On Neptune's Pride: The reason why I've been out

Hello everyone,

Well. It's been a while. Quite a long while, judging by the number of months since my last post.

Holy cow, I've been busy. I haven't touched Distant Worlds in a while, so I don't think that AAR is ever going to get done. Ah well...

Anyways, I haven't been gaming as much lately. Being a grad student and all has taken quite a toll on my free time. Thankfully, I've found some great alternatives that offers some gaming in bite-sized pieces. Neptune's Pride is one such 'snack'.

Found here, Neptune's Pride is the very essentials of 4x strategy without the crazy complications that leave theorycrafters up till the wee hours of the morning (though, there's absolutely nothing wrong with writing battle calculators, or AARs at all!) Neptune's Pride features very simple elements of play; move starships around systems to capture them, upgrade your starsystems in three fields: economy (money making), industry (ship building) and research labs (faster research) and advanced research in four different areas (weapons, range, speed and sensor range).

Neptune's Pride happens in real-time but at a very slow pace consistent with other massive online strategy games (on standard settings, you get your income from your economic development per day, every point of industry builds two ships throughout the day, and ships take many hours to fly between systems). Unlike other massive online strategy games, a single free game will usually pit 8 players in a randomly created galaxy; this makes gentlemen's agreements and trading a lot more personal and interesting as well! Note that there are no diplomatic options per say, except for the trading of cash or techs. This means there is absolutely no binding treaties that can stop you from plunging the knife (or in this case, the dozens of fleets you'll be flying around) in your would-be allies.

From realizing how important weapons research is, to discovering how important it is to scout out as many systems as possible to find cheaper places to build up. See, in Neptune's Pride, industry upgrades build ships at the location where the upgrade is, but economy and research are civilization-wide. Also, each system you find will have a number of resources on them; the more the resources, the cheaper it will be to build upgrades. At the same time, building one type of upgrade makes building that same type of upgrade on the same star system more expensive. This makes expansion a necessity to advance!

Guns, butter, or research that directly improves your ability to build better guns or indirectly improve your ships abilities to go find some creamier butter? Such are the simple, but engrossing choices in Neptune's Pride. Try out a free game before paying credits and you'll agree that this is quite the gem!

Have you also heard about this game or given it a try? Please leave a comment below!

On Day 3 of My Wallet Growing Empty; Summer 2010

Day 3, and I'm a little disappointed with Valve; I've already bought most of the games listed for considerably cheaper before (exception of L4D2, of course). I'm personally not sure that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is really worth the $7.49. That, and I'm personally holding out for cheaper fare tomorrow!

Here's a gem I've found through browsing the Specials tab on Steam:

Puzzle Kingdoms: 95% off. $1.00 only!

Holy cow! If you're a fan of puzzle games and RPG-like games, then you'll probably like Puzzle Kingdoms. I've only played the last game from these Puzzle Quest, which was good fun itself, so I'm not 100% sure if this game's better or worse off. But at $1, or less than 5 minutes of work for the average American worker, it's a freakin' steal!

As I scour the website for more goodies at super cheap prices, I'll let you guys hear it first, only on OTOOEP. Yay acronyms!

On Steam's Summer Sale: Day 2

Hey yo everyone,

So, the new batch of sales have been released. Frankly, they aren't as impressive as yesterday; though that's just my own opinion of the games they have on (and mostly the lack of stuff under $4).

I'd recommend the Galcon Fusion game that's going for $2.50; tons of fun as a iPhone app and I've heard it's been ported to the PC / MacOSX just fine too! Ghostbusters!: The Video Game is a lot of fun, but you won't get a lot of re-playability due to the lack of multiplayer on the PC version. Meh.

Hmmm... Let's see. If you're willing to spend the bucks, Resident Evil 5 and Serious Sam HD: Double Pack will keep you entertained for a while.

Like I said, nothing truly spectacular on today. I'm going to go back to play Oblivion; yeah, I love that game. And I'm probably gonna regret buying it for $7.50 (not as part of the Steam Summer Sale, but a previous weekend offer) when it goes on sale for $2.50 sometime later.

On Steam's AMAZING SALE OF SUMMER!

I LIVE!!! Or maybe it's just work getting in the way. I still have a blog though? This blogthor is easily distracted.

Anyway...

Hate going to the beach? Worried about getting bitten by sharks? Well not to worry, because Steam has the ultimate answer for destroying the contents of your wallets... er... I mean... ensuring you don't killed (especially those off the Louisiana coast coated in oil).

There are like 300+ games on sale on the Steam platform; a few of which are actually worth picking up. Now before you go running on over and spending your hard earned cash, keep an eye out on the Today Only! section of the Steampowered webpage. Those are games that are on sale ridiculously cheap (probably as cheap as it'll get) for that day only. Now, while you might run off and buy a game that's already on sale, you miss out the chance of that same game popping up on the Today Only! section sometime later for an even greater deal!

My suggestion: Don't buy stuff unless it's on the Today Only! section, or do buy it if it's the last day (who knows when that is) and it never popped up as a daily sale.

