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Well Come. This journal is where I talk about my current projects, rant about my life, and collect responses to my work. Read, respond, enjoy. Or I will find you. The Coda: Check out all my works to date! |    | ||
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Comcast Must Die (Preferably In a Fire) [2:43pm]
Yep, I'm offline again. And this time it's not even yoyoing for a while then back, it's just dead -- no less than a week since comcast last checked our crappylow signal strength.
No SL work, no IMs, no TF2, etc... Until they get here to poke at in on SUNDAY. ARGH.
On the upside I managed to snag a rental copy of GTA4 to test the controls. (They changed them around a bit this time, more of a stock shooter mechanic.) Fortunately the classic style controls are still there, so I can in fact play... Although the new car handling sucks. If I can get the hang of that and shooting I might buy the game.
...Now to go stare at the wall for awhile. And/or the Venture Bros dvd I rented. Heard good things about that show, figured I should scope it out.
Edit: It's still not 100% stable, but it seems the evening hours are plausible for internet access. I'll have to skip tomorrow's telecommuting, though... from past experiences when Comcast flakes out it always flakes out during work hours, for some weird reason. You'd think it'd be the other way around.
Finished Venture Bros Season 1. This show is AWESOME. SO DAMN AWESOME. I'm gonna put in Amazon orders for the box sets. I'm a sucker for any show that plays with melodramatic cartoonish villanry.
annoyedTuesday, May 13, 2008
Inspiration Needs Better Timing [8:57am]
So.
Second Life announced they were gonna open up sales of a new kind of sim -- one with 1/4th the prims and script performance and cost of a normal sim, but 1/1 the size of a normal sim. Basically it's a big, light-use area that doesn't cost a lot of money to run, great for landscaping and simple projects.
I wanted to do an 'art project' type area for a long time, since I first joined SL. Something that exists only for its own sake, not specifically to push a product or provide a service. Jen's felt the same -- so we picked up two last night. She's going to be building a giant tree you can fly around and explore, ala Below The Root. I'm going to be building MSi, the Mad Science Institute, where bright young avatars learn how to create hideous mutants, giant shrink rays, and threaten the United Nations for a ransom of one million dollars.
I thought long and hard about my idea, about what I wanted to do. Weeks I poked at various ideas, none of them really fitting. It kept bubbling away on the backburner of my mind, trying to congeal into something workable. ...and unfortunately for me, inspiration always strikes at two times:
1. When I'm in or en route to the bathroom.
2. When I'm trying to go to sleep.
In this case, it was the latter, and boy did that screw me up. My brain will not listen when I say "Okay, okay, you're excited about the idea and you want to start popping off a dozen ideas for how to make it happen and what to do with it. That's very nice for you. Now shut up, I need to get to sleep!" End result? Poor sleep, waking up late, and going to work all burned out. I'm looking forward to getting more sleep soon to try and compensate.
Also, last night I saw Iron Man. I was pleasantly surprised -- this is probably one of the best comic book adaptations I've ever seen, with exactly the right mix of action, drama, and comedy. I'd rank it up there with Spiderman, X-Men 2, and Batman Begins in terms of comic book movies that do it the right way. (For examples of colossal fail look no further than Daredevil, Catwoman, Fantastic Four, and to a lesser extent the first Hulk movie.) If Marvel can keep it up, can keep cranking out quality stories with good acting, then the proposed Avengers movie might not actually suck. Wouldn't that be nice?
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Poking at Issue 12 [10:07am]
ObSL: My new security system that will be built into 7Seas is coming along great. My proof of concept last night worked well, even under insane and impossible non-real-world load tests. It won't be unhackable but it will be unfeasibly stupid to try and hack considering it's just a silly little fishing game. A good balance between practicality and security.
Now, then! City of Heroes, Issue #12. It hit the test servers yesterday. I've barely scratched the surface, since I plan to do most of my work on it after it goes live (there's new mission arcs and such that I'm holding off on) but so far, I'm quite impressed. The QoL changes are huge, the VEATs are awesome, and my City of Planner sessions so far have been a success.
Yesterday I primarily focused on doing builds. I've got two stormies planned, a Plant/Storm Troller and a Thugs/Storm MM, and both are really tight builds. They're basically pretty dull folks until level 20, due to the need of a travel power and fitness... but after that point the storms start rolling in and we get some good craziness going on. Thankfully, since COH's levelling curve has been smoothed out, getting to 20 is no longer the painful chore it once was. I got my Archery/Ice blaster I rolled on a whim all the way to 20 in only a few weekend sessions, and I anticipate the same here.
All in all, I have four new characters planned...
