Unexplained Sounds

Here is a fascinating random Internet find. Wikipedia has a “List of unexplained sounds”. They are sounds that have been recorded in various circiumstances that can’t be attributed to any human, bigological or geological activity. Most of the sounds have been recorded by underwater microphones.

To increase the mystery, the sounds themselves have some phantasic names: The Bloop, The Quacker, The Slow Down, Mistpouffers or simply Julia.

They sound quite intriguing but they are actually less fantastic than they appear. Almost all samples have been sped up by a factor of 16. So I reckon they would all sound the same if you were there: like a deep hum… or you simply wouldn’t be able to hear them at all. Also, most of the sounds are probably the result of geological activities after all. They just have the status of being unexplained because there is no scientific evidence yet that would link them to specific geological events.

Nevertheless, the concept is intriguing and refreshing. Most myths around unexplained phenomena often rely on the rather sophisticated sense of sight. Compared to sight, senses like hearing or smelling are much less ‘tangible’ and leave much more room for imagination. In this case, I think they create an outstanding and inspiring mystery.

The Nationalism of Online Services

My long-awaited special edition of Demon’s Souls just arrived. I got the US version in San Francisco some time ago. I fell in love with the game but I couldn’t get the limited special edition anymore. So I was glad to hear that the game will finally come to Europe. I used this opportunity to secure the elusive Black Phantom Edition.

So now I have two copies of the same game. I already played the US copy for some time. I have a promising character going on, some achievements… you might already suspect where this is going. Of course, for some brain-dead reason, the EU version is not compatible with the US version. Starting the EU version, it completely ignores my US save-game and my US trophies. Instead it proceeds to create a new save-game and a new trophy category. So now I have two “Demon’s Souls” entries in my trophy case.

Two Demon's Souls

Slogans like “It just does everything” sound like an insult when you have to deal with crap like this on a regular basis.

Maybe it’s because it’s so hot today, but I find this quite infuriating.

The entire Playstation library is quite annoying in this regard. For example, I wasted a couple of dollars on various Little Big Planet costumes because I bought them on a US American PSN account which apparently delivers DLC that isn’t recognized by a European Little Big Planet version. How wonderful of them not to tell that BEFORE you buy the content, isn’t it? Oh yeah, and you can’t undo any purchase you do on PSN, of course.

But things got even more annoying when I got the UK version of Heavy Rain. In order to get the Taxidermist DLC for it, I need a UK PSN account. I already have a German one and a US American one and that’s already quite inconvenient. But no, for the DLC I need a third one. But that’s not even all, I can’t just use my credit card for the UK PSN account because I need to have a credit card with a UK address. So what I need to do instead is to buy a pre-paid UK PSN card on eBay to load the UK account with money so I can spend a fraction of that on the DLC. That’s where I drew the line. The fucked-up system essentially locked me out from that content.

But Xbox Live has the same problems. I have a code for Call of Duty Classic I can’t use because the UK version this code is referring to isn’t allowed to be downloaded in Germany. The EU version of Eternal Sonata is considered a different game from the US version so Achievements from both versions are listed separately. And many people don’t realize that things like Netflix or Hulu simply aren’t availible outside of the USA.

Being a games connoisseur living in Germany that’s the kind of shit I need to deal with on a regular basis. The huge advantage of online services should be the fact that you can play with people from all over the world and access content from everywhere. It frustrating and straight out sad when narrow-minded nationalistic thinking spoils this ideal.

I wonder if this is REALLY something unique to where I live. Have you experienced a similar problem?

A Life Well Wasted

It’s hot. The Word Cup is going on. There is not much new things to talk about. So instead of wasting my time and your time by straining myself to come up with something half-witted, I’d rater recommend other people’s work today. And what a piece of work it is. If you don’t know it, I recommend you to check out the podcast “A Life Well Wasted”.

A Life Well Wasted

I really adore the posters for the podcast made by Olly Moss. Too bad the sell out so quickly.

