Mar 19 2012

7-Step Crash Course in AJAX Programming With PHP and XAJAX

This is for the web programming geeks out there who have wanted to do AJAX in PHP but it seems too daunting.  I just added some AJAX functionality to a personal page/project, and would like to show you how easy it is.

For this example, we’ll be building a page where you can enter text, click a button, and have that text show up in a different element.  Here are the steps (caveat: I’m keeping it simple and not doing any sort of input sanitization or anything):

  1. Download xajax 0.5 final (minimal version) from here. (Direct link)
  2. Copy it to your webserver.  For this example, let’s say your PHP file is in your webroot, and you put the xajax files into a subfolder called xajax (so under that you would have directories for xajax_core, and xajax_js).
  3. Toward the top of your PHP code, add these lines: 
    require_once('xajax/xajax_core/xajax.inc.php');
$xajax = new xajax();
  4. Somewhere before your script actually starts outputting anything (even HTML headers and the like), add the following line: 
    $xajax->processRequest();
  5. In the <head> section of your HTML, include the following line (the value in parenthesis is the directory where you put xajax_core and xajax_js): 
    <?php $xajax->printJavascript('xajax/'); ?>
  6. Make a PHP function and register it with XAJAX like so (color coded to show where various inputs are used): 
    $xajax->registerFunction('my_function');
    function my_function($el_id, $text) {
    // Do some PHP stuff here -- database access, whatever
    $response = new xajaxResponse();
    $response->assign($el_id, 'innerHTML', $text);
    return $response;
}
  7. Call your PHP function via JavaScript — magic!  Here is some HTML code. 
    Type something here: <input type="text" id="my_input" /><br>
<input type="button"
    onClick="xajax_my_function('my_target_element_id', \
    document.getElementById('my_input').value)">Click me!</button><br>
<span id="my_target_element_id">Here is some text that will change
when you click the button above</span>

And that’s all there is to it! The xajax library takes care of all the dirty work.  The ending file from start to finish looks like this:

<?php
require_once('xajax/xajax_core/xajax.inc.php');
$xajax = new xajax();
$xajax->registerFunction('my_function');
function my_function($el_id, $text) {
    $response = new xajaxResponse();
    $response->assign($el_id, 'innerHTML', $text);
    return $response;
}
$xajax->processRequest();
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" \
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
  <?php $xajax->printJavascript('xajax/'); ?>
</head>
<body>
  Type something here: <input type="text" id="my_input" /><br>
  <input type="button" onClick="xajax_my_function('my_target_element_id', \
      document.getElementById('my_input').value)">Click me!</button><br>
  <span id="my_target_element_id">Here is some text that will change
  when you click the button above</span>
</body>
</html>

1 comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Computing

Feb 2 2012

Hugely Important Clause in Obama’s Healthcare Reform

As reported by Forbes, there is a provision of the healthcare reform law called the medical loss ratio, that requires health insurance companies to spend 80% of the consumers’ premium dollars they collect — 85% for large group insurers — on actual medical care rather than overhead, marketing expenses and profit. Failure on the part of insurers to meet this requirement will result in the insurers having to send their customers a rebate check representing the amount in which they underspend on actual medical care.

I had thought that this was just a general rule of “we cap your profits at 15-20% overall.”  However, if I am understanding some paperwork my company recently got from BCBS, it seems that this is on a per customer basis.

Let that settle in for a bit, because it’s huge.

So let’s say that I’m on my company plan, and I don’t use my insurance for much of anything. Regardless of what the other people in my company on that plan do, I personally get a rebate check back. The insurance company sends it to my employer, who is then legally required to send it on to me. On first look it’s pretty awesome, but I think there are some side effects to this.

Possible Positive Side Effect

It encourages people to be healthy.  If you’re healthy and don’t need anything other than routine check-ups, you could get a sizable rebate back.

Possible Negative Side Effect

This actually discourages people from getting regular check-ups, and even discourages them from being treated when they are sick — especially people in lower income brackets who stand to gain more proportionally from these rebates.

Debatable Side Effect

A bigger side effect, however, is that I’m pretty sure this will eventually mean the end of private insurance companies, or at the very least it will mean some serious changes to them. Whether this is a good or bad thing is debatable, but let me explain why it is likely.