Heroic Flora Fairchild (Plant/Storm Controller), a reroll of Flora since there's no faction-switch in place. I'll have to RP out a bit to get her relocated, including some tiebacks to my VEAT, but once that's done I can start doing the wrath-of-nature schtick in full. One minor disadvantage is that she's too sweet and acceptable to have anybody go "I don't trust this 'former' villain!" Even moments where I try to make my heroes like Street-Spirit be a little unacceptably unheroic get dismissed by other players, since we're all playing pretty modern-age heroes rather than silver-age. But that's fine -- it's NPC reactions that matter more, the civilians who don't know Flora beyond what they heard on CNN about her evil, evil villainry. Makes narrative sense.
Operative Thirteen (Crab Spider VEAT), a purely-ranged and support build. I'll have more on his story as we go along; he's like the opposite of Flora, a hero who fell instead of a hero who mistakenly fell. Should be a deliciously real villain instead of an antihero, with some good meta-twists.
Unspecified Character #1 (Thugs/Storm MM), which I want to play mostly because I've wanted a Thugs MM for a long time and I hate all the other secondaries. I haven't picked a concept here, yet, although it'll definitely either be screwball or true-villain. I'm currently pondering a weather controlling robot stolen by a bunch of thugs from a Paragon lab, who they've reprogrammed to be a straight up G thang. Word to your manufacturer and/or refurbisher, compute dis, my locally oriented organic companion units. ...problem is making a good robot/gangsta costume. Not easy.
Unspecified Character #2 (Mace/Dark Brute), armed with a pipe wrench. I just wanna beat people to death with a wrench, is that so wrong? (I seriously considered a wrench-beating tanker, just for the sheer incongruity of heroically caving in someone's skull with industrial steel.) Probably some sort of Jason Vorhees type, if I can get a GOOD mask going and not just standard COH facepaint.
...just to be safe here, before anybody asks, I'm NOT a violent nutball in real life, thank you very much. (And you shouldn't have to ask that question, anyway, Jack. It's just a video game.)
Monday, May 5, 2008
You Can't Hide Secrets From The Future [9:25am]
So after a weekend of aimless, restless boredom and shuffling from shootan to teevee and such, a white-hat hacker found an exploit in 7Seas.
As horrible as that sounds, at least it gave me something to focus on, something to be energized by. I immediately started drafting up plans for version 2.2 of the game. I hate to publish an update so soon after the latest one, but if I carry this off according to plan, it should (in theory, as always) be the last update. After that you'd need some heavy duty packet sniffing tools to hack this thing, way overkill for a fishing game.
Of course, I don't believe in patching just to close a hole. So I polled 7Seas owners for new features they'd like to see, and have a swath of them (mostly low hanging fruit) ready to code in so that swallowing the update becomes more palatable. Levels above 5, gear vendor profit tallies, numerous contest board feeps, and local custom prizes are in the works.
There's some preproduction to puzzle through and code to work out tonight, and we're weeks away from a release, but I think this'll be a good step forward and not just a CYA move.
Of course, this didn't stop me from having an endless series of nightmares tonight about things going wrong in mysterious and terrible ways. Like being in a car ride with my parents, then getting KOed and waking up with blood in the car and them missing, and me having to drive the thing home myself (er, how? I can't physically drive their car, that's where I kinda knew it was a dream) and try to remember the road intersection where I lost them, and other horrible things. Not a fun night. In fact, generally I never have GOOD dreams. Either I don't have dreams (yay!) or I have ones full of frustration and feeling helpless (boo.) Yay me.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Games! Other Than Fishing [8:52am]
Finally, some new content to post about! Yesterday was a pretty big gaming day for me. Here's my first impressions of various things. (not 'reviews' since, well, 1-2 hours of hands on experience is not a review.)
Zero for Rock Band - Being a 90s wunderkid and old time Smashing Pumpkins fan, seeing Zero on the hacked playlist of upcoming Rock Band tracks was a joy to behold. Playing the song itself, not QUITE as joyful, but nonetheless fun. Problem is that while I know every tone and inflection of that song inside and out, I can't seem to make my voice do what the game wants me to do to reproduce the lyrics. I don't fail out, of course, but I was hoping to have maybe 1-2 combo breakers, not 4-5. I may need to practice this one more.
Double Dragon - It's on Wii's Virtual Console, and I have fond memories of this as a kid. Problem is, I've become somewhat of a brawler connoisseur since then, and it's clear this game is a pretty crappy brawler. The "levelling up" mechanism's not bad, but punches are nearly useless since the other guys get just as many licks in on you as you get on them -- there's no defense mechanism and the chances of them hitting you midcombo seem to be random. When you finally get an over the shoulder throw, a key crowd control technique in a brawler game, you can't actually throw people AT other people. Weapons are vastly overpowered, to the point where the obligatory punker girl enemy type is a joke... knock down the first one, take the whip they always come with, and just keep hitting A. Etc, etc. (I should write an entry about brawlers at some point.) Still, it's got some value as a nostalgia title, and the music still rocks.