My recommendations for today (placed in order of how badly you should get this game):

Killing Floor for $5. What? You haven't played this yet? It's a freakin' great multiplayer game built around the zombie run-in-gun genre. Not just your standard shooter, also comes with "perks" and "levels" to keep the game fresh. Plus, humorous British accents and a sexual-innuendoized gun trader to spice up the humor. BUY THIS NOW!

Trine for $4. Yes, Trine is a great puzzle game and is well worth the $4. Buy it now!

Counter Strike: Source: The question is, who doesn't have this game already? With new achievements, killcam and a few other features, getting headshotted all the time by a bunny-hopping AWPer is SOOO much more fun!

Overlord Complete Pack: Good for a couple of hours of fun. I'd get the other two games above first before getting this one.

And now for a few mentions:

The Square Enix Eidos Collector's Package: What was once $586.84 worth of gaming is now $74.99; that's a fantastic $511.85 worth of savings. Holy cow!

The Witcher: A fantastic RPG that I have yet to play that's currently for $6.79. I would strongly recommend waiting for a daily sale of this title before buying it.

Oh man, there's just so many sales! But like I said, if you got the patience to hold off till the daily sales (or who knows if there's a weekly version), you'll be solid gold (or saving lots of it!).

On Portal is Free - Why are you still reading this?

Oh, and by the way. Portal's been free on Steam for a week now and it is available for the Mac or the PC. What are you doing reading this blog? GO GET IT IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY!

If you have, good on you! Now go play it again and get all those radio station-related achievements!

*Eagerly awaits Portal 2*

On My Successful Return from Examination Argh-ation!

Hey everyone,

Well, it's over! The Spring 2010 semester has been successfully concluded and it is now summer time! I'm still waiting to hear back from a few internships that I am applying for, but I am now considerably more free now! Man, it's been like, what is it now, 2 weeks? Geez Louise I've been out of the loop for a while.

So, let's start with the biggest of news. Steam now has a new format (was part of the Beta so it is not a big surprise) and Steam now also supports Mac users. Tripwire Entertainment; the guys who made the awesome FPS shooter Killing Floor, has jumped the gun and is offering the game at 33% off; or $13.39 (two cents higher than being truly leet). Having played Killing Floor yesterday, I noticed quite a few more full servers than usual. It's quite nice to see the game come back from the dead (both literally and... well... realistically meta-physically). In fact, I would say it is a valuable lesson for any publisher who works with Steam to consider the advantages of adapting your games to work on as many systems as possible. More money is always a good thing, right?

Well, I'm going to go celebrate with a bottle of Bass beer (omigosh, he posted something related to alcohol on a website with Google AdSense Ads... EEEKK!!!) and a round or two of Killing Floor. I'll keep the blog posts coming and... hopefully, will finally get around to posting that Distant Worlds AAR.

On the end of the semester and the start of exams!

Hey all,

As I've written in a few past blog posts, the end of the semester has come nigh and hither! Woohoo! Alas, the examinations I will be sitting for has not yet passed, nor has the interviews for certain jobs that I am expecting to hope to be able to fulfill this summer. As such, my gaming has come to a relatively complete stop.

Distant Worlders, I have much love for y'all BUT my schedule does not. I've gotten exactly one hour of play since my last AAR and... frankly... not a lot happened to justify a good AAR update like the ones before (the Kiadians are STILL looking for a good planet to colonize; seeing waaay too many volcanic and ocean world planets for such a small galaxy, it's like one of those statistical anomalies you know can happen but never ever expect to see). I'm hoping that after the 19th I'll be somewhat more free.

In terms of gaming, I... Well, what I mean... I'm trying to say that... Meh, mayhaps I shouldn't have started a gaming blog in mid-April; a month before exams were supposed to start. Hehe...

Don't worry though, this is not the end of On the Optimization of Electronic Play; though it will most likely be a very quiet 2 weeks. And before you all go, ZOMG YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL LIFE AND NOT VIDEO GAMES ALL THE TIME. Well, yes, I am; it keeps things fresh!

On Laziness: Why I haven't been gaming for 2 days!

Work... Classroom related stuff... Preparing for exams... Job Interviews...

Life sure does suck when you have to do stuff that takes time from other stuff I'd like to be doing.

*Waits patiently for the weekend*

On that note, what are all of you guys out there playing nowadays? I've found a link to the demo of Star Trek Adventures: Year One; looks like a classic point-'n-click game set in the Star Trek: The Original Series universe. Lemme know what you think about it!

On The End of The Semester and X3: Terran Conflict

With the end of the semester comes the crunch of exam time. Indeed, why did I start writing this blog in mid-April when I was fully aware that exams'd be hittin' in less than a month? Because I frankly can, to be honest. I find that I always have enough time to do all the studying I need to do and get in some internship hunting or gaming time. The Distant Worlds AAR I have been working on won't be effected so much, but I have installed a few oldies of mine lying around on my Steam account just for some extra funs.

Games like X3: Terran Conflict; a game I stopped playing because it 'felt' extremly buggy and am now giving another shot at thanks to all the new Steam achievements that was recently added to it, as well as and Mass Effect; already beaten it once, but do want to go through it again on Renegade (the Dark Side, whatever...) for even more funs! This blogthor is just getting warmed up.