Insurance companies are only allowed to make 20% profit max off of any one individual, yet the losses they can suffer from someone who costs them money are not currently capped. So one person who needs regular arthritis medication, or a heart surgery, or cancer treatment, will be worth many healthy people. And with the health situation of this country only getting worse, I can’t imagine that insurance companies will be able to stay afloat if this medical loss ratio is on a per-person basis.

Insurance companies can only work around this in two ways, that I see. First, they could severely lower lifetime max benefits — so maybe most plans would only pay out a maximum of $100,000 over your entire life. Second, and more likely, they could jack rates up so high that the 15-20% that they’re getting from healthy people still pays for the less-healthy people.

Example: Let’s say that there are 4 “healthy” (never need anything but routine check-ups) people for every 1 unhealthy person, and that on average the unhealthy person costs the insurance company an average of $600 per month — that’s off the top of my head, but I think that including surgeries, medications, specialist visits, etc. that number isn’t too far off.  To just break even they would have to charge $600/mo for each person on the plan.  And even that would actually cause the insurance company to go under because they couldn’t pay for workers or buildings. So let’s also assume that the insurance company has about a 15% overhead (which I believe is insanely low as far as insurance companies go).  That means $690/mo per person on the plan, and that’s assuming it’s not a large group plan.  If it is, that number jumps to $920/mo per person.

If insurance companies take that “jacking the prices up” route, and there is a government option for healthcare, I think that employers and individuals are all going to opt for the government option. Hence, the eventual end of private insurance.

If we were a healthier country, or had lower medical costs (a huge portion of medical costs go toward medical insurance because of our messed up legal system), those numbers would be much lower. For example, if we have one unhealthy person for every 9 healthy people, it cuts those premiums in half. But this speaks to a different point that I will likely make in another post.

Comments Off on Hugely Important Clause in Obama’s Healthcare Reform | posted in Musings, Rants

Jan 31 2012

Windows/Apache Sysadmin – Fixing the unadvertised speed limit

This is a post for any Windows sysadmins out there who administrate a server using Apache and PHP.

For a while now, our Windows download servers at work have had some transfer speed issues.  I would turn off all external traffic and try downloading a file directly, and it went nowhere near as quickly as it should have.  Turns out, there were 2 problems.

Problem 1: PHP readfile() apparently sucks

The first thing I noticed was that directly downloading a file via Apache was much faster than using PHP to pass it through with readfile() for some reason.  I fretted for a bit and ended up just doing this:

// Sends a file using fread, 16K at a time
function my_send_file($filename) {
$fp = fopen($filename, “rb”);
//start buffered download
if ($fp) {
while(!feof($fp)) {
print(fread($fp,1024*16));
flush(); ob_flush();
}
fclose($fp);
}
}

That made downloads go about 50% faster, but it still wasn’t near where it should be for some reason.  I left well enough alone for a while until it piqued my curiosity again, and lo and behold I found a few hits on Google!

Problem 2: Windows ignores Apache SendBufferSize setting

This is a rather annoying bug.  The only way to fix it is to edit the registry thusly:

  1. Open up regedit, then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Services > AFD > Parameters
  2. Create two DWORD values called “DefaultReceiveWindow” and “DefaultSendWindow”
  3. You then set both these values using DECIMAL (not Hex) using this formula:
    DefaultReceiveWindow = (Download Capacity in Kbps * 1024) / 8
    DefaultSendWindow = (Upload Capacity in Kbps * 1024) / 8
    For example, for a 10Mbps (~10000 Kbps) upload and download:
    DefaultReceiveWindow = (10000 * 1024) / 8 = 1280000
    DefaultSendWindow = (10000 * 1024) / 8 = 1280000
  4. Reboot and test your Apache speed.

We saw a 4-6x increase in speed after doing this. It’s possible that problem 1 above was related to this, so maybe after doing this readfile() would work just as well as fread().  But it ain’t broke now, so I’m not going to fix it.

Comments Off on Windows/Apache Sysadmin – Fixing the unadvertised speed limit   |  tags: , , | posted in Computing

Jan 31 2012

Kindle Fire Review

It’s been a while since I’ve bought this little gadget, and I realized that my review has been sitting in “draft” status for months, so… here you go!

