I started learning Japanese. It was a weird coincidence. First I was listening to a couple of podcasts from people living there. This primed me already for the topic. Then I couldn’t resist buying a certain book on a certain game I enjoy very much. That book was actually in Japanese so in order to justify the purchase, I felt obliged to at least try to understand it. Finally, my girlfriend asked be why I never learned it.

And it’s a good question, too. I think learning a language only makes sense if you have enough opportunities to get exposure to the language. So for example, learning Spanish wouldn’t make much sense in my case. I would need to deliberately make an effort to get me into situations where I would need to use the language – go on vacation to Spain, read Spanish books, etc. After all, you can’t just learn a language and let it sit in your head. A language needs maintenance. As it happens, my current lifestyle doesn’t provide much opportunities for a language like Spanish but provides lots of opportunities for Japanese. I play a lot of games from Japan. I also used to read quite some comics from Japan and I was fond of Japanese animated series. Considering this, it’s weird that I didn’t do it before.

But then again I’m not a big language learner. Especially not in the traditional sense. So I thought I keep it low-profile. I took an advice from a professional and started with the alphabet first, specifically Hiragana and Katakana. Also, I didn’t buy books, I bought apps instead.

It seems like a good starting point is the iKana app for iPhone. It is a beautiful, polished and comprehensive directory of all Hiragana and Katakana characters. There are also functions to practice the recognition of selected characters and even a simple quiz for learning how to write them. It’s a perfect tool for practicing the alphabet.

But the problem is that it is not a very good tool for learning them in the first place. As a newcomer, all charters looks the same to me. I need at least some guidance to get started. So I got myself one of the HiKaChan apps. They are actually not very good. They are ugly, the UI is bad. Some functions are poorly executed to the point of being useless. And they have less content than iKana – you need to buy an app for Hiragana and a separate app for Katakana. However, they do have one big strength. Each character is introduced by comparing it to an image – a so-called mnemonic device. The pictures are far from perfect. Some are quite a stretch and they often rely very much on the fucked-up english pronunciation (”i” like an “Eagle”??). However, even this small help goes a very long way for a newcomer to get familiar with the characters.

So my current setup is to learn the characters in HiKaChan and practice them in iKana. It’s going to be a long journey but I already had some sense of achievement. I was able to “read” a couple of words. I’m going to keep you posted on my progress.

There is something very specific about the Prince of Persia movie that bugged me. It actually fits well to the recent Experience Points Podcast where I was the guest. Or more precisely, the GDC talk by Chris Hecker on Finishing Games.

Prince of Persia is a story that centers (or should center) around a supernatural artifact. The prince obtains a dagger that can rewind time for a few moments. However, as I already mentioned the device is not used very often in the movie. But even when they use it, the characters never try to exploit the power this artifact gives them. The dagger is mostly used in the way it’s “intended” to be used. The blurry fringes of the rules that govern it’s power are never explored.

To understand what I mean by that, we need to take a look at a different piece of fiction where characters actually do exploit a supernatural artifact. Let’s talk Deathnote.

Deathnote is a Manga and an Anime where a teenage protagonist obtains a magical notebook. Every time he writes a name in that notebook, that person will die of a heart attack shortly after. The notebook’s owner can even specify a custom death cause and death circumstances by writing them in the notebook as well.

When I first heard that story, I was wondering what kind of drama would unfold around such an artifact. The notebooks seems so tremendously powerful that it’s owner shouldn’t encounter any adversaries or difficulties. So when I read the Manga, it pretty much blew me away. The story depicts a sort of a duel between the protagonist and a very smart super-detective. Even though the protagonist can kill people without leaving any evidence, simply the choice of his victims is enough for the detective to find out a lot about the murderer. Things get even more dramatic later on where the detective stages various traps and tests to determine the murderer’s identity. It’s a magnificent and well-thought out demonstration of deduction skills and logical thinking.

I’m mentioning this because the protagonist in Deathnote has a very peculiar way of dealing with the notebook. Instead of using it as it is “intended”, he actually does a lot of experiments with the notebook’s powers. One of the early experiment is writing the cause of death first and filling in the names later. Later he also experiments with “impossible” death circumstances or with the level of control he has over the way the victims die. He ends up even tearing pages or individual paper strips from the notebook so he can use them more inconspicuously. The very simple rules of how to use the notebook become a fascinating playground for the most macabre experiments. It’s a magnificent example of the author not being afraid of eventual inconsistencies of his own supernatural rules. On the contrary, he uses and explores them to their full potential and creates a surprising, smart and thrilling plot in the process.

I have the impression that especially western authors are afraid to go that far. Prince of Persia is an example. There are a lot in paradoxes the dagger’s powers could create. In one scene the prince gives the dagger to one of his brothers. The brother uses the dagger’s power to rewind to a time where he didn’t have the dagger yet. Weird enough, when time started flow normally again, he was holding the dagger in his hand, not the prince. So he not only used the dagger’s power to rewind time, he also magically transported the dagger from the prince’s hands to his own. What if he would rewind to a time when he was holding something else? What if he would rewind to a time when the prince using the dagger to rewind time? Or how about rewinding to a time when the dagger was used to stab somebody in order to prevent the stabbing simply by the act of rewinding? There are many other ways this could go. My point is that the movie never explored those questions, which is a pity.

Apart from being an exciting way to surprise and challenge the audience, doing such supernatural exploits also has an underlying message. It presents characters who do not simply obey rules and laws, even if they are of supernatural origin. It presents characters who take matters into their own hands, who use their brain and shape their own destiny, even when it means to defy gods. This moral is in line with the most fundamental change in storytelling of the last 2000 years. It’s time we stop going back to old fairy-tales and start thinking things trough. I’m looking at you, LOST! >:(

Working creatively is very different from working manually for example. The problem with creative work is that you will waste a lot of time. Most of that time you spend doing nothing. For me I fond this is often because of the Blank Page Problem.

