Tattered Page

I’d delayed this post until I had some time to write something more engaging, but I got caught up in the “spirit of the season (revised)” (read: mad frantic running from place to place in a desperate attempt to get things accomplished) and never had the time to craft anything notable. 

I’m going back to the old (true) spirit of the season now.  The one that focuses on the people around the tree, not the presents under it.  The one that makes us smile a little more as we give a holiday greeting to strangers as we pass.  The one that makes me feel like a kid all over again.   The one that makes me feel better about myself and humanity. 

May you have a Merry Christmas, a happy New Year,

and may that Christmas feeling remain with you every day of this new year to come. 

A friend sent this link on Crysis’ release sales. Of note:

Crysis sold just 86,633 units last month, following its release on November 13.

Those disappointing numbers don’t surprise me. I’m surprised so many people expected so much more, but I’ve been ranting on skyrocketing system-spec requirements for quite some time. Sometimes it seems that developers are saying “we expect to capture 10% of our market- the 10% that has uber video cards” instead of saying “we expect to capture 10% of the 10% that have uber video cards” and thus getting some rather ambitious projections.

Sure, the numbers are disappointing. The game’s got rather solid reviews, I’m told (my gaming rig won’t support it, so I haven’t paid very close attention) and you’d like to see a success for something that so many people have poured so much blood, sweat, and tears into to work out.

I’m just not sure if the real business agenda was riding on sales of the game.  I mean- someone with much more business savvy than me should be guiding things there… if I was concerned over the platform requirements, someone else should have been… unless there are other reasons to put yourself so far on the bleeding edge that you get cut. Like Licensing

Crytek always planned to license their engine- a platform that DOES seem to be living up to the hype. Based on the reviews, they’ve got a VERY solid product for that market. Crysis may not sell many boxes, but its an excellent technology demonstrator. By the time those licenses are ready for release, the market will have matured to more closely meet the required system specs.

Crysis might fail to meet the market numbercount but still succeed in establishing the engine in the forefront of DirectX10 engines.

Zubon’s got a good writeup on the Carnival of Shadows- a Villain group in the City of Heroes universe. I agree with much, but wanted to challenge enough of it that I killed the reply-box before I remembered that longer replies could go to my oft-neglected blog here.

Go ahead and read it, then this will make a bit more sense. You can also read the history of the Carnival at the official site, but warning- much of this is “spoiler” information that you discover in the story arcs.

My comments after the break.

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Jason over at probablynot is talking about mini-games for crafting. There’s a weird sense of déjà-vu for both of us, as we both recall talking about this topic somewhere at some time, but can’t find it anywhere.

For you non-MMO-playing readers, “crafting” is just what it sounds like. While some heroes may slay dragons or explore the far reaches of the wilderness, others make the armor that deflects that deadly blow or that sword that slices a new path through the wilderness. Crafting across different games comes in many forms, but almost all of them have one thing in common:

They’re incredibly boring.

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Ok, maybe not cubicle hell, but while I’m sitting in my monochromatic 8×8 cell (desk included) I’ll be thinking of these guys at Three Rings Design. 

I knew I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

I figured Google Streetview would be a regional novelty for quite some time… I still do… they just (more or less) included MY region in that novelty.  My friend over at ShinyObjects just noted that Google’s got Streetview running in Pittsburgh, PA now.

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Work’s been rather nuts.  Jenn & I are still playing City of Heroes.  Issue 10 still seems fresh to us (and only a few of our characters have been able to go through most of the content) but the Halloween event is soon upon us and Issue 11 has entered into closed beta.

Issue 11: A Stitch in Time adds time travel to the game.  The community team did an awesome job leading up to the announcement: news stories in the Paragon times that tell of different outcomes to events very familiar to the players as well as cryptic clues in the player-run City Scoop! newspaper.

It also inspired my own Teaser Comic leading up to the event.  Time travel & Superheroes.  What did you expect?

I mean, really… WHY?