The good:

  • It came pre-charged and pre-registered to me. I didn’t even have to enter my Amazon info; I just started it up, it downloaded a software update, and I started using it after a brief tutorial.
  • The size is pretty nice, and it’s good to be able to hold the device with one hand. It doesn’t quite fit in a standard pocket, but it does fit into the side pocket on my cargo pants, and in the inner pocket of my suit.
  • The PDF reader flipped pages pretty fast.
  • Notifications system is pretty neat — just a little number up top which you can click on. Uses this for downloads too; at first this confused me because I downloaded a PDF, and didn’t know when it was done or what to do.
  • $200! Quite a good price point. The biggest selling point.

The Bad:

  • No 3G option, so you’ve gotta be near WiFi to use the cloud services (and most things with it are stored on the cloud).
  • Seems a little laggy.  Not annoyingly so… but on the edge of annoying.  Animations aren’t smooth, but they are noticeably choppy. I’ve heard that other Android tablets tend to be even worse though.
  • No physical home button. Not only am I used to this with other devices, it makes it harder to quickly figure out which side is up and which is down.
  • The PDF reader is sub-par.  For example, it doesn’t support bookmarks (as in, ones that the publisher added), nor does it allow you to have multiple files open at once. I really hope a version of GoodReader comes out for Android. Tried Adobe’s reader, which does support bookmarks, but it’s pretty slow in initial rendering of pages, and also doesn’t support multiple files open at once.
  • The back button seemed a little glitchy — most times I had to tap it twice to get it to work. I’m sure this will be fixed in a future update though.
  • It was very hard to tap on an app/document in the “coverflow” view. I had to try 4 times to open the document I wanted.  Even now after I kind of have the hang of it, it takes 2-3 careful taps.

Overall

It’s a neat little gadget, but not nearly as great for general use as an iPad, and not nearly as good for reading as an e-ink reader like the Kindle Touch. The only real use I could see for it is for people doing LARPs who need something that can fit in a large pocket as a rules reference. If you want a tablet device and you’re on a budget, it’s a livable alternative to an iPad.

Comments Off on Kindle Fire Review   |  tags: , , , | posted in Reviews, tech

Jan 10 2012

Exalted Chat: Web of Memories

I usually post reviews for gadgets and so forth, but this time I’m reviewing an online chat.  It’s an online text-based roleplaying environment for Exalted, called Web of Memories.

First, a bit about Exalted

For those that don’t know about it, Exalted is a high fantasy game. Basically if you take Dungeons and Dragons, combine it with anime and wuxia action, and throw in some Greek and Roman epics, that’s what Exalted is like. In most roleplaying games you start out as someone fairly above average. In Exalted, you start out as a godlike being capable of carving their way through twenty enemy soldiers without breaking a sweat.

This is absolutely awesome for a tabletop game with friends. However, it gets… tricky when you’re dealing with a chat environment where there are dozens of these badasses walking around. Exalted have a tendency to change the world around them, so it makes it hard to keep to a canonical setting when you’ve got so many concentrated in one place.

Now about Web of Memories

Negatives

  • It takes a while to get your character approved. True of any online chat really, though. You make your character, sit around in the main room, and hope to get a storyteller’s attention. Actually for this chat you need to be approved by two storytellers, to make sure that two eyes are on it to prevent things from being overlooked. And to be fair, most other chats I’ve seen have a “pre-sanctioning” process where an assistant storyteller has to approve your sheet first, and then a full storyteller will look at it; so two sets of eyes look over it regardless.
  • There aren’t a lot of organized plots being run by default. If you want something, you have to ask for it. On the other hand, it seems that if you ask for it, someone will generally run something for you.
  • The documentation could be organized a little better. They use a wiki system, and they do have helpful new player guides and so forth.  But sometimes the information you need is spread across several wiki entries, and some of it isn’t there at all. As one example, when you first make a character, you need to enter the chat with (0/2) on the end of your name. Then when one storyteller approves you, you change it to (1/2). This isn’t mentioned anywhere in the documentation that I could find.
  • Most people tend to hang around out-of-character in the entryway. This is also something that’s true of every chat I’ve been on. As I’m writing this, there are 25 people out of character, and only 3 people in-character. On the plus side, this means it’s easy to get to know people OOC, which leads to conversations of, “We should meet up IC and do this.”