Of course, work and researching comes first, so what little time I have to squeeze in for gaming (mostly during the weekends) will be posted up on this blog in some way, shape or form. For the most part, though, I'll be posting little updates like this here instead.

Yesterday, in X3: Terran Conflict (the ultimate space trade and combat simulator... well... maybe not as massive as Eve Online, but still pretty cool), I learned how to set up trade ships to do manual trade runs. I can now make money without doing it myself and waiting as my ship plods around the galaxy at a boring 75 m/s (x10 SETA compression comes out to an experienced velocity of 750 m/s; still fairly slow considering the 60+ km distances the ship sometimes has to go)! That's one thing I wish you could do in Eve Online; set up an NPC network that does the trading for you. Oh sure, you need to keep an eye on the routes and make sure that it maintains a good level of profitability (versus, say, hiring NPC pilots to do the work for you) as well as keep them secure as they fly through low-sec, but that would help take the tedium away!

I'll keep everyone updated on X3 as I go along, though it will more likely be "Oh my Gawd I didn't know you could do [insert useful ability] in this game!". Playing X3 heuristically is definitely my biggest challenge to date (though it comes very close to figuring out how to play Dwarf Fortress).

On Distant Worlds: #2. Kiadians don't see exploration as a 'bold' thing to do...

Though the Kiadians are technologically basic, they're doing much better than us humans are doing in the first decade of the 21st century; they have recently unveiled a line of FTL hyperdrive units capable of transporting metallic hulks (with people and goods in them, we should hope) across the stars.

What secrets will the universe unveil? I currently have a fleet heading to the 'west' to take care of some pesky pirate varmits! The first, and currently only, fleet of the Collective is already busy in the galaxy playing clean-up with the space monsters and pirate pests.

Not even 20% of the galaxy has been unraveled and the Kiadians have already made the greatest of discoveries; a Zenox historian aboard the Lonesome Victory, a run-down exploration ship, managed to reconstruct the records found in a temple located in the Rindula sector of an extremely powerful, if not diabolical, form of government!

The infamous Rindula system. The blue diamond is the position of the Lonesome Victory; currently performing sensor readings on a few other planets in the system to find precious resources for the Collective. The white triangles are abandoned ships from a previous era; a constructor will be sent there as soon as the space monsters are taken care of! The three white dots that form a triangle shows the position of an explored ruin...

The Galactopedia article for the Way of Darkness. To the left of the entry is the current location of the Temple of Doom©; a sinister and foreboding monument found on a volcanic planet in the Rindula system. It is here that this superior (in the Galactic Empire sort of superior) form of government was found.

The Way of Darkness, as it was once known, is a way of life centered around glorifying the military power of the state while placing the rights of the individual in last. This form of government, in terms of gameplay stats, is quite superior to a Monarchy (the previous form of government). As we speak, the Kiadian royal family has fled from Zenox Prime, though 'suppression' agents (the few Kiadians who were rejected from the Zenox Prime Scientific Academy) are already on the hunt. Such a brutal but efficient system!

Also in the Rindula system are a number of abandoned ships (the grey triangles) from a previous age. They appear quite technologically advanced though retrieval will be difficult since the system is rife with space monsters! As if the lack of habitable systems was bad enough...

The Kiadians grow restless for more living space. Thus far, the 6 exploration ships commissioned by the state to acquire more resources for the expected huge war bill have failed to find anything worth colonizing (alas, the Kiadians are sensitive to temperatures and will not bear the stinging cold of Ice Planets, nor the heat of Volcanic Planets. The Zenox, not surprisingly, are also picky about planetary conditions). A few gas planets here and there, a few resource rich nebulae sure, but they don't bring the tax money now do they?

The initial six scouts of the Kiadian Collective; none have fallen prey to space monsters yet!

And with that, you are now up to speed with this AAR. From now on, I'll be covering future developments as I actually play this darn game!

On Shortness: Max Payne for $2.50

Ahh shortness. You've probably noticed I use long sentences. People say it's because it makes me look smart. Others think it's because I just got so much to say in so little time. I think I do so because long sentences make the alpha male. Being alpha male all the time is tiring. I let someone else be alpha male for while so I can do whatever it is beta males do.

For this blog post, I will use short sentences for this one. See how it goes. Mebbe is easier to read. Remember, this blog is as much an attempt to convey awesomness of video games to you as it is a scratchpad for my own writing technique! Anyway...

Yesterday I bought Max Payne for $2.50. It was part of the Rockstar Week on Steam. I heard many great things about this game before, but never tried it till now (Whoops, a comma... double Whoops, a sentence in parentheses!). Game is fun. Bullet time is fun. Narrative is interesting thanks to interesting use of in-game scenes as well as comics. Levels feel way too linear and short though. If structure of levels were released today, might be comparable to how some Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 co-op levels feel like.

