The ColorWare Dream

As some of my friends know, I once had a Playstation 3.  A dark green one, actually, which I had bought from the amazing website ColorWare.  I have recently been browsing around that website again, and I can't help but be vastly entertained.  They have a really nice setup for clicking on colors and being able to see exactly how the selected color would look on whatever device you're messing around with.  It's a great enough time consumer, and you will find yourself looking into the effects of coloring devices that you have no desire in ever buying.

I was caught today by the PS3 Slim being a now-selectable option.  From checking several weeks ago, it had yet to make an appearance.  And I would argue that the options for the Slim are much better than the original.  The thing with the original was that the system had to be all one color.  With the Slim, you can make the top and bottom pieces a separate color, as well as select the color for the new PS3 logo.

I don't have my Playstation 3 anymore, having sold it several months back, but I want to go by ColorWare again when I do get around to getting another.  And I won't make the same mistake as last time.  Choosing a very dark color when it's always in a dark place?  It was difficult to tell that it was colored at all.  With this two-tone business, I think this will be the look of my future PS3:

That's from coloring the front with Sand and both the back and logo with Rootbeer.

What would my dream 360 look like?  Well, maybe I'll follow the same color scheme for all of the devices I get from ColorWare.  It's not exactly a unique route, but it would be a kind of signature.

Assuming this is not all an unfulfillable dream...  But, hey, dreams keep us going as a hope for the future.  There's certainly nothing wrong with having material dreams (especially since most all of my dreams are material).

Windows and Video Game Cops

I have been playing a whole lot of Saints Row 2 lately, which might come as a surprise to those who know how I feel about sandbox games.  I was never a fan of the sandbox games' silent motto of "do whatever the hell you want, there's this big world we created that is wholly accessible," but I'm trying my best to get over it.  My solace comes with forgetting about world exploration and striving for a goal -- doing solely missions in one sitting, or trying to find all of *insert findable object here*.  Beyond that, I rarely find myself going all Attention Deficit Disorder and trying to accomplish everything; that, my friends, is one way to make my head explode.  Too many options.

But this is quite a stretch beyond the scope of what I wish to say here.  Getting back on topic.

There is one diversion required of a sandbox game that I will always regard as the icing on the cake (all Portal jokes aside): the police chases.  Even in the games where the police is attempting to arrest you, their methods are still drastic enough to say "we want to arrest you, but just as a second option."  And really, this is one of the long-standing appeals of sandbox games.  You can be thrown into a new world and still feel comforted to know that bumping into some random authoritative figure is enough to have them spew a strangely windows-sounding error message: "The player has performed an illegal operation and needs to be shut down."  All I did was lightly nudge his shoulder, but now he wants to take it personal and contact my skull with his nightstick.

Does messing around with corrupt cops make me a masochist?  I have the urge to shout out "no" almost instantaneously, but then I remember how all of those encounters end: me in a hospital.

I laugh on the inside to think of how these events can start out so trivial and escalate so quickly.  I nudge cop, cop draws out nightstick, I use fists in self-defense, cop has friends, cops have guns, and suddenly there is a blur between now and the cops sending helicopters and tanks to eradicate one citizen who had been on his way to buy the coffee shop down the street.

I suppose it's positive they don't have the game mechanics act too realistic, and I actually have a choice for when to pick my fights.  Realistic driving mechanics of some sandbox games aside, I don't want to obey the traffic laws to keep the cops from freakin' out. Getting around quickly when you have to worry about red lights? That would never catch on.

BlackBerry, here we come! Oh, wait...

After my recent completion of Blind for the Facebook Platform, well... My thought process has been running into other ideas for what I should do to pass the time. One of which was to re-create "Medea and Creusa" from the ground up. Though I really want to succumb to such an action, it would be the equivalent of pursuing the writing gig -- I need something that has sustenance right now, and it just wouldn't be able to fill that need. Truth is, I'm running out of time. I have until November before I have to start making loan payments, and I don't have to draw any attention to how serious that scenario is.

Without further ado, my original idea: to program for the iPhone. But wait! I don't have a Mac, so I can't do that...