Positives

  • The people are nice, both players and STs. Everyone I’ve met on here is nice and seems to get along pretty well. I’m sure some people don’t get along with others on here, but I never see any of it out in the open. Yay for no drama! And the storytellers are very helpful — one even gives out his Skype information and encourages people to contact him that way if they need something and he’s not online.
  • Generous XP policy. Most chats give you 0.5 XP each day that you log on, or something similar. This chat gives everyone a standard 5 XP per week, given out every Friday.
  • Kick-ass character database. This is one of the things that really makes this chat shine, in my opinion. The database was made by a guy that works with Oracle, and most things are automated. Want to buy something with XP? Click a button, it gets submitted, your XP gets deducted, and it will automatically be added to your sheet when the training time is over.
  • Relatively few house rules. The ones they do have are well-documented and make sense.
  • Easy sanctioning process. This may seem at odds with the first item under “negatives,” but once a storyteller does look at you, the process is pretty smooth. It seems like in every other chat I’ve played in, storytellers see their job as incomplete if they haven’t made you change at least something on your sheet. My experience here? The only change I had to make was adding some references that I forgot to note down (forgot to note Anima appearance, and Favored Abilities).
  • Player-run plots are encouraged. They even have a semi-formal system for “PSTs” (player storytellers). You run a scene, send the staff a log of what happened, and the staff assigns rewards based on it. I can’t emphasize enough how awesome this is. Only caveat here is that I’ve heard player-run stories don’t allow 4-dot rewards and above. So if you want that 5-dot Crown of Thunders, you’re going to have to get an official storyteller to run the plot for you.

So if you’re into Exalted, or thinking about getting into it, you should definitely give Web of Memories a try! My only character, currently, is Cathak Caldoras.

4 comments | posted in Gaming, Reviews

Jan 3 2012

Star Wars: the Old Republic – Initial Impressions

When I first heard about this game, I was somewhat excited, but the more development blogs I read, the more it seemed that it would be a money that Bioware pumped big bucks into in order to make a WoW clone with lightsabers, with some window dressing added on.

It turns out, that window dressing makes all the difference. I’ll get into that in a minute, but first I will go into the things that don’t impress me about the game.

Also, I will give the caveat that I am somewhat fresh to this game; I have not yet played all classes, and I have much more experience with the Empire (the “bad guys”) than the Republic. And I haven’t done space combat yet either, though I’ve seen it and it’s basically a Star Wars version of Star Fox (for those familiar with the old SNES game) — basically, a rails shooter.

Some downers

  • Combat is mostly standard MMO fare. The combat really is like WoW with lightsabers instead of swords, blasters and force lightning instead of magic. You have a tank, a DPS role, a healer class, and some “trick” abilities (traps, bombs, etc.). There are some departures from this here and there.  For example: the Imperial Agent class does have a cool “take cover” ability that requires you to actually find some cover (and then use an ability to roll into that cover and take a position), from which you can use sniping and various other abilities.
  • The dialog options are unclear. When talking to NPCs, you are given several options, sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure book.  However, the option presented does not actually reflect the exact words that you say, and sometimes the connotation of what is presented is different than what you end up saying. For example, “Intelligence can assist with that,” becomes, “I’ll let you know any information I find.” But, as you can see in the image here, you can at least tell beforehand which options will gain you light side points and which will gain you dark side points, however.
  • Rough in-game help/tutorial system. I think this is an area that all MMOs are lacking in, but making good progress on.

Some awesome things

  • The storylines are actually compelling. This is the biggest one for me. It makes the game fun, and not feel like a grind. At the very beginning of the game, you get the Star Wars fading-int-the-distance text, as if this is a movie and your character is persinally the center of it. Even though part of you knows that everyone else is going through the same stories, they are well-written enough that you feel unique in this universe. As a Sith Warrior, I feel like a supreme badass with far greater potential than everyone else. As a former slave-cum-Sith Inquisitor, I feel that I am being looked down on and really have to work hard to prove myself.
  • Companion characters are awesome. This is the second biggest point of awesomeness for me. You get several companions over the course of your story. These are NPCs that can come along with you on missions and aid you.
    • This allows for easier soloing — if you are a DPS class with a glass jaw, you can take along a tank companion to take the hits for you.
    • Companions add a new dimension to the game. They are actively involved — sometimes they pipe in during your conversations with other NPCs, and you gain or lose affection points with them based on your dialog choices with other NPCs. Mostly, companions evoke actual emotions, ranging from pride to annoyance.
    • Companions can take care of the minutiae like selling crap items. Just click and tell the companion to go sell your junk items, they disappear for a few minutes, them return with credits.
    • You can equip your companions, which makes them feel a lot more like “real” characters and less like pets.
    • There are even romance options, wherein you can become romantically involved with one of your companions. I have not explored this as of yet.
  • Voice acting. I thought this would be really cheesy at first, but it actually does help the immersion, a lot.
  • Waypoints show you exactly where to go.  Even down to which staircases you need to use. I suppose this may be downside for explorers, but damn do I hate running around wasting time trying to figure out where to go. Especially in a world like this, where one would presumably have a GPS type device. Speaking of which… why are places on the map greyed out until you go there? That seems a bit silly of an MMO troupe to carry over.
  • Level 10 email. I got an email at level 10 congratulating me, and linking to some further information and tips on what to do from here, including maps on where to go and what options you will have. Here is an example for the Sith Inquisitor class. That was a very nice touch. This is the level that you choose your class specialization (tank, DPS, healer, whatever), so I think this would be helpful for new players.  Of course, it came days after I reached level 10, so… it would have been nice for that to have been more timely.
  • The loading screen shows your story so far. Instead of showing random world lore or tip, the loading screen shows you what’s going on right now with your character. Not only does this make the game feel more “yours,” it’s great for me because I love alts, and tend to forget exactly what’s going on with each character, so it serves as a nice snippet for getting me back up to speed. Here’s an example:

