Drag On Quest

Been a while, would like to say I had been busy, but that would be a blatant lie. Though no one is probably going to read this anyway. Regardless I press on, in the vain hope that... you know what I don't even know, I guess I just like to read my own rantings. Well whatever, today is going to be another silly game rant! Hold on to your hats kids!

Way back for my birthday I got a copy of both DragonQuest V and VI. I already played though V and am probably most of the way though VI. And let me tell you it should be Drag on Quest, because the games sure love to drag on... but that is actually true of most RPGs. Random battles and dungeons really only exist as filler to pad out the story more then anything else, and there are lots of "talk to everyone to trigger the random event flag" parts. Not that RPGs can't be fun though. Anyway, I really can't be truly fair to the whole DragonWarrior/DragonQuest series, partly because these two games are the only two in the series that held my interest for very long (and even did with their original snes versions though V was not translated yet and VI I don't think I played that much). It still seems to me that the series has not really evolved too much. V and VI have some interesting gimmicks, and I am sure the newer ones do to, but the same semi-generic fantasy setting and story style seems to have gone unchallenged. It helps I think to compare the series to both the series it inspired, Final Fantasy, and the series it was inspired by, Ultima. Final Fantasy started off generic fantasy for the most part, but even the first game included a hint of steampunk in the airship and floating fortress, though it didn't really expand on that theme till Final Fantasy 6, at which point it started going crazy with the sci-fi stuff, and just got weird at Final Fantasy 10. Gameplay wise, Final Fantasy started with a class-system gimmick that really became refined and nice after Final Fantasy 5, and after Final Fantasy 7 decided to experiment with weirder and weirder gimmicks for ability systems. So by contrast, DragonQuest seems stick with it's own thing and tries to slowly refine it without sacrificing it's core gameplay or story foundations. And both approaches, wild experimentation and slow refinement work well, though I think I like Final Fantasy a bit more over all despite the series basically being bogged down in needless gimmicks and flashy cutscenes. Because when it works, like Final Fantasy 5, 6, and 7, it's really a fantastic experience.

Speaking of flashy cutscenes that's another big difference in tone. Final Fantasy is block buster type excitement with explosions and flashiness and lots of anime melodrama, where DragonQuest seems to be a lot subtler. That isn't to say Final Fantasy is a mindless Michal Bay-style farce, nor is it to say it's style over substance. Nor is DragonQuest free from some drama and interesting stuff. It's just Final Fantasy seems to try and be more movie-like and visually engaging, where DragonQuest seems to try and be more novel-like, where information is presented to you more as text and conversation. And again both methods work, though I might argue Final Fantasy's method works better for RPGs, simply because there is a lot more motivating the player from moment to moment.

Ultima on the other hand is not quite as simple a comparison. The Ultima games the DragonQuest series most resembles are Ultima 3, 4, and 5 though which inspired the series I am not sure. Regardless, Ultima 6 and up completely went in a whole new direction, becoming the ancestor of modern sandbox RPGs like The Elder Scrolls (though I like the Ultima games better, more personality). Regardless, Ultima became popular in japan for some reason (they even have an exclusive fully voiced version of Ultima 6, though the voice work isn't that good) and DragonQuest was probably conceived as a simplified Ultima clone. To be honest, I am not entirely sure if 3, 4 or 5 was the main inspiration. Ultima 4 and 5 attempted to evolve RPGs past "go kill the bad guy" plots, which was basically what the first DragonQuest game was. Though 5 sort of did come close to being one of those types of plot. Really Ultima 5 resembles a Final Fantasy game plot-wise almost, and was probably the first attempt at a really involving dynamic story.

Anyway, the first DragonQuest game basically was a striped down simplified Ultima in the same way the first Final Fantasy was a striped down simplified DragonQuest. Combat was changed from an overhead grid-based step-by-step movement system to a system that eliminated all movement and just showed the pictures of the enemies you face, and let you choose attacks. This simplistic battle set up has continued throughout the series and pops up in a lot of other JRPGs as well. Eventually the DragonQuest series would add much more animation. Final Fantasy changed it to side view with mostly static monsters and animated players which really looks a whole lot better, and added the ATB system as well, but even still I think turn based battles lose something when there isn't any movement. Though having this simplified approach meant you could just hold down the button to select attack and grind much easier, it also encouraged grinding a bit too much I think.

Personally my favorite battle system has to be in Ultima 6, where unlike the previous Ultima games, you didn't need to switch screens for combat, and could switch between combat mode and non-combat mode at any time. It made combat part of the rest of the game world, flowing so seamlessly there was hardly a difference (in fact the only difference was how your party members acted and the music). It's also the Ultima where they started focusing less on hack and slash and more on world simulation, where almost every object, even decorative ones, can be picked up or interacted with. It's kind of a shame the older Ultimas inspired DragonQuest more then the newer. To Be honest I didn't like the Ultima's before 6 all that much, because I found them overly tedious. DragonQuest streamlined the combat, but this really just streamlined the tedium.

As for story, the Ultima games are more or less direct sequels to one another that built up a long deep continuity (most of which isn't all that important, just little callbacks and conversations and such, but still) and I think DragonQuest started doing that, but I am not sure if they abandoned it later or not. DragonQuest V and VI seem to have a few place names and objects in common but not much else, though I read they are part of a trilogy in the same world. Final Fantasy of course discards continuity all together, but has lots of repeating monsters/names/weapons/summons/spells and such. Setting wise, Ultima starts out in standard medieval fantasy mode and aside form some slight sci-fi elements emerging in the early games that have been long abandoned, stays there until Ultima 7 which takes a slight shift to a more renaissance themed setting. The interesting thing about Ultima compared to DragonQuest and Final Fantasy is that the fantasy setting and the monsters really start to take a back seat to a slightly more mundane setting. Magic and monsters are still there, they just become far less important. In DragonQuest, and to a lesser extent in Final Fantasy, monsters usually are active antagonists, and magic is a powerful force for both good or evil. In Ultima by contrast, monsters are mostly mindless beasts, and the ones that aren't usually are on your side, or at least willing to talk it out. Magic in Ultima is more utilitarian, though you see powerful death spells (and one who can basically kill everyone on the planet), they aren't involved in the plot that much, and most magic users are healers or scholars who don't tend to be involved in combat or use their spells for all that much. DragonQuest and Final Fantasy are, more or less, escapist fantasy quests, and Ultima, while it may have started that way, after Ultima 3 the series really tried to not be that.

Though I still enjoy DragonQuest V and VI a lot, I just kind of wonder what they would have been like if DragonQuest took more after the later Ultimas instead. Oh well, that's just the way it goes.

The Legend of The Legend of Zelda

For Christmas, along with some other games, I received The Legend of Zelda the Ocarina of Time 3D for my 3DS. I have been playing it off and on since then, when I haven't be distracted by my latest mush obsession (this time with less creativity and more game, though you can still submit monsters and stuff... I did one myself, and I even coded the pull down menus on the site).

The new 3d version is pretty neat, though I end up playing with the 3d off most of the time. It's main draw for me is the higher res textures and better visuals that make the game look some much better then the blurry lowres N64 version. Other then that it doesn't look like much has changed, but then I probably wouldn't know because I actually, shockingly enough, haven't played much of it. Partly it was because I lacked a N64 when it came out, being more of a Playstation guy. But mostly it's that I, even more shockingly, just don't like the game all that much.

This is not to say I think it's a bad game, because I am enjoying it quite a lot, I just don't rank it highly as one of 'the best games evar' for various reasons. Probably the biggest is that I simply don't think it plays very much like a Zelda game should. This probably seems like an odd complaint, given that it has become THE standard for what Zelda has become, but when compared to the 2D Zeldas, there is a huge difference in controls and combat, though honestly yes, the 2D Zeldas have way too simplistic combat. Oddly enough the 3D game I think comes the closest to replicating the feel and style of the 2D Zelda games isn't a Zelda game at all, but instead is a quirky little gem by square called Brave Fencer Musashi. Not that I hate Ocarina of Time's gameplay, but it feels a bit too cumbersome and clunky when switching targets and dealing with the camera. I do like that combat is a bit more involved then 'flail your sword around' but it just doesn't feel that natural to me.