The BlackBerry? That's a great idea! Why hadn't I thought of it before? And yes, I loved the idea. Up until yesterday, when I was about to submit a completed app to the BlackBerry AppWorld (after extensive tests to write out what specific BlackBerry models it did work with, which ended up including every Curve model. Can easily be made to work with Storm and Pearl, just that the screen resolution and control maps have to be completely different, the Storm being a touch-screen and having an accelerometer and the Pearl... well, the controls I have just don't map the same) and discovered that you have to pay $200 to do so. But hey, they say the positive is that the $200 is good for 10 application submissions! Well, that's not very useful to me. Right now, looking at my online bank statements results in a rare South American moth flying from my monitor. One other thing I ponder is whether it will be just $200, since that's just to pass a verification of BlackBerry's RIM-deal. There's another verification that needs to be passed if you don't want your app to be free, but in order to reach that process you first have to pass the first one. And yes, they are OK with you using your own name to fill in the "Company" position if you're working on a Sole Proprietorship basis.

I'm sure I could get the answer to my last... well, I didn't post it in the form of a question, but there's a question in there. I just had a temporary loss of will to find out for the time being. Here's to wishing they could "put it on your tab" and have you pay them out of your profits. That way, if you flopped then there'd be no harm or fowl, eh? I guess they make it up to you by giving you 80% of the profits, but if you run the risk of not even breaking even...

Think positive, Trevor!

I just responded to an email today that was a questionnaire over my programming skills. It's for a job directly south about 4 or 5 blocks from where I'm living. They're looking for programmers of all experience levels, from Interns to Seniors. They mentioned a pay range, and I wouldn't have a problem getting $15/hr to be an Intern in a Contract-to-Hire position.

Right now, I've got a completed BlackBerry Curve App that will be collecting dust for a while and have my finger's crossed over 2 jobs. In the meantime, I can work on getting completed BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Pearl versions of that Curve App... There are about 3 million BlackBerry users in the US (if that online source is to be believed), and it would be a nice medium to get my name out. And another thing to add to the ol' resume.

And it's been more than a month since my last update? Whew! I should really think about doing this more often than once a month...

Vacation: Little Bit of Everything

Programmer: I didn't reach my deadline for my facebook game (last Friday), and it would appear the deadline is being pushed back a bit due to a vacation. Well, it's not technically my vacation, but since everyone else in the household is always around then there's not much choice for me -- sort of an enforced vacation, I suppose? My cousin-in-laws(?) tend to be dragging me into boardgames or video games, and my aunt and uncle are both taking time off while they're around, too. Even if I do get enough time to hit a completed point, I may not release just for fear of there being bugs that I won't have time to fix. Oh, vacation. Thou dost pickest a wonderful time to apparate.

Gamer: There are only a handfull of video games that I have been playing recently. I continue to give Fallout 3 a "FUN-tacular" rating, due to its ability to never grow old. My uncle recently bought the Broken Steel expansion, but neither of us have managed to do any of it yet (me: because I was recently attempting to get all Bobbleheads, which I completed yesterday. Him: because he's being an exploration completionist and is scouring every inch of the capital wasteland, going on 150+ hours of gametime). I will probably get around to that soon, though.

Via Gamefly, I had attained The Last Remnant, which I thoroughly enjoyed, except for framerate issues. I think it was made with the same engine as Mass Effect, since it continually has texture popping issues, too. I just returned it the other day, but I would very much want to continue it in the future on the PC version with "the perfect machine" that might help to reduce the noticeability of framerate issues.
My rating: Bad outways the good. Try it on PC?

My aunt and uncle have a lot of crazy boardgames here, and I have had a chance to play a couple of them. I had played the Cheap Ass Games' Unexploded Cows before, and it comes highly recommended due to its simple rules yet fun gameplay ("I give you a Skinny cow!" "Yes, well... Spy cow!"). That one is basically just a card game, though fake money and a dice is also involved (though the game only includes the cards, since that is the way a Cheap Ass Game works).
My rating: FUN-tacular

I hadn't played Munchkin before a couple days ago, and... I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly isn't as fun as I had imagined it might be. It seemed pretty unbalanced -- at least in that no monster was defeatable in the beginning until you got more equipment, and then no monster seemed to stand a chance against you after you did get some.
My rating: Could have been better

Yesterday, we had played Mwahahaha!, a game where every player is a villain set on world domination via a Doomsday device. This game requires a lot of dice to play, where choosing to initiate combat with a Doomsday device might mean one player rolling 8 dice and another rolling 5. It was pretty much about gathering resources, which you can use to either get minion/empire cards or power your Doomsday device. A successful roll with the Doomsday device when you choose to attack the world (which you can only do after successfully attacking the City, State, and Country) ends the game, as that player has successfully attained World Domination.
My rating: FUN-tacular