If you have only the time and patience to listen to one podcast on the web, make it this one. It’s a gaming podcast with mind-blowing production values. Each episode has a theme and contains amazinly well-edited interviews with all sorts of interesting people. It is a good example on how the internet can be home to some first-class journalism. It is also a good example of a very different kind of games jouralism – one that offers true, thoughtful insights instead of falling into the old routine of trite fanboyism and consumer advice.

Plus, each episode comes with a beautiful poster designed by Olly Moss. You can even buy the posters on the website but so far I missed each and every one. They always sell out in a blink of an eye.

So I recommend to go ahead and listen to the podcast, but don’t buy the posters so I can get one at least. ;)

P.S.: Yes, I it ended.

Monster Hunter Tri Diary 9 – It Ends Today

It is almost done. There are only two monsters left: The Agnactor and the Ceadeus. I could go straight for the Ceadeus but thanks to my wonder game guide I am already almost done preparing the perfect lance for Agnactor anyway. I’m also not a hunter who would deny himself a challenge.

In the last few sessions I found a REALLY effective solution to my previous Rathalos problem. The trick is to fight it’s weaker version, the Rathian.

Rathian

I haven’t considered it since it appeared to me that Rathian was really easy. I thought I could skip that one and focus on the harder monsters. But there are good reasons to replay the Rathian missions a couple of times. First, you get a very cool armor perfectly suited to fight the Rathalos and some other end-game monsters. The other reason is because the Rathian and the Rathalos share a lot of basic attack moves. After you learn to avoid the attacks of Rathian it is so much easier to deal with Rathalos.

But possibly the most important piece of the puzzle was to switch from the lance to the great sword. I was forced to switch because I needed to cut off Rathian’s tail to get a specific item for his armor. After a short learning curve, it turned out to be vastly more effective against both monsters due to better mobility.

So now I’m almost at the last single-player mission. I might be able to finish it today. Wish me luck… and if I don’t come back, tell my girl that I love her.

What Games Teach – Dance

Here is something you don’t hear often. Some time ago I took a Salsa course with my girlfriend. It was the first time I seriously took a formal dance lesson. Throughout the course I frequently had flashbacks of how video-games work, especially fighting games like Soulcalibur.

This is not me. But it’s funny and quite well-made! (1:11 is my favorite part)

Formal dancing is very much about learning and executing a series of moves in rhythm to the music and together with a partner. When you learn a dance, you learn certain routines – pre-set sequences of moves (combos?) so you can concentrate at learning to execute them intuitively. With time, as you learn the moves, you can go on and improvise. You break the routines down into individual moves and arrange them on the fly to a custom performance. Of course, some moves may require a specific stance so you need a good understanding of which moves can be linked together. At some point, a different level of difficulty kicks in – you need to communicate your next move to your partner. This is what you call “leading”. The leading person gives subtle hints to their partner so the partner knows which move comes next.

Surprisingly, this is pretty much exactly how fighting games work. In fighting games, each players can execute certain moves. Each move has a distinct pattern. The other player’s task is to recognize or even anticipate the next move and to execute the right answer to it. Soulcaliubur distinguishes itself by having very long moves that flow into each other, as well as a number of different modes and stances. This emphasizes the similarity to dancing.

This game design pattern isn’t unique to fighting games. A lot of action games use similar ideas. For instance, many games include boss fights that require the player to memorize and react to an attack pattern of an AI enemy.

But there are even more fundamental similarities. The first difficulty in learning to danced is to familiarize yourself with the moves. Funny enough, dancing is not especially complex. It is pretty easy to understand how a move goes on an cognitive level. But to execute that move is something entirely different. When dancing, you don’t have the time to analytically recall where your feet and arms go. So you need to learn the moves on a more intuitive, muscle-memory level. The way to do this is by repeating the moves over and over again until they come automatically. This enables you to fluently move from one move to another and frees up your brain to think about the overall performance. Doing the dance lessons it was fascinating for me to watch myself going from the cognitive to the instinctive execution of moves.

