As expected, because of the delay I wasn’t quite able to reach beta yet. I’m missing at least one weekend. But on the bright side, the holiday break at Cologne Game Lab starts this week and I will attempt to power through starting next Thursday.

Also, I got some good work done. This will be a bit more technical so feel free to skip. I went trough all the code and identified instances of things being loaded. It is an impressive list but I managed to make a sense of it and come up with a plan on how to pull everything together into a unified structure.

The final to-do list!

And I also already started laying down the fundaments of that framework. For starters, I was able to remove some loads by including the assets directly in the .swf file. The size of the .swf jumped up to 800kb but that should be Ok nowadays. The rest of the data needs to be loaded dynamically. I don’t want ALL of the data to be transferred from my server every time somebody accidentally fires up the game. Instead, I want to load the level data only when it is needed.

Then I wrote class for handling the loading of XML files. The entire game needs a total of 23 XML files that contain all sorts of important data. Until now the code was never able to cope with one of them failing to load. Now there is proper error checking and even a custom timeout that checks if it takes too long. I hate it when users lose patience before a software does.

But the most important part is that I wrote a crucial class for managing game mirrors. You see, I want to upload the game data on different servers. I want to be able to control where the various copies of the game load their data from in case there is a shortage of bandwidth. I also want to provide some fail-safes just in case a server is temporarily unavailable. So I have implemented a system that manages alternative URLs for each and every file, keeps track of priority, availability, load failures and successes, etc. This may sound like over the top but considering that each and every photo needs to be loaded individually, just one botched up URL request could have the potential to make the game grind to halt otherwise.

Both classes are really fundamental to this final task and I’m glad I finally got them down. The game loads 4 different types of files: XML files, images, sounds and movies. Using the new XML Loader class I can easily create derivatives for the other kinds of data. Also, the mirror management class can be easily used by all types of data without the need of changing anything.

As you can see I have a comprehensive to-do list. Generally, all is left to do is to implement a dialogue box for error messages and writing custom loaders for the other types of files. Otherwise, some of the stuff actually works already. Using the new systems, I was able to load all the 23 XMLs directly from my server today. Smells like beta already…

On this episode of the Monster Hunter Podcast: Three on PSP. The thee musketeers all moved on to playing Monster Hunter games on the PSP this week. Join us as we discuss all sorts of different topics, especially 3rd and Freedom Unite.

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Enjoy!

Ooops! It looks like I have missed two posts recently. And I don’t even have an excuse. I need to get a grip here.

I think I have already written something about the Let’s Play scene on YouTube. But I was recently catching up with the epic Let’s Play Monster Hunter Tri of my podcast partner Social Dissonance and I was reminded of how fascinating and weird this new culture is.

Contrary to a Let’s Play, the idea of a Speed Run or some oder kind of exhibit of extraordinary skill caught on video is pretty obvious. It’s a perfectly orchestrated, document of a very rare and precious spectacle. It’s intended to amaze the audience by it’s flawlessness. It’s also a way for the player to boast with his superior skills.

A Walktrough is slightly different, yet equally understandable. It doesn’t necessarily show off complete mastery of the game. But it shows still successful and competent play. It’s often presented in such a way that it can help players struggling with a certain challenge. To that end, it is often narrated.

Yet, in both cases failure is often edited out. Only successful runs are shown. This is where E-Sport replays come in. Those are replays of highly skilled players competing with each other. Like in a Speed Run, they are exhibits of spectacular skill, often unattainable by regular players. However, unlike a Speed Run or a Walktrough, by their very definition they show the defeat of one of the players. Additional commentary helps in emotionalizing the events and highlighting the important events. Quite often, the commentary also contains critique of the players which can potentially cross over into teaching the audience high-level strategies. In cases like the commentary by Day9, the border between Tutorial and E-Sport commentary becomes completely dissolved.

So what is a Let’s Play then? It’s not the exhibit of extraordinary skill. Failure is often part of the program. And it’s not even failure against extraordinary odds. Quite often it’s about mundane blunders and difficulties every day players know too well. There is some commentary involved and it blurs quite often into a Walktrough. But unlike in a Walktrough, the less successful attempts are also part of the game.

Social Dissonance is a good example. He is a very skilled player who already posted a lot of Walktroughs for various fights. His Let’s Play however, often contains sequences with a lot of mistakes and failures. For example, the Great Sword fight against the Lagiacrus takes almost 16 minutes. Social Dissonance often finds himself in a very vulnerable position and doesn’t seem to get the most out of his weapon.

But of course, this is still highly competent play. Many regular players (me included) would take easily 3 times that long or even simply die. On the other hand, Social Dissonance doesn’t upload the fights where he actually died and attempts to keep the time for each fight beneath the length restrictions of YouTube. He specifically fights ever monster with every weapon, which is more than most players do. But then, he doesn’t show the grinding for items, which is an important part of the game.

Still, his Let’s Play comes out much less perfect than his Walktroughs and it conveys much more faithfully the actual experience of playing the game. Which brings me to a final observation on the Let’s Play videos. There is some discussion about how to preserve games. Even technologically it seems like a difficult challenge. Hardware won’t remain functional forever and emulators don’t convey the real thing. The Let’s Play videos are an interesting form of preserving games for the future. More specifically, the don’t preserve the games themselves. But they do document the experience of actually playing the game. They record the progression, the struggles, the pain but of course also the eventual victories. They might seem pointless at first. But as we continue applying an analytical mindset to the design and critique of games, Let’s Play videos might turn out to be extremely useful at capturing the very essence of gaming experience.

When we last left our hero, he just got into the StarCraft 2 silver league. That was 1,5 months ago. Today, he gold league. Twice even.

GOLD! GOLD! I FOUND GOLD!

What happened since then? It seems like I have hardly been playing any 1vs1 games anymore. I played a lot 2vs2 games (50) and a lot 3vs3 games (40). I’m starting getting used to the team-based play. Also the initial ambition of always wanting to win fades away. I’m still pissed every time I lose but it’s not the end of the world when it’s just one of many games. I’m also getting used to the matchmaking system. It still doesn’t make any sense. But the game now seems to do a much better job at pairing me up with interesting people to play with. Sure there are lots of badly ballanced matchups, but at least I encounter weaker players now. Looking at the statistics it’s evident how the matchmaking systems always goes for a 50:50 win/loss ratio.

I also played A LOT cooperative games (100) and custom games. They are much more relaxing as you team up with other players against the computer. I play Protoss against other players but at some point I would like to go Random. So playing against the computer is a great way to learn the various races. And yes, there are also some achievements to get playing cooperative. Don’t judge me.

But generally, I haven’t been playing too much. A lot less than in the beginning. I found myself actually watching StarCraft 2 matches a lot. It’s a phenomenon I also heard other players talk about. I’m not sure how much I’m learning about the game, but it’s certainly a lot less stressing than actually playing the game. And you can pause at any time.

So the next step is to get gold in all 4 categories and then I’ll start working my way up to Platinum. Let’s see where I will be by the end of January.

On this episode of the Monster Hunter Podcast: The Third Coming. Monster Hunter Portable Third was released in Japan and we give you some exclusive insights. We also answer listener E-Mail and even do a shot Lightning Rooooooound!

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Enjoy!