(Yet Another) New Beginning...

In my last few published articles here, I'd stopped promising a brand new start, regular updates, and the rest of it, because I knew better. I started to feel like someone in a doomed relationship swearing "No, really, baby... I can change," no matter how obviously insincere it was.  I resolved to produce new content when I could, without forcing it. This, obviously, meant that I didn't produce much of anything at all in almost the last year.  So much of what I was interested in was something I'd already covered here, and I didn't feel there was anyone clamoring for yet another Minecraft article, weight loss update, Humble Bundle or any of the other topics I've exhausted here. I'm here to say that nothing has changed, and everything has.

...and I'm not just talking about dropping over 100 pounds, but
while we're at it, Hoo-raw.

I'll still be writing in this space, when inspiration takes me or when I really have something to say on a subject.  I have some new insights on a few different games, comics and films, as well as additional perspective on geek culture issues and challenges facing the unemployed or under-employed.  (On that front, I've returned to gaming/comic/hobby retail, part time at the moment, but I won't be renaming the site yet again.)  However, I need to rebuild and to set my house in order. Part of that is getting back to producing and sharing content for the people who have supported me so far. Those hopeful folks who are still checking in daily or weekly to see that the last update was weeks or months old, you are appreciated and have not been forgotten.

In addition to the new job, hitting weight loss goals and playing Magic Competitively (as alluded to in my last update here,) I still play video games. A heck of a lot of video games. For those who are more interested in sci-fi, tabletop, fantasy novels, TV and/or comic books, I'll roll out some new contents in this very space. This other thing isn't so interesting to you if you don't care about Magic or Video Games.  I'd  toyed with methods of producing content online beyond just blogging, and I noticed the sort of content I was consuming online had moved to something more audiovisual, whether podcasting or YouTube or Twitch.tv videos. Younger geeks often can't be bothered to read more than a paragraph (get off my lawn!) and video is the only way to engage with that growing audience.  I still have a message for those people, but the medium... that might need to change.

In the short term, I've launched a Twitch channel for streaming here, and have begun testing some "Let's Play" style content. It'll be a bumpy ride as I upgrade, purchase and replace hardware for this purpose, including a webcam, better mic and maybe a PC upgrade when funds allow. For the moment, though, I'm practicing playing games, as I do, with a running commentary (and learning no not hate the sound of my voice on playback.)  My best experiments in this area will go up on YouTube, and anyone who joins me on the livestream will be able to chat live, interact with others also watching the experience as I play games from my Steam Library, experiment with interesting Minecraft servers and play Booster Drafts on Magic Online.

It'll be a different sort of content than what I'm used to producing online, but one where I don't have to wonder: "Did I screw up and use a copyrighted image?" "Is anyone even reading this?" or "What am I bringing to the table that can't be found in a hundred other places online?" There aren't so many gamers this close to 40 and married making time to make this sort of content, and that's my niche. Maybe this'll be the next thing I try for a while and then lose interest in... but in the meantime, I look forward to producing this kind of show for myself, even if no one at all watches. Join me, if you like.

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Blog Gadgets

The OUYA – Open Source Console: What it is, and what it isn't.

Video game news sites, blogs and discussion boards are all talking about the OUYA, and it really is a story that is too big to ignore.  Crowdsourced for its initial funding by Kickstarter (which deserves its own article here, soon) in only four days, people have pledged $4.5 million to see this thing happen.  The concept behind the console is that the Big Three are hard and expensive to develop for, and the companies that manufacture them lock down the hardware and software so the user can't modify the units themselves after purchase.  Many talented developers have stopped even trying to create games for consoles, focusing on PC or moblie markets instead, where it is cheaper and easier to get going. The OUYA will run on a version of the Android OS, have HDMI output to a TV and will be moddable and hackable out of the box. The SDK (Software Development Toolkit) will be designed to make it easy and cheap to get games onto the platform, which should attract developers who don't want to deal with the hassle of breaking into console gaming's current walled gardens.

Controller will have analog sticks, triggers, and a touchpad, but doesn't actually exist yet.

I've read a lot of reaction to the Kickstarter campaign, and the vast majority of folks who are participating in either the hype-bandwagon or the hipster-backlash for or against the OUYA seem to have some of the details wrong.  They don't know what the OUYA is, but they either think it is the second coming, destined to immediately take out the Playstation, XBox and Wii platforms... or they have a laundry list of criticisms that are only partially grounded in reality. There are a lot more invalid assumptions and just plain wrong assertions coming from critics of the OUYA, but in order to get to the bottom of this, I need to talk a little bit about what the OUYA is, and more importantly, what it isn't.

Anyone dropping $100 today because they believe they are buying a piece of hardware that is comparable to even current-generation consoles is misinformed. The technical specifications of the unit are a little bit better than a bleeding-edge expensive smartphone. That said, a phone with those specs is $650 with a 2-year contract and has some serious limitations on what it can deliver as a gaming platform.  There currently are no final designs for the console or its controller, and it won't launch with AAA-style titles, the hardware won't support it, and the type of developer that is capable of delivering that sort of game is already inside the existing walled gardens, and doesn't need what the OUYA is selling.  All games that release for the system will be required to have a free component, like a smartphone app, with subscription or microtransactions in place, emulating the Free2Play model. Let that sink in. All games are free, but will likely feature a "cash shop" or something similar.

That said, without any 100% confirmed titles at launch (though Mojang has strongly suggested that Minecraft will be made available), and games that are more likely to have design influenced by the existence of microtransactions, the OUYA doesn't look a lot like an XBox. Critics have seized on this, and the Android platform as proof that the console will primarily support the sorts of games currently found on the Android Market (Google Play) and iTunes.  A $100 console that plays Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja doesn't sound as much like a game changer.  However, it is short-sighted to believe that developers won't line up to make games for this with over 30,000 pre-orders in a few days from customers, and the Developer's Kit console pre-orders (400+ of them) sold out in that same time. It is a fair assumption that while we'll see some shovelware, at least a few games that manage to make a subscription or microtransaction model work will be available at launch.

