I’ve been following Danc’s posts at lostgarden.com for a while now, and I’ve been itching to work on one of the prototype challenges.

Last week I finally took the plunge and started taking my notebook with me to work every single day just so I can work on FishingGirl during the commute. It’s fun working with “little stuff” and spending hours tweaking small details.

The last  addition to the prototype was a physics-modeled fishing line with verlet integration and constraint relaxation.

The protype source code is available and hosted at GitHub. You can see a sample here.

I Am A: True Neutral Elf Bard/Wizard (2nd/2nd Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-9
Dexterity-12
Constitution-10
Intelligence-15
Wisdom-12
Charisma-12

Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.

Primary Class:
Bards often serve as negotiators, messengers, scouts, and spies. They love to accompany heroes (and villains) to witness heroic (or villainous) deeds firsthand, since a bard who can tell a story from personal experience earns renown among his fellows. A bard casts arcane spells without any advance preparation, much like a sorcerer. Bards also share some specialized skills with rogues, and their knowledge of item lore is nearly unmatched. A high Charisma score allows a bard to cast high-level spells.

Secondary Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard’s strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail).

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Actually, don’t. Don’t forget. Let’s talk about this a bit further. It’s a hard game, granted — and it’s got a gazillion combos and stuff, great. And many weapons (cool), with choice of advancement (nice) and secrets (awesome) and stuff (oh yeah). Oh — and it’s fun. It really is. It’s lots of fun…

…once you get the hang of it. Ay, there’s the rub! It’s a matter of practice, really. Studying the combo list (which should be more readily acessible, methinks — and particularly, should not “forget” where we were once we leave the menu and return) — and slashing and kicking away. As a friend pointed out, this game seriously lacks a “practice arena” of some sort — we had to New Game it repeatedly to catch the curve.

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Once games became larger than a normal human’s reasonable play time frame (and I said normal. People who can finish Resident Evil in Insane mode three times in a row just with the pistol need not apply), the save feature became a must — mostly because it wasn’t feasible to wrap the game up in a single seating.

That is repose. That’s when you save the game because it’s time to go. Because you’re tired. Because you’re bored, even, but just in case you want to try some more… This is the rationale behind games like Legend of Zelda or Nethack – games where saving is merely a method to ensure you can continue some other time.

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Let’s see what happens once Home comes out. I just hope they’re not wasting spending all their man-hours on it instead of having someone do nice fixes to the menu system.

Computer games, of course, were far quicker to break this barrier. Even the Infocom adventure games would let you save your progress. Text-based interfaces allowed people to make far more complex games — requiring way more play time — and saving was easy anyway, once you had a hard disk or even a floppy ready.

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I guess that’s what I find off-putting about Ninja Gaiden Sigma’s bosses.

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I love games with a strong exploration side. Myst (PC), Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) and even Freelancer (PC) were great in that aspect — one could dally as much as one wanted, travelling about, seeing sights and listening to the birds and the wind (well, not in Freelancer, of course — in space no one can hear you… never mind). I remember playing Starcraft II (Amiga) in the old days and marvelling at the number of planets and things I could find. Oblivion (PC) shows that nowadays we can still have exploration gameplay as when we played Drakken (Amiga).

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But even so, it still sends a jolt when, everyonce in a while, you manage to coordinate something with your teammates. Even without the quick voice commands, the voice chat (I don’t have a headset available for it right now, and most people online don’t seem to either), or the squads, every now and then we’re able to pull off a pincer attack instinctively. Or we save one of our teammates from an enemy plane just behind them. It’s a nice rush.

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Wrapping means action won’t be hampered by such trivial things as borders. No abrupt stops, no screeching to a halt. It’s all swerving, all the time, all around — and the only obstacles are, well, everything in sight. But no rigid, unmoving lines.

It’s interesting to contrast this characteristic with the Geometry Wars (X360)  field. The borders create a two-fold sense of security (”this is MY corner — MY CORNER!”) combined with an acute claustrophobia (”oh no, that’s the wall! Nowhere left to run!”). The limited field works well there, but it’s a different kind of thing. Stardust seems to me to be more oriented towards drive-by players, what with the boost capabilities and all.

Or maybe that’s just my personal playing style — I’m watching the automatic demo as I type and I see pro players moving in very little increments.