Mario Kart Wii - It's Mario Kart! ... and that's it. Kinda bare-bones, no frills. Which is fine, since I never owned it on my SNES, and I never owned an N64/Gamecube, so this is all new to me. Problem is controls. I like the FEEL of the wheel but my hands are just too small to use it properly; in order to launch a weapon I have to reposition my left hand, then I can't move it back to the drift button easily. Same goes for the classic controller, where I need to reach up for the mushy L trigger and then shift back. I'm going to try wiimote only -- I think without the thick wheel frame in the way that might work pretty well for me. Until then I reserve judgement and REALLY wish developers would let us remap the damn controls in their game. (And I know one or two of you guys read this blog, so pass that up the food chain, mmkay? Disabled gamers are gamers too!)
Team Fortress 2 Gold Rush - AWESOME MAP. So chaotic, so wonderous, and actually quite balanced as far as we can tell with a zillion medics running around. There's plenty of pyro routes (although too often I have no way to get there without crossing vast open terrain) and spy hidey holes. Being an engy is harder since any good sentry position will get steamrolled quickly, but hey. This one's got promise, way more than scout/soldier dominated Badlands does. ("Let's make points 2/4 be inaccessible to any class other than the jumpers! Yeah!")
Grand Theft Auto 4 - Actually, I didn't buy this. I'm worried about control issues. I can't do tactical shooters on Xbox controls; I fumble around trying to move my hands between triggers and twin sticks and generally muck it up. I'm going to wait until I can rent this and test it out before I drop coin on it. Also, like past GTAs, odds are it'll be initially fun until I hit a mission I can't complete because I lack skillz -- Bomb Da Base type missions. If there's a PC version I have a chance at getting a trainer/cheat in place AND proper controls, but so far none's announced. Guess we'll wait and see.
Feels good to finally have something new to talk about other than SL. Huzzah!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A Sense of Proportion [9:06am]
One of the good things about organizing my thoughts at night and writing up blogposts ahead of time for quickposting in the morning is that I can focus on the end of the day wrapup. One of the bad things about that is it tends to localize my thinking to what I've been dealing with in the last three hours, which usually stinks since that's when I handle most of the day's issues.
So yesterday, to paraphrase and omit names, I had this discussion.
Customer: "I hate your stupid update system. I don't wanna have to log in and replace parts of my fishing game because you sent me an update. In fact, I don't want you sending me updates. It's a pain and you're treating your customers badly. Die in a fire."
Me Thinking: "Obviously we're not gonna satisfy this jackhole since we have to release updates, it's the nature of the beast, but maybe I can come up with some non-push based method..."
Me Talking: "Okay, I'm putting a vote out to fishing area owners to see which of our two update methods they'd prefer -- being sent updates automatically, or being able to manually pull updates whenever they want. The proposal's up now in our group notices, so vote for whichever one would make you happy."
Customer: "Both are stupid. I want the game to magically update itself without me lifting a finger, despite that not being possible in SL with any sort of reliability or security."
Me: "*sigh.*"
Stuff like this really gets under my skin, when I've got one loud and angry customer. I always have this lingering fear (based on a certain level of reality) that one pissy person is all it takes to wreck everything, if they decide to treat it like some kind of holy war and rally all their friends to grief you and complain and spread bad word about your product to potential customers. So even though this one dimwit is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of other customers we have, it does raise the 'ol blood pressure.
Now, because I prefer to KNOW when I'm being unreasonably stupid myself, I know this is in fact unreasonably stupid. It's just one guy. I gotta have a sense of proportion -- we have dozens of happy, happy people a day who talk about how much they love the game. One complaint does not mean the whole thing is a disaster. One complaint out of that pool means it's a smashing success. But when someone's all up in your area like that, I have a hard time FEELING like we're a success, even when I know damn well we are.
Just as I've had to train myself to only do things I want to do and not do things that are expected of me, I need to train myself to just let go and admit not everybody can be happy and that's okay and it's not going to ruin me to leave someone unhappy. It's all a matter of scale, weight, balance. Believe in what's important to you and let the rest slide.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Doctor Who in 5 Minutes [8:57am]
I could rant here about how certain customers kept bugging me in the middle of DJing with unreasonable and pissy IMs about 7Seas, but frankly, reporting that I'm tired of being a support monkey has been the only thing I've BEEN reporting for the last two weeks in this LJ.
Instead, I give you ( A Summary Of An Unfortunately Large Number Of Doctor Who Plots. )
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Bored Now [10:35pm]
DJing random stuff, point winamp/itunes/etc to XXXXX
Edit: Awwdone.
Friday, April 25, 2008
The Customer Service Tango [9:39am]
...is being danced by someone else now.
