The Underforge is dead.

Long live Morac.net

I wrote this thing

I am not entirely sure what strange corner of my mind this came from. Needless to say, when I do find out, I shall promptly strip mine it and destroy the surrounding environment.

A complicated series of interconnected message tubes, stretching for kilometers, is laid out before you. People stand on the outside, some just watching the madness, but most with the end of a tube, furiously scribbling messages and then hastily dumping them down into morass below. Small robots carefully maneuver their way through the jumble of plastic, occasionally disconnecting and reconnecting tubes. Some of these re-connections send messages shooting back up to the people holding the ends, but most of the messages end up dropping into the great pit the whole network is suspended above. A massive mound of these missives is piled here, and yet more people scrabble about upon it, seemingly looking for something important. Every so often, one of these people will pick a message and open it, seemingly at random, though by the way they move they obviously have some obscure metric of their own. Each of these messages are eventually discarded in favour of rummaging around in the pile some more. High above, a neon sign twirls in the darkness, illuminating the landscape below. It is fashioned in the image of a small bird, perched upon a twig, evidently capture in the middle of singing his song to the world at large. His neon caricature of a beak, however, is silent.

One of these days I'm going to figure out exactly what I want to do with this sad excuse for a blog.

In which I ramble incessantly

I should really update this place more often. Right after I figure out exactly what sort of blog this should be. Or maybe I shouldn't decide. That's "in" in the art crowds, right?

Anyways, what with the summer session going on up at UVic right now I've scarcely had time to avoid doing any actual work, let alone get to my own projects. I am doing some pretty cool research, though. And not the standard undergrad "go research this topic, then write a report on the shit you looked up at the library", but much more of "go research this topic, then make something better, then write a report about how your shit is better than anything the industry professionals have done." There's an important life lesson in there somewhere. Nothing that I can't ignore, though, I'm sure.

With the iPad coming out in Canada today, I'm going to go take a look at it in a few hours. I'm still quite on the fence about getting one, or getting a new laptop instead. I have yet to figure out whether the pros outweigh the cons, but I do know that the collective weight is enough to give me back strain.

I'll leave you with a few tidbits from around the 'net.



And check out Tempesmith. He draws cool shit.

A Rant

Right. Rant hat: on.

Topic of the day: snobbery and Apple. There is a very vocal group out there that pops up every time Apple releases a new product, new feature, or basically anytime Macintoshes are mentioned. No, I'm not talking about the supporters. I'm talking about the people that complain about Mac supporters. According to these people, there is a vast army of slavering Mac zombies out there that diefy the virtues of Apple products, completely oblivious to all these other (obviously better) products. Now, here's the thing. Maybe it's just the communities I frequent (which are, admittedly, mostly gamer communities), but the only marginally oblivious Mac supporter I have ever come across is my Mother. I don't know where people are meeting these eyeless, earless Mac supporters, but seriously, all of you staunch PC supporters out there are making yourself look bad. Like, really fucking bad. Like, I-want-to-buy-Apple-products-just-so-I-don't-have-to-associate-with-you bad.

I get it. Mac's are by no means a perfect machine. But they aren't that bad, either. They do a lot of things really well. Interface design, useability, simplicity; these are things that Macs do very well. Certainly better than Linux, where interfaces are mostly tacked on as an afterthought. And way better than Windows, where making even simple changes to your setup requires hours of work, compounded by inconsistent interfaces and no logical categorization of utilities. Computing flexibility? Mac has the linux command line, bitches. DOS ain't got nothing on that. This isn't to say Mac's aren't without their downsides (high cost, inflexible hardware), but seriously guys: rabid fanboy-ism has never been in style. Try for some objectivity next time, eh?

Linear zone progression, Part 1

First up, what do I mean by linear zone progression? Generally, it is tied to a level-based progression system. Each zone is declared as being for a certain level range (say, 10-20). Enemies and quests you find in this area will be of appropriate levels, and once a player has finished most (or all) of the quests, they move on to the next zone. If a player's level is lower than the levels proscribed for the zone, enemies will wipe the floor with them. If said player is over the proscribed level, the enemies will be extremely easy, and have very little in the way of rewards.

Linear zone design is a practice of many popular MMOs, easily one of the more recognizable and quantifiable attributes of the "traditional" MMO model. Oddly, even many of the more innovative MMOs follow this design. It seems to be that if you have a level based progression system, linear zone progression seems to follow. But does this have to be the case? To answer this question, we really need to examine why designers would want to stick with this design.

The answer, when you get right down to it, is time. And, as proven by Math™, Time = Money. "But how does this method save time and the almighty dollar?", you ask (or maybe you don't. I don't know). Well, let us count the ways!

1. Tried and True
Other games have already perfected this method, and if a company can save a month or two of hashing out different game methods, implementing them, finding problems, looping back through the design process, and so on, that is a lot of money saved. I'm sure that investors also like the idea of a surer, if less innovative, design.

2. Works well with other traditional designs
The idea of giving enemies levels similar to player levels is very common. Also common is scattering them about your world for players to encounter. However, if you were not using the linear zone model, you have no guarantee that a player will be of a certain level in any given zone. What level enemies should you put there, then? The two options I have seen used thus far are to either use a completely instanced based world, or to ditch the level-based system (EvE does the latter fairly well). All in all, a non-trivial problem.

3. Enemy group design
Often, zones are designed with a certain theme in mind, and themed enemy groups to go with them. Though I will probably tackle enemy group design as a whole at some point, an important point to understand is that lower level enemies are designed to be weaker than higher level enemies than just by having less hitpoints and less damage. To save on spending time designing and testing every enemy group for all level ranges, enemy groups often exist only in certain level ranges (Hellions in City Of Heroes, for example, do not exist above level 14 or so). If a designer wanted an enemy group for a zone in a non-linear environment with a traditional leveling system, the enemies would have to cover the full level range of the game, instead of just a small part of it.

4. World Story
There is a common smoke-and-mirrors tactic used to draw players into a world, and attempt to make the world feel as if it is changing, even though it is not. Having a linear zone progression allows for a consistent story to be developed over a character's progression to the level cap, tying in the various zones they visit along the way. Remove the linear zone progression, and tying the zones together to the world story becomes much harder.

"Ok, ok! You've convinced me!" you say. "Why would I, a potential MMO developer, ever want to use a non-linear zone design?" "Simple," says I. "Non-linear zones excel when..." Hah! Got you! This is only part one!

(What? You knew that? Oh... I guess the post title did give it away a bit.)

To be continued...

Welcome!

Welcome to the Underforge! The fires are being stoked, the metal heated. The strange rumblings you hear is the machinery gearing up. Even now, you can hear the hammering of the blacksmiths as they begin their work transforming raw materials into things of wonder.

My name is simply Morac, and I shall be your liaison and guide to this place. Wonders await, and I shall show you them. They may be yours... for the right price.

Now, drink your mead, and light your pipes. We must get down to business.

Hello world!

Hellllllllloooooooooooo!