Games are quite similar in that regard. The allure of action games lies in the intuitive control of elements on the screen. As you master an action game, you progressively delegate entire levels of game-play decisions to muscle-memory in order to free up your brain for more strategic thinking. First it’s more about the individual button presses, with time you end up executing entire attack strategies without consciously thinking about them.

Both, dancing and action-games are most satisfying when you stop thinking about and start relying on simply feeling them.

But of course there are some differences. For instance, a big aspect of dance is music and rhythm. While action games do have certain rhythm aspects they are hardly comparable to music. Music and dance are an aesthetic experience. They focus very much on harmony and regularity. Games focus on interactivity and challenge instead.

Expressing yourself is also an important aspect of dance. You could say it is pretty much the whole idea about it. Game systems offer less opportunities for expression. They are challenges and idea is to overcome them. There is often only a very narrow path of “doing it right”. If somebody manages to discover and exploit some wiggle room on that path, it is considered a noteworthy exception.

There is one more obvious difference. Games, especially fighting games, are competitive while dancing is cooperative. That’s why it may seem absurd to compare the two. But the difference is a superficial one. I found this in Rules of Play and it stuck with me: games are by their very nature cooperative, even if you end up killing each other. After all, the participation in games happens on a voluntary basis (ideally). The game also is kept alive by both players actively engaging in the game. It always takes two, no matter if you fight or dance.

TRAUMA to the Eleven!!11

By the way. I don’t just play and buy expensive stuff all day long. Over the past few weeks I have been keeping a constant progress on TRAUMA. I dedicated two days a week for developing the game. I will try to increase the pace but so far I got a nice, steady rhythm going on.

I finished the last video sequences two weeks ago or so. I don’t think I will need to record, cut or animate anything during this project again. Wrapping up this part was a great milestone for the project. I celebrated it a little bit.

Right now I’m doing quite mundane, administrative programming tasks. For example, I just included a volume slider. It may not be the most exciting job but for me it’s refreshing not to deal with high-level storytelling and game design tasks for a change.

TRAUMA Volume

By the way, here is a quick test – are the icons I used understandable? What do you think they mean? Should I use text labels instead?

The volume sliders were a bit tricky too. I complete forgot that I will be needing them in the final product. So I haven’t planed with them in mind – neither visually nor structurally. I now have to do a lot of workarounds to make sure they work properly. For example, I want players to be able to change the volume any time, especially when animations are playing. So I need to pay attention if new objects appear on the screen and make sure that they don’t accidentally appear on top of the volume slider

Also, there are a lot of different objects that can play sounds. I need to find them all and somehow figure out ways how to change the volume while they are playing.

None of this is impossible, it’s just a bit tedious. I have to wade trough a lot of quite convoluted code. I have learned a lot working on this project and the entire style on how I code has evolved. It can be frustrating to get caught up in your own mistakes. But on the other hand it’s a quite powerful learning experience. I’m almost finished with this part anyway and almost all remaining tasks are of quite similar nature.

A full-on beta test is approaching fast!

Making For Each Other

Apple are smart, sneaky bastards sometimes. Looking for a monitor, I was considering a display by Apple for quite some time. The biggest reason had actually nothing to do with display technology. It had to do with a bunch of cheap cables.

Minitor Cables Apple

Aaaaw! Look! All the cables fit right in. “They’re just made for each other”

The Apple display comes with a neat cable that splits into 3 connectors: one for a MacBook Pro power supply, one for the MiniDisplay Port connector and one USB connector for various goodies installed on the display. With this one cable you can quickly hook up your entire MacBook to the display with ease. Of course the problem is actually caused by Apple since two of the connectors are proprietary and unique to MacBooks. But Apple makes the weakness into a strength and advertises this with the slogan “Made for each other”. And you know what? It works!

