\n'

GAA!! Notice the complete lack of semi-colon! As if this oft mis understood piece of punctuation hasn’t been trimmed from the english language enough now we must remove it from programing as well?! What will the future coders of America complain about?! Do you know how many hours of my life have been spent hunting for the missing semi-colon? or the misplaced semicolon? (interestingly enough demi, semi, and hemi can all mean the same thing),,, So I guess good riddance to the foul thing.

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I have always been a fan of the Doppler effect. If that isn’t nerdy I don’t know what is. Seriously though I always liked the sound a car made when it went by, the way the wavelength got shorter as it approached and stretched out as it went away, of course I didn’t always know that was what was going on, but still. Now I am writing a papers on it and doing equations involving Doppler shifting. It is one of those things that is really simple when you think about it but it took a long time to ‘discover’ I would imagine it didn’t come up until we had the ability to move quick enough to notice it. I mean it is unlikely in the extreme that some one on foot or horse back is going to notice that “hey, Olaf’s voice seems to change as I charge at him.” or “Hmm these arrows sure seem to sound different as they fly past my head.” generally not situations conducive to scientific thought.

Considering scientific thought: ultrasonic imagery is really quite fascinating. The idea that we can use sound to ’see’ things is really very interesting, it makes me wonder if things like the heart beat sensor from the Rainbow Six games actually exist. Or could exist in the future. I don’t know if a specific heart beat sensor would be possible but I am sure it would be possible to create some sort of essentially portable sonar type of device that could identify soft tissue in a house at range. It would not be necessary to distinguish features as specific as a malfunctioning aorta but it would still be a good idea for police and such to have advanced knowledge of what they were heading into. With more information they would be better able to defend themselves and prepare for an encounter. (more…)

designing levels is a bitch can be extremely challenging. Think about it you must balance the challenge to your players, you have to give them a reason to be there you have to keep it interesting. This all boils down to knowing your audience and, most importantly, knowing yourself. It’s a bit like dating, the hardest part is getting them to play the game. Once they are playing the game a lot of forgiveness can be had. Never the less the game must still keep their interest. If you make it to hard they will stop, if you make it too easy they will stop, if its too predictable, unpredictable, unrealistic, the list goes on the elements must be balanced, or at least close to it, in order to keep the players happy.

So suppose you keep all that in mind you balance everything you design your level; pouring heart and soul into a creation that at last is perfect. Then once the players are released into the level they run through destroying everything, ignoring your clever plans and plots, slaughtering your minions, and generally laying waste to hours, day or months of planning. It’s like watching some one take a flamethrower to the Mona Lisa. I am mostly thinking about DnD levels, but it applies to all RPGs as well as FPSs. There are pages and pages writen about this on the interweb so I am not going to go to indepth other than to say I have a great deal of respect for the people who do it for a living and make the games I love so well. The level design in games like the Half-Life series, Duke Nukem, Fear, Doom II, Quake II and Blood. Here I feel I should mention Doom III, it started out well enough but by the half way point the levels became formulaic, walk in the room shoot the monster, turn around, shoot the new monster that just spawned in, collect the item, lather, rinse, repeat. So what is the key? Hell if I know. Seriously though it comes down to knowing your audience. You have to make them want to play.
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