Finally, we also played Smugglers of the Galaxy lastnight, which is all about buying and selling goods -- going to one planet and buying a material with a low demand and selling that same material on a different planet with a high demand to make profit. There are all sorts of different kinds of planets, and the best deal you can get is by buying from a planet with a Very Low demand and selling to a planet where that item is Illegal. However, Illegal items have a high risk, as you can get yourself a bounty, get those goods confiscated, or get thrown in jail AND lose all of your goods while trying to get through customs. A safer route that still offers lots of profit is to sell to Very High demand places, as there is no risk in selling (so long as another player doesn't sell first, as planets disappear when goods are sold to them, causing a new random planet to appear). The game ends when a player sells 10 weapons to a specific military planet, but you are required to buy those weapons from another specific planet for 500 each. The planet you have to sell them to also marks weapons as being an Illegal good, so you have to successfully make it through customs to succeed, otherwise you just wasted that hard-earned $5000. Ouch.
My rating: FUN-tacular

Stalling

I tend to not have a problem when it comes to understanding logic, or so I think, but occasionally this one problem shows up that proves to be quite bothersome. In most circumstances, I would just give up and find some way to avoid having to solve the problem altogether -- for those who don't know me, compromise is one of my favorite solutions when the going gets rough. However, sometimes I find myself looking forward to the end result and imagining what it could become, which can find me miraculously pushing myself forward, tossing more fruitless solutions at the problem and watching them all become further victims of what could arguably be my favorite key on the keyboard: Delete.

I may be in one of those "I'm too close to the problem" sort of moments, where I am too focused on the problem to the point where I am incapable of thinking outside of the box for a solution. Sleeping over a problem is usually a good choice for me, since there's not usually a rush, but I do ever so want to rush right now that I don't want to have to sleep over it. Besides, I slept over it last night, and all it produced was a figuratively new angle that ultimately led to taking a step backward to a literally new angle.

I am a little excited by all of this positive emotional overload for if this works, but having to create algorithms to imitate lighting effects... Manipulating individual pixels and all that is perhaps beyond the reaches of my usual capabilities. But it's the basis for this program I'm working on right now, and everything else will fall into place afterward. Gah, it's ever so frustrating, though.

Happy thoughts, Trevor.
Soon you could be done with it.
Patience till then, 'k?

***Update
Not even a half-hour after writing this and I made an awesome breakthrough that solved pretty close to the entire problem. Just some minor tweaks with it, but the main headache has been resolved. The main part that's left is to perform the same steps with diagonal movement, and... well, let's just say that results for viewers like you will be seen very soon (like, within the next week or two soon).

Autarky - Part II

The last I wrote, I mentioned the Real-Time Strategy genre, which might have created an inherent false perception of the overall idea; at least, from the stand-point of playing against an opponent with the intent to defeat said opponent through genocide. Now, before I continue working over the weekend on this, let me unveil a few important factors to this idea.

#1 - Economic simulator
Perhaps the most important tid-bit of information to point out is the specific genre I would define this game, which I have decided on the (at least temporarily) title of Autarky. The overall premise of the game will revolve around establishing one's own economy and attempting to stimulate it in order to attain profits. Now, the specific goals for victory will change depending on a number of different "scenarios" that can be at play, but the most notable of these scenarios will be to "attain X profits" or "attain Y population" with potential add-ons such as "the current economic status must at least be average."

#2 - Difficulty Settings
The other notable point of interest is how I intend to manage difficulty levels. Since the economy is such a difficult system, I imagine the game might seem overwhelming to newcomers until they are capable of managing little pieces of the game mechanics at a time. Rather than throwing the entire economic system at a player, the difficulty settings will allow for players to play through a scenario with more or less things to micro-manage.

Say the player decides to play on the Easy difficulty setting. In this setting, the player may only have to worry about creating new buildings and controlling what the individual citizens become in order to get jobs at those newly-created buildings. Such things as the controlling of taxes -- sales or otherwise -- wouldn't be editable by the player, but would be placed on an automatic control to be changed depending on the player's current economic state. As the player chooses more advanced difficulties, there will be more options that the player will be required to handle on his own and less that will be automatically controlled.