Story wise it's pretty much an expansion and retelling of the back story form A Link to the Past. It does change things around a bit and vastly expand on Ganondorf's backstory, making him an actual character instead of a vague threat, which I like a lot. All and all I like the story even if it was a bit basic but at the same time I was not really invested into it. It's main gimmick is pretty much the same as A Link to the Past but replacing the Light World and Dark World with two time periods. It's semi-sequel Majora's Mask on the other hand I absolutely loved to death because pretty much from the start your drawn deeper and deeper into an emotional roller coaster, and it's gimmick of reseting time and working on a schedule was new and innovative to me. I really hope they make a 3DS remake of Majora's Mask too.

Lastly one of my big gripes is that the world is so small and cramped, or feels that way compared to some earlier 2D games. I like the fact they made the hub area Hyrule Field so big and expansive, but honestly that only makes the rest of the game look more cramped. I liked the open exploration of the first Zelda a lot, and it took until The Wind Waker to really make exploring the overworld interesting again, though in a limited way (I am not sure if Skyward Sword continues this trend, but I hope so).

I am enjoying myself with Ocarina of Time 3D though. It's not a bad game at all, I just think it could be better. But I think that about almost every game.

MUCKing about.

I started a new medication a while ago, and for whatever reason, since I started taking it I have felt especially... playful. So I started hanging out on internet chatrooms with furries a lot role-playing involving some fairly extreme fetishes. Sometimes I fear I man be way to close to being a furry myself. Though I am not exclusively attracted to anthropomorphic animals, it is among the things I am attracted by (which to be fair, is nearly everything), and it is nice to have a group with so many... open-minded members.

It was when I was exploring this little dark underbelly of internet culture, that I was alerted to Voregotten Realm. Voregotten Realm is a MUCKwhich is a particular kind of text-based virtual world. And it's primarily focused on vore. What is vore you might ask? Basically eating people. Though there is a bit more to it then that. Although I am not really a fan of vore (Though I am a fan of unbirthing, which is a type of vore), there is a lot of other sexual stuff going on there too.

But what has occupied most of my time I think, is the building and scripting. Simply put, you can basically make anything you want. In some ways it reminds me of a text-based Second Life (which I already talked about). I have gotten quite good at the lisp-like MPI scripting that it uses, though I haven't touched the more advanced MUF scripting stuff.

Honestly Voregotten Realm's biggest problem is there is just not enough people on. Which is a shame because it has a lot of neat features. One of the most interesting I think are the "vp" and "wixxx" commands that basically let a player tell people what kinks they are into and what they are not. It also has a lot of interesting features I like. I also like the "bellyroom" system it uses to define what happens when you swallow someone, and works with... multible orifices. It also supports full ansi color on everything. I did try checking out another MUCK with more people called Tapestries (though I was slightly miffed that you cannot play a human, and I didn't really want to be a furry all the time, so I became a slime creature) but it isn't anywhere near as advanced, and most of my scripting I did broke. It's still pretty fun sometimes for just role-playing.

I think another problem though is MUCKs aren't so much games as scripted chatrooms. And while I do like the freedom of play compared to MUDs, it also leaves a bit less to do, especially if no one is on or you can't find anyone to roleplay with. Honestly I am tempted to script an optional combat system (or make one with the bellyroom system) just to have a bit more game that people can play if they want to. It seems more reasonable to have a creative role-playing with optional gaming extras then the reverse.

Internet Art is Deviant

The other day I uploaded a new picture to my deviantart account which is in of it's self is a rare enough occurrence and has a long enough of a rambling nonsensical description that it might be worth a blog post of it's own (you might be interested in the picture or description if your interested in my silly romhack). In fact I am not sure how many people even know or remember I have a deviantart account. It's certainly not something I pay a lot of attention too. In fact, I mostly only got it to be able to view mature images and decided to upload a few of the old things I had laying around there.

Part of the reason for my lack of attention is because I have long ago given up on ever being an artist, since the only art I seem to be capable of making is either simple pixel art or stuff about on par with the pictographs I use on this blog (minus the ones that are blatantly traced). Most of the work I have in my deviantart account is either collage work or pixel art (and the new picture I put up counts as both), and none of it is very engaging I think. But another big part is because I am very apathetic about sites like deviantart in general and the type of art usually hosted on them.

Now I make no secret of the fact that I like porn, mainly hentai, cartoon, and furry smut, all of which is drawn art rather then actual live action porn. But Outside of x-rated art though I find I very rarely take a interest in much art online. But there is another side to it too. I quite like art used in comics, videos, games, and such, x-rated or not (but it's still better as smut, of course). Really it's only static images that usually fail to hold my interests without smut.

I think the thing is, when a artist draws fanart, or even original art, of random characters who sit there and look pretty, it seems to lack any real context or point. It just becomes a image. It doesn't move me, it doesn't inspire me, it's just there. There are exceptions to this of course, especially for interesting landscapes or interesting character design, but mostly it seems to run a little flat. Smut of course gives me a reason to care for more then the image it's self, but it has to be real hardcore stuff. Simply having a pretty girl doesn't do much for me, and sexy pinup poses rarely work either. Sometimes nudity isn't even enough. I guess I have just been exposed to so much really smutty stuff that it takes more to really wind me up.

Having a story or a game to go along with the art does the same for the mind as smut does for the body. It gives me a reason to really care more then just pretty pictures. And it works in reverse too, in that the art that goes along with the story or game gives the story or game more style and helps craft the world with the art. In fact, music acts much the same way in this regard. I am not quite as interested in music when it's just music, but when the music is put in to enhance a story or a game, it becomes a lot more powerful (but music and sex results in too much bad techno). But I suppose a lot of the time, at least with art, there is usually a story there I don't know about. A lot of original characters made by online artists seem to have roots in roleplaying chats or in progress works of fiction (in fact so does Jiggles, on both counts), and a lot of fan works seem to focus on exploring different aspects or ideas not seen in the original work (homestuck fan works tend to do a great job at that sometimes).

But as I said, I am not an artist, I do not know the mediums and techniques, and I tend not to pay that much attention to style or ability aside from a vague sense of aesthetics and some basic skill. I probably just don't appreciate all of the details that people tend to obsess over in art. I like well done art better then sloppy and badly proportioned art, but I can't say that's something I look for so much as something I notice when done wrong.

Accretion Risk

For a while now various threads of thought have been coming together in my head and half unbidden have merged to form the basis for a fairly interesting fantasy world. This is not something I really never intended to happen. I have enough to deal with with the existing fantasy worlds in my head already. What with my hack (which is more a small pocket dimension to be fair), and the world I have built up over the years in my dreams (which are related more then you might think) and all. I really don't need more. And thats not even counting the other ones that have formed in my head over the years that have been abandoned and slowly faded into little more then a memory. Now I fear another has sort of popped up in there. Well to be honest four of them (not counting two other realms that don't really count), but they all are so interconnected they might as well be one.

I think it started when I was playing Disgaea a year or two ago, but it probably was in formation in my head much earlier, as I have known about things like the six Buddhist realms for a long time (and of course basic Christian ideas of heaven and hell for far longer). The basic idea was just to do what has been done millions of times in fiction, with angel/demon worlds with the human world in the middle, but I added an additional major supernatural force: Fairies. Or fae. That is the oringinal mythological kind. In addition I came up with the idea that angels, demons (well humanoid ones anyway), fae, and even normal humans, were more or less the same thing, or at least had common ancestors. And slowly more ideas popped up, and it has gotten to the point where every fantasy related idea that isn't part of my dreams or doesn't fit into my hack has migrated to this newly forming world.

