digitaldust

Ah ha, I remembered what I intended to post about FF, when I was inflicted with Workus Interuptus.

Superhero MMORPGs. I thought that a Superhero world would be perfect to play within. I was thinking around some of the design principles that would apply.

Respawning villains would be perfect. Every now and then they would pop up again. No explanation, they just break out, resurrect, come back for vengeance, whatever. No one asks why villains respawn in comic books.

Also smaller worlds would be good. Rather than massive worlds with thousands of inhabitant, you could have smaller more socially integrated servers. There is one argument that the larger the social group the better the dynamics, the more interesting and diverse the social interactions. But with each game world/server in EQ it’s probably too big.

The game could start out with a new group of heroes and have the standard game villains come in at the same power level. The villains could then “level” with the heroes. Keeping track with them. Imagine the gnashing and grinding of teeth when the arch-nemesis pops up again and even though you’ve upped your punch power, he’s now tougher and wilier.

And while thinking about that I did a search and what do you know, one’s in production. City of Heroes. Star Wars Galaxies gets to lose.

I caved in yesterday and finally bought Freedom Force. On the back of the box it says it’s a Superhero tactical RPG. Man I’m such a sucker for games like these, Superheroes and RTS game all in one, and an especially tacky one at that, so tacky that it has a Connery voiced Submariner rip-off. You can see where they get their inspiration from as there’s a ton of fun Marvel rip-offs… Minuteman for Cap America, El Diablo for the Human Torch and a wall crawling Antman.

More supervillan pounding tonight.

The BBC announce they’re starting pre-production for some new Dr Who series/serials. I hope they get Richard E Grant to play the next doctor.

Design Noir

Interesting view on design. Design not for a usable product but to play with the user. Goes against a whole bunch of design principles, but there have been a whole raft of examples of misuse of products, or overcoming interface woes. Take the web, teletext or the unix command line interface.

I’m reminded in his thinking about game design. In game design you specifically do not make things easy to do. It’s a competition/puzzle/feat against the game. You do compete against the product and try and overcome it. So maybe some of this “play” could be used on other products. But in the right sort of way. I’ve seen some product design that people call “playful” but usually it’s just cute or whimsical.

Any suggestions for products that are hard to use but actually fun to use?

Or products that are meant to be fun but are just cute?

My mind is a blank and I’m going for a walk in the sun while it lasts.

.the.product and .poemtoahorse

15 minutes of blasting synthesised music and beautifully rendered 3D graphics, all coming in under 64kb. When people are carrying around 40Gb HDDs in their pockets it’s refreshing to know that someone somewhere is trying to go fight against memory bloat and create beautiful things in tiny spaces. Sort of like a Zen garden in a Berlin trance club, all done to fit on a C64.

Warning: You do need a 3D card and DirectX8 to view it. Otherwise it might fry your machine, oh and I assume not at all Mac friendly, but you expected that didn’t you.

The Global Rich List makes one take pause for thought. It reminds me of when I was in Cambodia and talking to some of the Moto drivers there. One of the guys I talked to was saving up to get married and maybe take the one trip of his life across the border to Viet Nam. Things like that put one’s life in perspective, and make you feel lucky that you have the benefits of a life in the culture and time you are in.

Maybe Poke’s site is not entirely accurate but it really hammers home the reality of our status in the west.

People who experience a sense of spirituality in church may be reacting to the extreme bass sound produced by some organ pipes.

I like bassy music, and really like organ music but it has to be experienced live or through a shit hot PA. Seems some sonic scientists have been investigating the undertones that give people spiritual sensations.

But in a controlled experiment in which infrasound was pumped into a concert hall, UK scientists found they could instil strange feelings in the audience at will.

These included an extreme sense of sorrow, coldness, anxiety and even shivers down the spine.

The whole personality quiz thing has hit a sureal note.

Monoethylene glycol: You are miscible with water, alcohols, aldehydes and many organic compounds. You will not dissolve rubber, cellulose acetate or heavy vegetable and petroleum oils. You are 50% more hygroscopic than glycerol at room temperature. Find out what kind of industrial solvent you are

Also what kind of Hummel figurine, or brand of scooping catlitter are you?