You might be familiar with the situation. You know you need to do something. But you never even get started because there is nothing there yet. So it’s difficult to figure out what to do first. There are too many possibilities and it’s difficult to decide what to do. On top of that, the sheer amount of work in front of you is discouraging. So you start dancing around the problem. You start doing simpler tasks, which may or may not have anything to do with you actual project. You might clean up you desk instead. Or clean up your mail in-box. And if you don’t play attention you end up doing what you fear most: PROCRASTINATING.

When I already started a project, it is much simpler. I arrive at an unfinished piece. I can start by checking out the stuff I have so far. I will immediately see the parts I want to work on. And suddenly I forget the huge amount of work in front of me and lose myself in the task at hand.

I had big trouble getting back into TRAUMA development specifically because of the Blank Page Problem. The game was at a point where figuring out the next step was difficult. I had a big break since the last time I worked on it so I lost my train of thought. And there was always other things to take care of too.

My solution was to reserve an entire day to jump start development. If I have anything planned on a day, especially in-between, there is a good chance that I won’t get anything done. I often arrive at a point where it seems like it makes no sense to continue because I would have to quit soon. Actually, it’s quite like in the video above.

However, if I have an entire day there are no excuses. And indeed, I successfully returned to developing TRAUMA.

The trick now will be to keep working on it regularly. At least an hour a day. I don’t want to lose my train of thought again and arrive at a Blank Page situation. I need to finish this.

Here is a real treat for those of you who enjoyed my space map of the 32 nearby stars. The independent developer Loren Schmidt whom I’ve met at the Independent Games Festival recently did experiments with a very similar map. Now he managed to James Cameron it. Get your 3D glasses out!

I love it. I have been playing with that idea for some time and now he beat me to the punch. I enjoy that we do have slightly different approaches on the information design of our maps. It is an inspiring experiment. I might go ahead and do a 3D version of my own map. That puppy is ripe for an update.

I finished a first experiment. I think I have the code for the orbits almost done. It’s still very slow and user-unfriendly. But you can change the orbit of the orange planet already.

If you are interested, the function I was looking for goes almost something like this (AS3 code):

public const TORADIANS:Number =  (Math.PI / 180);

public function stateVector(t:Number, o:orbit):point3D {
	// Calculates the State Vector (xyz coordinates)
	// of an object in an orbit at a given Time
	// The coordinate system is Heliocentric
	// and aligned to the eclyptc

	// t - current time (in days)

	//o.e - Eccentricity (degrees)
	//o.a - Mean Distance (Astronomical Units)
	//o.i - Inclination (degrees)
	//o.O - longitude of ascending node (degrees)
	//o.w - longitude of perihelion (degrees)
	//o.P - Period (days)

	// Define some Variables to work with
	var myX:Number;
	var myY:Number;
	var myZ:Number;
	var M:Number;
	var V:Number;
	var r:Number;

	// Choose a Mean Anomaly
	// This is due to change
	// Right now, all Planets start at 0° at t=0
	M = ((t / o.P) - int(t / o.P));
	M = M * 360;

	// Calculate True Anomally
	V = getTrueAnomaly(M, o.e);

	// Calculate Radial Distance
	r = (o.a * (1-o.e*o.e)) / (1 + o.e * Math.cos(V * TORADIANS));

	// Transform Orbital Coordinates into
	// Heliocentric Ecliptic coordinates
	// Sin / Cos values are pre-calucated to save redundancy
	var sinWV:Number = Math.sin((o.w+V)*TORADIANS);
	var cosWV:Number = Math.cos((o.w+V)*TORADIANS);

	var sinI:Number = Math.sin(o.i*TORADIANS);
	var cosI:Number = Math.cos(o.i*TORADIANS);

	var sinO:Number = Math.sin(o.O*TORADIANS);
	var cosO:Number = Math.cos(o.O*TORADIANS);

	// Calulacte Carthesian Coordinates
	myX = r * (cosO*cosWV - sinO*sinWV*cosI);
	myY = r * (sinO*cosWV + cosO*sinWV*cosI);
	myZ = r * sinWV * sinI;

	// And that's where the Planet is
	return new point3D(myX,myY,myZ);
}

public function getTrueAnomaly(M:Number, e:Number):Number {
	// Approximates the True Anomaly (V) from the Mean Anomaly (M)

	// Set constants for precision approximation
	const TOLERANCE:Number = 1.0e-12;
	const MAXAPPROX:int = 80;

	// Some Variables
	var E1:Number;
	var E2:Number;
	var V:Number;

	// Convert from Degrees to Radians
	M = M * TORADIANS;

	// First calculate the Eccentric Anomaly
	// Get a first approximation for the Eccentric Anomaly
	E1 = M;

	// Start iterating to calculate a closer value
	var loopCount:int = MAXAPPROX;
	do {
		E2 = E1;
		E1 = M + e * Math.sin(E2);
		// Quit loop if close enough or running too long already
	} while (Math.abs(E1 - E2) > TOLERANCE && --loopCount > 0);

	// Now convert Eccentric Anomaly to True Anomaly
	V = 2 * Math.atan(Math.sqrt((1+e)/(1-e)) * Math.tan(E1 / 2));

	// Convert back to degrees
	V = V / TORADIANS;

	// And that's the True Anomaly
	return V;
}

I still need to tie the place in orbit to a REAL time and date. That problem is related the the last post. But now that I got a prototype, I should be able to experiment to figure it out. I will also improve the performance and interface so people can use this app for their own experiments.