dovka

The development of my pet project, rpg2knet 4 is continuing very nicely. I've overcome certain problems I was having earlier (including one small issue I had with my nested set model code) meaning so far… so good. No problems that remain unsolved. One of the more esoteric problems I have been pondering over lately is this: am I making this website too involved and complex?

Looking through what is complete at the moment (and I'd say we're definitely closing on half-way done), there is a tremendous amount of interactivity. These days, with the advent of the social web and the advances in user experience and interactivity, I'd say this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Conversely, the forum element has been dubbed 4um4-lite, as layers of complexity have been removed. The use of the forums is a much more tied in experience with the rest of the site. Previously, the forum had upwards of 85% of the traffic whilst the rest of the site languished behind. Now, there will be more of a reason to visit the main site as a lot of information is available there.

My main concerns, due to the lack of problems with the codebase, are turning to two other things. The design, which I have tried and tried to perfect but doesn't come off quite right, and content. The site will inevitably feed from user participation and submissions from the users, but I think a site of this size and complexity will definitely need some very devoted people to keep it fully stocked. With the issue of design, I'm contemplating asking (very nicely) a friend and colleague of mine to see what he can come up with. Either way, these concerns are trivial — I still have a lot of motivation, regardless of the criticism and comments from certain people.

For those of you that haven't noticed the wonderful side-bar app that Jon coded, we now have a nice little Twitter streamer. I also thought some nice links would be in order, feel free to follow Dovka-ers on our many adventures, in our many acres as we drink from many toilets.

Anthony (_parable)
Jon (_jon)
Ethan (1p5v)
Liam (_yen)
Johnny (JohnnyDubble)

Some other interesting twitters I follow:
Mars Phoenix Lander - First person perspective on the Mars Phoenix Lander, neat idea.
Thursday The band Thursday has a neat studio journal, unfortunately every album they've released since Full Collapse has been a disappointment.

Although, according to this, UK users can no longer receive SMS updates. Poor fellows.

Some other great sites I frequent:
Official Ubuntu Forums - A great resource for all things *buntu.
Deezer - Online music streams, great for work.
OpenDrive Access your hard-drive from anywhere.
Today's Big Thing - Whatever the latest internet video-fad is.

A more complete, and actual blog, post to follow.

This is pretty old (circa 2006) but I've never seen it before… so I thought I'd write a quick piece about it. Verizon (a phone and data carrier in North America for those of us in Europe) seem to be really struggling with simple multiplication. It all revolves around the customer service representative not being able to discern the difference between 0.002 cents and 0.002 dollars. Obviously, the unit different here means there is a one-hundred fold difference between the two. I say 'obviously', but the caller in this recorded phone-call to Verizon explains to the representative in a multitude of different ways. No matter how hard he tries to get through to the sales rep, he fails to understand.

I can't believe it. How stupid do you have to be to not understand the difference between a $0.002 and 0.002¢? The poor guy had soaked up 35,893Kb of data transfer whilst in Canada (which Verizon charge 0.002¢ for, which is $0.00002). However, when he got home he had a bill of $71.79. Obviously, they have charged $0.002 per kilobyte instead of 0.002¢. Hilarity ensues when he attempts to get his bill rectified (and so he should, considering his bill should only be $0.72). The recorded phone-call is pretty long, so if you want it compressed, there is a YouTube video (~3 minutes long). The YouTube video doesn't really go into the same amount of detail as the phone call, but if you listen to the call first and then watch the video, you can see how prolific the problem is. Furthermore, the guy in question chronicled his quest for a refund in the Verizon Math blog. Worth a read!

Sad to see you go…

Okay, I have a summer job, which, sometime in November will turn into a full time adult position. As we all know summer, according to school rules, ends at the end of August, or rather, after Labour Day. This leaves me with approximately 2 months in some jobless void (a sort of frictional unemployment if you'll allow me to flex my economics degree).