The alternative would involve crawling under you desk to attach the power supply every day and using a whole bunch of funky (and expensive) adapters. Not really unacceptable but just enough to make a strong case for Apple. It just “feels right”. It maybe even triggers some weird instincts to match things that seem to belong together.

But a lot people suggested that I wasn’t being reasonable. After all, a display costs around 800 EUR and the cable makes up just a fraction of that cost. It doesn’t seem like a smart idea to disregard quality and value just for the sake of some cables. It was a good counter-argument. I reconsidered. In fact, there are much better, cheaper, bigger and more flexible displays than Apple’s. I realized that it was, in fact, quite silly of me to disregard them just because of such a detail.

But maybe there was a way for me to have my cake and eat it too. A few Google searches and I developed a plan how to make things that weren’t made for each other work together just as well. I got a Mini Display Port to Display Port cable at Circuitassembly.com and a second power supply from eBay. The USB port was no big deal. Voilà, made for each other McGyver style.

Custom Display Cables

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

There are two lessons to learn from it.

First it is quite amazing how effective it can be to design and clearly communicate specific user cases. This is one area where Apple does a great job and where other computer manufacturers simply fail. The computer industry is still dominated by technology geeks who still think they are selling technology. Dear technology geeks: I don’t care about the specs and functions of your products, I don’t understand what they mean! It’s not that I’m stupid, I just don’t have the time to learn all the stuff. I want you to tell me! I want you to give me good reasons to chose your stuff over the competition. A 0,1 EUR cable can sell a 800 EUR monitor, you just need to communicate it clearly.

Secondly, it is frighteningly easy to fall for such traps. That’s why it is so important to get different opinions in. Apple has a way of lulling one in. It is easy to get obsessed with nifty features that can easily be reproduced by other means. I’m glad I was able to take a step back and see the big picture. I must be more cautious in the future.

In any case, I’m happy to report that the setup works well and I can only recommend it to others who are looking to hook up their MacBook Pro to an external display.

Videogames in other Media Ep. 3: Superbad

A quick post today. I thought I pick up the old idea of looking at how video-games are represented in other Media. I recently saw the movie Superbad. Don’t ask why, I just did. If you don’t know the movie, here is a trailer:

From what I gathered the movie is somewhat like American Pie but with a bit more nerdy main characters and a bit more purpose. I actually enjoyed it. It conveyed the dilemmas and anxieties of growing up in a humorous manner. The female side was hopelessly simplified but that’s to be expected I guess.

But let’s talk games. There is one inconspicuous scene where one of the main characters (loser / nerdy type) is changing clothes while the other one (loser / nerdy type) is playing a video game. It struck me as quite odd. I’m struggling to grasp the function of that scene. It seems to me like there is just one answer.

Superbad Screen

Quiz: Does anybody recognize the game? I don’t. :(

The entire scene characterizes the main protagonists as immature losers. Video-games play a pivotal role in this scene as an immature and silly activity. The scene is at the beginning of the move (30 minutes in). The game he is playing is not recognizable but seems to have to do with police and terrorists. The guy playing mumbles something about terrorism which I guess is supposed to be funny because of the stark contrast between terrorism and the harmlessness of the protagonists. It is the only time we see the bedroom of one of the protagonists. We are treated with a display of strategically placed objects in some of the shots, one of them including a Lara Croft poster.

Superbad Lara

Oh hello Lara. Long time no see!

But the scene falls flat for me. The integration of video-games is not only stereotypical and fallacious, it is also poorly executed. For starters, I think Lara Croft is a tad too old to strike the fancy of today’s high school graduates. She is obviously here to be recognized by a video-game uneducated audience.

The gaming setup doesn’t seem believable either. The player is sitting in a char in an upright position. It doesn’t seem like he could play like that for longer periods of time.

But what REALLY gets me is the acting. The way the player (Michael Cera) is holding a controller is utterly unbelievable. He is constantly switching his hand positions. He slowly, nervously and aimlessly massages the analogue sticks. It looks more like he is kneading some dough than playing. He even looks at the buttons at one point.