Things I would like to see

  • Low/high-level grouping. Some sort of apprenticeship system or something, wherein while a level 12 dude groups with a level 35 dude, he is brought up to par. So maybe artificially bumping him to level 35, and boosting gear stats accordingly, just not giving any of the extra abilities/talents.
  • The ability to name companions. This is one of the breakers for suspension of disbelief for me. When I see 20 dudes running around with a helper that has the exact same name as mine, that feels a little silly. Just alter the dialog so that other NPCs don’t speak the name of your companions, and this could be pretty easily done.
  • Single-server environment. This is a pipe dream, but already I have run into the issue of, “Oh, you’re playing TOR too?  What server?  Aww, I’m on a different server, so we can’t play together.” Why do MMOs insist on this? EVE Online has everyone on the same server, and so does Champions Online. Sharded servers are so early 2000’s, guys.
  • Cross-server chatting. Since a single server is a pipe dream, it would at least be nice to be able to chat with friends on other servers.
  • Choose your own voice. It would be cool if they had some choices for what voice you want. I know this isn’t realistic — it already took a lot of resources to get the voice acting done, and every other choice would require re-recording all of that dialog.

Overall Star Wars: the Old Republic is a great MMO, and I believe it has the potential to be even greater as time goes on. Will it be a WoW-killer? No, nothing will. If/when WoW declines, it will be because of several awesome new games like TOR coming out and chipping away its subscriber base, not one giant game to rule them all.

15 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Gaming, Reviews

Sep 19 2011

World of Darkness MMO Q&A – My Reactions

These are some of my thoughts on the bigger announcements made at the Q&A session at The Grand Masquerade 2011.

Related posts:

Permadeath

First, the biggest announcement (in my opinion) was that Final Death (aka permadeath) can happen.  This was a point of strong contention last year — some people absolutely wanted it, some absolutely did not.  I had my own reaction.  CCP stated that the input from last year informed their design decision going forward.

I believe that this can be done in a way that satisfies both people who love and hate the idea of permanent death. They also talked a bit about Humanity’s role in this game, which I think ties in here. So here are some ways I think that permadeath should be able to happen:

  • If two players duel and choose that the loser dies for good. Chris McDonough raised this as a “question” to the audience, and there was resounding applause.
  • If a player physically attacks someone else in Elysium.
  • If a player breaks the Masquerade enough, they are flagged such that someone else can kill them (and possibly even diablerize them if they have that mechanic in game) without being thus flagged themselves, or suffering any other negative consequences.
    • I’d even take it one step further, and say that if you kill someone this sort of Blood Hunt has been declared on, you get some influence/prestige/whatever.

This could be one of the defining elements of this game (and perhaps even the defining element). MMOs these days are about grind, netspeak, and generally everything but roleplaying.  Even on RP servers in WoW, you see very little roleplay.  It’s an afterthought — why waste my time doing something that doesn’t ultimately benefit me (mechanically)?

But the World of Darkness is not about killing the biggest badass dragon. It’s about creating a story, connecting with other characters and having social interactions, unveiling mysteries, and fighting the Beast within. The stated themes are: Power, Danger, Mystery, and Romance. So even if “power” is taken in the traditional MMO sense (which I’m pretty sure it’s not), that’s only a quarter of the game.