We've moved almost all CS duties to "7Seas Sass", a support account. Frankly, yesterday's post of woes was apparently a spike -- things have dulled down considerably since that one bad day... but it can't hurt to get this stuff off the shoulders of your lead software developer and onto someone with some PR skills. So, any broken rods or other needs I forward along, then I get back to work. So far it's played out nicely.
The upshot of this is I have time to devote to new features, to expand beyond the fishing basics we launched with. For instance, collaborating with the 7Seas Social Chat group, I came up with an entirely new contest mode -- Team Fishing Challenges, where teams of 3 can add their scores together on the board. Included in the fishing area kit (and a board update) will be four clusters of sittable crates, Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow Team based.
That by itself would only be "okay" but let's add this to those motorboats I've been coding... now we have a purchasable boat that seats three which acts as a team! You can rename your team, and give it a logo to put on a flag on the back of the boat, too. So instead of being Team Blue, you can be Team Skullcrush. (There's a 10 character limit.) Plus you can sail anywhere within the sim and fish, and still be in the contest, since the boat's got a built in fish server!
I think things like this -- as well as our nameable, wearable pet fish, our arcade game integration, our 1-prim fish based aquariums, our insta-franchisable fishing areas, our casual baitless fishing rods, and catchable clothing items (to be expanding) really set is apart from the competition. Not in a "WE RULE" way, but in a "We're different" way. We focus on different areas. For instance, the other systems have more emphasis on cash tournaments networked across all of SL -- we aren't doing that, and have no problems coughing up that marketshare because it's not something we're interested in. Same goes for a more "hardcore" leveling curve with dozens of levels, it's not something we want to do, even though we know there's certainly customer interest in it. Just not our style.
(Edit: Someone in an earlier comment pointed out that NR doesn't actually have a built in cash option. I didn't know that. My only experience with NR was three hours of rod fishing a few months ago. Any similarities are, as I've pointed out, due to how all fishing games are kinda the same at a conceptual level. If anything we WANT to be different, for reasons noted above.)
Of course, my life is not all SL, no matter what this blog seems to look like at the moment. I'm also keenly awaiting the Teamfortress 2 and City of Heroes updates, but not much to say about them until I can get my greasy little paws on 'em and play. So stay tuned for rants about Crab Spiders and Kritzkreigs in the future.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The Business of Fun... [8:38am]
...is wrought with peril. Which is one of the reasons I never went pro; you're less beholden to the nightmare if you've got no monetary stake in it, and are providing no ongoing service. Something I should've kept in mind before launching 7Seas.
Yesterday's problems were twofold. One, a rash of non-deliveries last afternoon for no explainable reason. If the entire system shut down, or if EVERYBODY was getting non-deliveries, okay, that would be our fault. But nope. For a few minutes at a stretch it wouldn't work, then it would, then not, and so on. Very selective, very random. The only possibilities are that SL's HTTP broke or SL's inventory systems broke, both of which are highly possible possibilities. And then the problem up and went away again for no explainable reason, leaving me with 30+ IMs of delivery requests. I can cope with bugs that are my own fault... but dealing with the unstable, unreliable platform we're on is a pain in the ass.
Second, we got copied. Someone made a version of our LOLCatfish for sale. Seriously, it's a cat swimming backwards wearing scuba gear holding an object, and they're selling it for L$500 -- twice the cost of our most expensive fishing rod. They didn't directly copy our build, but the CONCEPT is so damn close it's hard to believe it's a coincidence. Funniest part? Creator told us that they "never copy", and that this was a "custom order requested by a customer" and we should "always investigate content theft." ...oh, and she "wasn't taking it down and would keep selling it" and the name of the guy who supposedly tricked her was "privlidged(sp) information". Then when we pointed out the obvious, er, contradiction in encouraging us to investigate the matter while refusing to help us out, she started wailing about harassment and lawsuits and we just ignored her after that.
We're not actually going to pursue legal action here... probably wouldn't work out and certainly wouldn't be worth the time, money, and headaches involved. But we can damn sure let folks know this backwards snorkelling cat is not ours and they shouldn't think we authorized it. Let the market decide, after that.
The old saying goes "your ideal job is to take what you love to do and make money off it." Wrong. As Cypress Hill put it, "It's a fun job, but it's still a job." The key is to structure your approach to it so the fun overtakes the job aspect. And after WingFling's done, I'm thinking that's what we'll need to do. I'll probably still be the focal point for these complaints, but I don't have to be the customer service representative; we can find other approaches, like putting them into a workflow for Jen to deal with, coding systems to autoprocess some of the simpler requests like "I need a new rod", etc. We'll find solutions. I am not just gonna sit here and stew in the suck much longer. I wanna have FUN again.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Winding Down and Up Simultaneously [9:27am]
Crazy, crazy weekend.