I like Canabalt, love Minecraft, but they will need a solid launch library that consists of new titles that are hits, or
that can be hits on their platform.

A common complaint I've seen online is that the technical specifications are weak for a console and that they won't be able to produce units in order to retail the console at $100.  These statements come from comparing specs to existing consoles and price to smartphone components. The test of the OUYA as a concept is what sort of performance they can get out of their advertised hardware once full games are running on the system. I'm not worried about the hardware price, as there is no reasonable comparison between phones and PCs or consoles, dispersing heat in a small handheld and making components tiny enough to fit inside is pricey, mass-producing dedicated boxes to run Android... not so much. Downloadable games in a console which is basically a PC with a GUI and a controller evokes a negative comparison to the Phantom Console from 2004 that nearly ruined Infinium Labs. In the last 8 years, however, many of the technical limitations that made the Phantom famous vaporware have worked themselves out, most notably massively improved bandwidth speeds making streaming content, even games, possible.

I've talked a lot about what the OUYA isn't... but there are a few things that it is, or could be, that folks are missing out on.  A moddable/rootable box can be a 1-stop console for emulation of everything from the NES to the Playstation 2, with all the legally grey caveats that emulators and ROMs have dealt with.  It can be yet another box for streaming Netflix or any number of music services with nothing but existing apps on the Google Play store today.  It may not be able to challenge even this generation's consoles on day one, but it could absolutely take on the Xbox Live Marketplace, PSN and Wii Points stores if enough developers with fresh ideas back the idea, letting their best games rise to the top naturally. Even without a massive launch lineup, the confidence that comes with the number of people behind this project makes $99 a more than fair price.





Investing in the OUYA today is supporting a group of established industry professionals who are rolling the dice on coming out with something that could really change the console market. Even if it doesn't deliver on the best of its promises, what you could have today is fairly reasonable... and with the right software, and if the hardware is stable and relatively quick given its limitations, what could be there tomorrow sounds plausible, all hype put to the side.

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Blog Gadgets

Minecraft: HCFactions and Mine-Z, plus - Interview with Lead Admin HighlifeTTU!

I clutch my pick in hand, creeping beneath the earth searching for diamonds. I started with nothing but a fishing pole, and now I've carved out a small base with a working farm, resources to keep me stocked, and I know at any moment, if I'm not careful enough, someone could break into my less-than-secure spot and kill me, and I'd lose everything. I'd also be locked out of the server for three days. Death comes at a high price. Some days later, I work in a faction base. The land is secure, as people can't use our doors or break our walls unless they manage to kill one or more of us.  The call goes out to everyone online, hostiles in diamond armor have appeared at our walls, looking for a way to get in, even a small hole could mean a well-thrown Ender Pearl could teleport the raiders inside. We grab potions and equip diamond swords, and prepare to fight.

Me, in glorious diamond armor, in the little room deep underground,
where I would be brutally murdered less than a day later.

If this doesn't sound like the Minecraft you've been playing, that's not unusual. HCFactions, a server with loads of custom-programmed tweaks and plugins is a special and unique place. Players contend with the usual difficulties of monsters, lava and starvation, plus hostile other players and the three-day "deathban" that enforces the "hardcore" nature of the server.  The stories above are both an actual part of my last week on HCFactions, and the drama, shifting alliances and betrayals of Factions (organizations that can purchase and defend land) have been detailed on Reddit for well over a year now.  Run by Matt Sundberg, better known as HighlifeTTU, the server can take up to 175 people at once, and there are usually between 50-100 playing at any given time, struggling and banding together to survive.

Recently, HighlifeTTU and his Administration and programming team announced their second server concept, called Mine-Z, a cooperative/competitive Zombie Survival server that takes direct inspiration from the popular fan-created Day Z mod to the game ARMA. I had a chance to speak with several members of the Admin team in the last few days, and I asked HighlifeTTU if he'd answer a few questions. Here's what he had to say.

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- Tell us a little bit about yourself and your coding/Admin Team.

I go by "HighlifeTTU".  In the real world I work the standard 8 to 5 grind in the finance industry, so Minecraft server hosting is my after work hobby.  It has quickly exploded into something I never imagined! I have been lucky to find a very talented team of individuals. Almost all of them work in the technology industry in some fashion, so we tend to get on at night after we've all slaved away for the man and put our heads together to create new plugins and ultimately craft new experiences for players.  I am about to turn 29 years old, so I regularly tell my player base to get off my lawn.

The HCFactions Shop, where iron and gold can be sold by players who wish to purchase
land, potion materials or rare blocks for customizing their base.

- How would you describe HCFactions and MineZ to someone who is familiar with  Minecraft, but ignorant to the larger Bukkit/Factions community?

HCFactions is a hardcore PvP oriented factions server.  It basically allows groups of players to band together, claim land on an expansive map, and then battle it out against each other.  The uniqueness comes from the death ban we use.  When a player is killed, he is banned from the server for three days.  For someone unfamiliar with a hardcore experience, they would probably say there is no way that could be fun.  But the magic of a hardcore server is the change in how people act. In a normal game where you respawn instantly, you don't have a fear of death, and ultimately you see players grow bored since their actions have little meaning.  With death ban, many people actually get an adrenalin rush.  You know every mistake could be your last. defeats are brutal, but the victories are that much sweeter.

We've expanded on the normal factions experience by adding a number of things.  We have PvE oriented events, a King of the Hill event that has players fighting over a location for a chance of good loot, and my lead developer (lazertester) recently rolled out the Factions Arena, which is a fully automated arena plugin featuring loadouts, multiple arenas, and a comprehensive stats page for bragging rights.  Recently we added an Archer, Bard, and Rogue class that is in the spirit of vanilla minecraft, as it requires no slash commands, and you activate it by simply wearing a full set of a different armor.  Our most challenging change has been re-coding some of the craftbukkit code to balance enchantments and make them more intuitive, which we plan to roll out in the next couple of weeks.

The extensive Arena, as seen from the glassed-in Spectator Area, where players can
practice their PvP skills without risking their hard-won equipment.

We now have had 15,000 unique visits to the server, and average about 6,000 unique players a month.  It has been a very big success, and has motivated the team to work on side projects.

