Author: Zubon

Today’s xkcd is about using rocks for cellular automata. The alt text is “I call Rule 34 on Wolfram’s Rule 34.” You can look up either term, but the great glory comes from Google trends, where “wolfram rule 34” has jumped to the #5 hot search trend, with a ridiculously massive spike within minutes of midnight EST. (It is still losing to “miley cyrus dead” (she’s not).) As I write this, the top search results for “Wolfram’s Rule 34” are from people who monitor search engines, wondering why everyone is Googling “Wolfram’s Rule 34.”

And now I am part of the feedback loop. It is a warm and cozy loop.

: Zubon

Taking my own challenge, let’s talk about one of the great classics: Contra from the NES. Nerds who know exactly what you mean if you talk about the spread gun, and many of us know the Konami code as the Contra code.

On the plus side, this was one of the great early mass slaughter games. If you wanted to pick up a machine gun and blow up some aliens, in the days before shotguns and zombies were all the rage, this was it. You had a variety of guns, cooperative multiplayer, and several variations on places in which to shoot them. When I was much younger, this was awesome.

On the down side, it was Nintendo hard. One-hit death with full item loss, three lives, and enemies with guns in multiple directions. Mix in flame jets, death pits, and spiked walls that spring from the ground. I blame development for arcades: “kill him frequently to take his quarters” does not port well to a non-quarter-based environment, to say nothing of the many games without saves, passwords, etc. (See also: online games that give you incentives to stay logged in AFK.)

Lessons to take away: (1) fake difficulty is bad. Elite monsters are not any more interesting than normal ones; they just have bigger numbers. Granted, the normal ones are not very interesting in group play, but it does not make something more interesting to give it 10x the hit points or damage. In Contra’s case, dodging a few shots is interesting, but dodging shots while on a moving cart beneath a splat-pillar maze, only to have a spiked wall pop up as you are almost to the last pillar, is bad. (2) Let’s make that a general case: it should be at least theoretically possible to beat the game on the first try, without random choices that sometimes lead to suicide, undisclosed boss fight mechanics, and all the other fun reasons why we follow online guides instead of just playing the game. (3) Understand your audience and platform. Do not design for the console as if it were a PC or an arcade stand-up. (4) Shooting things with your friends is fun. Preferably imaginary things rather than the neighbor children.

: Zubon

Bonus: speed run

I have mentioned the trial of Lori Drew a couple of times before. She (attach “allegedly” at the appropriate points in what follows) created an account as a teen boy on MySpace, befriended a neighbor girl, then precipitated her to suicide. State prosecutors took the position that this was horrible but not actually illegal. Federal prosecutors decided to take a go at using hacking laws, since she violated the MySpace ToS by creating a false identity.

With a final decision to come, the judge has indicated that he will not let the prosecution mention the suicide. It would not be relevant to the hacking charge. And good luck getting a jury to convict someone of a federal crime for lying on MySpace or creating a false identity.

: Zubon

H/T: Hit & Run

The next several weeks are busy in MMO land. Almost everyone seems to have an expansion or major update before Boxing Day. Some of you are looking forward to big changes to your favorite games.

And then we have my blogger friends. As much as you want your game to do well, you know deep in your black hearts that you already have a post mentally drafted about how the opposing game failed. Like a jilted lover, you heap scorn and derision upon the one that already failed you. You are working on new metaphors for queues and crashes, dreaming up death knight puns, and rehearsing old arguments about inability to maintain balance, to say nothing of grinds, bugs, and the other horrors of a fresh release. Come, recite with me the litany of failure to meet sales expectations.

To assist you in your path of snark and bile, we turn to author John Scalzi: How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie. Mix its dark ingredients as you stir old resentments. Listen for your oven timer when what you really want to hear is the cries of the fools who stayed behind when you moved to a better game. Feast upon its chocolate malignancy while you hunger for reports of emergency patches that do not quite work. Combine it with a glass of milk that turns to bitter gall as you still thirst for the tears of those who thought they were moving to greener pastures.

To the baking goods aisle, and on to — no, not to victory — to vengeance!

: Zubon

H/T: Book of Grudges

Gaming blogosphere: your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to discuss a game that was published before 2003, preferably one that has seen few or no updates since 2003. Tell us about the game, what you liked, what you didn’t, and what lessons we should take from it for our current generation of games.

Why? First, nostalgia is fun. I remember the original Kirby fondly. At LAN parties, we will sometimes dig up Warcraft 2 or something similarly non-cutting edge. It need not be new to be fun, and many old games are still in play because they are still worth playing. Why do computer games go away after a few years when people are still playing baseball and solitaire?

Second, we can learn something. You may not have heard of someone’s favorite game, or you might never have tried it because Katamari Damacy looked a little too weird. New to you is key. But learning from is not just learning of. At IMGDC, Brian Green discussed inspiration from other media. What should Funcom have taken from the original Ninja Gaiden? Are there gameplay elements from Settlers of Catan that could have saved Asheron’s Call 2? This industry has a horrible habit of reinventing the wheel. There are lots of perfectly good wheels in the discount bin.

Please, add links in the comments. Old reviews of old games also work: the internet is forever.

: Zubon

We had Shiny Happy Week here at Kill Ten Rats to say good things about various MMOs, including older ones. GamersInfo.net (also introduced to me at IMGDC) has a policy encouraging reviewing ancient games. And I’ll gesture towards my book blog, where pre-release reviews lie alongside the ancients. I need to get The Iliad up there sometime.

I have been visiting the Kingdom of Loathing lately. Some of you may remember my fondness for it, but I have not touched it much for a year. This is like going back after an expansion pack.

There are some new familiars available. I like familiars. I may not use very many, but I like having a stable of little pet friends. [Update: a commenter fairly notes that this post is completely incomprehensible if you do not know the game. Ha, and I don’t play WoW, so I had to learn a second language to read your blog! Anyway, this is your break point if you don’t play.]

I found myself parked at the start of the level 11 quest on a level 13 character (I think I played with holiday events for a level or two). This is a long quest, the sort of epic that would require hours of horse-riding in an MMO. Conveniently, travel time is as long as it takes to load a web page. It kick-starts pretty quickly when you are at the cap for daily adventures, and I got to see much of the post-NS-13 content that was added to force you into more zones. Still not a lot new, but it was familiar and pleasant. The Naughty Sorceress is a bit of a bear, since I parked as a Hardcore Sauceror, probably the worst option for that last fight even with more than a dozen Hardcore ascensions under my Boss Bat Britches. I am debating between leveling a bit to raise my Moxie (useful for Hobopolis later) and using the favorite strategy of “get beaten until she stops blocking so much.”

I have not touched Hobopolis yet. It looks interesting, but its level of grind is designed for a guild. It costs 10,000,000 meat to open and it takes 100 turns to get through the sewers to begin it, with thousands of turns of fights to get to the end. I am not deeply in-touch with the KoL community, especially after a year away, so this could be a potentially interesting and very large solo project.

I also parked on the way to a Bad Moon ascension, with no clover use during the run. I recall something about the path to Bad Moon having changed, but I hope this still works. If all goes well, that will be the next big project after solo-clearing Hobopolis (and getting some trophies along the way). I will let you know how it goes.

: Zubon