I have thought a lot of the cosmology of this world, some of which crosses over with the shared cosmology of my dream world (part of which I wrote about already), namely the Void and to a lesser extent the River of Souls. The Void is the emptiness outside all worlds (which I called such long before Dr. Who did it I might add, though I did get the name and some of the concept from somewhere else, though most of the concept is from experiences going outside levels in games and having distressing dreams about it). The River of Souls is more or less a spiritual realm or pathway that connects all worlds, and can be seen as sort of like FF7's "Lifestream" concept mixed with the concept of the astral plane, and works sort of like a river made out of the souls of the dead, which are pulled downstream and reincarnated elsewhere. The thing is, I actually usually use the term River of Souls in other contexts to metaphorically refer to the collective unconscious or noosphere, and the world that I came up with based on my dreams has a much less direct method of reincarnation, but they are more or less connected. I must say I find my dream world a lot more interested and less "constructed", which is one of the reasons I put off wanting to do anything with this new one for so long.

The way reincarnation works here is a soul will be swept down the current and either naturally reincarnated or resurrected in a new form, depending on the content of the soul. If it fails to find a fitting place for it, it ends up in the Void and is lost. In my dream world, if your curious, the soul returns to the archetype or archetypes that spawned it, along with all it's memories and traits, rarely for a strong willed soul that doesn't fit any archetype becoming a new archetype (which fits more in with how I think "reincarnation" of figures like the Dalai Lama actually works in real life, if a type of indirect memetic reincarnation counts, which is dubious at best). A big difference then is that in this new world souls can vanish into the void, where in the dream world souls always return in some form and the void instead only really destroys matter. There may also be a place at the "shore" where the River of Souls washes things into the void which will probably be called "The Realm of Forgotten Dreams" or something. Such a place is actually sort of important to my hack's story only I was originally going to call it "The Hall of Forgotten Characters", though that might be part of it. It's kind of a depressing place. Remember when I said I had a few worlds I had abandoned in my lifetime? Yeah.

Other then the Void and River of Souls being somewhat the same, it's a completely different setting though. Again there are four main realms, all connected by the River of Souls which can sometimes be transversed magically but usually only in a way similar to astral projection, as actual physical travel is both risky without a portal open on both sides, and even then has side-effects. Mostly the idea is that each world has slightly different properties.

The Human/Mortal realm is the only place where beings naturally are born, grow, age, and die. A being form any other realm who goes there will start to age and eventually die. In addition beings in the human realm are quite limited to how strong they can become (I thought of this as a fun way to explain the way demons in Disgaea can level up to level 9999 when the limit of most RPGs is 99). A being that is too powerful will not be able to enter the Human/Mortal realm (without dieing, being forced out, or possibly extremely rapid aging) unless it uses magic to make a section of the Human/Mortal like it's own realm (which also explains why final bosses then to stay put in a castle) or sealing/weakening their power.

In the Angel realm beings cannot be born, grow, age, or die. In addition emotion must be controlled, and they must have a degree of "unity of thought". This is more or less because the angel realm is maintained by the angels inside it. When there is peace and the angels get along, the angel realm is blissful and perfect. To much dissidence and strife causes it to break down and become unstable, so any threat to the peace is cast out. Angels increase their number by pulling souls out of the river of souls that the Angels think are worthy, and resurrecting them in new bodies. As such, Angels are interested in teaching and helping humans become like them. Even if they can live forever in the angel realms, after at least a hundred years or two, they often either become tired of their life and decide to reenter the river and become reincarnated somewhere else, or less often become rebellious and need to be cast out. The origin of the realm is that long ago the angel realm was actually created by an advanced civilization of humans as a way to live forever.

When the angel realm was first formed, the angels did not know of the instability caused by the clash of ideals, and after a while the instability built up and threatened to destroy the realm. in desperation, angels only means of saving the land was to cast out all that did not agree to follow a strict spiritual code, but there was dissident among some who disagreed with the majority's more strict ideals and could not or would not go back to the mortal realm. They had to be cast out by force, but thanks to either some trick of magic or blind luck, many of them found them selves in what is now called the Demon realm. Native beings in the demon realm are usually not born but simply come into being though spontaneous generation, and are usually mindless monsters. These monsters could and would consume each other and take on the traits of those who they ate. It was a brutal world, and many of the new angels were consumed. They also felt the hunger as will, and reluctantly also ate the flesh of the monsters they managed to slay when they could find no other recourse. The monsters that consumed enough angels and the angels that consumed enough monsters gradually began to become more alike. The monsters started to learn and the angels became stronger but less civil. The new hybrid race was born, but they found that if they reproduced, the offspring would be a mindless monster unless they consumed enough flesh of another of there kind. But a solution was found. If there offspring was infused with the right kind of human soul picked from the river, they would be born in a human form and have a human mind. Thus the new demon race was born.

The mysterious fairy realm is another matter entirely. Very few humans know much about it, and even fewer if any know it's origin. In truth, of the lost tribe of humans who went on to become angels, the rest of there race took another path. Instead of attempting to live forever, they decided instead to master reincarnation. What exactly happened to them I am not sure yet. All I am sure is the fairy realm is the result. Beings in the fairy realm will be reborn in a new body when they die with most of their memories intact. But over a few deaths they will become more childish and forgetful, and each bodies lifespan is much shorter then a human, only at most 20 to 30 years, except for kings and queens witch live longer. The realm seems to have been created by somehow magically sealing a large mass of land, possibly using standing stones, land carvings, and other strange magical artificial structures found in a region of the human/mortal world. It is said these places connect to the fairy world, as well as some deep forests or other natural places. Sometimes fairies leave their realm, on purpose or by accident and seem one of the few beings that can cross over at will (though powerful beings can't go far form where the worlds touch). Fairies often take humans back with them and if when they die they reincarnate as a fairy and are made kings or queens which they revere for being able to think more clearly and make decisions for them, but they usually only take those who dieing anyway or are not likely to be missed, and they have a preference for children, the very old, or the unwanted, who are less likely to want to escape back to their old life.

Aside from the basics, the human/mortal realm is actually probably the most developed, simply because so many ideas fit in there. There is probably a religion run in the name of the angels as their main way of recruiting humans to join their ranks, but demons are unlikely to need a religion as they base their choices on personality and spiritual power, and may be feared because of propaganda of the angels as well as for being often much less human looking. Angels and Demons likely need to convince humans to allow themselves to take their soul though (maybe it has to be a willing choice when the time comes), or even bind them (the deal with the devil archetype could be used, but I have no idea why a demon would need a deal, unless just thinking you are bound makes you unable to reject it when the harvest). There is probably a race of elves which are despondent of fairies, and maybe a few other races too besides humans. I thought of making a dwarf-like "dwarrow" race which actually look more like the dwarves in final fantasy series and have dark black skin, reflecting yellow cat-like, and whiisssper witthh hisss in thhhere vvoicce (but can actually yell very very loudly when they want to). All of these being things (minus maybe the black skin) that I think would be more logical for a race that lives primarily underground. They could see in very little light, use their voices for echolocation and long distance communication in tunnels, and so on. They would probably almost never appear in daylight. Hows that for a Our Dwarves Are All the Same subversion eh?

There are several ideas for games I came up with based on this framework over the time I was thinking about it. One of the first ones was the idea to make a game like a fusion of EVO and an obscure snes platformer called King of Demons. The idea was to play as a human girl who somehow got sent to the demon world and could gain new abilities by either eating enemy demons to gain demon body parts or abilities, or somehow purifying them to get angel parts/abilities, with probably a few fairy parts/abilities too but I am not sure how that would work. Probably couldn't really work with the setting in it's current form, but it might. Another idea was a mons game involving binding or creating spirit familiars which slowly migrated to the setting and started to become more like a general rpg, with the trainer character and other humans also fighting. Today I was playing a particular x-rated (and I am not ashamed to admit it) text game called Corruption of Champions which actually could possibly fit in well with the setting, and I was thinking what a game like that might be like.

