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A few of us at FLS went to see Iron Man late last night. We really enjoyed the movie, but I’m going to briefly talk about The Hulk. They showed a preview of the next Hulk movie, and watched it reminded me of playing The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. The brief fight scenes they showed looked like they were taken straight out of the game - I recognized a variety of unlockable moves. Anyways, who knows if the movie will be good, but there’s one thing I want to see in a Hulk movie: HULK SMASH.

I went through and upgraded the site and added a bunch of security features, but I didn’t have anything worth saying anyways. Also: still lazy.

Which is why I haven’t posted much this month. I really don’t have any time on a workday, as my typical day goes like this: wake up - jog - get ready for work - breakfast - drive to work - work - drive home - jog - dinner - miscellaneous task - sleep. Lately, that miscellaneous task is going over one section of my ION presentation a night. I have a long commute, leaving there’s no time left in the day. So, I need to queue up things I want to post in order to reliably get anything on the site during a the work week.

So, I’ll try to build up some stuff over the weekends.

I managed to blow up the site in the middle of an upgrade tonight. The downtime was pretty short, but I took the opportunity to make a few changes. I changed the permalink structure, which means I may have broken some links in the process. I also tossed in a picture of the Retarded Alien in the header… it’s from a quick flash project I did a couple years ago.

While I was digging through the site, I took a look at some of the visitor metrics and I was rather surprised by the quantity of visitors. I thought Darius and Joe were the only readers! Of course, just because someone found their way here doesn’t mean they actually read anything.

Earlier I mentioned that I’m indebted to Gothic 2. That’s because the newbie experience was so awful that it drove me to Gamefaqs, where I found this Survival Guide by alterEgo. In the guide, the author expressed his distaste for WASD and explained how he used ESDF instead. Reading his explanation made perfect sense, and I felt obtuse for never thinking about it before. Look at the keyboard. Where are your fingers? My left hand rests on A, W/S, E and R/F. There’s a little notch on the F key for identification. Placing my fingers on ESDF requires almost no adjustment whatsoever. Now, if I moved my fingers over to WASD, I’m putting a crink in my wrist. My arm is no longer straight and it’s not as comfortable to hit the keys.

I had wrist pain for years when I played PC games, and I coudn’t play WASD games well because I had to play cautiously. I severely restricted my playtime because I was looking at long-term injuries, and I avoided quite a few games. Then I switched to ESDF and it went away almost immediately. That’s huge, and it’s hard for me to understate my enthusiasm for anything that is not WASD. It makes me wonder how many other people have the same problem, because WASD is unnatural and jams up the wrist. RTS games are still an RSI risk, but that’s generally from requiring constant mouse movement and an absurd number of mouseclicks (even with hotkeys).

I’m still waiting to find a game that offers an ESDF control set, even if it isn’t the default, but I’m not keeping my hopes up. WASD is deeply ingrained in games, and it’ll be hard to get rid of even if it shouldn’t exist. Where else does this happen in our industry? What simple controls adjustments could we make to improve the general ease of gameplay and quality of life?

I’ll bite.

True Neutral Human Wizard/Cleric (2nd/1st Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength- 14
Dexterity- 14
Constitution- 12
Intelligence- 16
Wisdom- 13
Charisma- 12

Alignment:
True Neutral- A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Wizards- Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard’s strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Secondary Class:
Clerics- Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron’s vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity’s domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric’s Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

True neutral? I remember the only time I got in trouble in school (I had my name written on the board in kindergarten… due to a communication breakdown!), and I spent most of my time on MUDs protecting people who couldn’t PK… and delighting in killing people who thought they could. So, who knows - it is the best alignment, after all.

Damion beat me to posting about it… although people actually read his blog. But what’s special about this? I started writing this before Damion posted back in October, and I’m just now finishing. How’s that for productivity? Trying to ship an MMO tends to get in the way of everything else.

More seriously, I have a lot of thoughts on Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, but I need to remember them before I can start writing.

Update: More importantly, it’s getting a sci-fi follow-up called Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. I don’t need to know anything else about the game - I’m already a guaranteed customer.

Welcome to my new site. I haven’t learned how to swim yet, so this beast is still struggling to breathe.

Since I don’t really have anything to say yet, I figure I’ll just link all the devlogs I’ve written on Pirates of the Burning Sea.

• Don’t Haze the New Guy: There’s absolutely no design-related content in this log, but it tells the harrowing tale of my first day at Flying Lab Software.
• Broken Silence: I may have written this, but I still have no idea what it’s about.
• Data-Driven Design & Architecture: This is probably basic stuff for anyone who’s interesting in game design, but it was a cool experience for me since it was my first big project.
• It’s All About the Ships (Part One, Part Two): A big devlog about ships in Pirates.
• Waging War: This is a devlog about the beta Battle Royale 2, a 24 player versus 24 developer battle. I played the role of admiral for the developers.

–Taelorn