So what if we have a method using in-game mechanics to discourage people from doing things which break the feeling of the setting? Then the game will be self-policing, and that is the philosopher’s stone of MMO game design.

And as a note, ideally I’d like to see a carrot as well as the stick (to use the old metaphor) — some mechanical benefit to roleplaying in a way appropriate to the setting.

Sex and Violence

They said this will be an adult game, with nudity, violence, etc. This is awesome.  It just wouldn’t be the World of Darkness without tits and gore and mind-breaking fucked-up shit happening. Of course, they will have to figure out what to do in countries where certain types of sex and violence in games can simply get your game yanked, but they said they have a legal team researching and working on that.

Someone brought up the point that if you allow players to walk around naked, that breaks the game feeling.  In other words, you make it a more adult game by not allowing players to strip naked at will.  Chris’s response to that implied to me that they are well aware of this, and that full nudity would be allowed in havens (and hopefully other appropriate areas), but not necessarily in public.

Hellooooo cybersex havens!

I say that tongue-in-cheek, but sexuality is a huge part of the Vampire mythos, and I actually do think it would be damn cool to being able to lure a mortal (PC) to your haven with p[would be pretty damn cool.

Player-Run Political Structures

The Prince, Primogen, etc. in the cities will be PCs.  This is pretty frackin’ cool. I would expect it, based on EVE’s player-based focus, but it’s still nice to hear it confirmed. This will also be another defining characteristic of this game, I believe. The mechanics behind how one attains and keeps “office,” what it allows you to do, and other such details are yet to be revealed. What are your thoughts — how would you do a vampire political system?

Everyone Starts as a Mortal

Also very cool, in my opinion.  It was not mentioned whether one must necessarily find a PC sire, or if there is an option to be sired by an NPC.  I can see pros and cons to both. It was also stated that you cannot be embraced against your will, which is a good thing.  They did not mention the possibility of playing as a ghoul — I think that would be pretty neat, but really I don’t want them taking their focus away from creating an awesome vampire experience to create a cool vampire-lite experience.


One Server to Rule Them All

Okay, “sever” is a broad term since a server is really made up of many computers these days. But, this will be a semi-sharded game — everyone is in one game universe, but there will be different cities.  However, one can travel between cities, in a manner analogous to character server transfers in other games.  What is not clear is how easy or difficult that will be (though I imagine fairly easy and hopefully free).  It is also not clear whether your character’s name must be globally unique or not.  (Personally, I’d like it so that character names don’t even have to be unique on a given server like with Champions Online, but I somehow doubt that wish will be granted.)

It was also stated that the cities will all be large, but will not be clones of one another.  I imagine that they will be clones content-wise — I mean, dear Cthulhu it would take shit-tons of resources to make different maps for the different cities.  However, it was explicitly stated that cities will be different due to player controlled/originated things.  Taken in the mindset that this is from the same company that created EVE Online, I take this as a pretty big hint as to what could be planned, and I salivate over the possibilities.

External Access Via Web

No details were given, but if CCP is taking a page from Blizzard’s book with their World of Warcraft Remote, that will be pretty awesome. Even better if they make it capable of more things, and make it an included part of the game (as opposed to an add-on service). People are constantly on the move, and since they said that this will be very much like a Vampire LARP, being able to get notifications of events — and react to them — when you’re on the train to work will be a pretty huge thing.

Those are really the high points from the Q&A session. Let’s see what other news comes out in the following days!

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Gaming, Musings

Sep 18 2011

Grand Masquerade 2011 – World of Darkness MMO Q&A

The following notes were taken from the World of Darkness Q&A/suggestion panel at the Grand Masquerade 2011, lead by Reynir Harðarson and Chris McDonough.

Also see this post for my thoughts on some of this.

* Wants social interactions to “have some meaning” (perhaps implied mechanical consequences to social interactions?)
   – Yes, that will be a part of it.

* Microtransactions    – wants transparency, wants more info
   – Blame Chris McDonough; will release more info next year.
   – Chris says, “Pay attention to EVE Incarna.”

* Play as mortal from “scratch” vs playing “sleeper”; toggle sort of like pvp for being embrace-able
   – Everyone starts as mortal, but can never be embraced against your will.
   – Vampires can die permanently under some circumstances. (See item toward the bottom.)

