The Fallacy With Serious Gaming Groups

Some random events have occurred recently that made me think about video games and video game groups and their success.

Generally speaking it seems gaming groups fall into 2 major categories. There are the very large groups which can number in the thousands and the very small tightly nit groups that number always under a few hundred.

Larger group dynamics are very interesting but for the interest of time and article length I am only going to look at smaller groups. In particular the topic of seriousness. You see smaller groups seem to fall into 2 main camps as well you have  the groups that seem to be very tight nit that are more or less focused on the social aspects then you have the groups that are focused on succeeding and winning.

The first group that likes to socialize generally tend to be more varied. They are harder to define but generally speaking you see a lot of inner group interaction and very flat structure and hierarchy in the group itself. Everyone tends to know everyone and the environment is very relaxed.

The second group tends to be much easier to define groups that are focused on winning tend to artificially enforce structure and hierarchy. They may have their own internal version of a chain of command. They want to appear "serious" to the outside world. They want fame.

For a second let's look at the silliness of the idea of serious gaming. At it's core gaming you do for fun sure there are those that are pro gamers at which point gaming is work for them. For most players where gaming is something you do in your leisure time you do it because you enjoy it. So what's the problem most people enjoy winning right? Well the inherent problem isn't winning it's all the layers that were put up in order to guarantee a win or further improve a win. All the bureaucratic red tape you hated at work is now in your game. This is a draining experience a lot of us go into our games to recharge to get away from thinking of work and if one group isn't offering that well why stay?

The fallacy of serious gaming groups I find is that they are awesome and everyone wants to be part of them. Another fallacy is that they manage to stay together for a long time. The reality I think from what I've observed is that serious gaming groups are boring and bureaucratic and lack the organic friendships that will form when everyone's allowed to be themselves and serious gaming groups will burn out rapidly since it's built on the foundation of the game and not the people within the group. A gaming guild or clan that is based on the game first lives as long as the game is relevant and fun they also never survive any hiatus since there's always something newer and shinier to play. However gaming groups that are at it's core about the people in them build strong friendships and bonds that cannot be broken and often carry through even after the death of the initial game.

So why is it you see these groups or guilds that are in fact super effective in game? I think like anything effectiveness and likelihood of winning competitive games is due to time spent practicing more than anything else. The more time you spend the better you are. A corollary is time spent practicing with your team the longer you and your team play together the more you're practicing and the better you will be as a team. So ironically in order to get better as a team the focus should be to make the interpersonal relationships better inside the team rather than focus on the actual skills individuals need to learn.

So in my opinion other than professional teams gaming groups and clans that do very well generally don't dwell on winning they dwell on interpersonal relationships and having fun winning will naturally happen with practice and experience. In an environment where practicing is optional ultimately people will practice more if there's more reason to come back and socializing is a large incentivizing device. So next time you try and bring a lot of bureaucracy and start building your gaming clan with military structure think about what that mean to your members you may just be losing the best and brightest within a few weeks.

MKV2M2TS script for linux lovers

I found a pretty good script to base mine off of from mediatomb the problem is it has a pretty significant flaw when dealing with AC3 files that causes it to miss the AC3 file entirely half the time and give me a null audio track.

So I've patched it up and here's the fixed version:

The Rebuild Begins

A few days ago I finally got all the parts together for the Blade CP Pro. I’m in the process of starting the first rebuild since a mechanical failure caused a crash due to a servo that failed to respond.
It does baffle me how bad the stock E-flite servos are. I’ve since replaced those with my trusty HXT900 (I apparently buy these by the dozen now).



Since it’s winter this time around I have time to make sure cable management is done right. This is probably the most clean cable route I’ve done so far to the bird.
Blades still need to be installed but I think I’ll get around to doing that once we are closer to flight season so I don’t falsely think I can just take it out and fly it.

Global Agenda First Looks

Recently I purchased global agenda and after a few long sessions I have finally come up with an initial opinion on it. Global agenda is not an MMO. Why would I say this? well global agenda does not have a shared space required for a true MMO.