In the end, I probably won't do much with this setting, because to be honest, I find it a bit generic and uninspired. It's just something I slowly found myself thinking about and before I knew it, I had planned it all out without thinking of it very much. It might be fun to play with, but I just want to work on my hack and eventually do something with my dream world. My hack story is fun to work with because it is subversive and metafictional. My dream world is fun to work with because it is entirely based of a lot of the dreams I have had since I was ten or younger, which fit together and build on each other surprisingly well, and it's more interesting that I consciously created very little of it (but I have overanalyzed how it works, like most of that reincarnation stuff is more analysis then anything else, but there is evidence for it).

I guess for a generic magical fantasy world with angels and demons, it's still pretty interesting.

Let's Interface

Six or seven months ago, I think some time in march, I came up with a plan. A crazy plan. A silly plan. A plan involving a series of games I always had a interest in despite not being the most refined or enjoyable series of games in the world. That game series is Pokemon. That plan is the one I began with a last desperate bid to get an event pokemon, and it is almost complete. On my birthday in July I received the second item, a brand new 3DS, and today (well yesterday now) I received the final item, that of a brand new copy of Pokemon White. Now it is only a matter of time till my plan is complete.

Quite a while ago

But all that crap is completely besides the point of what I actually wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about is a realization I made while playing Pokemon White and also with the 3DS. Well not so much a realization as a conformation, since it's something I have thought about before. And that is that computer interfaces are getting so much more... maybe not better, but more INTERESTING at least. How they look and how they behave, and what they do, from the 3DS's little "augmented reality" games to the pretty way the menus open up and fold out, as if the game menu was a device on the character's wrists, the way the 3DS organizes things and how the 3D works, all sorts of little details most people don't really ever think about.

A while ago, I don't remember when, I learned about what I have heard referred to as The Mother of All Demos, and event in 1968, where a team of scientists first demonstrated ideas about computer interfaces to the world. A lot of the way commuters work today can be traced back to that team. When I watched it I was awestruck. Here seeing some of the first ideas of how these things work take flight.

But more then the practicality it's also the look of the 3DS and of Pokemon's interfaces that gets me, and not only interfaces, and not only the 3DS. It seems the new "future look" is that cool sleek plastic ipad-like thing, and that seems to extend both to interfaces and devices.

I also have to say one of the things I really like about Pokemon in particular is how the newer games fuse the interface into the story and the setting in some way. Black and White's visuals have tons and tons of interesting technological devices, a lot of which serve some gameplay purpose. it did it the last game I played too, and to a lesser extent to the older ones. And as I alluded to before, pretty much the whole menu system and various new abilities and functions are actual devices your characters use. And I think that's super neato. I think Homestuck also deals with some fun devices come to think of it. Like the whole alchemiter thing. It's neat to think about what you could do with these hypothetical technological marvels.

( Side note: As an added bonus to my plan, my brother finally found my long lost copy of Ruby that he misplaced when I lent it to him (the fact he got it for me in the first place is besides the point). Which means, I have a perfect line of secession through Generation III, IV, and V, even if my Generation IV games are remakes of Generation II, so I don't get all the Pokemon from IV, but I do get all of them from II and probably most of Generation I as II also featured the regions and Pokemon of I. Why does this matter? Heck, I am not even sure any of my plan matters.)

Church of the Random Number God

One recurring annoyance I seem to notice with some kinds of games, mostly rpgs and roguelikes, is the annoying way they tend to use randomization. It is not that things are randomized that is really the problem (after all, roguelikes wouldn't be any fun if they made the dungeon layouts static, and combat should always have some small element of chance just to mix things up), mostly just the way they tend to get players stuck in loops, doing the same thing over and over for a chance at some rare thing or some event, and the fact that EVERYTHING is randomized even if there is no logic to it.

It seems that rpg/roguelike designers often put everything in the hands of the Random Number God, that fickle semi-deity that grants blessings to only the most lucky or the most boneheadedly determined of the players, and often curses just as many. How many pokemon fan has hunted for years in vain for a Shiny Pokemon? How many Nethack players have summoned hoards of water demons and ruined their sword trying to get Excalibur? How many old-school rpg players got mobbed by a billion monsters as they were desperately trying to get some place that they could heal? How much time is wasted by people killing the same type of monster over and over hoping for that rare thing it drops?

There are better ways to do these things. Why not let every few thousand encounters be a shiny? Why not have a particular place trigger the effect? Why not have enemies appear on the map? Why not enemies actually drop what they use, or have every so many encounters drop something? I like the way Dwarf Fortress pre-generates a world and it's history. Everything that exists in the game is there for a reason. The world is randomly made, but enemies all have populations and roam on their own. Things are built where they are for a reason, treasure always comes from somewhere, almost nothing is randomized in actual gameplay besides some combat rolls. It's a good example of randomness done right.

There should be no incentive to stay in the same place and do the same thing over and over. There should be no way most of the game boils down to luck. Randomization is a tool that can be used to mix things up, but it should not be the whole game.

Phantoms of Substance

The other they I picked up a copy of Phantom Brave for the PSP. I owned the original PS2 version (well not the original PS2 version, the English version, but you know what I mean) but I never quite got along to finishing it. Largely because actually focusing on playing though the story mode and not getting sidetracked on making uberweapons which completely break the story mode battles and make them no longer able to pose any kind of threat takes massive focus. But I beat it this time, though shear willpower to get though it, and then played the new alternate story mode, and am now working on the original story mode again, and will probably play the alternate one again too cause I missed some stuff. Why you can't just skip to the part of the story you care about after you beat the game, or have enemies match your level to make story mode not so frightfully dull, I don't know. Nippon Ichi has never been fans of convenience when it comes to replaying stuff. At least you can skip most of the cutscenes.

But I still find myself in the same old trap of doing the same thing over and over for some menial virtual reward I really shouldn't care about. Last time I ranted about a Nippon Ichi game, I touched on some of the problems with them. But really most of the problems are shared by RPGs in general, what with the blatant grinding that makes about 90% of the game filler. I really think that games should be set up so you can basically always find something new without spending time mucking about, but on the other hand I dislike linear games that hold your hand and don't let you loose to really get a feel for things, or have no progression at all. Or maybe that's not really it either.

I suppose what it comes down too is I think a lot of games don't feel like they have any really depth or substance to them. But lately I have been thinking more about what I think "depth" and "substance" really means. I have been watching a minecraft video series by two guys who play together. The series starts off with a simple demonstration of some of the basic minecraft mechanics and survival, but after a while other players start getting involved and end up building a world and a integrate backstory for the two guys to play around with. They also play a lot of "adventure maps" made by people who come up with challenges, rules, and backstorys in a map for players. Not to long ago I was chatting with someone about Tower Defense games and why I didn't like them, even if they had upgrades and stratagy and things. I realized what it basically comes down to, why I find those minecraft videos so fascinating and Tower Defense games so utterly boring, is basically the act of exploration.

Exploration is at the heart of almost every game I like. It's one reason I like roguelikes so much, one reason I think why people swear that Super Metroid is one of the best games ever made, and the reason why, quite frankly, beat-em-ups, shooting games, Tower Defense games, Nippon Ichi games, and other arcade and stratagy games tend to annoy me. And it isn't just about exploring a environment either, it's about exploring gameplay as well (in fact I dare say I enjoy roguelikes like Nethack, and too a lesser extent, RPGs like the SaGa series for more for this reason then exploring the environment).

It works for stories too. I think this is one reason I like things like Homestuck and certain fanfics (which reminds me I was reading a interesting one not to long ago) is the exploring they do of places and ideas. And one reason I hate soup opera-ish crap (which BTW I think Phantom Brave's plot is dangerously close to with the whole "POSSESSED" melodrama thing), because they just give a series of unresolved hooks to draw tension and never really try and deeply explore any sort of underlining meaning or the character's inner selves.

So I guess when I am saying "depth" and "substance" I really mean a sort of exploration of something. It doesn't necessarily have to be something new it just has to be something you can really dig deep into and uncover stuff. It seems a lot of RPGs and other games think of a game's goal as something you work to, spending time and effort to get to the end, or to get some rare thing. I think it should be more something you explore. Not necessarily in terms of a secret that needs to be discovered, but in terms of a thing that is out there and can be transversed. It can be a subtle difference between the two to be honest, but there is a difference. Grinding is not exploring.