* Gaining titles within own real life city, interact with higher-ups from other cities and travel to other cities
   – That’s exactly how it works.

* Have tiered dev system for brand new vs old players?
   – Game is as deep as you want it to be.
   – External access to game through web. (Editor’s note: no specifics were given, but I highly doubt you’ll be able to actually play the game from the web.)
   – You can gain Influence without ever fighting someone.

* Plan for caitiff? “Deck of many things”
   – Caitiff not part of original release, unlikely at this point.

* Day/night cycle?
   – When server goes down that’s when day breaks (in other words, it’s always night)
   – Looked at options like playing own ghoul, but this game is about playing a vampire, so you should be able to play a vampire at any time.

* Dementation suggestion    – screen goes crazy/dark, friend looks like monster
   – There is some stuff like that in the game.
   – Powers will work the same on humans, NPCs, and PCs.

* Majesty    – combat (you can’t attack me) and out of combat (you have selection of options to say)
   – Something like that but [social] PvP is more about breaking down your opponent’s will.

* Filter control to keep scrotemaster griefers out
   – Attacking other players lowers humanity, when goes low enough you are open for others to attack you.
   – As far as trolling, you can ignore someone.
   – “You will have ways of dealing with it through actual gameplay. You will have to behave in this world. But we also need enemies, assholes, someone to hate. But there is a ratio there.”
   – The game will have havens.

* Role-play is secondary in other mmos
   – Lot of game design around this, like political system. See EVE; wanted role-play to emerge naturally. “When your character’s goals align with your goals as a player, then roleplaying is natural.”

* Concerns: pvp, some people want to roleplay without getting fucked with. Guy jumping around in thong. Masquerade enforcement. Malks need extra tlc because of their uniqueness. Age of Conan adult scale-back, don’t want that to happen here last-minute.
   – Have staff lawyer looking into legal implications of adult stuff in all countries. Some countries will just shut you off if you break policies/laws on adult content.
   – It’s about doing it tastefully, not gratuitously.
   – Gotta be careful about giving players ability to be nude. Might be a more adult game without that. Possibly nudity in own haven but not public.
   – More similar to LARP than EVE.
   – PVP is very different than in other games. Both more free and more restrictive. Want the world to feel real; it’s a dangerous place. Have to make friends. If you go out of line we want the community to be able to punish you.

* Will Sabbat vs Camarilla PvP be player driven?
   – More structured than EVE but not as structured as the Masquerade.
   – Power structures are player run, like Princes and Primogen.

* Alternative paths? Like paths of enlightenment?
   – Right now no, but every intent of releasing that in expansions.

* V20 Europe wants game that is adult, with story, unique character that is not a clone (can tell on sight), and will run on lots of hardware.
* Planning on promoting in Europe, like at GamesCon next year?
   – Story is tangential to the game. There won’t be a story that drives the game
   – Unique characters are extremely important in this game design.
   – Reynir: “Does not run on iPad yet.” Mindful of required specs though, like laptop. Will have multiple visual settings/levels, but want it to look good no matter what setting. “It’s going to run on a laptop.”
   * Clarification: Story meaning background.
   – Editor’s note: There was no official answer — it was sort of lost in the shuffle — but I will go ahead and say yes to this.

* Actions should have consequences, including true death
   – True/permanent death can occur.
   – Chris: “Should players be able to duel each other with an option for permadeath?” Loud applause.

* Planning on incorporating other genres?
   – Stick to vampire initially.

* CoH veteran rewards style of opening up other WoD races?
   – Just focusing on vampires now, don’t want to even talk about other character types at this point.

* Overhead names in UI? Way to keep notes if not?
   – There will be an option to have names overhead, but it we be off by default (presumably to make the game more immersive).

* Standard char sheet?
   – Yes, and it looks very similar to the pen and paper RPG.

* Metaplot not solely driven by PCs
   – Yes metaplot, but hard to do that without disempowering players.
   – Again more similar to LARP.
   – Metaplot through expansions.
* This guy apparently absolutely hates PC-driven metaplot. Perhaps this is not the game for him, and he should instead simply read a book.

* Permanent consequences like blow up a building and it stays that way
   – Big in MMO world now. Phased instancing etc. It’s not about the graphics though. It’s about what happens in the world. See EVE as example.
   – Things open up and close down.
   – Reynir doesn’t like phased instancing. “We don’t want the game to lie to you.”

* Will there be a generation system, and cap? Will there be diablerie?
   – This is under heavy discussion now.