#3 - Your Own Opponent
Autarky stands for a self-sustaining economy, and in the beginning the player will have no choice but to be self-sustaining. The way the game works, the player's citizens and their needs constitute as a valid opposition, so the player will not have any other players as an opposing force. At least, this is how it will stand in the beginning.

#4 - Multi-Platform?
I've been seriously considering working this out in both XNA (what I am currently working it out on) and Processing. An XNA version would perhaps find its way on Xbox Live or Community Games, whereas a Processing version would find itself on Facebook. Certainly the Facebook version wouldn't be profitable (at least, from what I've read about Facebook development, which could essentially be wrong), but it would also be a little different. Mechanically similar, but visually not similar. Still something I'm just tossing around right now and am uncertain as to whether or not I'll step forward to work on. Being just me, the chances are a little slim of both.

#5 - Expansion-worthy?
As I have been coding, I have been keeping in mind flexibility for the future. I have been striving to make the code malleable enough to allow for expansions to become a possibility in the future. I have also thought up potential expansions that would revolve around an entire subsystem within the economic theme. Both expansions would revolve around having an opponent, adding this whole multiplayer complexity to the mix (and both are also unnamed. The following are just descriptive titles).

Multiplayer Economical Conquest - Ruin an opponents economy by buying out their buildings and expediting your citizens to temporarily work in their territory (nets you tax income that will not go to them). Just the basics, but a whole lot of other subtle ways to sabotage your opponent shall exist, too.

Multiplayer Military Conquest - Adds a military aspect to the multiplayer. From an economic standpoint, military is not very cost efficient and would take a lot of time for a player to set-up in order to work. Currently, I'm uncertain as to how this could work out, since it could make for ridiculously lengthy games, but...

"But" we'll have to see if I can keep my interest long enough in just the normal game before I put more considerable thought into expansions.

Until next week's update.
-Trevor

Did someone say RTS? - Part I

Call me a liar, but I really hadn't been working on any programming projects around the time of my last update. However, I seem to have this whole oscillating thing going on -- my interest in writing and programming move forward as though one is a Sine wave and the other is a -Sine wave. Er, yeah -- trigonometry to prove a point... Hey, the image in my head seemed clearer than it sounded when put in words.

At the heart of my current (or rather "in planning") programming project comes one of the problems I see with the RTS genre: units being produced from buildings. No, I don't have a problem with requiring a building to exist in order for a unit to exist, but it is the physical action of creating a unit from the building requiring the unit to exist. In my words, that no doubt sounded drastically more complicated than it needed to be, so let's get to the basics of my idea. Just keep in mind that before you continue, you should toss the ideas lingering in your mind from those existing RTS games you are so familiar with.

In the beginning, let's say we have a House, Residential District, or some other sort of living-based area built (or even, say, a school). From the House we can generate our base unit: let's refer to him as the Citizen. The Citizen will be the only unit that is generateable via a building.

At this point, we might want to build some other form of building. So, we rally together some citizens and build something: let's say we build a Military Academy -- our basic military structure. From this, funds from the player are expended in order to pay the citizens who build the building.

So now we have ourselves a Military Academy. Now having unlocked the ability to train some form of military unit -- let's just go for the generic term Soldier for now -- let's go ahead and train ourselves one. Enter a Citizen into the Military Academy in order to train to become a Soldier.

Let's say we build other buildings, which allows further unit types to be trainable at the Military Academy. We also build some buildings which allow for the Citizen to become other non-military units. As a general rule, the Citizen must pay the player in order to train to become something else.

There are a couple other Citizen-Player scenarios which would come in play in order for both to attain profits necessary to advance. Rather than simply training at buildings, a Citizen also has the opportunity to work at buildings. The Citizen gets a paycheck from the building, and the player gets a tax of the Citizen's pay. The pay the Citizens attain from working is otherwise not taken from the player, but an invisible source -- presumably the company/corporation that owns the building. If no Citizens are currently assigned to work at a building, the building is still in business, allowing the player to gain a set minimum amount of profit over a period of time. And don't forget, from mentioned in the building-creation process above, that the Citizens assigned to build new buildings get paid directly from the player as well.

And... that about covers the basics. Trust me, I'll eventually post more, but I'd like to tweak around with the idea a bit and actually make some test runs with this and some of the other more advanced thoughts I have before posting more. In the mean time, I might actually get around to posting a snippet from my writing on here soon...