Superbad Hand

What exactly is you right thumb doing in this shot, Michael? Well, at least he is holding it the right side up.

All this these details completely undermine the scene for me. The player doesn’t come off as an experienced video-game nerd. He comes off like an actor that picked up the controller for his life. But even worse, the entire set doesn’t look like a place where the characters live. I actually had to listen to the dialogue to figure out whose room this is supposed to be. It would make sense if the Cera’s character was just visiting and actually wasn’t into video-games at all.

Superbad makes the very same mistakes lots of movies and TV series do – it doesn’t pay any attention to the medium of video-games. It haphazardly stitches together some superficial stereotypes to make a shallow point. But the problem with Superbad is that it is a movie with nerdy guys as main characters. Throughout the course of the story, the losers actually do hook up with extremely good looking girls. This is a movie that many nerds are supposed to watch to feel good about themselves. By portraying video-games that poorly, at least for the duration of this scene, the entire plot falls apart and the intended messages is exposed as a lie.

And here is something weird: I really enjoyed Michael Cera in that movie. I am looking forward to see him in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim Movie. But it seems like Michael has no idea of video-games. I am concerned about his ability to perform in a movie as deeply connected to video-game culture as Scott Pilgrim. Maybe it’s time Hollywood starts hiring video-game coaches and consultants?

Screen Real Estate

I dream of a world where screen real estate is available in enormous quantities. Imagine the ENTIRE WALL of your room to be an interactive screen. Imagine having all you documents and photos just there on your huge desktop instead represented as tiny icons and filed away in a hierarchy of tiny folders.

I have been working with a twin-monitor setup for quite some time. I had to abandon that setup at some point due to the advanced age of the CRT monitor and a malfunction of the VGA port of my old Notebook. But now I’m back and it is a blessing!

Dell U2711 Setup

Funny, I swear it feels bigger in real-life… [insert "that's what SHE said" at will].

I recently got a Dell U2711. It is a 27″ monitor with the breathtaking resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. The experience is profound. Sitting in front of it, the screen fills a big portion of my field of view. The resolution is high enough for me not to be able to recognize individual pixels at a reasonable distance. The monitor is supposed to have some crazy color magic abilities. I took such claims with a grain of salt until I saw a large red surface on that screen. The color red is rendered so vibrantly it almost hurts. I’ve spent the first evening just watching Full HD movie trailers. It’s way more impressive than my TV.

The increase in screen real estate is remarkable. The screen is large enough to easily contain around 3 applications at the same time. Pretty much every activity is enhanced. Coding is easier as I can see a much larger portion of the code at the same time. Video editing doesn’t require the constant reconfiguration of the user interface. Just yesterday exchanged assets between Photoshop and Flash with both applications open and working at a reasonable size side by side. How did I ever managed without it?

Dell U2711 Closeup

It’s so big, it’s like having 4 at the same time… [insert "that's what SHE said" at will].

There are some minor downsides. Many programs are not really prepared for a multi-monitor setup or for such high resolutions. Watching videos on the web and switching to full-screen mode creates all sorts of weird problems. Games can’t handle the resolution and often full-screen on the wrong monitor. The colors are vibrant but feel darker than the MacBook Pro screen. It takes getting used to. And it wasn’t exactly cheap either.

On the other hand, coming back to work where I have to rely on the notebook screen only, I feel like looking through a keyhole. There is no going way back anymore.

Here is a funny problem I have now. I can’t seem to find images in 2560 x 1440 to use as a desktop background. The only image I found so far was this ultra hi-rez image of the surface of the moon. After setting this as a background I found myself just staring at it for a couple of minutes in awe. If you have any other suggestions, please do tell!

Monster Hunter Tri Diary 8 – The Fall of Rathalos

I have spent the last few play sessions in Monster Hunter Tri to prepare myself to face Rathalos again. I’m glad to report that preparation finally paid off. The Rathalos is slain.