The construct of global agenda consists of a main lobby area were people can change and buy items and then instance missions. The instance missions themselves just activate after you waited X amount of time in the queue. The best way I can describe this game is it's like TF2 in PvP and L4D in PvE but since most of the time you only play with 4 in co-op and 16 players in PvP there's nothing massive about this game.

A lot of people called Global Agenda the new planetside. I don't think this is a fair assessment. PlanetSide the norm was to have 100vs100 wars and sometimes 100vs100vs100 when things got really hectic. Unfortunately global agenda isn't this exciting or dynamic.

Global Agenda has recently added a shared questing area but unfortunately it's far too short for me I finished this area in about 2 days that's hardly any time at all for an MMO.

Although some may argue that the game has been streamlined I believe that it is far too streamlined to. The draw to MMO's was always there was this massive persistent world where you could explore together with other players. Random encounters (with other players) are always encouraged and add to the experience. However here Global Agenda misses the point as well because the only random encountering your going to get after the initial quests (which are more like a long tutorial anyways) is the randomly being put together with a few other people when your assigned a mission.

This would be fine if the missions were more varied but sadly they are not they always consist of killing some random spawns. Going through a trap and then defeating some boss. To that end the boss don't even have any real strategy to them it's just hit them with all you got.

Learning Unity a Beginner's Prespective

First I should probably give everyone a little background. I'm a Programmer by trade not an artist so I approach things from a programming standpoint. Me and a friend of mine recently decided that we would like to make an attempt at producing an indie game title.

After some of the ground work had been established we decided that it's would be an appropriate time to take a look at some toolkits. The Unity Game Engine has been recieving a lot of praise from the indie crowd recently. I felt it was appropriate to at least give it a fair evaluation.

Arriving from a programmer's background the first thing one would notice is that Unity is built somewhere in between the artist and programmer tools. Although I would place unity more heavily towards the artist side of the game development. The first hurdle a programmer will find is that a lot of the terminology is geared towards the artist so it may be hard to figure out what "bones" are or the concept of a "scene" is.

Once you get beyond that and start your own project you find another lacking area of Unity the tutorials seem to span. "This is the UI" and "Here's an advanced tutorial that we expect you to know how to use the toolkit well" but nothing in between. What I was looking for as a coder is "this is your first unity level" but there really wasn't any tutorial that ran you through creating a box with the player in it and giving it some basic lighting.

In this area unit could be improved upon. If the tutorial exists then it really wasn't made that clear where you could go and find it.

As a programmer game development for us works as follows. Build Rough Game Mechanic concept --> Make ugly place holder graphics --> Test game concepts --> Refine and acquire final art assets. Unity however doesn't work this way. Any object you want to put into Unity must be first drawn in your 3D modeller package. Unity does not include any form of "primatives" you can just drop in. This basic disconnect forces people used to the programming model to adhere to the unity work flow model of: Build rough art assets --> Drop into unity --> Attach scripts --> Test gameplay --> Refine models.

Admittedly to non artists this model can seem Alien often times we use code to compensate for the fact that we don't understand how to use all the features of the complex 3D modelling packages such as rigging, bones, mesh deformation, and particle effects.

Overall though for a first look Unity may seem baffling at first but I can definitely see signs that once you get a hold of how to appropriately utilize the tools unity definitely seems to speed up the "concept / code / test" cycle we are used to. I only caution the programmers about to be introduced to this tool to be cautious and be aware that when they first start they will be baffled in what appears to be a tool designed for artists.

Flash programmers would be well aware of this concept that the editor doesn't assist the coders instead it's somewhat expected the coders use their own coding environments to get the job done.

Best RC I've seen today

Ok it might not fly well but I love it anyways.

And here's a star fighter from my child hood video game "descent" the Pyro GX

This one is impressively detailed (can't tell if it's the same one) but hats off to the builder he really made this one shine

Vesaero Maiden

The first Maiden flight went somewhat bad I realized too late that the prop I was using is too big for the motor and the plane come down with a lot of smoke.

However if you want to check out the brief flight video I have it here.

Early impressions are the plane flies rather well it does some really hard banking turns it definitely follows the “super maneuverability” design of the initial concept.

With enough power these hard banks won’t be a problem the plane does exhibit some pitch up tendencies at higher speeds which will need to be examined.