Rockstar is going with a 3 hour sales frenzy on Steam, where they dictate a game in their list, chop the price by 75% or so and give the user but 3 hours to scramble to purchase the game. I was reading through the GTA series forums and found a post of someone complaining that they weren't able to buy GTA IV because they were still at school. Given the rating of the game, I think Rockstar did a good job there. Business is business though.

Anyway, I got to get to class. Will have next Distant Worlds part up soon!

On Distant Worlds: #1. The Start of the Glorious Kiadian Collective!

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EDIT: Pictures too small? Clicky-clicky on them to make them bigger! (Warning: All Distant Worlds screenshots are in a 1920 x 1200 resolution; which translates to an average of just under 750 KB a screenshot. Those of us with limited bandwidth beware!)

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Looks like I WILL be doing a Distant Worlds AAR (After Action Report). Huzzah! Expect updates to come in haphazardly though, as real life continues to make blogging ever more difficult (especially with exam and research presentation time come next month). Humbug!

I have finally figured out how to take good screenshots in Distant Worlds without tabbing between the game and the GIMP. CodeForce was awesome enough to incorporate a simple screenshot function (without the mouse pointer getting in the way, too!) with the game; all you have to do is hit the 0 (zero) key on your Numpad. Note that this only works within a game and not with the menus, so I had to GIMP up most of the screenshots for this post.

The next few pictures will show what settings I used to generate my own tiny galaxy.

This first screen lets you play with the galaxy itself by using easy-to-understand to specify how large the galaxy should be (yes, the slider ranges from 100 stars to 1400 stars, where each star might have its own set of planets and anomalies; that be a lot of objects to play with), the developmental cycle of the galaxy and how well-structured it is (this also effects how well developed independent colonies are), the political 'tension' of the galaxy (this dictates how an AI will react when they first meet you; setting it like I have on 'Chaos' implies me and the other AI ain't gonna be the best of bosom buddies) as well as the existence of habitable worlds, pirates and space creatures! There's also a few preset types of galaxies available; I went with a ring structure because... well... umm... Oh I know! The other three, more epic rounds of Distant Worlds I'm playing are all of a Spiral galaxy shape and I wanted to try something different! It was most certainly NOT because I watched someone else play Halo 3 a lot recently... most certainly not!

Screen #2: On who and how awesome your empire'll be! You can specify where your empire will be located in the galaxy (based on the Ring galaxy selected from the last screen, you can choose whether your homeworld will appear in the center or on the outer rim), your empire's flag colors and symbol, the size of your empire (I chose the smallest here, though if you're not a fan of exploration you can always try putting it to the maximum setting!) as well as its tech level. Finally, you can choose your system of government as well as your race and give 'em all a good awesome name! For this game, I selected the ultra-trustworthy humanoid Kiadian who benefit from a very high research bonus and a moderate ship maintenance bonus.

But wait, you cry out, why are you picking a brainy race for a small galaxy where superior firepower will determine the victor? Because... I can! And because losing is fun! ... Sometimes.

Anyway...

Screen #3: Choose your Opponent(s). You can either tell Distant Worlds to generate up to twenty opponents for your to fight against (would be a bit messy for a small galaxy) or specify their characteristics themselves. The options here are quite similar to your own empire's screen and you can even specify how far (or close) you want the aliens to be from your own empire. What would Star Wars have been like if the tiny Rebel Alliance had been parked right next to the monstrously huge and technologically superior (sans the unshielded Tie Fighters, of course) Galactic Empire? In Distant Worlds, you can 'simulate' that!

Screen #4: The only winning move is to keep one of these checkboxes marked. Of course, winning in any 4X game is usually determined by the player, and Distant Worlds is awesome enough such that, even if you win or lose, you can keep on playing the game (or until your entire empire goes *poof*, though I have yet to fail that miserably).

A quick note about this screen, the victory function for all the options is a bit funky in that it looks at how you're doing versus all other empires as opposed to the galaxy as a whole. Not sure what I mean? Well, suppose we left the territory requirement to 75%. In a game with 100 habitable systems, you'd imagine that means the first to 75 planets (by colonization or conquest) wins the game, right? Not quite... In Distant Worlds, the game calculates this number based on the current number of colonized systems.

Let's continue this example by looking at the current game; me versus one other empire. Suppose at the start we own one planet (the homeworld) each. The number of colonized systems is simply two. I own one of those planets. That means I (and, by symmetry, my opponent) have a territory rating of 50%! Not quite the same thing eh? I can win the game by colonizing 2 more planets before my opponent can grab any as I would own three out of the four total planets which is 75%! Pretty lame, eh?

Clearly this system hands out victories based on short-term noise (colonizing one or two planets at the get-go should NOT be a clear win; this isn't Starcraft!). If only we can take advantage of the Law of Large Numbers...

But, what's this on the 4th screen? The last option allows the player to delay when victory conditions take effect by a user-defined number of years. Here, I put 20 years (though I'm not sure the game will take that long); more then enough time for me and my opponent to grab most of the galaxy, at which time the game will actually base the victory calculations on my own ability to capture planets from my foe.

Enough stats talk! I'll wrap up this AAR with a screenshot of my homeworld after a few months into the game (taken at the same time where I introduced Distant Worlds to this blog).