I must say fighting Rathalos seemed like a quite unfair experience to me. Some of his attacks happen quite suddenly, he tends to waste your time by hovering in the air where you can’t reach him and he seems to have a bit too many health points. After the series of defeats last time I was quite frustrated. I have invested quite some time in the game and I didn’t expect such a challenge at this point. I decided to prepare as best as I could and simply leave the game if it wouldn’t help me.

I researched Rathalos’ weaknesses. One of them was thunder. I had no weapons with thunder element damage so I had to craft some. Weapons with thunder element damage are made of Lagiacrus parts. I decided to craft the lance which is my favorite weapon. I also set out to craft the great sword which seemed to work quite well against the Rathalos. This meant I had to fight the Lagiacrus a lot. The lance required a couple of Lagiacrus horns, which were quite a rare item. You could only get them if you damaged Lagiacrus’ head. The great sword was ever harder. It required two Lagiacrus tails. You need to actually cut off the tail of a Lagiacrus to get them and even then you don’t always get them (I know, it’s moon logic). I never actually managed to cut off a Lagiacrus tail before and it took a bit of training to get a hang of it.

In between I was also investigating alternatives. It turns out that thunder wasn’t Rathalos’ biggest weakness. It’s biggest weakness is an element called “Dragon” but the weapons with this element are quite special. There is an interesting mechanic about them. You can’t really build them. You must find them.

When you go mining in the Vulcano level, you sometimes find items called “Rustshards”. After the mission is over the Rustshard turn into various weapons. Most of the time they turn into very weak iron weapons. But on rare occasions you get rusty weapons. At first, the rusty weapons are even worse. They do practically no damage whatsoever. But you can invest a lot of different items to refurbish them. Already after two upgrades, they become actually quite descent equipment. And they are the only ones that do dragon elemental damage.

I must say I find the idea quite attractive. You excavate an old, broken weapon and then keep repair it until it’s like new. Reminds me of finding an old car at the scrapyard and restoring it piece by piece.

So I started to grind to get a rusty weapon. I have managed to get 3 different ones, among them a great sword that would be useful against the Rathalos. However the problem is that refurbishing it up to a point where it is usable would require items from a monster I haven’t even met yet. So even though I really loved the idea of restoring an ancient weapon to it’s former glory, I had to concentrate on my other plan. At least I got a ton of different ores I used to upgrade some of my armor.

Eventually I got all the Lagiacrus parts I needed. I got the lance and the great sword. I even got a Lagiacrus armor. I didn’t use that one against Rathalos but it is a cool armor anyway. So I set out to fight Rathalos once more…

… and I lost.

After I recovered from my rage blackout (kudos to Nintendoo: the new classic controller is REALLY sturdy) I decided to try again. While equipment can play an important role in Monster Hunter, it doesn’t really help unless you really know the monster you fight against. It seems like I was fighting the Lagiacrus for so long that it took me some time switch mentally to Rathalos’ attack pattern. So again, I played more defensively and I was able to slay Rathalos at my second try.

I went on fighting the Barioth which everybody complains is too hard. I beat him on my first try. I didn’t find him even very hard. That confirmed my suspicion that Rathalos may have been a little bit mis-balanced.

With my total play time being around the 100 hour mark, I really hope that I’m approaching the end of the singe-player campaign. The game is great fun but with mechanics like the rust weapons I get a sense of the depth of the rabbit hole and it is quite scary…

Next on this Monster Hunter Diary: Diablos!

About

The Game Design Scrapbook is a second blog of group of three game designers from Germany. On our first blog, Game Design Reviews we describe some games we played and point out various interesting details. Unfortunately, we found out that we also need some place to collect quick and dirty ideas that pop into our minds. Hence, welcome to Game Design Scrapbook. You will encounter wild, random rantings. Many of then incoherent. Some of them maybe even in German. If you don't like it, you might enjoy Game Design Reviews more.

Twitter

follow Krystian on Twitter
follow Yu-Chung on Twitter
follow Daniel on Twitter