A game should not require you, and maybe should not even let you run in place for hours to get ahead. What if enemies didn't respawn for example, or most of your experience was related to progress and conversation not repeatable tasks (Planescape: Torment comes to mind). Suddenly it's a whole new type of thing where you can't stay in one place forever to get ahead. Suddenly both the player and the developer has to think more about what they are doing. And this can be a bad thing too, where you no longer have the option to just grind to get by That One Boss. How about have random drops have a counter so after so many enemies if it doesn't randomly drop, it will raise the chance until eventually it is 100%. That way fighting the monsters won't be a waste and if they don't respawn, or do different places so you can't farm them, then you can keep moving and not have to worry about grinding for them. There are many ways to subtlety change it so grinding isn't a thing anymore, while still rewarding effort.

ROM Slacker

I think it's about time I game a hack progress report. After three going on four years, my hack project still hasn't progressed past some basic ASM and graphic work. And while I sort of like the work I have done on it so far the last time I think I made any significant progress on my hack was over a year or two ago.

This may change soon. Not to drag my life to much into it, but I am in the process of re-obtaining some equipment which may help me sleep significantly better, although last time I had it I was unable to get used to using it for the required time to satisfy my medical insurance. I could have gone to the sleep clinic again right away but I decided to instead see if I could fix some allergy problems which I felt may be the cause of my struggles with the machine, and also a more pressing matter over all. But, although I think my allergy problems are perhaps slightly better, they are not improving as much as I like, so I decided to go back to the sleep center, and after a bit of hassle, I am approved for a new machine. This MAY help. I am honestly not expecting that much from it. Last time I felt a lot better over all when using it, allergies included, but it's terribly hard to get used to, and I think my allergies may have made a lot of pressure build up. But really, any little bit helps, and if I can stick too it, may feel a whole lot better.

But really, I don't expect it to help my hacking all that much. Even when I am more or less fully awake, I just can't really get in the frame of mind for doing work. I can sit in front of a screen and look at code, but I often box my self into a corner and get frustrated or just don't want to bother doing something hard. Basically everything I do is the easy stuff, but now there is no real easy stuff left I can do without tackling the hard stuff. Level design is even worse because I can't seem to get into a real groove where I know what I want to do with a level all that often. There are times when I have, but they are extremely rare, and I usually just look at the screen utterly lost in what kind of thing I should do. I guess I could start pasting things randomly in the level and working out the details, which is exactly how I designed the OW map, but that kind of level design doesn't really fit the linear gameplay-centric style of Mario-style levels. A lot of my designs I have done have been almost exclusively based on aesthetics and not gameplay, and I am still not exactly sure what kind of gameplay I really want.

Perhaps I should take after some things Homestuck has done and have everything be completely focused on narrative with small game segments to allow the player to get a feel for the world instead of my original plan of having 80%-90% of the game almost entirely plotless. After seeing things that Homestuck has done, I am very tempted to do just that. But I don't really want to do that because I have seen romhacks that had heavy narrative focus, and I hated them. Maybe it was more the way the narrative and gameplay got in the way of each other rather then flowing together as one. And even before I got into Homestuck I was already thinking of things like throwing in overhead RPG segments with RPG boss battles, and other very odd subversions of the expected formula for Mario hacks. At first I thought such things would be pipe dreams, but there are tons and tons of patches and more coming every day that may make even my most crazy ideas fairly easy. I kind of wanted at first to use primarily my own asm, but most of the things I really wanted to do ended up being done by other people. There are still a whole bunch of things that would be tricky to do, like Homestuck's elaborate [s] animations, but even that is not impossible, as things like MPU-1 or even a series of stim images can work almost as well. The problem would be doing the art. If you couldn't tell from my pictographs, I kinda suck at art. But I am better at pixel art I guess.

Either way, I long ago set a deadline for myself for this project. That deadline is December 21, 2012. I thought it was a fitting date for a reevaluation of my life either way. And thats only about a year and a half away. Now a lot can happen in that time, and if I really make progress on my hack, I will continue it until it's done regardless.

If not well, there are a few other things I want to work on some day as well. Before I got into romhacking, I was working a bit on a metroidvania game about magical girls and H.P Lovecraft. Yeah, what a combination eh? And despite what you may think I promise I was not going to involve naughty tentacles ... that much. Regardless I still sort of like the idea, and I still have the old techdemo I wrote for verge with it in mind.

I also still have thoughts about doing something with zdoom (which I already wrote about a while ago) One of the people I hang around with on the net sometimes has gotten into zdoom stuff lately, and we both had a similar idea to do a sort of Yume Nikki or L.S.D. Dream Emulator inspired surreal horror thing with it. However I am unable to get Doom Builder to work on linux (though wine or virtual box) and he is very new to level editing and stuff. I think if I am unable to get myself to work on my hack in the near future I may end up working on one of these two things instead. I have tried to avoid any other project that would distract from my hack too much, but at this point I don't think it matters.

Entertainment Tomorrow

I am sure anyone who bothers to read this blog has noticed I fixate mostly on games, and occasionally other forms of entertainment. A lot of my political views and such are also related to things like copyright and consumerism. So I want to take this time to sit down and share some of my views on the subject:

Why entertainment is important:

Entertainment in some form or another has been a important part of human civilization for almost as log as it existed. People may not thing the entertainment industry is a big deal, but if you think about how much time and money is spent by people on entertainment, and how passionately people follow this stuff, you may change your mind. Who tend to be the famous celebrities that most people recognize? Actors, musicians, sports athletes, writers, etc. All entertainers in some form. Sure powerful leaders may have the same fame, and a handful of inventors and scientists, but there are still tons of people who don't do much but entertain.

Along with that, I feel it's very possible that as science and progress grew and religion seemed more and more silly by a lot of people, fiction started to replace myth, and fandom started to replace old religious practices. Where before myths of spirits and gods motivated people to do strange rituals in the woods by the full moon, now fans start elaborate little cults to worship their favorite show, with rituals such as conventions and dressing yup as there favorite character. I am sure a whole essay can and has been written on that subject, and I probably mentioned it before, so I will say no more, except that entertainment is no longer entertainment to most people.

The difference between entertainment and art:

Entertainment by it's self doesn't have a much grander goal then giving a person a way of occupying time without doing actual work. And in fact the reason entertainment even exists is because when building early civilization mankind suddenly started to need to work less and less, and had more free time for which to do things. Entertainment is often treated as an alternative to work, but that's not it's function.

I have said before that "art is about invoking an experience or idea though different mediums. It is an act of reflection of experience or ideas". Perhaps it would be better to narrow that definition a bit, at least in this case. Art also probably was mostly invented to fill a gap, and that gap was meaning. At the same time entertainment started to emerge, art did to. This time the question was not so much "what should I do with my time" as it was "what does what I do what my time mean". By coming up with ideas of beauty and other things, and trying to express those ideas some way, art attempts to come up with a meaning that people can connect to, a drive to do things. I could go on and speculate that science, religion, philosophy, and other things are all also related to this revolution of free time, but thats besides the point.

The point is, entertainment and art are not the same thing yes, but they are deeply connected in a very fundamental way and come from the same root source, that human civilization has long since stopped being driven simply by survival. Thats simply not enough for us anymore.

Why entertainment might not be enough either:

Entertainment is a necessary thing to have of course. Even pets to be taken care of need more then just food, water, and a place to poo. Playing is an important part of a pets life. However few I think would dispute that humans can't be satisfied with such a simple life. Humans need meaning. Humans need art. Or do they? How much on TV and in films can you truly say give you a concept of meaning? Probably more then you might think, but there is a lot of "mindless entertainment" out there that is little more then the equivalent of jigging keys at a baby. Not that that is bad really, it just serves a different function.

Werther or not humans need art or entertainment, probably just depends on the person. If a person has no personal need for meaning, ether because they already came up with a meaning for what they do, or if they simply aren't introspective enough to care, art becomes mostly pointless. We could go into a whole discussion on if people should strive to find meaning or not, but that's not really relevant right now, even though in general, I would say yes.