Fri/Sat I was mostly working on my new Blaster in City of Heroes. I've got Dusty, but I don't really count her as a pure Blaster... she has an awesome secondary I never get to use, since nobody wants to wait for me to set up an elaborate series of tripmine traps and caltrops and stealth based distance snipes and pulls when they can just ZERG into the fray and kill everything in seconds. So keeping that in mind I made a Blaster that pretty specifically hammers at the enemy with damage upon damage and doesn't do anything else. The only secondary powers I'm taking are local area control -- Ice has some fun tools for that, with Ice Patch and Chilling Embrace to ensure things around me are massively debuffed (shiver to cut damage, cold to slow attacks, patch to knock 'em down, etc).
So far... it has been a DELIGHT. I have access to Aim and Build Up, two tools I never had before thanks to playing an Ar/Dev, and they are a joy. I can't wait to try them out on the Archery nuke (which is a sufficient hybrid between Full Auto and a true Blaster Nuke, in that it doesn't drain me but does great area damage). On top of all that, I'm playing a ghost character, which I've always enjoyed from past MUCK type experiences.
In SL, things are looking up. There were still bricked rods and such but those tapered off as the weekend went along and I never had capped IMs. People are settling in to their new 2.0 lives and doing well. Item non-delivery is still happening but to a very small extent, and usually due to asset server failures beyond our control. I did have to deal with someone claiming that the game was haxx0rzed because they got a series of misses and Common/Uncommon catches with a L5 rod, but I specifically coded NOT to accept any external input that could alter your lookup tables, sooo... *shrug* a bad run is a bad run, okay? Deal with it. Oh, and this picture is awesome.
Jen's been on the end of her rope setting up WingFling, which is her personal 2.0 hell... but even that will smooth out as the week goes on, it sounds like, and good for it. We've got a DJ'd party set up for next Sunday from 4-6pm SLT, which should be fun. I plan to load up on every song I have that mentions wings or flying. Including Mister Mister.
Once everybody settles in and we get back to normality we can resume doing regular 7Seas waves of new fish and items, which is a considerably hassle-free concept compared to doing system upgrades. Heck, last night I managed to make the craftable motorboat that'll be in Wave 4, thanks to a free script given to me by Serenity! After some tweaking it works like a charm. I'll patch a fishing server into it tonight then go looking for ocean sims to test it in.
And on the horizon? Rock Band albums (although none I wanna download until Nevermind, at least they're coming), Teamfortress updates, beach vacation next month, COH Issue 12, and a less harried SL experience. Hurrah!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Continuing Adventures of Upgrade Hell [1:52pm]
Last night I got capped IMs (30+) within three hours.
I decided to go in an even further idiot-proof the hat. Now it does a silent check to make sure you have your 2.0 rod out before it offloads its stats and shuts down. I should've done that from the start; I think my optimism was assuming people wouldn't patently ignore the instructions being given. Hopefully, that'll cut down on things.
Problem is, ye old "email is COMPLETELY broken" instead of "email is unreliable" bug has resurfaced and nearly every old rod is shut down -- and some folks haven't upgraded their fishing areas, either... so that factor may offset any leniency I gained by adding more idiot proofing...
One week. I tell myself: One week of this mess and then things should be sorted out. ENDURE.
I had a fun adventure in commerce yesterday. I think I might've posted about this before, so pardon doubles, but Amazon.com gave me $50 in pity money since I own an HD-DVD drive. GameCrazy gave me $20 in cash for selling Mass Effect 360. That means that I have come out $10 on top, since I paid $60 for Mass Effect 360 to begin with -- I am now the owner of a Mass Effect PC preorder and a $20 MS Points card for Rock Band purchases. 'tis a weird, wild, digitally downloaded world we live in, folks.
Speaking of digital downloads, go buy Sam & Max Season Two. And Season One if you haven't already. Go ahead, I'll wait. You can get them at TellTale Games. They are AWESOME. Supremely awesome. And what's more awesome? Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People is being developed by them as ANOTHER great episodic point and clicker, this time for the Wii and for PC! I love it -- a small studio makes a killing on entirely digital downloaded games in a genre people claimed has been dead for ten years. SCORE. Makes me believe I can be successful, too! ('cause I am. Totally. Fishing has paid in return for all the frustration it causes.)
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Welcome to Upgrade Hell [11:52pm]
7Seas 2.0 is upon us. And that means, like the last rod upgrade cycle, manually replacing people's rods when they brick them.
The vast majority of users upgrade just fine, and have no issues. Our new system is easier to follow, does a lot of hand holding, and has some idiot-proofing (as much as we could code). But nevertheless, there are plenty of people out there -- native english speakers, even! -- who are not going to read instructions or will read them wrong and will brick their rods. This is expected. And there's even the chance that despite working for 90% of folks, SL is somehow screwing up when they upgrade.