So with this short term freedom - during this time I intend to mouch off the system (Unemployment Insurance) - I am trying to figure out what I should accomplish, not accomplish, or how i should enjoy myself. There are a couple of options:

1. Drive across Canada to British Columbia for approximately 1 week there. I figure this will kill a good 2 weeks of time as it takes about 3 days to drive out there and 3 days to drive back, maybe a little more if I'm in no hurry. I've never seen my own country really and I figure now is as good a time as any plus one of my housemates from University lives out there, so I can stay with him for free.
2. Fire out to Thailand in November for about a week and a half. I've got a buddy at school in Australia who also wants to go to Thailand, so we would meet there and pick up one of those many Thai hookers…double wrapped of course…
3. Sit at home and do nothing… boring…
4. In the mean time, throughout September and October, I have baseball twice a week and am entering a bowling league (I am actually overly excited for a bowling league), but that will not keep me busy, what is there to do in your own town to make you not bored?

Help me out here people! Make my decisions for me!

\new topic/

On a side note:
A conversation with andrew:

(andrew) imagine
(andrew) a mexican japanese person
(andrew) they'd have an amazing 14 year old moustache

I think their moustache would be outstanding at any age

\new topic/

I want one of these.

Legitimate uses for flash carts be damned, WE'RE SUING!

As most visitors I imagine will know (since they are mainly friends), I used to run a website about game making called rpg2knet.com. The site has been down for many years now (since around about this time in 2006) and I have been trying to get it sorted and back online again. It has only been recently that I have really been pushing hard to get this all completed. I got really wrapped up with Counter-Strike: Source for several years (starting around about April 2005 and ending just recently), which caused me to struggle finding time for programming. Now that I have effectively retired from the source scene, I have had plenty of time to get on with rpg2knet.

I thought, since I'm coming up to roughly the half-way mark in terms of coding, I could start using the group blog here at dovka as a devlog as well, since posts can be filtered quite easily with our tagging system. So, today I thought I'd let people know about how things are progressing. This weekend has mainly been spent working on part of the site that I have toyfully been calling Nutforge (a play on sourceforge). It is a tool for starting a game-making project, finding your team/friends with certain skills to help you work (and rating them on how useful they've been, etc), talking about your game, showing off screenshots, and uploading/releasing your game to the masses. The 'end-game' for nutforge is to have your hard work reviewed by the panel of reviewers here that we shall (hopefully) hire for rpg2knet.com, just like it happened last time.

One of the features I have implemented is a "skill set" system. Using the excellent Hierachical (Nested) Set paradigm, I've managed to come up with a tree of skills that you can tag with different levels of proficiency. The idea being, you can search for 'free' people that have listed that they are looking for a project to help out with, and order them by their proficiency, filter them out and well… cherry pick the people you like. Obviously I can foresee a problem with trolls putting all their 'proficiencies' at maximum just to clutter up the search results. With that in mind, I've been thinking about adding in a modifier system where community members can vote a member up or down in skill level if they have been involved in a project with them. That way, if somebody is a time waster, they'll essentially be flagged as such and this will warn others about undertaking a project with them.

This tiny feature is something that I consider to be, at the time of writing, very unique. I can't see any other RPG maker based website doing anything like this, although I'm aware I may have been mildly inspired by the excellent assembla.com. This is what rpg2knet.com is all about in my eyes. Something original, that nobody else has thought of, or something that nobody else can do. If all goes to plan and we can couple this website up with the sort of community spirit the old rpg2knet.com had, I believe we are really onto a winner. And that spirit is exactly what keeps me programming every night to get it completed *hurl*. As cheesy as sounds, it's true.

I saw the Dark Knight, like the rest of the world, over the weekend. I'm not here to review it, though. I want to discuss the possibilities, my friends. The possibilities of awesome comic movies that we're missing out on. Somewhere towards the end of the film, I was half paying attention. Hey, it's long, and I was tired. I was thinking about how completely incredible a Green Arrow movie would be, done PROPERLY.