MineZ was inspired by DayZ.  DayZ proved that as a developer you can try to ruthlessly murder your player base, and they like it.  MineZ is basically a zombie survival mod, where zombies use advanced AI and fast movement to hunt you down.  Players must manage limited inventory, find loot at key locations, all while managing their hunger, thirst, and health.  There is open PvP, so players can be as much of a threat as zombies.  The world is expansive and built by hand.  There are large distances with no loot to be found, meaning any amount of travel requires preparation.

- What are your short and long term goals for HCFactions and MineZ?

For HCFactions, we are currently doing an enchantment balance and are then starting on our own fork of Factions.  We plan to add a finite power source that can be gained at events, which can be used to gain small bonuses to combat.  After that, we want to add some RTS style features, letting players "power" chunks outside their main land, and build specific structures to take advantage of these bonuses.

MineZ?  Well.  I have a very firm grasp of the short term vision, but I want to see how the players react once I finally let them loose on the world.  For one though, I want to add a story to the game that is gathered in pieces via signs and eventually written books.  I also want to add a special bandit NPC type, that has advanced group AI. The bandits will only spawn at the hardest places on the map, and will require teamwork and high tier items to defeat.  Honestly though, outside of that, I think the player base will dictate what the development team ultimately works on.  We've already received some great ideas from the community.

A desperate band of players fights a small horde of aggressive zombies in MineZ.

- A lot of custom code has gone into your servers, making them unique. Are there any ideas that you've really wanted to incorporate, but haven't yet been able to make a reality in code?

Anything interface related.  We always build our plugins to use the vanilla client, as we feel the client modding process isn't intuitive to all players.  I am hoping the new mod API allows us to add new interface elements and more easily disseminate information to the players.  This will open up more possibilities, since some plugins just won't work with slash commands.

- Minecraft has been criticized for being an excellent building "toy" but without a whole lot of traditional gameplay mechanics, objectives or metrics for victory. Your servers have clear "game" elements with careful thought given to balance and progression over the course of a particular map. Are there particular games or designers (aside from the obvious ARMA/Day Z for MineZ) that have inspired or influenced the systems that have been integrated into the servers?

Ultima Online.  It was the first game I fell in love with, and for the first two years it existed it was something special.  The sad thing is they ultimately changed the game to cater to a wider player base, which makes sense financially, but hurt the gritty, hardcore experience it once was.  I find myself looking back at those experiences and it is a clear influence on how I balance things on HCFactions and how I look at the design elements of MineZ.

A look at HCFactions' Spawn area, where players can safely fish, shop, and when they are ready
to leave, be fired from a cannon 600 blocks away in a random direction.

- The type of gameplay found on HCFactions lends itself well to stories of drama, betrayal, heroism and sacrifice re-told by players. Do you have a favorite "story moment" from the playerbase on your servers?

Likely Greysoul. [Note: full story of Greysoul can be found here and here.]  On the second map of the server I saw a large group of new players venturing off together.  I followed them around and documented their experience.  They ended up being the first faction to slay the ender dragon, and then they went on to conquer and destroy the largest and most dominate faction on the server.  It surprised me that a group of players with no experience on HCFactions grew from nothing into the most powerful force on the server.  Well, at least for a couple weeks. :)

- If you could tell your community one thing about your time on these projects that isn't already widely known, what would it be?

I'd have to say that the most surprising thing is I have no background in programming or game design.  I took a C++ class in high school, but that is the extent of my experience.  For HCFactions, I had to teach myself how to use linux, bash scripting, some php/mysql for the first stats page, and basic java to understand the plugins I was having developed.  It has been a very long ride, but very well worth it. Having done it for a few months now, I still enjoy it as much, if not more, than I did the very first day I started doing it.

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I'd like to thank HighlifeTTU for his time, and for a gameplay experience that has matched or exceeded the play experience I've found in a lot of $60 titles, all for free. Server donations keep the project from being exceedingly expensive, and players who donate are rewarded with "free lives" to get around the 3-day ban on death.  Notoriously cheap about F2P gaming, and suspicious of most games featuring microtransactions, my experience on these servers is a testament to the hard work these folks have put into the experience their players have. Within days of my first time on HCFactions I purchased a spare life, which is, to date, the only real cash I've spent for something extra in a game since purchasing a basic starter kit in my time playing Team Fortress 2. I eagerly await the opportunity to try MineZ, and also to get back to base-building with my faction. That is, once the brave souls we lost in last night's raid have served their three-day deathban.

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Blog Gadgets

Yet Another Humble Bundle – Voxatron, Blocks That Matter and The Binding of Isaac

I've written before about the Humble Indie Bundles and their many advantages, pay whatever you want, support charity, DRM-free Indie games that deserve our support, and these are all still true. I've purchased every one of the bundles I've encountered since I became aware of them, and have been extremely happy with my decision. Though "bundles" that are initially released as just one game, but frequently get more content added gradually are happening more regularly, they've consistently been a great value and the Voxatron Debut bundle is no exception. In this case, unlike the Frozen Synapse Bundle, the "main" game is the weakest of the titles (for now) included, so paying more than the average to get the bonus games is a must.

Let's start with that main event, available for any price, as low as $0.01, the Alpha release build of the Robotron-inspired voxel-based shooter Voxatron. The 3D graphics combines with an old-school aesthetic not unlike Minecraft in a shooting game that is unlike most of what I've played on the market. You play a character with a basic gun, the ability to move in all directions and jump, and when you shoot, it locks your direction of aim and movement together into a strafe based on where you are pointing. It feels like the arcade classic it takes its name from with the way movement and shooting interact, but the controls end up feeling extremely clunky, and that takes a lot away form the game. I've also suffered a few crash bugs and framerate slowdowns, but I expect these will be corrected in future patches. The one thing that saves this game from mediocrity is the fact that players can use an editing program with building blocks to build and add their own content and custom levels, and turning a community's creativity loose on your project is a sure way to ensure a lot of content (quality, and otherwise.)