But even discounting art, the same entertainment can get old and stale. Entertainment is constantly being driven by a need for more. More movies, more music, more games, more books, more everything. And most of it is pretty bad, but it's still worth it to people to do more. But just more of the same isn't enough for people I think, we also want something new, something to innovate and to inspire. If we didn't we would just be satisfied playing pretend with rocks like a small child.

Why the way we entertain ourselves should change:

The thing is, something new and innovative is exactly what the entertainment industry bad at, and they seem to often be even worse at doing art at times. The industry is run in the name of profit not in the name of entertainment or art. It likes safe investments, predictable trends, sequels, genres, and doesn't really care about how good the product is as long as it sells well, and will often meddle in it's own product to get a few extra sales.

Furthermore, entertainment has become way too expensive and addicting. We no longer seem to use it to enrich our lives, but instead let it control our lives. I do think fiction of various forms such as games and films are valuable besides their entertainment value, for artistic merit, or for the spread of cultural memes, but I don't think all our time and money should be spent on them either.

The real problem I guess, is that we live in a culture where entertainment is a big and binding thing, something people flock to in droves and use to define who they are as much as their political or religious beliefs. And the industry pumps more and more money into bigger and bigger things, without really delivering much substance or innovation. Entertainment is to most people no longer something people can do on their own within a reasonable budget.

Things that may help:

First, one thing that is happening already is a number of people are moving away from big budget industry entertainment. People in the "indie" crowd for various media are growing stronger, and entertaining things can be found online for free which are growing in popularity. The internet is full of ways to entertain yourself for nothing or almost nothing. Cell phones often come with free or low cost games, music and other options. The biggest problem is that as these alternate entertainment venues become more popular, the industry will try to get in on it. This has already started to happen on the internet as more and more things become commercial or copied by bigger budget cooperations. Even free ones are often plagued with advertisement and other meddling. In the end, unless we don't stop this trend, we will have changed the medium but not the problem.

There is one way we can attack the industry at it's core, and that is by reforming (or even ignoring) copyright laws. Copyright laws were created to give people an incentive to innovate by guaranteeing a brief time where you could produce the work without competitors. The problem is, that brief time was extended again and again and is used more as a way of controlling something and forcing others to do things the way you want to do it then protecting innovation. If copyright was extremely reduced or demolished, the industry would no longer have an excuse to profit on entertainment as much. Would this mean that no entertainment would be created? No not at all. There are plenty of people who are still willing to create, and plenty of people still willing to donate to have things made. It would simply mean the end of the massive bloated monster that todays entertainment has become.

But really, when it comes right down to it, people don't need to change or break any laws, all they need to do is become more proactive and more choosy about how they entertain yourself. Do you really need to see that new blockbuster movie, get that new album, or play that new game? Can't you write or draw or something? Can't you browse the internet for free things to do? Can't you try dreaming up something, or going somewhere with friends? And I am not saying never spend money or anything either, I am just saying, let's choose how we entertain ourselves more carefully.

Really I guess most people are totally content with the way things are now, but this is just how I feel about it.

Pokémon will consume your SoulSilver

A little while ago I brought a new Pokémon (gotta use that accent ya know) game. No, not one of the new ones, I will wait until the 3DS and/or the inevitable third version to be released for that. Instead I got Soul Silver.

The reason I got it in the first place was a rather silly one to be honest. See they were giving a Celebi at gamestop for a while and I really just wanted an event Pokémon (there is that accent again) for once. Thats it. Thats the only reason. See? Silly. I guess you could say I fell for Nintendo's brilliantly evil marketing stratagy. Simply make a game about collecting things and make some things so rare it's impossible to get them all without getting almost every game ever made, taking advantage of special marketing events, and/or trading with other people that own the game.

To be honest, I always thought the main series was just way to tedious and annoying. Until you get fly, just moving about the world is annoying on it's own. Your contently backtracking though the map, often with random encounters every two steps (though thankfully most areas confine them to tall grass, but still), and you consistently need to keep a number of HM moves available to get though most of the maps, taking away valuable space form your already limited number of moves.

Beyond that, most of the game is just battling over and over in order to gain levels or moves. Frankly they is very little skill or strategy involved. It is mostly just a matter of patience and knowledge, along with a little luck. Now a lot of RPG-like games seem to do this, and really it's not that hard to understand why. It gives the player a sort of feeling of accomplishment without actually expecting the player to have any real skills. But it's a fake kind of accomplishment really. It doesn't actually mean anything. And really, I don't think games should be played just for the act of winning or accomplishing something anyway. I think games should be played because they are fun or interesting. Dwarf Fortress for example, is not a game you play to win, but it's still worth playing. And I sure use that as an example a lot don't I?

I still am rather fond of Pokémon (cut and paste FTW) though. Partly it's because, even though they can look silly, most of the creature designs are cute and cuddly and I like that. Maybe I just see too much po-- er... fanart of them. It's also because some of the mechanics behind it are pretty neat. Like the type system. It's extremely simple yet just as flexible. I kind of think they should have a "light" type as a counterpart to the "dark" type though. Also while the old boring exp/level system is still there, there are also EVs, IVs, Natures and other subtle things that make the system a lot more interesting and complex. But honestly it's a bit too complex for anyone who doesn't know exactly how it works to really get ahead, which leads me into the last thing I want to talk about.

And the last thing I want to talk about is the Metagame. The competitive battles between different players. Honestly, I never liked competitive games. I hate sports, multiplayer FPS games, and all things like that. Maybe it is because I am no good at them. But really, I never liked the pressure people put on being good at them. And I always hated the elitist attitude of people who are good at them. Yes you spent months honing your skills so you could be good at some silly competition that shows off these skills. Guess what, all that proves is your more obsessed then other people. It's not anything to be proud of. For Pokémon (no, I am not going to stop with commenting the silly accent) it's no different. Spend months upon months looking up all the tricks, finding good pokemon with good IVs and moves, chain breeding them and training them up to level 100 again and again, and yeah, your pretty much going to win. But it doesn't prove anything except that you are a obsessive nerd.

Of course the irony is, if you brag about all that people will call you a nerd and a freak, but brag about how much training and how good you are at sports, and suddenly people think you are cool and want to sign a million dollar contract with you.

SmallHugePlanet and Scribblenots

I have been playing the PSP version of LittleBigPlanet a bit lately, and although I am locked out from the online stuff and have done very little editing, the story levels are still quite fun, although I find the physics a bit annoying because your jumps can fall short if your run into objects sometimes.

The reason I am locked out so to speak from online stuff is simply I refuse to upgrade my firmware because I am still holding out for some kind of homebrew crack, and it won't let me use the playstation network otherwise. Although really I might as well at this point. I have pretty much given up hope on homebrew, and I do have a laptop for things anyway. Really though, I can't imagine it will add too much to the experience. I would have to pay for most of the interesting additional content anyway, and I am not going to do that if I can help it.

Other then being annoyed at some physics issues and the fact most of the additional content is unavailable to me for now, I am more or less happy with what I got. I really didn't buy it for it's fun story levels and possibly to play with the editor.

Also, a while ago watched videos of someone playing Super Scribblenauts. I have never really been interested in Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts does little to change my mind. Partly I guess it's because I was expecting something like a expanded Drawn to Life. Something where you actually created objects and not just typed them in, or at least drew how they looked like. But thats only a minor problem.

The major problem with Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts is that it's "levels" are barely anything but one screen with one puzzle, and hardly any action. Sure it's fun to pit god and cthulhu in a death match, but thats about the only interesting thing I saw in the games. Another thing I miss is the ability to draw your own hero character in Drawn to Life. I drew Jiggles of course.