It's a pain in the ass, but this is how it goes. It's the price of doing business and I'm prepared to pay it -- one week of hell and dozens of IMs, but after that, everything will settle down and we will be free 'n clear. 2.0 has not had a misdelivery yet, and even if it did? We can still do manual sends. But presumably, we'll be having far, far less of them now that we're ditching the Linden's craptastic email code.
(The one thing I don't appreciate, and we've already have had two of, are people who send me an IM dripping with hate and swear words because their rod bricked. Like we poured sugar in their gas tank, or something, when it says right there in the instructions that your stats are in no risk, that we WILL replace your rod. I swear, this is the primary problem with customer service... aggrivated entitlement complexes. And because we're in customer service, we have to smile and grit our teeth even when someone's proclaiming the sexual deficiencies of our mothers over a silly little fishing rod. Jerks... but. Again. Cost of business. We cope.)
I look forward to the weeks ahead, when the 7Seas problems taper off, and it becomes something that largely manages itself. Then I can start turning my attention to game upgrades, new games, or just RELAXING and doing other things.
Like Rock Band! My god, today's tracks ruled. A last minute surprise Motley Crue track, their first new one in a decade and it's world premiering in a video game, not on an album. How cool is that? Also great are Message in a Bottle (yet more Police) and Blondie's "Call Me", which I got a real rush singing. Good times... good times.
Dark times now -- bright times to come. This is the way of things.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Falling Sakura Petals @ 29'F / 4e | !4e [8:51am]
What a weird spring.
Spring sprang last week, when 2-3 days of nicely 60-70'F weather caused the trees to go "Oh, gooody, time to bloom!" Very petty. Then we got nailed with a WEEK or overcast and occasionally stormy damn cold weather, which wrecked that completely. Now my car is parked under a beautiful pink shower of petals... and it's below freezing out there. What a shame.
If you wanna read way too deeply into this, that's a bit like my life right now. Some initial joy and hope, crushed by cold hard reality, but with promise to eventually, slowly, get back to normal. The 7Seas project was an amazing idea squished by the suckitude of SL and is now on track to getting stabilized. There were even micro-moments of "Yay! Wait, ack! Ahwell..." within the project itself -- this weekend I got a nice warm feeling from prepping all the 2.0 components for distribution, gave some to a few beta testers, and WHAMMO, game crushing bug! But it's one we can fix, so, in time, it'll be okay.
My goal is to have this thing out of my hair by the end of the month. No more IMs, no more missing items, no more failed upgrades. Just COAST on our success and let the team make some new fish and we simply enjoy things. I know we can get there. It'll just take time and headache pills.
In amusing news, Amazon.com gave me $50 store credit out of pity since I bought an HD-DVD drive through them. I felt it only appropriate to spend it on the PC version of Mass Effect, which was announced two days after I bought my clunky 360 version. What's more, I'm selling back my 360 version for $20 in credit at the local game shop, so in the end, I MADE $10 profit off this thing! Ha ha! In your face, universe!
In joyful news, the Yuri's Night DJ session at Extropia ruled. I always get a good, responsive crowd at Extropia that doesn't mind some of the weirdness I play for them. Nobody really batted an eye at the COPS song from Sam & Max that Shadur dared me to play, for instance, and they're always up for some Johnathan Coulton. I still feel I'm tapped for "party music", though... the majority of my library is angry rock or hiphop or creepy weirdness or chillout. Very little 'upbeat'. I might need to go on another buying rampage for some stuff that's upbeat but still very ME. Otherwise we're gonna go into reruns, and that's no fun.
EDIT: Since Amazon had it dirt cheap, I decided to sink more potential Idiot Tax into D&D 4th Edition. Player's book only, for now. As much as D&D's mechanics got in the way of what I was trying to do in NWN, I still like it in concept.
Notably, 4e has an online service that lets me play despite having no local friends. For adults with lives who can't arrange a weekly cheetos-and-dew powered session with D&D geeks, this is mandatory for the modern age. A lot of folks have railed against the monthly fee but for people like me with a steady job who feel well orchestrated free time is more valuable than money, it'd be worth it. We'll see how it goes.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Boring and Annoying [11:05pm]
I haven't LJed in much detail today because I have nothing to talk about except the continuing woes of 7Seas... Linden Labs bungled in a huge way and email communication between objects died. Which effectively shuts down 7Seas entirely.
We're gonna migrate to Shadur's new tech next week which has no email component whatsoever, but until then, we're kinda boned here and reliant on the Lindens to stop sucking so much. But given they have sucked at a consistent and steady rate for the last three weeks, I have no faith.