The Binding of Isaac is a twisted little game that combines features of shooters, the original Legend of Zelda dungeons, and roguelike RPGs. The story is that of a child whose mother hears God's voice telling her to murder her son to prove her faith, and the weeping, naked boy escapes into his basement, which is filled with awful things. There are disgusting and hellish elements from bosses based on blobs of flesh with cleft palates, enemies weeping blood or vomiting flies, and upgrades related to the occult and implied child abuse. The arenas are randomly generated every time the game starts, power-ups and bosses are different with each playthrough and there are tons of unlockables and achivements to earn. The game is tinged with a disgusting dark sense of humor but it is never funny, images which could (and perhaps should) be shocking are rendered with a cartoon style that robs them of their power and just makes them part of the game world. If the concept of playing as an abused child using his tears as a weapon against demonic creatures and confronting his own fears and personal demons doesn't offend, you may find that the overall solid game design makes this one a lot of fun to play.

My personal favorite game in the series is the platform/puzzler Blocks That Matter. The game combines elements of Tetris and Minecraft to form a unique experience that directly pays homage to its inspirations. Indie Developers Alexey and Markus have been kidnapped, and their secret project, the Tetrobot is the only way they can free themselves. The robot can destroy and collect many blocks such as sand, wood and dirt, and is able to replace them elsewhere in the level, but only in shapes of four consecutive blocks, like tetris pieces. Parts of the four block designs may again be destroyed and collected, leaving bits to stand and jump on to reach other parts of the level. As levels progress, there may be massive spots where there are blocks that cannot be drilled through, but, like Tetris, any line of eight (or more) blocks can be made to vanish. Figuring out how to make the various types of blocks interact and being efficient with them allows for progress through the games many stages.

This bundle will be available until Monday, November 14^th, 2011 and the bonus games both have Steam and Desura activation codes. Like other bundles, bonus titles are available if the price chosen for the bundle is higher than the average for all bundles purchased thus far, so about $5.50USD (as of the moment) gets you all three titles, and any of these games is worth at least twice that.

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Blog Gadgets

MineCraft 1.8, the Adventure Update

Minecraft is often eventually abandoned by folks who exhaust the limits of what they want to build in-game within their capacity for patience and how much effort they are willing to put into the game. I can't say that I blame them. The ability to build and craft is great, but once you've made your castles, houses, startships or what have you, the few monsters in the game can be fought, but to what real end? Notch and the rest of Mojang knew that what they have on their hands is the basics of a powerful engine, but in terms of "gamelike" content, it is a little bit sparse. Dungeons are exceptionally rare and difficult to find, have a monster generator and maybe a few chests inside. Not a whole lot of unique reward for exploration. The solution: add a lot more content. Update 1.8 is the start of a brave new direction for Minecraft, and one that should attract a broader range of players.

Randomly generated NPC village. Man, I can't wait until these are inhabited.

I've mentioned most of this before, in my profile on Notch himself. The new information I have on Minecraft is from this past weekend up until now. The "adventure update" has a bold list of features. NPC villages, abandoned mines, new monsters, improved biome code, the ability to sprint, the addition of hunger and experience gain, more dungeons to explore and an overall improved lighting system. There was a preview of the new build at Penny Arcade's PAX convention, and speculation that we'd see an early September wide release. September 8^th was tossed about as a probable date for 1.8 to go live, and everyone began preparing to explore villages (even if actual NPCs aren't in yet) and avoid Endermen.

The news came down on 9/7 that a full release for the patch wasn't happening. There were too many bugs, features were partially implemented or broken... worse, the game kept crashing. Quietly, on Friday, September 9^th, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten put up a file that could be downloaded from the minecraft servers, if one knew where to look. The location of the file was "leaked" to several internet forums, and it was a playable, if extremely buggy build for the long awaited update. Installation requires a little bit of computer knowledge (you have to at least be comfortable with locating and replacing a specific file manually,) and people willing to endure crashes and the occasional glitch could get a look at 1.8. I was one of those people.

Abandoned mining operation, as I found it, placing a single torch for light.

I was immediately impressed by the new biome code, which is the thing that sounds least exciting in the list of features, but has the most dramatic immediate visual impact on the game. A biome, in this context, is a set of rules for random generation of terrain so that features that should naturally occur near each other will. Biomes mean that we don't see a cactus in the middle of the swamp, ice in the desert, etc. I found a deep chasm with a river at the bottom and traces of an abandoned mining operation with wooden supports, broken stretches of minecar track and cobwebs strewn about, the sound of skeletons and spiders lurking within the defunct mine suggesting the reason it is no longer bustling with activity. I noticed that coal and even iron seemed to be much more plentiful in this area, and in caves in general, rewarding exploration.

As exciting as the mining chasm was, I wanted to explore everything the new build had to offer. Sure, there were some major performance hits, lag and poor framerate, but this is a preview "unofficial" build, and I wouldn't hold that, or the occasional memory leak/crash bug against it. I headed out to explore some more. Torches now cast a flickering yellowish light, and if you can manage to actually run the game with the view distance that far out, sunsets look amazing. I wasn't just here to enjoy geography however, I had to explore the land. Before I could find a village or a dungeon to explore, night was falling and I ducked into a cave, putting a door on the entrance to keep monsters out. I dropped a few torches, and realized I wasn't alone. Pale green eyes turned toward me from the darkness, from a pair of tall figures calmly moving blocks of stone around the cave I'd chosen to rest in. I'd found endermen.

Creepy.  Maybe I should have dug my own shelter that night.

The figures were menacing but not hostile, moving toward me not particularly aggressively, as I wasn't looking directly at them. Smoke rose from their coal-black skin, and trapped in the confined space, I got too close and their mouths opened, and they strode toward me with murder in their eyes. I readied my sword and as they got right in front of me, "poof" they both vanished. I could still hear them around me, sounding like zombies, and I ran through the cave planting torches, one reappeared and struck me from behind, only to vanish again once I turned around. I hid in the cave, back to the wall until sunup, and left the hole to find both endermen waiting for me outside in the pre-dawn hours before the sun claimed them. I fought, they fell and dropped curious green pearls that seem to serve no purpose at this time. I crafted a boat, and set off.