The thing that strikes me about LittleBigPlanet and Super Scribblenauts though, is they really are more similar then you might think. They both primarily rely a lot on physics interactions and gadgets to solve puzzles. You would think Super Scribblenauts would be more interesting gameplay-wise because of all the objects you can summon. The thing is, it's not. And I think the reason for that is partly because it doesn't actually give any room to really play with a large number of objects and partly because it doesn't make you work for anything. LittleBigPlanet's actual gameplay outside the editor is nothing more then platforming with occasionally dragging items around or manipulating things in the level. If Super Scribblenauts say, let you summon things only during particular points in a long level when you needed something to fly or to swim, maybe letting you collect new objects as you play, it would be tons more fun looking.

I guess LittleBigPlanet (or Drawn to Life) and Super Scribblenauts are just two entirely different types of games, and I just prefer platforming to "choose the word" puzzles. It just strikes me as boring when "choose the word" puzzles is all you ever try to do. The objects and mechanics in Super Scribblenauts could be used for a lot more interesting gameplay.

Mission the Point.

Along with Z.H.P. I got another game for Christmas I had neglected until a few weeks ago. Namely Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. There are many things I probably could discuss about the game, Like how I am kind of disappointed it lacked Metal Gear Solid 3's stamina and wounds systems, how the story line is actually rather neat, but having advanced AI in the 70's is a bit silly. Overall I would say it's a solid game, and quite fun, if a little frustrating for me cause I always insist on 0 kills and almost always 0 alerts. I like the recruitment and research aspect a lot.

But one design choice I find extremely questionable is it's use of missions. It isn't just in this game either, there are a number of games that use the mission structure, Notably the Grand Theft Auto series and it's clones. Today I was re-playing Children of Mana to see if it is as dull as I remember (the answer is: almost), and noticed it also had missions (though they are more like side-dungeons to be honest). Elona and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon were also heavily mission based. I am also reminded of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and the Monster Hunter series, which also use a similar structure. And in each instance this mission structure (or quest structure if you prefer) has really brought down the game.

Now I think it's important to divide missions into a few categories. First we have missions that are entirely in the background as little notes in your journal or other mission list. You just are told to go somewhere or do something out in the world and leaves you to do it. Then we have timed or exclusive missions which take all of your attention but still give you a goal and leave how to do it up to you. Lastly, there are the missions that restrict your movement to a small part of a open map and force you to complete a objective before you can leave (Elona has all three types, but thats not really important).

The problem here, at least for me, is that missions are used more to constrict the gameplay then to enhance it. Although missions can be randomized in some of the details (such as the person who gives it to you, your reward, what type of monster to kill, what item to get or deliver, and so on), mission based games still have the same tasks repeated over and over again. But more then that, they basically force you to do them in order to progress, or at least in order to get descent stuff. Other games, such as the Grant Theft Auto series, force you to play though mostly closed, boring, and stupid story missions in order to unlock most of the interesting and fun parts of the open world gameplay. But the worse offense is games like Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, and others (I think Monster Hunter if I remember right), that basically take a open world, chop it into bits, and only let you visit parts of it if your on a mission there.

It just annoys me that, for example, you have to choose to accept rescue fetch missions in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, of which you can only have 4-6 or so, before you go to a dungeon and find a person to rescue or item to get. Why can't they just be there anyway? That way you never would have to choose between missions. Or in a Grand Theft Auto game how you need to go back and do story mission after story mission to progress the plot. Why can't you just uncover it as you explore, and let you do objectives on your own without needing to go back to a glowing circle for a mission (not that anyone cares about the Grand Theft Auto series sorry excuse for a plot)? Or in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker where you do missions and go back to base to get a score and you usually get sent back to where you left off in the plot next mission. Why can't it just be like the other games where you can explore the world only with evacuation points to go back to base at any time and score based on completeness or your actions instead of time (or at least time between major story events)? That also reminds me that I was somewhat disappointed you couldn't actually explore your home base and talk to people face to face in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, but eh.

I guess when it comes right down to it, I just don't want side missions, story missions, and normal gameplay to be separate, and I don't want to be put in a world thats obviously open but I can't explore because thats not my current task. I know it's hard to do in some games. Elona for example relies so much on missions that it's almost impossible to imagine it without them. But I think Elona is mainly like that because it's world and NPCs are so utterly generic and it's gameplay is so grind-heavy and unfocused, that random missions are one of the only ways to fill the void.

Part of the problem is probably simply scope. When you have large open worlds, you tend to lose the details. The tendency is to make up for it by adding more things to do which don't actually relate as much to the rest of the game, and to spread out or randomize content. The problem is, this doesn't really work. Nethack is fun because it's so tense and eventful. You have to be careful what you do and there is danger everywhere. It's also fun because the stuff you can do with items is so clever and well thought out. Elona is not as fun despite being more or less the same type of game because it removes a good deal of the focus and detail.

But I think a large scoped game CAN be just as detailed and focused as a smaller scoped game. A good example is Dwarf Fortress, at least in fortress mode, and probably in adventure mode too if you pay attention to all the little things, like character descriptions, relations, history, etc. Of course adventure mode offers missions too, but at least you can learn more about the task and it isn't really random or out of no where. When you are assigned to kill a dragon, you can be assured that dragon is a preexisting character with a history and a reason for being targeted. In a dragon's treasure hoard you can find loot that was made by people it raided in the past, usually engraved with records and history. And this is all different every time you make a world. Not that I expect games to have that kind of detail or complexity or anything like that, I just wish side quests had a impact and a more detailed reasoning, and that the things you did would be important and possibly rewarded regardless of if you knew there was a particular mission or quest to do them. Of course there is nothing wrong with something like Minecraft where there really is no task outside of whatever you want to do, though I do like Dwarf Fortress's fortress mode more because you need to manage the whole simulation aspect of the game, but both are really similar in the aspect of creation.

And if it's a heavily story-based game you want, your better off doing something like the Final Fantasy series where you go from place to place following a series of short plot bits and towns between boss battles and/or dungeons. Sure it's linear, but there can still be branching plots, side-paths, and optional areas without having to go back to town and find a ever growing checklist of things to do just because you need some more filler. Games have enough filler as it is.

I guess it's better then being stuck not knowing what to do to get on with the game, or just having all you ever do be fighting to the next bit without any interesting variation at all, but if thats what your game is without missions, you need to redesign the game anyway.

ZDoomed

Every once and a while, I find myself fiddling with Zdoom (well actually Gzdoom, but they are basically the same. Gzdoom just has some extra fancy 3d stuff). Now I have a history with Zdoom. Years before I started being to lazy to do romhacking, I was being to lazy to do Zdoom editing. See what makes Zdoom is a updated and heavily updated version of what has retroactively become known as the id Tech 1 engine which was made famous by Doom. The great thing about Doom and the other games that share it's engine is how they are the first games to focus on being easy to edit by every one. Zdoom also adds all of the features of Hexen and a ton of it's own features to make it almost like a full game creation tool.

After I started getting into romhacking I stopped using zdoom or visiting the zdoom fourms (actually between zdoom and romhacking, I was involved with something called verge, which I also was involved with before getting into zdoom too). But lately, maybe because my hack isn't really going anywhere at the moment, I have every once and a while found myself fiddling with zdoom again.

I guess a recurring problem for me is I always seem to want to do ridiculously ambitious projects, which cause me to reach a point where I am basically stuck because I have neither the talent nor the patience to do any more. I think my hack may be the project I have stuck to the longest, but it isn't the only one I deeply wanted to do. In verge I was making a platformer of my own, but ran into problems after a while. I did abuse verge's scripting language to hell and back, but they are not even using that language anymore, so eh. For zdoom, I admit I never had a good idea of what I wanted to do really. But I did have a basic outline.

In my last blog post I briefly mentioned Ultima Underworld, which is one of the best first person games ever. A long long time ago, before I even knew zdoom existed, I attempted to make a Ultima Underworld clone I called Underrealm using the half-life engine. I actually managed to get a ton of stuff done, including a inventory system, but my progress was hindered when the SDK was almost completely rewritten and my code suddenly became almost useless. By the time I managed to fix it, it happened again, and I just gave up because I didn't understand the new code at all. And that was the last time I really fiddled around with much C++.