Vesaero Plans

Some of you have expressed interest in these plans. I am planning on open sourcing these plans. Standard Creative Commons license applies.

I haven’t planned initially to open source the project so these plans will come up slowly as I have time to digitize and plan out how to best present them to you for building.

first up is the primary wing. Measurements are in CM. My plane is scaled up with a factor of 4.7. That means that to obtain the full scale wingspan you take 15cm as listed in the diagram and multiply by 4.7 to obtain 70.5cm (15 x 4.7 = 70.5cm).

To get the angled wings you will need to use the wing scaffolds during build while gluing to obtain the correct angle on each wing. Cut each bend leaving a tiny bit of material then fold back to expose a gap. Use the scaffolds to obtain the correct angle of the gap then fill the gap with hot glue.

The vertical stabilizers (v-tail) I created ad-hoc but I’ll try and digitize a version here as well.

Vesaero Post Flight Test 1 Modifications

Lol I had a duh moment. The Vesaero is designed to look like a jet I should’ve clued in that that means it will also fly like a jet. First flights have shown that the Vesaero has an average cruise speed of 50 km/h. This is a tad high for a beginner with zero flight experience.

There are also some minor flight issues as well. For one the plane has a nasty habit of stalling once you get down to 10 km/h speeds. Flaps alone don’t seem to provide enough lift.

The dihedral which doesn’t look like a lot ended up being a very obvious flight characteristic the plane loves to self-right itself in flight. although this is great for the beginner I can see how more advanced pilots would struggle to keep a plane like this on knife edge. The intension however was never to build the plane for knife-edge moves so this wasn’t a bit surprise.

The position of the v-tails also puts the v-tail at risk of deep-stalling. A condition that is common to planes with controls surfaces that could be blocked by the wing during high angles of attack.

The Final design oversight has to do with super maneuverability. Saying Vesaero is agile is an understatement. Vasaero’s wing design and CG is modeled after an 3D helicopter. It’s CG balance point is located exactly where the cord of the wing is the thickest. Designing the plane this way makes the plane very easy to pitch, as well as roll.

The plane is super maneuverable in that too much pitch input from the pilot will cause the plane to “over-G” and over AoA quickly rapidly bleeding off airspeed without warning until stall is achieved. In this respect Vesaero handles very much like a Su-37 when they do the mid-air flips.

The key difference is the Su-37 and all other modern jets have a thrust to weight ratio of over 1.06:1 the best I can estimate my jet is only producing a power to weight of around 0.6:1 which puts it in line with jets of yester-year like the F-4 phantom.

All most of this means is that the plane is more capable than the pilot can currently handle so I’m putting in some modifications to make it behave more like a glider and less like a jet.

In order to slow down the jet I realized that I needed to decrease wing loading in order to increase “float”. I’ve tapped on removable wing extensions for this purpose. The wing extensions serve to double the length of the wing adding to the lifting surface. Care has been taken to maintain the proper CG even with the extension. The new body to wing ratio is now ~0.5:1 (almost double wingspan to body length).

Also after the first few test flights I noticed that just foam on the control horns was starting to wear out so these have also been improved to be much more rigid by adding plastic reinforcement members.

The new servo arrangement has RC helicopter like levels of rigidity and should help control the plane a lot snappier.

One minor consideration that needs to be tested in this new setup is the trainer wings add a lot of wing-span but fail to move the aileron controls out more this could lead to decreased control in roll.

In terms of damage resistance the airframe is very resistant to damages the V-tails clear the ground making hitting them during a crash near impossible. The nose cone is double reinforced and designed to deform a very severe crash had the plane drop nose first 3 stories straight into the ground the nose was easily repaired after. The modular design of the nose cone has also seen very nice crash repair characteristics. Often time only 1 or 2 panels need to be re-cut from foam for the repair but not all of them.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the design the one thing that needs to be improved is the power plant it feels somewhat underpowered to be able to call itself a jet. I also definitely need a much wider space to test it in the future as this plane likes to go fast.

Vesaero build log 3

More work on Vesaero 2 days ago I managed to finish building the nose cone.

Originally I decided to go with a 2D profile design but with more thought I decided this wasn’t going to be cool enough for a “Vortex” build.