After some searching and a few more nights in shelters carved from island rock, I finally spoptted what I'd been looking for in the distance. There was a structure on the coast ahead that clearly wasn't naturally occuring. I got out of my boat and headed toward what looked like a tower of some sort, but turned out to be a well. I found some farmland, several mixed wood and stone buildings, eerily empty but ready for habitation, some even had libraries full of books inside. I wanted to explore a bit more, but crash bugs were becoming more frequent and frustrating, and I knew I'd likely discard this world I'd generated for testing upon official release. Today, 9/13 a second version of the prerelease was uploaded as Jeb worked on the bugs discovered by so many weekend playtesters. The official release should be soon, hopefully. I look forward to playing a lot more minecraft with the bold new direction the game is headed in.

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Blog Gadgets

The Man Behind the Mines, Markus “Notch” Persson.

There's been a lot of news lately about the creator of Minecraft, best known online by his nickname “Notch.” As a developer, he's one of the respected pillars of video game culture for being all around decent to his many fans, and with some of the studios out there, the bar isn't set particularly high with regard to customer service. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Sony, EA and Activision.) With the possible exception of Valve's Gabe Newell, I'd go so far as to say that Markus Persson is the best loved industry figure by the vast majority of geeks. With his name in the news a little bit, it seems as though right now is the perfect time to talk about why.

Seeing as how I wore a similar hat and coat throughout college,
I also approve of his fashion sense.

Notch is the founder of Swedish game studio Mojang, and his phenomenal rise to success with indie smash hit Minecraft is well known. (I've even written about it once already.) As a designer and game developer with King.com, Notch had a “day job” working on titles like Wurm Online. What he really wanted to do was to branch out on his own and create something that he could support, and even sell himself. Inspired by Infiniminer from Zach industries and the roguelike game Dwarf Fortress, the combination of procedurally generated block-mining with crafting and monsters in a roleplaying-like setting got him started on Minecraft. Soon after, he quit his full-time job to work on it, a decision that paid off. The success of millions of sales from what started as a personal design project allowed Persson to found Mojang as a company, and to hire a few employees.

As months have gone by, the company has grown, and continued to update their flagship product while working on a follow-up game, an online collectible card game with board gaming elements called Scrolls. Much of the news these last few weeks has focused on Scrolls, as a controversy around the title of the upcoming release erupted online. Bethesda Softworks, the studio behind the Elder Scrolls series of roleplaying games, has had a pretty good relationship with Notch and Mojang. They've been complimentary of each other's work, as Mojang employees are huge fans of Bethesda games and vice-versa. The positive relationship between the companies made it extremely surprising when Notch got a letter from a Swedish Attorney's office demanding that the use of the word “Scrolls” be eliminated from the title of the new game or a lawsuit would be forthcoming.

Yeah, I was just about to confuse this logo with one for Skyrim.

Cue the torches and pitchforks. It is ludicrous that anyone could confuse “Scrolls” with :The Elder Scrolls,” or that use of a single word shared between titles constitutes infringement. Bethesda has been taking a beating in the press over the legal bullying of a much smaller company run by a highly popular developer. In fairness to Bethesda, they are owned by a media conglomerate called ZeniMax that aggressively defends the copyrights associated with their companies, and some of this can be boiled down to a simple overreaction. Copyright law is murky at best, and claiming to know for certain what is legal and what is not is a great way to get into a pointless and frankly boring debate without hope of resolution. What is clear, however, that where there is a case of infringement, a company is required to defend their intellectual properties in court, or forfeit the right to do so later.

While Notch hasn't kept quiet about the situation, he isn't exactly fanning the fires of the angry mob. He's been forthright about the whole thing, saying on his blog that it is “partly lawyers being lawyers, and trademark law being the way it is.” He'd offered before the lawsuit to make assurances that every possible step to avoid confusion between the franchises would be taken, including a promise to never put any words in front of “Scrolls” in the title upon the game's release and in any possible future expansions. Today, (August 17^th) Notch further made light of the situation by proposing a “trial by combat” between Bethesda and Mojang, with Quake 3 as the battlefield. Winner take all. I somehow doubt ZeniMax media will go for it, but I appreciate the nod to Tyrion Lannister implicit in the offer.

Casterly Rock approves of this proposal.

Markus Persson also recently celebrated a moment in his personal life with his fans, as he got married on August 13^th, and announced a special offer for anyone who still hadn't yet purchased Minecraft. On the weekend of his wedding, a 2-for-1 sale was available on the game, one copy purchased for yourself, and one for “someone you wub,” according to the site. Personally engaging the fan community and attempting to provide some additional content even when personal obligations and the time sink that comes with a one man operation turning into a multinational game studio continues to endear him to geeks. Events like this have converted many users who have pirated minecraft, which has no DRM besides an onscreen acknowledgement that the user is playing with a pirated copy, and lack of access to official update servers.

Notch has been forthcoming about his views on pirating games, indicating his beliefs that major game studios are approaching the problem using ineffective and potentially harmful strategies, while making it clear that he doesn't believe piracy is OK. A member of the Swedish Pirate Party, he's come out publicly saying that “pirated games do not translate into lost sales,” a position that is at odds with most of the gaming (and other media) industries. Though the piracy numbers on Minecraft are high, value is continually added to the game, and the fanbase is engaged on a personal level so that pirates can be converted into customers. As for the pirates that refuse to pay anything, no matter how small, for content, expensive and ineffective tools like DRM won't be a part of Mojang's strategy. In general, those schemes tend to frustrate legitimate customers while doing nothing to stop piracy, and Notch knows it.

Soon to be no longer the scariest thing in Minecraft. I might recommend
Googling "Endermen" for a preview of one of the upcoming monsters in 1.08.

