my first graphs

Graphs are cool. They help people understand things that are hard to explain in other ways or they organize information differently in order to try to infiltrate your brain.

I like video games. First Person Shooters, Real Time Strategy, Turn-Based Strategy, Role Playing Games and almost any combination of those. The problem with a lot of video games (especially RPGs) is that they are so complicated that it's hard to remember all the information you need to know in order to play the game effectively.

In particular, I'm playing Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance right now. The character progression is cool, but it's hard to remember all the different dependencies and all the abilities associated with each class. So I graphed them. Woo! code warning:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use GraphViz;

open F,'<races' or die "couldn't read races: $!\n";
my $fc;
{ local $/ = undef; $fc = <F> }
close F;

# race -> base -> child

# split on 3+ "blank" lines
my @races = split /(?:\s*?\n\s*?){3,}/, $fc;
for my $race (@races) {
  my $g = GraphViz->new();
  my ($r,@r,$flag);
  $r = $1 if $race =~ /=.*?\n(.*?).\n/s; # grab race name

  $g->add_node($r);

  $race =~ s/^.*?\-\s*?\n//s; # only keep ability information
  # iterate over abilities, saving class and prerequisite
  while ($race =~ m|^(\w+(?:\s\w+)?)\s*\-\s+(.*)$|gm) {
    my ($class, $prereq) = ($1, $2);
    $g->add_node($class);
    if ($prereq =~ m|N/A|) {
#      print "base [$class]\n";
      $g->add_edge($r,$class);
    } else {
#      print "  child [$class] "; print "(multiple) " if $prereq =~ /,/;
#      print "dependency [$1] " while $prereq =~ /(\d (\w+(?:\s*\w+)?))/g;
      while ($prereq =~ /(\d) (\w+(?:\s*\w+)?)/g) {
	my ($label, $dep) = ($1, $2);
        my @options = (style => 'dotted', fontcolor => 'red', dir => 'both');
        $g->add_edge($dep, $class, label => $label, @options);
      }
#      print "\n";
    }
  }
  $g->as_png("$r.png");
}

whizzball online game

http://kids.discovery.com/games/whizzball/whizzball.html
arrange objects to guide ball through obstacle course compete online create your own courses

Cube: open source fps

http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/index.php4
Cube is an open source multiplayer and singleplayer first person shooter game built on an entirely new and very unconventional engine. Cube is a landscape-style engine that pretends to be an indoor FPS engine, which combines very high precision dynamic occlusion culling with a form of geometric mipmapping on the whole world for dynamic LOD for configurable fps & graphic detail on most machines. Uses OpenGL & SDL.

Allows in-engine editing of geometry in full 3D (you fly around the map, point / drag stuff to select it / modify it), which can even be done simultaneously with others in multiplayer (a first!). Has simplistic but effective fine grain vertex lighting that looks like lightmapping and can do dynamic lights & shadows. Doesn't need any kind of map precompilation, even lighting is done on the fly. Has very simplistic quad-tree world structure that can do slopes (heightfields with caps) and slants, water, does decent collision detection & physics, has client/server networking that goes a long way in giving a lag-free game experience, and features a Doom/Quake-style singleplayer (2 game modes, savegames) and multiplayer (12 game modes, master server / server browser, demo recording) game with some uncompromising brutal oldskool gameplay.

Super Mario, Psychologist

http://www.gcc.edu/news/collegian/10.10.03/nintendo_overdose.htm
video games addiction learn relationships

And I quote:
===============
My real insights came from the original "Super Mario Brothers," which taught me more about relationships than Jerry Springer, Ann Landers and Confucius combined:

Lesson no. 1: If someone gets between you and your woman, you should either stomp on his head or light him on fire.

Lesson no. 2: Look before you leap into that green pipe of commitment, or else the piranha plant of emotional baggage might bite you in the butt.

And, most importantly, lesson no. 3: You can search all you want for the girl of your dreams – you can brave the dungeon of vulnerability, avoid the fireballs of embarrassment and dodge the dragon of apocalyptic, life-shattering rejection – but seven times out of eight your only reward will be a midget in a vest saying, "Sorry, your princess is in another castle."

episode 1 of disgaea

i got the last copy of disgaea from best buy in laurel last night. apparently i got lucky cause it's hard to find at a lot of other places.

so i started playing it after i finally got home. i had planned on going out to dollar bud night, but everyone else that was gonna go bailed for one reason or another, so i stayed home and had a great time playing my new game.

it's a turn-based strategy rpg. and it's funny. no really, you get pet penguins that call you dood and everything. it took me a while to get the hang of it, but it's quite fun. i even cleared the first episode. dood!

disgaea

http://www.atlus.com/dis/
rpg fun buy

puzzle pirates!

http://www.puzzlepirates.com
booty solve difficult

argh! hard game!

find the rgby men
flash game hard! try it for yourself!

back to Camelot

i've played a bunch of video games. ever since i got a computer, i've enjoyed games. then came MMORPGs. games with no end. an irc client with a game built on top of it. any way you look at it, it's much more than a traditional game.

there is a thriving industry providing online games to gamers. my MMORPG experience started with Ultima Online, which was plaged with exploitable bugs, griefing player killers and overpowered skills, continued on to EverQuest, which was clogged with twinks, power gamers and time sinks that weren't even rudimentarily disguised, dropped me into DAoC, on to Shadowbane, and back to DAoC. i am subscribed to 2 MMORPGs right now, and actively play 1 of them. i played Shadowbane for a while but didn't really enjoy it... the game isn't balanced, and there is no easy way to learn how to make an effective character.

the other MMORPG i play (the one i actually do play) is Dark Age of Camelot. Its backstory is derived from mythology, its gameplay is intuitive, and its chat system is excellent. i had stopped playing DAoC for a while, but have since started again, inspired by several of my co-workers who had started playing Shadowbane and were looking for less retarded alternatives. in case you'd like to know, i play on the Galahad server and my character's name is Hansel McNasty. feel free to drop in and say hi.

Stuntman for the PS2

I bought this game last night, and it's ok. The review of the game at TechTV seems accurate (3/5 star rating). The gameplay is great, but the repetition needed to just figure out what you need to do to pass the level along with the long load times make it hard to play for very long. I definitely think a better walkthrough for each stunt would have made this game much better.

But for $15 at Best Buy, I guess you get what you pay for.