Other than that, it's just games, hanging out, and tomorrow night's DJing at Extropia's Yuri's Night. Not much worth talking about aside from the ranting, which I've subjected you to enough lately, so Twoof out.
The Lord Is My DJ, I Shall Not Want [12:01am]
It's weird, but it's true.
Whenever I'm in a particular mood... angry, frustrated, depressed, in need of contemplation, in need of encouragement... I throw my iPod or iTunes on random. And invariably, the RIGHT songs spin up. It'll give me soothing music, or exciting music, or inward-looking music, or nostalgic music from my teenage years... whatever the situation calls for.
Sometimes I prompt it by picking a playlist, say, "I'll do my 90s list" or "I'll do my quiet list" but even within those lists, it seems to nail exactly the right tracks, leaving out the 'meh' ones I might've put in there. It just... happens.
Fate, chance, divine intervention, the almighty hand of Steve Jobs, who knows. I'm just glad that when I gotta groove out, there's a random number generator seemingly on my side.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Tweaking Out [9:07am]
Tune, adjust, tweak... I had an actually satisfying night of code fixes last night as opposed to a frustrating one. ( MASSIVE SL TECH GEEKERY AHEAD, so eh, LJ-cut. )
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The Upside [9:51am]
As much as I may rage in this journal about technical glitches and software engineers who couldn't SELECT their own ass even if you INSERTed a primary key straight up their index table, it's important to know that I am, in theory, happy.
I tend to be very focused on 'the present'. And by 'the present' I mean 'the last three hours or so'. So if you catch me when I'm fresh off a couple frustrations, I am rather pissy. If I had some time to relax and play some Rock Band or watch a good movie, I am rather cheerful. Any ranting I do is really just venting, getting the steam out, not declaring my entire life to be a succession of failure and horror. (That was 2006, thanks.)
In the LONG RUN, on the WHOLE, OVERALL, and other CAPITAL LETTERS, things are going great. I'm a successful indie game developer who got bumped into a higher tax bracket this year (yay, grumble), who has the hearts and minds of the fans despite the technical hurdles (yay, grumble), and so on. But the grumbles are just grumbles. The yay is good, solid yay.
So, that said, last night I gave up on SL and waited for it to stabilize while I went and watched the Series 4 opener of Doctor Who. It was a fun little romp, and I'm intrigued at the idea of a companion who does not want to have sex with the Doctor, for a change. (Remember when that was the standard, not the exception to the rule..?) I am a bit concerned at the generic action packed slapstick kiddy nature of things, but I was concerned at the start of Series 3 and then it coughed up awesomeness like Blink, so I'll wait and see. Same with Torchwood Series 2 ending with a good portion of the cast dead and industry rumors it's going to be retooled to be a kid's show.
(This is a classic problem with scifi/comics/etc. on television, I've noticed. They start out aimed at kids with simple stories and simple villains, they get popular with young adults and yuppies, they get a 'retooling' to be more sophisticated, then promptly get dumped one or two seasons later because they aren't hitting the marketable kiddie demographic anymore. Sometimes the inverse happens, and they get dumped because they aren't hitting the marketable young adult demographic anymore. I wish the shows I love would just pick a niche and run with it, honestly. See also: League, Justice -- Superheroes, Legion Of -- and Titans, Teen, to an extent.)
Also watched a visually stunning but completely predictable french CG movie called Renaissance. Really amazingly well done, but anybody who's read TV Tropes for more than ten minutes could call the game by the first quarter. Still, enjoyable.
Anyway, the point is, the end result of media wackiness? I felt much better by the time I went to bed despite earlier RAGE. Like I said... very focused on the present.
And there's even some upshot in the SLaverse, too -- early work on the HTTP based communications methods for 7Seas is promising. I think it's going to remove one of the two points of failure in our system, namely llEmail. I can't do anything about SL's transaction server being made of ass and poo but at least the bit we CAN control will be fixed and gear delivery problems will be a thing of the past. I probably won't use this for the actual catching of fish; a 5% failure rate's not so bad there (we can supply missing fish) and the existing system will be faster, more immediate-gratification. But we CAN use it for fish at some point if it just gets too weird out there.
Also, I'm likely gonna resume my Twitter account to help with my SL projects, notably trivia. Feel free to friend me, or follow me, or whatever term you crazy kids use with twitter.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Random Doings and Goings On [9:00am]
I have no overarching theme or thing to discuss. I just haven't updated in awhile and feel the need to.
SL™'s been yo-yoing, as usual, with one impressively hard crash Friday night on into Saturday. Fortunately I'd already arranged to watch movies with an RL friend all of Saturday, so that took care of that, but it did delay the launch of Freestylers:Rock again. Good news is: Launched. Done. I can put that one in the bank and call it a day.