Finally, Mojang has also been in the news about the current release of a mobile edition of Minecraft, the upcoming “Adventure Update,” and the upcoming full release of the transition from Beta to full game at the recently announced MineCon convention in Las Vegas this November. 1.08, the next update and most likely the last content update before the full release of Minecraft, promises to add a LOT of rpg, exploration and combat-type content. A redesign of dungeons, rewards, the combat system, new monsters and NPCs with their own villages are planned for the release. The most significant major content overhaul since the “Halloween Update” that added the Nether or “Hell” dimension, many fans of the game (including me) are eagerly awaiting an official release date. I'm sure that when the time comes, I'll be loading up the game and ready for a full review.

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Blog Gadgets

Roguelikes: The RPG Ancestors of Diablo. Free, Complex... and still relevant.

With the release of Diablo 3 on the horizon, I've done a lot of thinking. Some of it has been about the recent controversy regarding a persistent internet connection required for even single player, and the in-game shop where players can buy and sell in-game items for real money (Blizzard takes a cut, of course.) These issues are important to the geek community, but there is little I can say about those at this point that hasn't already been said many times by many other people. What the bulk of my thoughts has turned to is the history behind games like Diablo and Torchlight, from humble origins as games nearly as old as I am to the current state of massive releases that can inspire Geek Holy Wars like the one that rages on as we speak. Before there was Diablo, there was Nethack, and before there was Nethack, there was Rogue. These early descendents form a subgenre of RPG gaming on computers that is easily overlooked, which is a shame, because nearly every game in the category is free.

Rogue, text symbols only edition. I played this on my Palm Pilot years ago.

Rogue is remembered for giving the name to the category of RPG that it spawned, though when it released in 1980 it wasn't actually the first in its subgenre. The “roguelike” games are characterized by permanent character death, turn-based movement, typically text, ASCII or simple tile-based graphics, and randomly generated content for maximum replayability. “Random” is sort of a misnomer, as a truly random dungeon would inevitably have unplayable features like rooms with no possible way through, stairs or doors that go nowhere, etc. A more correct term is “procedurally generation” where content is randomized with a pre-set series of rules in mind making the dungeons and their inhabitants playable, if not necessarily “fair.” The first game in the roguelike genre was on the Apple II in 1978, called Beneath Apple Manor. It is worth mentioning that neither of the men developing Beneath Apple Manor or Rogue knew about each others' projects while making their games.

Early roguelikes were different from purely text-based dungeoneering games in that they had graphics, after a fashion. Symbols drew out rooms, the player was represented by the “@” symbol, and all manner of foul creatures from rats and slimes to vampires and medusae were typically represented by letters roaming the procedurally generated dungeons. Gold, food, armor, weapons, torches and magic items found in the dungeon all have their own symbols, and typically treasure is nearly as dangerous as the monsters. Items may be cursed, potions actually deadly poison, unidentified scrolls may have unpredictable effects... between the traps, creatures and rewards, sometimes the life of a character in a roguelike game is short and extremely unfair.

NetHack displaying a simple tileset translating the ASCII graphics to simple  image tiles.

Later games improved on the formula and added shops, more character options and depth to the gameplay. Angband, which was heavily influenced by Lord of the Rings, and Hack were early standouts for addition of new and fun features. Hack was followed up by NetHack (the Net added to refer to UseNet groups that distributed new versions of the game,) which enjoyed continued content updates from its original release in 1987 through 2003. In addition to refining the mechanics and systems behind this style of gaming, graphical tilesets became popular. A simple front-end could be added to the base game to translate ASCII symbols into specific graphical tiles to improve the graphics somewhat, though many players prefer the extreme “low-fi” option of playing without a tileset.

I'd be remiss in not mentioning a further offshoot of the roguelike genre that really deserves an article all its own. Dwarf Fortress (full title: Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress,) is, along with Infiniminer, the direct inspiration for Minecraft. Dwarf Fortress combines roguelike graphics, procedurally generated worlds and turn-based gameplay with city-building strategy in a uniquely complex and difficult game. Dwarves dig into the ground or mountains, fashion goods and living spaces, encounter and trade with or war upon other races, and have to deal with threats to survival that range from monsters to starvation and insanity. Someday, I'll be ready to give this game the sort of full writeup it deserves, but despite many hours of trying to get the hang of it, the learning curve has defeated me several times. I have time, however, as even though the game started development in 2004, the most recent update in March 2011 is still an early alpha stage of a game still being worked on.

Dwarf Fortress with a Tileset. Civilizations, trade, economy, even gravity
and erosion are modeled in this ludicrously detailed game.

Though I've played every game I've mentioned in this article with the exception of Beneath Apple Manor, there has been one in particular that has grabbed my attention. As I've said before, I love zombie gaming. Most roguelikes are fantasy, swords and wizards, but my current favorite doesn't have any of that. Rogue Survivor is a zombie apocalypse survival simulation where “treasure” is food, weapons, medical supplies, and fighting is necessary occasionally, but most of the time... you run and hide. There's a lot of work left to do on this game, but in its current state, it is a blast. Your survivor gets skills like “light eater” to consume less food, “hauler” to get extra inventory space, “leadership” to get others to follow, and you get a new skill each time the sun rises.

Rogue Survivor puts you against the constant threat of zombies, the need to scavenge for supplies and find a safe place to sleep. In addition to zombies, skeletons and zombie masters, players need to stay on their guard against biker gangs, other hungry survivors willing to murder for food and employees of the sinister CHAR Corporation. Exploring residences and stores can get some basic equipment, as can picking through what is left over by those unfortunate enough to be cornered and killed by undead. You can barricade buildings, explore the sewers, race to army supply drops when food gets short, hide your cache of goods from other scavengers... There is a lot of depth already in the unfinished version of the game available right now. My personal best time so far is 13 days, when my hardware store base was found by 2 zombie masters, a zombie lord and 5 shamblers and I died with an empty shotgun and six of the eight creatures at my feet.

A public park littered with corpses, a street with cars aflame, and a nearby
skeleton ready to attack in Rogue Survivor. 

Open source, free and infinitely replayable games with constant content updates that have inspired some of the greatest computer games of the current era. Roguelikes are unique in that the existence of the games they inspire doesn't make them obsolete, or any less fun. Most of them are labors of love from a single programmer/designer or a very small team, and I think that a lot of them will never be completely “done”. The time investment from character creation to probable death in a lot of these games is short, with the exception of dwarf fortress. These aren't 30 hour epics, but there's no padding to the content. It is pure, undiluted gameplay. You'll die and curse, and restart again. I'll play Diablo 3 when it comes out, but I'll almost certainly play my roguelikes long after I've become bored with it.