In any case I found map editing in half-life somewhat cumbersome and hard to do. I always preferred doom-style 2d maps for there ease of use. I had messed around with editing doom 2, heretic and hexen, but found them inflexible due to the fact that you could only really edit the maps and graphics, and not the behavior of the things in it. There was a tool called dehacked that allowed some editing of things and weapons by changing the exe, but I still found it too limited in the long run.

Zdoom changed all that. It had built-in dehacked, and ton of other interesting features. As I started to work with it, more and more features were added, and now dehacked became obsolete in favor of a new feature called decorate, which quickly expanded past anything someone using dehacked even dreamed possible. New ideas and possibility opened up, and I worked long into the night on this or that. It seemed anything was possible, or would soon be possible. But it still wasn't enough if I wanted to restart my Underrealm project. Custom inventory was a huge step forward (most of it's features in zdoom are actually a lot like what I was doing for half-life, probably because I had a lot of the same design goals in mind back then).

But even today there are still things I want to do which I can't without changing the source code. Honestly I probably could change the source code and make my own version, as all the code is free. I didn't want to make my own version just for one or two changes, but unlike half-life's code I do understand a fair bit of it from what I have seen. Either way, if I were to make a game that way I would still need levels and such, and I would still need to do a lot of work. It would honestly be better if I found a free 3D engine or API and did it all my self, or maybe even hack half-life 2's source engine which has a lot of awesome features, but I haven't touched either half-life 2, or steam in years.

In any case, after a while, my interest shifted away from first person 3D games, into platformers and such, and then into romhacking and ASM. Maybe I am still making all the same mistakes I did back then. I was never very good at level design, and always focused on other things first. I never had the fortitude to continue working after I hit a roadblock of some kind, but at least I am determined not to give up quite yet. What can I really do?

I guess it really comes down to effort, talent, and community support. Back in my zdoom days I never really had that much community support because everyone was focused more on other things. Not that I didn't have some fun with people there, just that no one was really rooting for me, and I doubt anyone remembers me now. Same with verge really. With half-life I never even joined a community. With my hack though, while I wouldn't say the whole community is behind me, I think I have a good number of people who at least notice me and my work.

Talent I really couldn't say. I think I have gotten way way better at almost everything, but I am not sure if I really have a knack for making games, even if I really want to. It just doesn't flow out like I would like it to, and I end up wasting time on silly things. About half my work on my hack has been silly graphics and asm experiments.

Effort is the killer though. I just can't make myself do anything I don't like, and there are tons and tons of tedious annoying things I always find myself needing to do. Like with my hack and levels. If I could sit down and focus on it for a few hours each day, I think I would have my hack mostly done by now. But I simply can't. It's tedious annoying busy work. It might not be if I had a talent for it but I don't. Oh well.

Really this has been more of a introspective look at my loserdom then talking about zdoom, but oh well.

Zettai Zero Project

One of my gifts for Christmas this year was a quirky little game from the masters of quirkyness themselves, Nippon Ichi Software. It is called Z.H.P. (Zettai Hero Project): Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman. I actually found out about it from it's TVTropes article (you know, every once and a while, TVTropes will actually be useful). And it's another roguelike. At this point I think roguelikes deserve thier own label already.

Z.H.P. is a rather mixed bag to be honest. The story is rather standard for Nippon Ichi, with quirky characters doing silly funny things, and ultimately not really that well written. My biggest complaints about the gameplay are that there is only 4 directional movement while most roguelikes have 8 directional movement (which really adds a lot more stratagy then you may think), and there is no item identification gimmick at all. Also while the game has special spells or techniques and exotic gameplay functions like barriers, they are more or less completely pointless or hard to use effectively.

Like the Disgaea series, the gameplay involves tons and tons of grinding (so much so the trailer proudly calls it a "Grindfest RPG"). The method of grinding is sort of interesting in that you start at level one whenever you enter a dungeon but the levels you gain when you leave one or die are added to a "total level" score that increases your base stats. I find that in my game almost none of the enemies can even lay a finger on me now after a level or two.

Some nice features are the fact that you can see every item you equip on your character (Elona did this too to an extent, but the equips in Z.H.P. are more interesting to see), and costumes that let you change your base body sprite. Even though most of these costumes are of anime characters I never heard of. But Dokuro-chan is one of them, and that alone is worth the blatant cameos. Everyone loves Dokuro-chan.

As far as the dungeons themselves, it is similar to the Mystery Dungeon series in it's basic dungeon layouts that are randomized each floor with a few traps items and monsters. In this game most rooms are pre-set and only the placement and paths are randomized, though there are rather good variety of rooms with basic 3D terrain and/or gimmicks that add some variety at least. Some dungeons have features like paths or rooms that vanish after a while or have no paths but feature other ways to get between rooms, which is interesting but a bit under used.

I have to say playing this game made me think about some features in Mystery Dungeon-like roguelikes. I have to restate I really like Elona alot for giving a Nethack-style interface that can be mapped to a gamepad. The Mystery Dungeon-style interface isn't to bad, but automatically picking items up sort of bugs me because my inventory fills up faster then I would like. Also I really must say I don't like having all the dungeons change every floor, as it doesn't allow for as much exploration. Also Mystery Dungeon-like games have way to tight food requirements. It should take AT LEAST few days before you starve, not a few minutes. This might be true of all roguelikes. In fact one of the only games I know of that I think got this right was Ultima Underworld, where food and sleep were very very subtle needs that didn't usually need to be dealt with unless you sleept a lot (BTW, I really would like to see a Ultima Underworld random level generator, because it's practically a 3D realtime roguelike in every other aspect).

Also I really have to say that Nippon Ichi games in general, while generally fun, are sort of annoying. Their stories are way to predictable and cliché, their gameplay relies way to much on repetitive grinding, and there gimmicks are just that: gimmicks. I also personally hate the restricted and gimmicky character customization. In Z.H.P. for example, you can fuse items but all this ever does is let you choose some skills to be attached to them and raise their max condition. You can put stuff on a silly little grid to upgrade your stats and abilities but a simple point system would make much more sense, be easier to do, and would offer more freedom in the long run. I could also say similar stuff for Disgaea's class, reincarnation, pupil, and item world systems. They are just gimmicks that limit character growth and make no sense. I kinda like Phantom Brave's fusion system though, even if it was way to easy to break the game with it thanks to the silly title system.

I should actually make a roguelike someday. I have a few ideas I really want to try, such as completely level-less gameplay (using only a system like in nethack/Elona where you can train stats and skills directly) and a reincarnation mechanic (you have to make a new character when you die, but you unlock new starting roles/races/starting feats as you play, and the world layout will remain more or less the same giving a chance of getting items back).

PSProblems

For a while now I have been caught up in a dilemma regarding my PSP. See people have made all sorts of stuff for the PSP, and much of it is actually much better then the official stuff made for it.

But Sony wants to make sure all the software run on the device is sanctioned by them. They claim they want to stop piracy but as they already have various ways of encrypting games and allowing limited "user mode" access, it's obvious the real reason is something else. I have heard that Sony has a rather odd strategy of undercharging for the device and making most money with development kits. As a result of course, hackers can't help but bypass Sony's silly little protection, which just opens the device up to pirates, where as if they just allowed limited user mode homebrew, most hackers wouldn't bother.

Anyway, the result of this was that every time Sony would limit the device, hackers found a way to unlock it. Then Sony would scramble to fix the bugs hackers exploited, and hackers would come up with new ways to bypass it. Up until a while ago the hackers always ended up on top. But my PSP was wearing down and last year I got a new one to replace it. This time hacking became harder and harder, needing all sorts of special stuff. I never got into homebrew as much after that.

Now, today I got some new games that require an upgrade to play which will make me unable to use exploits without buying some dumb game I have no interest in. I have heard promises of a new thing that may come out soon that will totally open up the psp again. But reliable information is becoming harder and harder to find as the psp hacking community fills up with false hope and crappy news. So you know what? Screw it. Now I have a laptop. If the exploit I hope for comes out, great. If not, oh well I will have to settle for playing the actual games.