I'm not a big Batman fan by any means. I like the guy well enough; he's just never completely grabbed me. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight have shown us, though, that comic movies don't need to be campy nonsense, or overdone trash relying on lowest common denominator effects and writing. They can be well-written and thoughtful, appeal to the masses, and respectful to the source, all at the same time. Apply that to my favourite comix characters, and it's a wet dream. Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Swamp Thing? Don't they all deserve a chance to win the hearts and minds of moviegoers everywhere?

DON'T THEY?

But as Run DMC says, not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good. As every nerd knows, Square-Enix just pushed out its latest Final Fantasy remake, for the DS. Final Fantasy IV has always been a favorite of mine, thanks to an enjoyable cast and a story I adore. Seriously, you take a whale to the moon. What's not to like? So, is this another cashgrab, or is this actually worth it? Let me answer that for you.

Short answer: Yes. It's a nicely polished remake of a great game, with additional features to boot.

Long answer: FFIII was okay, I guess. It was a good remake of an okay game, and thus it ultimately lacked any real draw for me. Class changing was a hassle and the story was reeeeeeeeal light. FFIV changes all that. It's a remake of a great game, so the foundation is more solid. What it adds, however, is what really makes it.

First off, the Active Time Battle system isn't much changed. The meter still fills, you still pick an action, and then perform said action. Nice touch: you know see how long it will take until the spell you just selected is cast, as the gauge starts filling up again, in a different colour.

Secondish, also related to battle: Each character's battle commands are now customizable. Do you think Edward's Hide command is useless? Replace it with a shortcut to a potion. That's right, instead of just being able to pick "Items" to throw on their list of five battle commands, you can specify which item. Same with magic-users. Why dig through the menu to cast Cure or Fire, when you can put it smack on the commands list up front. The only ones that must stay static are Attack and Items. The other three slots are flexible. AND, since characters now have the full complement of actions they had in the Japanese version of the original 16-bit game, there's quite a variety. Rosa now has Pray, not just Aim. Edward can use Salve, to use an item on every party member. Palom and Porom, Yang, too — every character I've used has extra commands.

Thirdforth, also also battle-related (let's face it, the bulk of time you spend playing an RPG is spent in battle, so it better be good and tweaked): Auto-battle. No longer must you sit and pay attention to every single random encounter. Push X and the party will fight for you. What's awesome about this, aside from the time savings? It's completely customizable. You choose the command. If you want Cecil to fight, Tellah to cast Thundara, Yang to use Kick, and Rosa to heal, you can do it. It's all set up in the same menu as their battle commands. Reeeeally tricky, Square. Nice.

Fourthwise, and this is a plus that potentially was a minus: Cut-scenes and voiceovers. Any time you take material this old, with a following this large, you run the risk of shattering everyone's mental impressions of characters, which have been established for what, about 15 years now? I'll admit: at first I hated the voices. Cecil sounds younger than I always imagined. Kain sounds too growly. Everyone else, however… has been pretty spot-on. I've even started to accept the others. Combine them with cut-scenes — thankfully NOT FMV — and it's a nice touch. Cut-scenes use the same character models as the rest of the game, so there's no shocking switch from 3D to FMV. It's a nice touch, and I don't usually like these things. I do, however, wish that you could skip them, which you can't.

So what's not to like about it? Not much. It's hard, for one. You will die. You will probably die multiple times. You will have to level your party or face death at every boss, and occasionally in random encounters. For serious. I also don't understand why they missed out on a couple little tweaks that would've made a big difference. For example: You can't set the cursor to memory mode, meaning you have to pick your action again and again every time you're in a battle. That's an annoyance. Also not configurable is the battle message speed, so you'll have to sit for five seconds after you're done reading, every time someone says something in-fight. Not major items, but silly just the same.

To summarize: If you like Final Fantasy IV, you'll like this. If you don't, you should. If you want something easy, don't get it, and miss out. It's up to you. I just can't imagine passing this gem up.

The Batman is truly Amazing. Everyone should be required to go see it or be shot in the face…