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Blog Gadgets

Review: Terraria - When Samus Aran and Simon Belmont Go to Minecraft.

Usually, I have some idea of what I'm going to write about daily in any given week, or at least a range of topics. Also, typically, if I'm interested in purchasing a computer game, I've followed the development cycle for some time and I'm anticipating the release date either to wait for official reviews, or damn the torpedoes, I'm buying it. Sometimes I get blindsided, and yesterday was one of those times – on both fronts.

A little independent game called Terraria launched on Steam yesterday, when I happened to be checking for sales. I watched the trailer for the hours-old release and something about it immediately grabbed my attention, as it appeared to be a fast paced platformer with RPG elements, with... what's this? Randomly Generated Worlds and... a crafting/building system? A quick couple Google searches later and my interest was piqued. What little information I could find mostly described Terraria as “Minecraft in 2D.” A side-scrolling retro platform action/RPG with the ability to dig up resources, craft tools and weapons, and build your own custom structures with a day/night cycle, nighttime being dangerous. Uh oh. Here we go again. With a price point of $10, I took a chance, and eight hours of my day mysteriously vanished.

The comparison between Terraria and Minecraft is natural, as much as the diehards in the emerging Terraria community across forum posts, message boards and wikis hate it. There are a lot of similarities between the two games, but to call Terraria a “Minecraft clone” is a misstatement, as though the two titles share many common elements, at their respective hearts they are about different things. Terraria owes at least as much to classic NES titles like Metroid and Castlevania as it does to the father of the sandbox building/exploration genre of games that is slowly expanding beyond creepers and pickaxes. Minecraft, and the soon to be released clone FortressCraft for XBox Live are, at heart, about building, with other elements present for variety's sake. Terraria is a game of exploring caves and dungeons, fighting monsters and getting treasure, with crafting and building as means to an end. I'll come back to this point later.

Terraria starts with a simple character customization process, with a few outfits and hairstyles and the ability to color hair, skin and clothes however you like on RGB sliders. Then, you select whether the world is to be small, medium or large (there is an end to these worlds, they are just massive) and let the program create it randomly for you. You start in familiar territory. Fresh world, a few basic tools, chop down trees to get wood, make a crafting bench and start cranking out slightly more advanced items, dig down to collect dirt, ore and stone... The first difference a player familiar with Minecraft will notice is that there are monsters in the daytime... and they are relentless. Luckily, you can make a simple sword quickly.

There is a LOT less digging and rooting about needed to find the sorts of cavern complexes and dungeons that are at best uncommon treats in Minecraft. As an RPG gamer, taking this bit of a game I already love, showing me why it was my favorite component of Minecraft, and putting it on center stage is how Terraria hooked me in. The dungeon exploration feels a LOT like Metroid Prime, except imagine being able to play that game with the ability to blast or tunnel through any wall or floor. Treasure chests have interesting (and sometimes very powerful) items, rare crafting resources and coins and they are worth the effort to dig them up. Breakable pots containing lesser treasures and crystalline Heart Containers a la Legend of Zelda round out dungeon exploration, which also features a wide variety of monsters, depending on how deep you go.

Screenshot of midgame combat from the Terraria Wiki.  Minecraft doesn't have lasers!

With all this dungeoneering, what's the point in building a house at all? It is just there “because I can?” No. The building system in integrated into the gameplay in a few key ways. First, building rooms or structures that are furnished and have walls (side walls/roof made of stacks of wood or stone and a “back” wall which is a texture placed on the background of the area) some light and a door will attract NPCs. You start with one NPC, The Guide who follows you until he is given a home and who dispenses “tips” which will clue you in on some basics. After fulfilling certain conditions, provided there is a space for them to live, others will move into your town/fortress/2D condo. Those coins I mentioned? Various NPCs selling goods and services including the Merchant, Nurse and Demolitionist show up and move in. Defending these structures and the NPCs in the game's random events is another twist on an already solid set of mechanics.

Some nights, a Blood Moon rises, which allows zombies to spawn faster, and lets them kick in the doors to your buildings and attack whatever is inside. Even more rarely, a Goblin army complete with mages who teleport through walls and thieves who pick the locks on your doors attack intent on wiping you and your NPCs out. These events are random, deadly and exciting. Boss Monsters very rarely spawn randomly, usually having to be sought out and defeated, but when they do, they will also attack your house/town. Boss Fights represent the mid/end game and from the relatively easy Eye of Cthulhu to the nasty Skeletron, they drop loot and crafting materials worth the effort to kill them.

The Dread Eye of Cthulhu, the easiest of the Bosses.

In addition to being a product launching with all of these features, the multiplayer component shown in the early “Let's Play” YouTube videos is working, and mostly stable with only a few latency related glitches scratching the paint of what, for many players, will be the draw for this title. Multiplayer is brutal, especially with fewer than four players, as there are MANY more monsters and they spawn faster. It allows for drop-in drop-out play, and virtually any game where users can change or build in the world tends to be more fun with friends. I have high hopes for multiplayer to be tidied up, as Terraria is promising regular balance and content updates, so we should also see more random events, more items, maybe more bosses and monsters too!

Overall, this is $10 incredibly well-spent, the retro sprite graphics and core gameplay has been smooth so far, bugs have been rare and mostly non-intrusive and the music, changing depending on where the character is and the time of day/night (with special themes for events and bosses) has been solid. It has a steep learning curve, but to be fair, so did the games it pay homage to. I think I'll be playing this one for a while.

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Blog Gadgets

Minecraft: of Building Blocks, Blocky Pigs and Exploding Cacti

I remember first reading about Minecraft. I was reading Penny Arcade, and they did a three comic series about the game. Usually, this only happens if a game has reached a certain point in gamer culture, that is to say, that a large portion of their audience will “get it.” If this is not already the case, community interest is piqued by the sudden exposure, and assuming a game is good, it'll take off from there. My own gaming tastes tend to line up with the Penny Arcade guys, so I looked around to see what the fuss was all about.