From the Cryptic Studios Blog:

What if life were a video game? I know I’d want some cheat codes. Here’s what other people at Cryptic said they would want:

It comes complete with an image of a whiteboard scrawled with ideas. Some of my favorites:

• Ctrl Alt Del
• Mario coin blocks (that’s gonna cause some nasty head injuries)
• Hookers restore health
• Double XP weekends
• Hot Coffee Mod
• Doughy 40-something guys can look like supermodels.

Me?  I can’t find a single thing to add…. as long as they make sure jiggle physics are still included.

Kill Ten Rats has a great writeup on the “myth” of the “unpredictable PvP foe.” It’s a good read, and echos something from way back in my military days.

See, the same is often true for real life military tactics. We had “Standard Operating Procedures” for virtually everything- how to react to an ambush, how to breach a building, how to secure an operations post. When the platoon leader was going on a recon, he left a “5 point contingency plan” to those left behind. 13 years later, I still remember it.

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Well, I got my prizes from the Comic Book Contest.  I figured that, with City of Heroes’ Issue 10 on the way, I’d give the new software a run doing a comic book based “guide” to the issue.

My goal was to mix a brief overview of the features with a little humor.  I hoped to make it target the casual City of Heroes player- no hard numbers or DPS stats- but also make it understandable to the curious outsider… maybe enough for them to want to give it a trial run.

Anyway, it’s currently available through hypercomics as well as .pdf here.  Let me know what you think.

If anyone’s more out-of-touch than I am, you might not have seen this yet.

1-18-08

Trailer launched with the Transformers premiere.  That’s not the movie title.  It’s codenamed “cloverfield.”  There’s a great deal of speculation.

Seems like a monster flick taken by an alternate perspective, but others aren’t certain. Is that roar’ a monster or just a skyscraper’s structural groaning resonating through the city after a quake.  Other… events… seem to make it clear that it IS a monster flick, though one with a different enough perspective that it warrants further attention (for me, at least).

(Sigh) I hear all about game developers’ insane schedules.  I believe them.  I just can’t figure out how all these guys maintian their blogs so well.  Things go a bit nuts here at work and I’m out of commission for over a month.

How the heck do they do it?

Ok, it’s not just work.

So… what’s been going on here?

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Well, the City of Heroes Comic Book Creator contest prizes are announced this week.   I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring some comics there, and while none of us would probably be “professional grade” there are some real noteworthy achievements out there.

When I started my entry, I had some aspirations to winning it- now, I don’t really care- there are so many entries over there that deserve some attention… so many with just a dozen or so views.  I just want all the participants to feel their entry is worthwhile.

I first tried this over in hypercomics’ blog, but I’m re-posting here.  Sometimes a story just drives me to give it a little more attention. It may be the humor, or the style, or the message it delivers. It just might resonate with my mood of the day. When it does, I’ll write about it here and share why.

“Not a Hero” is such a comic. Go read it now. There may be some spoilers ahead.

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Nerfbat’s posted “MMO Development Lesson #16” and while I agree with the overall message, I don’t like the way the introduction feels. “Don’t be different for the sake of being different. Be different for the sake of being better.”

It is a good cautionary message- too many new developers want to come in, challenge all conventions, assume that everything in the past was somehow flawed or lacking vision and run headlong into the same obstacles that the MMO pioneers met. Still, as I peek into the betas of more MMO’s, I wonder if perhaps some developers aren’t clinging a bit too tighly to that philosophy to avoid any substantial change. “Different” is the “better” that we’re desperately missing.

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I’ve always lamented that the game with greatest toolset for self-expression and roleplaying was tied to an ever-changing combat engine that never seemed to live up to that potential.  I’m talking about Star Wars Galaxies, of course.

I don’t know whether it’s because so many people had such high hopes for it or because the bad reputation it developed through the occasionally-drastic changes it implemented, but the game doesn’t seem to get much attention anymore.  Shame, really.  They still manage some interesting ideas.

“Storyteller” is one of them.

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