How The Game Is Played

First ever darkstar training course comes to an end

Well,

This past week I spent giving a week long course in Darkstar to a number of Sun technical representatives from all over the world. We had attendees from China, Korea and Australia just to name a few.

The week was broken up into morning lectures of anywhere from 45 to 120 min (with breaks) and afternoon labs where they did real Darkstar coding. The labs included a simple matchmaker, a full Blackjack game, and a tiny action game complete with dead-reckoning and server-side collision detection. Look for some form of the slides and labs to be available for general down load in the not too distant future.

Another note: I lied last blog. There IS one date on the road map. I guess the team felt confident enough to release that.

Posted at 07:25PM Mar 21, 2008 by gameguy in General  | 

Darkstar roadmap goes live!!!

This is an exciting bit of news.

I have really appreciated the Project Darkstar communities willingness to deal with scant internal project information. This has been a crash project in many ways and our first focus was getting code out to you. However we're well aware that engineers do not live by code alone and in the next few months I hope all of you will be pleased to see us filling out the documentation picture and tuning the community site.

I'm pleased to announce we have an officially released road-map now. You can read it at http://www.projectdarkstar.com/wiki/doku.php/darkstarroadmap.

No, it doesn't have dates. Really, all we can say on that front still is "we're trying to get you everything as fast as we can while still making sure we give you a solid and reliable system." But at least you can see what the team's plans and internal priorities are right now.

You are all SO important to us. I don't want you to doubt that for a minute. Project Darkstar was born of my dream to fundamentally change the economics and technology of online games to bring their development and deployment into the range of the small developer while a the same time improving their scalability, reliability and content. But the Darkstar Project cannot succeed without your enthusiasm and involvement. I hope this road-map and the information that will follow will continue to make you, the community, feel like real partners in this goal.

Posted at 09:06PM Mar 14, 2008 by gameguy in General  | 

Getting into Mass Effect

Well, I started playing Bioware's Mass Effect again and got hooked. Played til midnight. I think maybe they nailed the
settings business. I hate reaction tests that get in the wy of the story. With the knobs set to easy, however,
they are not very challenging... adding just enough to heighten tension without setting off my easily triggered
frustration response.

One warning: The early bombs-at-the-train-station sequence is pretty easy IF you go the right way around the
platforms. Go the other way and its incredibly hard and there isn't really a guide. (The right way is up and over the first
bridge you encounter at the top of the ramps.)

Speaking of knobs, curiosity got the best of me and I peeked at the IGN footage of the infamous "sex scene." Honestly, I'm disappointed.
I mean, yeah okay, you can play as male or female and if you play female then its a "girl on girl" scene but my
titillation level at that went to zero I think with about year 14 of my life. And "on" is stretching it pretty hard. Its
pretty much a "pan to the trees" scene.I'm told if you stop-frame it you can get a brief flash of the side of a blue
boob. Oh boy.You see more in a PG13 movie these days.

Honestly, with all the media noise I was expecting something at least a BIT more fun :P

Posted at 05:38PM Mar 12, 2008 by gameguy in General  | 

Are fancy graphics really the answer to all game questions?

Tim Sweeny sure thinks so... ofcourse, his entire world is based around his product, the very high end Unreal engine.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36390/118/

Me, I'm starting to wonder.

As much as I love the *idea* ofimmersive virtual environments, in the end none of the MMORPGs I've played have been able to hold my interest
for more then 12 months. In the end they all seem to suffer from shallow game play and shallower game players.

My current addiction though is about as low-tech as you can get. Its a card game, online. How 1970s, right?

The thing is, its an incredibly *deep* play experience. I played Magic:The Gathering (also called Magic: The addiction, or just "gamer crack")with physical cards when it was new.  Now I'm playing again with virtual cards online.Their servers really need work (can anyone say Projhect Darkstar?;) ) but the game play is undeniably deep and fascinating.Also, the people I play with, on first blush, seem a bit deeper.; Maybe it takes a certain amount of a tendancy introspective thinking to really get the hang of something as permutationally complex as MTG.