So I popped into Google Sketch-up and came up with this nose design:

 

 

The original Google sketchup work file can be found here if you want to take a closer look.

So with a lot of careful cutting of each of the triangles and a lot of gluing the finished Vesaero build looks as follows:

Multiplayer Gaming Console vs PC

Me and a friend had an interesting discussion concerning multiplayer gaming experiences on the console vs the PC. We looked at several areas of both technical details and also personal subjective experiences with the community on both and below is some of what we feel is a representative list of average experience differences you can expect on both.

Game Size

We found that the console game size ranged from the average 4vs4 to a max of 8vs8. PC’s on the other hand started at around 8vs8 and seemed to reach their upper limit close to 25vs25 for many games that we tried.

Because of these differences we found that console multiplayer maps often placed players in a much smaller environments forcing players to run into each other more often.

PC environments especially the ones chosen for larger matches tend to be quite expansive and often required a level of team co-ordination in order to win.

On the flip side these same maps don’t scale well when there’s only a 4vs4 game. Think of games like TF2 these games only start to be playable at 8vs8 on the PC.

 

Player Mentality

One major difference is the player psyche of the console gamer and the PC gamer. We found that often times PC gamers lean more towards a true team co-ordinated effort vs what we found in consoles where although everyone is playing together there is no communication as to common strategy.

Worse still was we found that in many “team” based console games players would purposely undermine you in order to appear higher on the scoreboard rather than assist each other to come up with an overall victory.

 

Player Communication

This one was interesting before I played on the xbox 360 I always assumed that since everyone had a mic it was used to great effect in games. This turned out to be very untrue most games (I’m looking at you MW2) communication consists of complaints random burping noise or your one friend trying to tell you some useful info before he’s abruptly cut off by the next pre-pubescent teen in a rage scream because they just got killed.

PC communication is tricky although almost all games released now have mic support many still prefer to use the keyboard and do so to high efficiency. It is a bit disconnecting when half your players are typing and half ar talking. However the quality of in game chat is dramatically different the talkers are usually people that are actually talking about tactics or actively participating in how the game is unfolding. In almost all cases random people you meet are helpful and civil. The text chats can sometimes have bad comments thrown around but these are far easier to ignore and it would appear that these people are far to embarrassed to take their jack-assery in to pollute the voice channel.

 

Network

Xbox live is a fenced garden that you have to pay monthly for. Admittedly it’s a lot more populated than PSN I found that for several games on PSN matchmaking would just be unable to pair you up with someone due to lack of players for games just a few months after launch. The possibility of hosting your own server where the server op can play with the rules a bit is also gone.

In contrast because almost all PC’s are internet connected. Current games number in the thousands you’ll never have problems with match making. However things like a shared friend list and joining a friends game are less than automated on the PC unless you have steam.

 

Extended Play

Consoles simply don’t have the capability of creating more content for the game by the users. Aside from a select few examples consoles are purely you play what the publishers want you to play and that’s that.

True multiplayer PC gaming however has always had a hand in the modding scene in fact a lot of the best game ideas come to us first as experimental game concept ideas. With people running custom servers player driven content is loaded onto these custom servers and then players around the world tired with the stock experience can just go nuts with mods. Mods can sometimes be extremely entertaining but also completely mis-understood by publishers do it will never make it into a DLC.

 

Conclusions

This article really wasn’t suppose to point finger or conclude anything. It’s main purpose is to point out that the two platforms just from their heritage has some different expectations to them. I think it’s these gaps that PC gamers and Console gamers will never really see eye to eye.

Build Log 2

Well today I finally got off my lazy ass and started to build the full sized version of VESAREO RC foam plane.

You can see from the pictures that it’s a manageable size when it’s fully built I’m not there yet right now I’m having issues figuring out how to mount the motor onto the main foamie frame.

The whole plane so far is built using hot melt glue which would come apart if I use it to attach the motor. Ideally I would like some form of firewall or motor mount so I can easily remove the motor. Something like a box the motor can fit in and screw onto the box itself as long as it doesn’t transfer heat would be hot melt glued to the plane.

So far in the interim here’s what it looks like.