Lots of activity on Zenox Prime. You'll notice a few constructor ships (the large crab-looking ships; one of which is flying to the planet from the top-left) placing some orbital defense platforms in anticipation of first contact with the still-unknown enemy. A few resource transports (part of my Private sector that helps maintain a sound economy for my empire, though they are out of my direct control) are milling about as they wait for my gas collectors within the system to mine enough resources to warrant a freight run.

My early aggressive exploration policy has paid off; one of my scouts discovered a cruiser (the long ship below the south-east-most orbital platform) abandoned from a long-forgotten conflict that contained knowledge of the Way of Darkness (an ancient form of government only found in exploration that gives high bonuses to attributes that best suit a militaristic state, like mine!). Additionally, the cruiser has a lot of high tech on board, which I could allow my researchers to dissect for a tech gain. However, as the Kiadian's are already good at research, I opt to keep the ship around for guard duty instead.

Clicking on the planet, I note a sizable population of Zenox, intelligent and happy rodent/feline (don't ask) like creatures on my homeworld! It seems that my Kiadian subjects have a symbiotic relationship with the furry Zenox; the Kiadian's long hours of research benefits the State while the Zenox keep them entertained (not so much 'entertained' as kept from being outraged by the massacres and alien genocide that will characterize the soon-to-be-epic war with my mysterious foe) with glorious tales about th' galactic yore o' old. So deep is this mutualism that the Zenox have managed to flourish; there are two Kiadians to each Zenox on my homeworld, for a total of 4.75 billion inhabitants in all.

Kiadians and Zenox sitting in a tree! G-e-t-t-i-n-g r-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s-l-y b-u-s-y!

A true Collective this is, indeed! Next time, I'll show you what secrets my scouts have discovered to date.

EDIT: Pictures too small? Clicky-clicky on them to make them bigger! (Warning: All Distant Worlds screenshots are in a 1920 x 1200 resolution; which translates to an average of just under 750 KB a screenshot. Those of us with limited bandwidth beware!)

On the Dangers of Heuristic Thinking

Another human psychological post? In mah gaming blog? But... Well, why not? I gotta satisfy the higher tiers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ya know!

Anyway, if you remember from yesterday's blog post, I had talked extensively about the idea of heuristic gaming (i.e. a fancy way of saying "playing by just doing it and not reading the manual") and even gave a few examples in PC gaming history. This blog post, however, will focus on the dangers of this type of thinking. Well, "dangers" is such a harsh word and probably not that appropriate considering the context of how terrible real life can be sometimes... Let's say we'll be focusing on the "disadvantages" instead!

Remember the non-gamer example we talked about before? You know, the guy who doesn't play video games that often, and how we're talking about the scenario where you try and entice the guy to play this great new video game because you need him for your awesome gaming group (like, say, for a survivor team in L4D or L4D2)? As we established, the non-gamer is not interested in learning about the intricacies of the game, nor figuring out the best way to optimize his playing such that he does well; all he cares about is having fun! This, of course, is the very crux of gaming... Why play a game if you don't have fun? Why play a game if you can't jump into it immediately and figure things out as you go?

Thus is the first disadvantage to heuristic thinking. When game developers need to appease to this form of thinking (in order to boost their sales by enticing both the gamer and non-gamer to purchase their product), they can approach this dilemna in one of two ways. The first and easiest choice is to dumb down the gameplay such that the game can be quickly learned; pretty good for movie-to-video-game tie ins as well as console ports (Splinter Cell: Conviction, while a very cool game to watch, does feel a little drier in the stealth department than previous games from the Splinter Cell series). The second, and considerably more difficult, choice is to ease the learning curve for the player by creating a quick tutorial or forming a single player campaign to ease the player into new gaming concepts. This can be done while still keeping the game complex and hard to master.

A great example of this is CCP's MMO Eve Online (the only MMO I ever liked playing!), which is the pinnacle of complex gaming thanks to its fairly convoluted gaming systems. Optimizing the training of skills; something which every Eve Online player has to deal with, has its own forum section! Wow! However, to keep the learning curve on the down-low, CCP has been pretty hard at work to make the tutorial and the UI a little more accessible to the masses and to hopefully entice more newbies into the game.

Let's get back on topic! As you can see, a society that prefers to adapt an after-the-fact style of learning as opposed to a RTFM (read the freakin' manual) style of learning can potentially result in a general dumbing down of certain products. At a corporate level, the desire to take risks in video game design and create a complicated (though possibly fantastic) new game is just not there thanks to our preference for heuristicism! That sentence, that right there, is the SECOND disadvantage to this sort of thinking; a loss of innovation in the available products of play.

Now, there's nothing to be said about making more money from appealing to more people. It's a fantastic business strategy and one that can keep a company's bottom line well in the black. However, being TOO accessible takes the risk of alienating the more hardcore of players, which can be a loss in terms of a company's video game production credibility (then again, I know a lot of hardcore players who'd prefer to pirate video games than actually pay for them... meh...).

The third "disadvantage" of heuristic thinking? Using the word heuristic too much when trying to anticipate other people's behavior.