What's all this then?

At the time, the best way to experience minecraft legally without paying for it was to play the free version in your browser. I was prepared for the retro, blocky graphics so that didn't bother me. I saw a landscape, I could punch trees or dig in the ground, and seemed to have an infinite supply of various bricks I could set anywhere. I was baffled. THIS is what all the fuss was about? I guess I could dig around, build something with all those blocks, but WHY? I couldn't see the fun in it. I almost gave it all up right there.

This doesn't look like fun.

Something was bothering me though. The more I looked into it, the more insanely popular the game seemed, and it bothered me that I couldn't fathom why. It would be one thing if I understood why others liked it and decided it was just not for me, but I couldn't figure out why anyone would ever want to play this. I slowly realized that there is a big difference between the free version and the full version of the game, and some of the differences were intriguing. I noted how cheap the (then-alpha) version of the game was, took a deep breath and bought it.

Though I'm not precisely sure why, the importance of the scarcity of resources was the first thing that hit me. I no longer had unlimited blocks. I had to gather resources, and not having them, but knowing what to do with them took these blocks from meaningless objects, to something to be coveted. Crafting tools and other objects to affect the world, and knowing that at nightfall, the monsters would come added a sense of urgency to the game. I understood now, but I wasn't quite there yet. Hiding in a hole for long boring periods of nightfall was frustrating, not fun.

Just a few of the objects that can be made in-game.

I can honestly say that torches made me see the light, literally and figuratively. Now I could build, dig deep beneath the earth, there were different activities for day and night, and I was hooked. I merrily built forts and castles, mines and diverted waterfalls to my own liking. I was working on a sidewalk in broad daylight, when I suddenly heard a “Sssssssssss”... then there was a large explosion, and I was dead. WHAT THE HELL. I didn't know about the creepers before that... now it is kind of funny.

I've played around on multiplayer servers, built a lot of cool things and created four of my own singleplayer worlds to explore, as well as playing a little with the Survival Island scenario/save. I put Minecraft away for days or weeks, but I come back. One of the things that still gets to me, that I can't quite explain is the feeling of creeping dread when exploring a cavern. I play a lot of survival horror games, but somehow NONE of them match the terror of what is essentially a bouncing lego skeleton or spider around that next dark corner. I actually feel fear at these cartoony beasts made of blocks.

Yeah, we've all been there.

My creations would be boring to an internet that has access to full-scale reproductions of the USS Enterprise, or feats of architecture that boggle my mind, but I'm getting better... I've made a waterslide elevator in a mountain fortress, and almost have enough obsidian for my first trip to the Nether (no USB required.) I'm glad I got in on the ground floor, and NOW I know what all the fuss is about.

Boring or not, showing off what you make is part of the fun. My house in Minecraft.

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Blog Gadgets

I Pity The Fool.

 There's a reason that I've been making assurances for two whole days about the lack of a “gag post” for today's entry. Geeks and geek websites LOVE April Fool's day. Technology sites, gaming websites, webcomics, all love to come up with a phony image, new product/feature announcement or other humorous changes to their day-to-day web presence.

Social media is no exception, as YouTube gets in on the gag themselves, and your friends on Facebook, Twitter followers and other similar sites are likely to make phony updates to snare people who are both gullible and don't own a calendar. Don't get me wrong, I like these a lot, but some years, it feels like certain sites are trying too hard.

Mushroom Kingdom Hearts? Gmail Motion? Seven Dead in Protests in Syria? Wait... that last one wasn't funny.

I'm going to link to a lot of the sites I'm talking about, but April Fool's jokes are frequently posted for a day, and then removed from the web, so if you come across this article on April 2^nd or later, keep in mind that some of the links won't lead to anything funny. The usual suspects have turned out their annual April Fool's gags, and for me, two of the biggest and best have always been the World of Warcraft official Website, and ThinkGeek, the online shop for many, many assorted geeky products.

WoW has had some really good jokes over the years, announcing fake races like the Alliance Wisp, who is basically a sentient ball of light, and the Horde Ogre-Mage, who has two heads and is controlled by you and a randomly selected second player at the same time. This year, so far, we've seen three “announcements”, the first of which is most effective (and annoying) if viewed first.

• “Crabby”, a googly-eyed “Dungeon Helper” that pops up randomly on your screen to offer tips and advice is a great parody of Microsoft's “clippy”, the annoying paperclip assistant.
• The further announcement of the Tomb of Immortal Darkness dungeon, the gag being that you can't actually see anything (it is too dark), and “new gear” to give you tools to deal with the lack of light like a pet bat with a sonar ability, are almost as good.
• The fake “patch notes” for the next patch are potentially the funniest, but you'd only get the joke if you already play the game.

Oh, Crabby. Damn thing actually Rickrolled me with a link to Rebecca Black's "Friday."

Thinkgeek has announced a long list of new products for this year, from the fairly innocuous Star Wars Lightsaber popsicle, Angry Birds Pork Rinds, to the less believable “Original Shirt Plate” or Official Playmobil Apple Store Playset... and the big one, the USB Minecraft Nether Portal. These last two are the best of the joke products, in my opinion, and the concept and photography on both are examples of why I turn up on Thinkgeek once a year.

• The Apple Store Playset has a small Genius Bar, miniature Apple employees selling tiny iPods, iPads and iPhones, and a Keynote theater where Steve Jobs can announce new products, using a REAL iPhone as a screen for his presentation. Of course, there are optional add-ons (sold seperately.)
• The USB Minecraft Nether Portal features a desktop version of the square gateway to a blocky version of hell, where documents can be “filed where they belong” after being pushed through the mystic portal to the land of lava and zombie pigmen.

Who could forget the classic ThinkGeek Unicorn Meat? This year's entries are less likely to provoke threats of legal action.

There are countless pages of geeky April Fool's Day pranks out there this year, but these were some of the best, in my opinion. Were there any particularly awesome ones, from this year or years past that were your favorites? Discuss.

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