All this comes back to an interesting question though. Is Tim Sweeny barking up the wrong tree? Is the answer to the future of games not more CPU cycles but more design cycles?

Its an interesting thought.

Posted at 10:52PM Mar 10, 2008 by gameguy in General  | 

Project Darkstar Siting!

This is really cool and is based on Project Darkstar for their servers

Check it out:.

www.callofthekings.com

Posted at 05:53PM Mar 10, 2008 by gameguy in General  | 

Passing of an era

Well, the EGG is dead.

E Gary Gygax, or EGG as those of us who have been in the pen and paper roleplay game hobby since the beginning were won't to call him, has passed on. I'm sure they will be brief spat of glowing tributes about "the creator of D&D" and so forth. As one who lived a bit closer to the story, I remember him somewhat differently.& And in that memory, there is a cautionary tale of Greek proportions about greed and hubris.

I was living in Madison, WI during most of the early history of TSR and had, if not a front row, a first-row balcony seat to the drama that unfolded. This is from my memory. Dates may be off, but I think the important events are fairly accurate...

In the beginning. &EGG, Dave Arneson and the two Blumes were all wargamers together playing miniatures based wargames. Together they developed and published the original D&D rules, which were extension rules for a miniatures game called Chainmail to add (heavily LOTR inspired) fantasy and heroic elements.

In one line in those original rules it says "or you can dispense with the miniatures and just play with your character sheets." In this one sentence, they accidentally invented pen and paper roleplay gaming. Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) is born.

On the heels of their success they start publishing other pen and paper RPG games including Metamorphosis Alpha (the original one, which was a rip-off of the TV Show "Starlost") and Boot Hill. During this time hey also publish four extensions to D&D (Blackmoor, Greyhawk, Eldritch Wizardry, and "Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes") & &The money starts coming in, and trouble begins in paradise...

EGG and the Blumes push Dave Arneson, who wrote all the original monster stats, out of the company. At the same time, JRR Tolkien, who never cared much about rights and derivative works, dies. His son inherits the rights to LOTR and threatens to sue over D&D's use of Tolkien creatures such as hobbits. As a result, TSR issues AD&D, which makes such superficial changes as changing the word "Hobbit" to "Halfling"

The first AD&D book published is the new "Monster Manual." It contains no acknowledgment of Dave Arneson's previous work.& He sues in court and wins rights to the Monster Manual as a derivative work of his original D&D monster booklet. They have no choice but to pay him royalties on
that but its is his last TSR product.

TSR does very well for awhile publishing AD&D and then 2E. Within a few years, however, the Blumes wrest control of TSR totally to themselves and kick out EGG.

EGG goes off and writes "Dangerous Journies", which is a flop. He has a few more flops over the years and basically lives the rest of his life kicking around the industry on his "old man of gaming" reputation.

The Blumes nearly destroy the company in the long run and end up selling out to the family of the originator of the Buck Rogers serials. What the Blumes couldn't manage to destroy, they basically finish. As TSRs financials get worse, TSR gets more and more and more desperate and start trying to chase third party suppliers of D&D related materials out of the market with bogus claims of copyright and trademark infringement.

They only go to court twice ... and lose both suits. &As the result of losing a suit against Mayfarie Games' "Roleaids" product line they agree to buy out the Roleaids products. They buy them and they are never seen again, but this further stretches their money problems.

The end can be seen to be finally approaching when they start suing their own fans for putting up freeware D&D modules and aids on internet ftp sites. A general truism is no business can survive when it becomes regular practice to sue ones own customers (look at whats happening right now in music, as another example.) TSR goes bankrupt and is bought, lock stock and barrel, by WOTC.

And thats the story as best I remember it. A tale of a company born of a common love of a hobby, and destroyed through the greed and hubris of its founders.

Like EGG himself, who was never actually all that great a Dungeon Master, it had its warts and faults, but many of us still loved it for what it brought into our lives. So godspeed E. Gary. And thank you from those of us whose lives your touch indirectly brightened.

Posted at 01:03PM Mar 05, 2008 by gameguy in General  |