On Gaming Heuristics

A human psychological post? In mah gaming blog? But of course!

The idea of 'challenging' gaming is essentially a simplified version of human learning; a process that is based on the concept of heuristics (we'll define that properly in a bit). Indeed, the smart gamer could try and read up on a video game through, say, a strategy guide, or an online FAQ or walkthrough. The more daring of us, though, will want to boot up the game and drive (EDIT: Yes, you literally drive right into a stone wall with complicated racing games. Never mind that the right word for this idiom is "dive") right in. Video gamers who prefer to do so expose themselves to the fun, and dangers, of heuristically-based thinking.

Before we continue, let's define what the word "heuristic" means. This definition is from the Merriam Webster dictionary:

Main Entry: ¹heu·ris·tic

Pronunciation: \hyu̇-ˈris-tik\

Function: adjective

Etymology: German heuristisch, from New Latin heuristicus, from Greek heuriskein to discover; akin to Old Irish fo-fúair he found

Date: 1821

: involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods ; also : of or relating to exploratory problem-solving techniques that utilize self-educating techniques (as the evaluation of feedback) to improve performance.

And, of course, the Wikipedia link for even greater detail into the subject.


As you can see, the short version is that heuristics is all about learning how to do something through doing it and most definitely continuously failing and retrying. Think of your favorite PC or console platformer / adventure game. Now think of all the times you ran through a section of the game, got hit by some unknown trap or a vicious monster who attacks from an angle-not-initially-seen or died from failing to jump across a perilous gap at the right time. What would do in this situation? Why, you'd simply reload the game from the closest autosave point and try it again, learning from your mistake (hopefully) and completing the challenge successfully before being hit by the next killer move.

Now, let's expand this idea to the entire spectrum of the genre of video games. There are a few FPS games where you've no doubt died from turning a corner into a bunch of angry enemies, or maybe you launched your rocket launcher in an area that turned out to be not as expansive as before. Or maybe there's a scripted event which results in a truck falling on your head unless you strafe out of the way from the get-go of the autosave point.

Strategy games? Tower Defense games are ripe with this sort of heuristically-based thinking (the fantastic Defense Grid: The Awakening's auto-load from a point midway through a particular mission is a prime example), while single-player campaigns in certain RTSs or turn-based games may encourage a continuous save/load experience (the Commandos series is notorious for this, especially when the Commandos 3 series reminds you on multiple occasions to save your game regularly!). Of course, any form of multiplayer gaming is fairly difficult to correct from the get-go, though practice does make perfect!

Ran out of resources? Aliens got through with a core? Got the wrong tower up for a particular wave? No worries! Just hit the Backspace key and try again! Defense Grid: The Awakening is the prime example of heuristic gaming; a very fun example, though!

Now think of the first time you tried to show a non-gamer a particular new video game (say, you were looking for a few more buddies to add to your L4D team). He doesn't care about reading lengthy manuals or learning the ins-and-outs of a video game such as being able to melee and reload at the same time in the L4D series. He doesn't care about learning all the different keys he has to press. All he wants to do is be able to extract a good amount of fun by making the game progress sufficiently for his own tastes.

My own brother, for example, does not like RPGs whatsoever; too much detail and nitpicking over something extremely short. Not even Mass Effect 2, a very streamlined approach to the RPG genre that presents a fantastic story ever really appealed to him. He's much more the FPSer (whenever he gets a chance to play, that is) and you'd more likely see him shooting up other players in Halo 3 then pondering through a game of L4D. Honestly though, I haven't tried as well as I should have...

Let me know what YOU think about heuristic thinking. I'll write up my next blog post on the dangers of continuously applying heuristic thinking to real life (it's somewhat of a form of laziness, when you think about it...).

On L4D2's new update!

Hey yo, don't have a lot of time for blog posting today so I'm just gonna give props to Valve for the fantastic release of their newest DLC for L4D2 "The Passing". I'll leave this post spoiler free, but let's just say I was really saddened when I finally learned of the character who was killed off. I wasn't totally surprised though; judging by the availability of certain voice actors and the convenience of killing off that particular one voice actor who Valve was never able to get again after the initial recording of L4D1. The fact that the survivor's death is but a few lines of banter between the survivors is a little saddening; I truly hope that L4D1 will expand on this and maybe even figure out a way of de-canonizing this, since it's the exact same survivor who dies each time (would have been nice to have mixed it up).

Anyway, the Mutations are fun; especially loving Realism Versus and hope that Valve'll figure out a way to get it so everyone can play the mutations anytime they want (especially the single player ones later doown the line). Also loving the big, bad and beefy M60; a big machine gun with 150 bullets and no need to reload, and oh, it's an insta-kill versus all the common infected. The next footlockers in the game are also a nice boon to the survivors; as it's always funny to see groups of survivors get hopped up on pills / adrenaline shots as well as abuse the heck out of molotovs and pipe bombs (a quick Expert Realism game I played through yesterday had one guy consistently run back to a footlocker full of pills every time he got injured, the last time he ran back without telling us and he was gagged to death by a smoker).