 

Vesaero foamie comes alive

Today I started a new project I decided after much procrastinating that I was finally going to make an effort into bringing Vesaero foamie to life.

I started off a few weeks ago with nothing but a sketch.

Here I determined what was going to be  the overall look of the plane and how the mechanics might work. Also had many mental discussions with myself trying to figure out how I would work out weight issues and balance. No to mention where the control servos go.

Finally I decided what would make more sense is to just go for a profile build and work from there.

Because this is my first build and this is not an easy plane geometry wise I decided I needed to build a scale model in order for me to understand how the pieces will go together for the profile plane.

So now with the prototype scale model in place the serious planning on the first full scale build can begin… Damn this is exciting I love the look of the mini model too.

RC Day Out

The more RC's you get the long it seems these RC days out get. Today's RC'ing lasted over 1 hour! I had a chance to run everything in my fleet once. This includes both helicopters (Blade CP, and Blade 400) and the RC car (Tamiya TL01 using aircraft lipo for insane power).

 

 

I finally learned nose-in hover today. The funny part was I've been able to nose in hover for over 1 year now in the simulator. But whenever I took it out into the real world I always felt like I didn't learn anything and chickened out. Today I took the "learn or bust" strategy with the Blade CP. Basically I was going to force myself to learn it or allow the Blade CP to be destroyed in the process. After a slight initial adjustment period of about 1 minute it turns out I could hover nose in semi-accurately for as long as I want without returning to a more comfortable orientation. I was very startled by how long I avoided doing it but at the same time not too surprised as I know I could perform the same skill for very long periods in the sim. After confirming my skills on the Blade CP with the training gear I decided to give it a go on the Blade 400 a much more scarier bird. The results were even more impressive since the Blade 400 is more stable to begin with I hovered nose-in for the entire pack with only slight periods of drift and correction.

I think the lesson is if you have been able to perform the same skill in the sim but always felt uncomfortable with it in real life and have been stuck. Sometimes just forcing yourself to do it and accepting that your heli might be sacrificed has surprisingly positive results. When your brain realizes it can't just retreat it steps up to the plate and performs amazingly.

I also had a chance to try out my RC car with a very modified power plant. It's a standard RC car but it runs a 200A aircraft lipo compatible speed controller. The speeds were spectacular off the helicopter power packs which have much higher discharge rates than the car motor normally runs off of. Today's test was several runs that would stress the speed controller and motor to find out if any of the components would burn up after prolonged use. Although the motor did go above 125 degC and the speed controller equally toasty at 80 DegC none of the components started smoking or failing so I'm going to cautiously give this configuration a pass for race use. The car can now reach speeds beyond 70Km/h and you will quickly run out of space in even football field sized parking lots at top speed. I've noticed with this incredible amount of power the 23T pinion is starting to show signs of wear, I assume that I will have to change the pinion out periodically if I still choose to run the car in "insane" speed freak mode.

I thought about selling the Blade CP before I'm glad I didn't I would never dare force myself to train with the Blade 400 under do or die conditions the Blade 400 is far to dangerous to allow a crash on purpose with it. The Blade CP is still an awesome trainer regardless of what everyone says.

Dual Speaker Setup

Theory: If speakers all have their weaknesses (High, Low, Midrange) then would combining speakers with different strengths improve things?

 

Setup:

(outer)

Logitech Z-2300 THX speaker set:

Strengths: Highs, Lows,

Weakness: Speech, Mid range, Rumbling bass

 

(inner)

Yamaha MS201:

Strengths: Mid-Range. Accurate but weak bass

Weakness: Highs, Ultra low

 

(Connector)

Standard single 3.5mm to Dual 3.5mm splitter jack.

 

 

Result? Well I've yet unconfirmed a true result but I do notice slightly improved midrange when compared to the stock Z2300 setup the vocals come through clearer and are more center stage rather being drowned out by the accompaniment.

I wouldn't recommend you go out and buy a setup to get this effect though the reality is that the Logitech Z-2300 does a pretty good job already. The Yamaha's do a very good job of filling in the mid range which was lacking in the Logitech. In particular the bass is now not only loud and thunderous but also accurate and fast which would be impossible with the vented setup. But now with two subs one vented one unvented I get the best of the mixing.