* Dynamically generated content? A la Guild Wars, e.g. garou attacking a part of the city, if you don’t defend it then they now have control over it.
   – Yes. And there will be world events.

* Single server?
   – Multiple cities that you can travel between, but all one world. So, sort of a single shard.

* How to determine how one player has praxis of something? Mechanical locking?
   – Yes there is a mechanism, but requires lots of human interaction.

* Different sized cities? Population controlled?
   – Populations can vary, but all cities will be large.
   – There will be differences between each city. Player controlled/originated differences. (Hint, hint.)

* Does your game have NPCs?
   – Yes.

* Justin Achilli asks: If you’re not lying to players, then why have fake people (i.e. NPCs)?
   – Essence of response: STFU, Justin

* Translation? E.g. Latin American?
   – Yes, via a newly developed “Cerberus” system.

* Will there be a system for torpor, like cool-down period?
   – Not in traditional sense. [Torpor] is an excuse for why your PC doesn’t die.

Comments Off on Grand Masquerade 2011 – World of Darkness MMO Q&A   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Gaming

Aug 25 2011

Why Steve Jobs Stepping Down Could be Good For Apple

Yesterday, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, volunteering himself to be chairman of the board instead. I predicted that their stock would plummet, but my company’s president (also named Steve!) said he didn’t think the stock would drop much because Apple “graduated everyone into the idea that he’s out.” Turns out, Steve was right — guess there’s a reason he’s in the driver’s seat.

In any case, I think this could be great for Apple. Actually, when Jobs leaves completely, I think Apple could make some great strides forward. How, you ask?

Because they won’t have Jobs’s ego holding them back. As one big example, HTML 5 is not replacing Flash, sorry buddy. Flash does not drain batteries like the filthy whore that Jobs makes it out to be (as proven by Flash running fine on hacked iPhones).  If iOS devices were to support Flash, that would knock out the main advantage that Android devices have*.  And hey, maybe they’ll be more willing to admit to mistakes too.  Remember that whole iPhone 4 antenna issue and Steve Jobs’s response to it?  Yeah.

Edit: It has been pointed out that I only used the example of Flash, which does not a valid argument make.  So as another example, Apple has a somewhat-recent policy of disallowing apps from linking to their own websites where people can buy stuff.  This, I feel, comes from the Jobs-like mentality of, “We’re the best, if you want in on our platform you play by our rules and give us a cut of everything that happens on our device.”  However, this will ultimately weaken them as companies turn instead to web apps, as Amazon recently did with their Cloud Reader. This gets consumers more comfortable with using web apps, and companies soon realize, “Hey, you mean I only have to pay to develop this once, and it will work on any mobile device with a browser — including both Apple products and Android products?  Sweet!”  More companies do that, meaning iOS has fewer exclusive apps, and consumers have a more viable choice in alternatives.

In general, I feel that Jobs has an attitude of, “We are the market leaders, therefore the market goes where we say, not the other way around.  We tell people what they want; they do not tell us what they want.”  Which, to some extent, is true.  But that level of ego also blinds one to their own weaknesses, which is to Apple’s detriment.

* I’m sure Android devices have many other awesome advantages, but from an average non-tech-savvy average Joe perspective, Flash is really the one functional thing missing from iPhones and iPads that Android has.

7 comments   |  tags: | posted in Computing, Musings, tech

Aug 16 2011

The Difference Between D&D and Exalted

This is a quote that I find myself constantly looking up, so I’m basically just putting it on my blog so I’ll be able to find it more easily in the future.

The Difference Between DnD and Exalted:
From “spatulalad,” on RPG.net:

D&D: “Okay, you enter the tavern and head to the bar. As you’re sipping some ale, you overhear some rough looking half-orcs talking dirty to the daughter of the guy in charge of the caravan you’re guarding. What do you do?”

Exalted: “Okay, you enter the city and kill off the current ruler and set yourselves up as the overlords. As you’re setting up court, your Night Caste reads the lips of a messenger a mile away and figures out that one of the Dragon-Blooded viziers is plotting with a demon lord of the Second Circle to eat the souls of the first born children of all people in your city and then use the ritual’s power to make a ten story First Age warmachine that shoots laserbeams from its eyes. Also, there are ninjas. What do you do?”

Comments Off on The Difference Between D&D and Exalted   |  tags: , , , | posted in Gaming, Humor