The Passing is a fairly cool map, and the introduction of the Fallen Survivor Uncommon Common Infected fellow is a fantastic new experience to the series. This poor fellow was able to arm himself fairly well before he got infected and has a chance to drop goodies (especially first aid kits, regardless of the difficulty level, meaning it can be a game-saver on Expert mode). Only problem is the bugger has a lot of health (1000 on Versus, meaning he can take x20 the punishment of a regular zombie on Normal, not sure about Expert though), and Magnums and Sniper Rifles are not a one-shot kill against him, though Melee weapons are. Though good luck trying to melee this bugger because, unlike other zombies in this game, he will actually try and flee from you when he sights you. Thus, to gain his fantastic goodies, you need to make a tactical decision to break from your position and give chase. This can be devastating on Expert mode, though a few well aimed shots will take the fellow down quickly.

So yeah, stay tuned for more developments this Sunday!

On Distant Worlds: The 4X that Masters of Orion 3 should have been

What? Talking about (or advertising) some obscure game that's NOT available on Steam for my first game-talk-about? But of course! Well, to be honest, Distant World's exposure to the public is a bit lackluster right now, which is a darn right shame considering how much depth is in the game. Code Force, the New Zealand-based developer and Matrix Games are the guys behind this little gem which manages to strike a pretty good balance between depth and ease of use. Sure the game's interface is based on the .NET Framework 3.5 (which makes the game feel a little, umm... Windows-y), but it works well as an homage to the good ol' days of strategy gaming (think of the MOO series, XCOM and what-not).

The game has a small but vibrant following over at the Matrix Games forums for Distant Worlds which you can find here. Thanks to them, the game is constantly being updated and new features are being added (recently, the ability to retrofit entire fleets of ships is now enabled, where before you had to single-click through every ship to upgrade them. Yay!). While this blogthor will be using up a few blog posts to give my two cents about the game, you definitely can't go wrong with seeking a few more opinions from OTHER people who've also played the game.

I might even do an AAR (After Action Report) on this blog post! Won't that be exciting?

Anyhow... The big reason why I enjoy Distant Worlds is because it has a very flexible learning curve. Flexible learning curve, you ask? Yes, you can, through the options menu, tell the game which aspects of your galactic empire you'd like it to handle, to give suggestions about, or to leave entirely to your own grubby micro-managing hands. In essence, you can make the game as simple or as difficult as you want to and focus on whatever it is about 4Xs you enjoy. Like the colonization and exploration part of the game (for which Distant Worlds provides a lot of stars and planets and moons to explore; the largest setting has an astounding 1,400 stars for you and your rivals to play with)? Then tell the computer to bugger off while you take care of your exploration and colonization ships, snuggling them into the bosom of the stars and habitable planets of the galaxy. Life in the space navy more your thing? Then let the computer handle all the wishy-washy economy stuff (which it does fantastically well) while you move your ships all over creation.

I can get into a lot more great things about the game like the ease-of-use of the Galactopedia in explaining all the somewhat-complex game components, the interplay between your empire's state ships (your exploration, colonization, construction and military ships) and the private sector (the transports, mining ships and things that make your economy tick), as well as the epic overarching exploration story that can change every time you play (though it's usually along the lines of Mass Effect's Prothean-Reapers-esque conflict, still interesting to have in a 4x though!).

Here's a few screenshots of a game I'm currently playing. It's a small one, with only (only, hah!) 100 stars with me and another faction in a very restless and pirate-y galaxy.

Here's a screenshot with most of the galaxy shown. It's close to the start of the game and I still only have a few planets in my home sector, though you can see a bunch of ships flying out everywhere. The diamonds on the outer rim are my explorer ships, while the circular ones private sector freighters couriering resources between my gas planet mines and my home sector. Despite the fact that this is about half an hour into the start of the game, there's already a bit of action going on here!

On Darthcaboose's (that's me) Steam Library

Ola everyone (no I'm not Hispanic). Here's the Library of games I got on my Steam library. Note that the vast majority of the titles were purchased during many of the ridiculously cheap Steam weekend deals; so while there are quite a few titles, most of them didn't cost me more than $5. In all, I'd value all the games here at under $300; with an average of $0.25 in cost/hour (and that number's always going down, until I buy a new expensive title).

Wow, this looks tiny; but it's two subsections of my Steam Library split into two different images placed side-by-side. I'm lazy and usually end up using WYSIWYG programs when I want to do silly stuff like place images of my Steam library online.

In my favorites, you can barely see a few of Valve's best recent titles on there, in particular Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 1 + 2, as well as a few non-Valve titles that I've come to love, including the excellent Torchlight from Runic Entertainment as well as Global Agenda from Georgia-based Hi-Rez Studios (of course, being the poor and destitute college student I am, I am not paying the subscription for that game).

At the bottom on the right-side image you can see I bought the ~$5 X-COM pack that was recently on sale on Steam. Gotta say, never had played the series but am glad I did. I'm a big fan of middle-to-high-end complexity strategy games that don't pamper you with a tutorial, forcing you to try stuff out, fail miserably, search online for a wiki and adapt from there. Of course, all those steps are fun, fun, fun; the point of optimizing electronic play!