The satellites are more interesting it takes a bit of adjusting to get the mix right depending on your preference the mixing is about 40% Yamaha 60% Logitech now.

Do I see a sizable gain?: A slight gain yes, a sizable gain no certainly not if you didn't have the extra equipment on hand. However if you do have 2 speakers that you both like different qualities to it might be worth a shot to bring them together.

ToJam 2009

Tojam 2009 concluded last Sunday. By far ToJam is the craziest most fast paced game development competition around. Teams and individuals try and put a game out from scratch in just 3 days.

 

Most teams work around the clock forgoing sleep to nurture their creations.

Team AnyKey pictured here this year went with a very ambitious project, and some members including myself are still spending a few hours a week tuning the final result for the arcade.

There were many days where we went from Extreme coders to musicians to artists in a way ToJam is less about what you know and more about raw talent. To anyone thinking of going to ToJam but fear they won't place, come anyway! Part of the joys of ToJam is being around great people doing what you love and learning in the process.

 

 

There were plenty of awesome games to be seen many of them way too good for you to feel like they could've been created in 3 days.

I can't credit these pictures above they were taken by David Vanvliet, another participant at the event.

A Better Game Sound Engine For AnyKey tojam#4

Today I had a thought about something quite interesting leading up to our game competition. Since none of us are music experts and all music loops are quite short and designed to be connected to each other I'm proposing a very interesting change to our game music engine.

Our original music engine was monolithic as in it only played one massive track.

< Level >
[Songfile]

We could in simple terms switch to a basic shuffle system

< Level >
[songfile1][songfile2][songfile3][songfile4][songfile5]

But then I thought of a much better idea which I hope to be able to be able to implement today or tomorrow. Each song data will consist of 2 parts the track itself and a linked list reference to another part. Music then becomes a sort of directed graph with cycles. Edges then can be taken randomly. This kind of thing is better explained with a picture.

 

The advantage to using this system is that we can prevent one obvious section from continuously looping and we can enforce tracks that sound better after each other to happen. The end result is a pseudo-random music that will make the listener think it's more intelligent than it is.

Auto-generated in game music

Today I had a thought about something quite interesting leading up to our game competition. Since none of us are music experts and all music loops are quite short and designed to be connected to each other I'm proposing a very interesting change to our game music engine.

Our original music engine was monolithic as in it only played one massive track.


< Level >
[Songfile]


We could in simple terms switch to a basic shuffle system


< Level >
[songfile1][songfile2][songfile3][songfile4][songfile5]


But then I thought of a much better idea which I hope to be able to be able to implement today or tomorrow. Each song data will consist of 2 parts the track itself and a linked list reference to another part. Music then becomes a sort of directed graph with cycles. Edges then can be taken randomly

ToJam 09 (pre-event info)

ToJam #4 is taking place this weekend from Friday to Sunday. I always enjoy this event but there are currently a few lingering issues:

1. The organizers via twitter have already stated that there is no wired internet and there might not be wireless.

When someone says might not be wireless, what they mean is some fool forgot to secure their open wi-fi and it's now going to be bombarded by 100 participants of the event. The organizers are looking into tethering but I doubt one device will be able to support the rates required for things like downloading art assets or free soundtracks.

For that reason our team is considering also having a tethered option for this event.

I'd personally imagine teams by now will have their game idea done, and I'm hoping there won't be any of that "tape giant sound blaster posters on the sun facing window" fiasco we had last year.

Hopefully mickey the mouse was cleaned up too.

At the same time team Any Key this year will probably not bring a mountain of snacks making us by far the snack team.

Currently I'm debating if I should bring my linux box to the event with it's sole purpose to act as a GIT repo

Pork + Apples

Today I tried an amazing recipe (which was franken adjusted to my tastes)

 

Take pork chop steaks boneless butterfly it, then take dill apple and onion chopped with a little butter for good measure and stuff the steaks in it. Finally finish with a dash of pepper.

 

When cooking the steaks in the oven be sure to add 1/2 cup of apple juice to the bottom of the cooking sheet to keep everything moist.

 

It's delicious!