That leaves only the Trivia game left unfinished in the arcade project. Problem there is that I still need trivia. Lots of it. Copyright free or creative commons, because if I have to resort to buying trivia from a service, I have to lock the notecards so nobody can expand their trivia selections manually. I've already tapped my friends, my LJ, and myself and it's still not nearly enough, so this project is on hold until I can find somewhere I can MINE FOR TRIVIA more. All suggestions (other than "Durr, copy questions from insert popular game here illegally, durr") welcome.
7Seas seems stable. I haven't had many IMs about it other than SL™-induced non-deliveries, from people who SAW the big flashing neon "Do not perform transactions, SL™ is borked" signs and went ahead and tried to buy fishing gear anyway. *sigh* In a way I wish that Linden Lab™ would shut down SL™ more often... leaving it open for business when everything is broken and screwy just makes life harder on all of us. ...anyway. Point of this paragraph should be "7Seas Seems Stable" and that's a good thing. We still have massive goodwill from our fanbase, and thank god for that.
With one project in the can and another swimming semi-easily I can now turn to more leisurely projects. Specifically, DJing. I'll be DJing at Extropia's "Yuri's Night", celebrating the first man into space, this coming Saturday at 6pm SLT/Pacific. I put together a good space themed playlist including a few first-run tracks.
I am hitting a wall for "upbeat/danceable" songs, though... my library seems heavily focused on contemplative, chillout, aggro rockout, hiphop, etc... all stuff nobody wants to hear from a DJ in Second Life™. I gotta expand the roster, but never at the expense of buying songs I myself wouldn't care to listen to... I'd rather not play a bunch of clubber electronica I have never heard of. People hire me because I pick the oddities other DJs don't pick. I just wish I had more party songs amongst those oddities.
Tried making a pinball game, now that Havok 4 is launched. This may be a futile task since I doubt I can do it any better than Meteor Storm, the only other pinball game in SL does... with its non-moving flippers (since you can't do bat-whacking-ball style physics, even under H4) and too-large game table and so on. It's not worth doing if I can't do it better. If I can find a good fake-but-looks-right solution for flippers and bumpers I may go with it, though.
Gaming news... TF2 updates hit next week yays, City of Heroes I12 launches soon which is good because I'm in the mood to level some new concepts and new powersets compared to my tired standbys and already-kitted-out level 50s, Rock Band fanboys have severe entitlement fixations, no other major games coming out soon I care much about as we enter the summer doldrums.
Aaand... guess that's it.
Edit: Forgot to mention, Jen's SL™LJ™ has several entries with links to press articles about 7Seas. Good reads. I'm glad we've got the hearts and minds of our fishers, despite the bugs and troubles. Since I only see the backend code of the project, not the frontend fishes and social, all I see are the problems -- all they see are the awesome.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Legal Tomfoolery [9:34am]
Checking through the linden blog for details on the H4 rollout, I noticed this:
Introducing the Second Life Brand Center / Guidelines for Using Linden Lab's Trademarks
It amazes me, the depths of fail the Lindens are capable of. Okay, I understand the legal need to defend trademarks, but we're talking about them demanding things that are not technically possible or put a financial onus on people. Best example, if your blog/game/whatever is called "SL Foo" you are in violation. If it's "SL Foo Bar" you're OK. Huh? Why are two words fine and one word not? And let's say you have www.slfoo.com. Is Linden Labs (oh, I'm sorry, that's a violation; I meant Linden Lab™) going to pay for your domain name registration changes? After all, without the community of builders, they have nothing going for them. Their attempts to bond with Big Corporate Media have largely gone ignored in favor of community content (see Armidi vs. Armani). Continually urinating on your only real source of income is not wise.
My faith in SL (I'm sorry, I meant InSL™) has dropped considerably in recent weeks. I have no intention of starting any more in-depth projects InSL™ anymore. When I feel like working on them, I'll extend my current ones (arcade/fish), and I'll build new stuff for my own use like my DJ gear or maybe a void sim build, but damned if I'm gonna whip up any NEW franchises or bold new concepts. The platform is unstable, codewise and lawwise. It's not worth the headaches to try and be innovative when your mandatory business partners have all the common sense of an emu on acid.
So. What else is going on in my life, other than whining about SL™..?
Very little. Enjoying Rock Band, as usual. Shootan people in TF2. But mostly, trying to relax and rest, reading comics, doing low-key stuff. I've been poking around forums and websites, trying to ignore Fanboy Rage and just find the neat things about net culture I appreciate... like this funny outtake reel from the Muppet Show. (You'll wanna watch that soon before Henson Corp yanks it from youtube, I think.)
Between frustrations before and after the work bell, I need some very sparse and simple activity to unwind with. (And a good blog to express the angry bits, so I can vent.) My hope is that in a month's time this mess will be behind me and I can find something else to focus on.