With the exception of Guild Wars (never really got into it), I'm not a huge MMO fan. Too much of a time sink, and the inability to stop the game at your own convenience (park your character/toon/spaceship into the nearest inn/city/spaceport before you can log off, as well as the whole raiding and grouping issue) is not conducive to my own busy schedule. I was a big WoW junkie during the first two years of college and, well, I'm sure you can guess WHY I ended up quitting. I've found other MMOs to be interesting, though, particularly Eve Online by Iceland's CCP (doing quite well despite the active volcano there) which can be described as a futuristic spaceship MMO with a fantastic Spreadsheet-esque economy. My only issue is the cost; I'm paying $14.95 a month to PLAY a game which takes a lot of time to play and doesn't earn me money in the end... Meh...

So, now you have my list, and no, I ain't gonna tells ya my Steam ID.

Well, introduction aside, where do we go from here? I dunno... if anyone's reading this, post a comment below if you'd like me to write about a favorite game of yours. I'm thinking about writing a bit about a little-known game that recently came out called Distant Worlds. What is Distant Worlds, you ask? Well, you'll just have to wait & find out later!

On why this blog won't be like Kotaku

This blog is essentially a verbal and cognitive release of my own ideas percolating in my head from exposures to life, work and video gaming. It seems like common sense, but keeping something in your head (or, at least, never talking about or writing stuff down) is not always the best way to test out ideas. The way I see it, and this is based on my many many years in academia from the middle school era to the present day graduate level, everyone needs to develop a set of heuristics, or a rule set, in order to do something well or to accumulate "experience" in some field. For example, if you're learning how to master a game concept (say, developing a worthy strategy around the rigid structure of the Left 4 Dead and/or Left 4 Dead 2 finales), the only way most people will ever do well is to get in there, make a mess of things, and struggle with it a bit till they hit the sweet spot (sure, you might pick up a strategy guide, but there's no fun in that!).

Well, I might check out the forums for that particular game to learn the ins and outs, but gaming is all about the fun of trial and error.

Taking the gaming analogy to the self-expressive world, my personal ambition with this blog is to show video games through the weird, pulsating flashlight that is my brain. No doubt I'll be saying stuff that many will find obvious, insipid, dull or ludicrous but I do hope to spark a few electrons here and there (the ones working the nerves in the brain, that is, always keep your stuff grounded people!).

This blog isn't Kotaku because:

1. I don't have THAT much time on my hands.
2. I'm not as comprehensive as Kotaku, especially not for the consoles; this be as PC-exclusive as can be as I do not own any consoles (computers dedicated exclusively for gaming, bah!).
3. The stuff I talk about is a bit more personal and, given the disclaimer above, hopefully more though-provoking into what makes us humans who we are. I'm most definitely not a psychology major, but I ain't the bluntest knife in the first melee weapon slot of your typical RPG-esque inventory, too. Don't let that scare you off though folks, I promise to keep this as exclusive of boring details as possible.

And to keep the promise I made in Part #3, I'll do a good post of the library of my Steam account sometime later!

On my first (and hopefully not last) post

So... this is what blogging looks like, eh? Looks easy enough. One quick stop at blogger.com, a few clicks later, a quick association of this account with my GMail account (and honestly, who doesn't have a Google Electronic Mail account nowadays?) and *BAM* I'm on my way to blog writting.

Though English be me first language, I am certainly not privy to the finer points of properly constructing grammatically correct sentences, though you may have noticed that, hey, this guy actually capitalizes the first word in each sentence as opposed to the "hai gusy lol" responses we see on MySpace and Facebook these days.

Enough about me, let's talk about you! You probably stumbled onto this blog because you were either unfortunate enough to be bored of the regular ol' blogs out there and were in search of something new and exciting. Well, new and exciting is what I aims to bring! Provided you have an interest in video gaming, particularly that on the PC. 

Alright, enough about you, let's talk about me again... I'm an Electrical Engineer at some prestiguous university located in Austin, Texas, and I'm as mathy a guy as can be. Not mathy in the socially inept, I-see-numbers-everywhere way, but in the smart practical-problem-solving way, just like the good ol' Engineer from Team Fortress 2 (a personal favorite of mine). 

Pictoral Proof: Intelligence correlates directly to well-kept teeth, but can we establish causation? Sure, if we change our statement to "The Intelligence of virtual Texan Engineers correlates... etc. etc.", as he's probably the only virtual Texan Engineer I know of.

Of course, he's more concerned with guarding unknown briefcases from a plethora of enemy threats like Scouts and Spies, while I'm more concerned with Renewable Energy technology (in capital letters for maximum effectiveness) and the Optimization of such. Hey, optimization! Clearly I, the blogthor (blog author, I just made it up), am gifted in the art of English punnery.

I have a Steam account (and what self-respecting gamer would not have a free Steam account? DRM issues from specific games aside, of course), and I'll post a few screenshots in a later blog post of my libraries list to give y'all an idea of what type of gamer I am. 

Extra credit: I'll tell you right now, though, Sniper is NOT my best class in TF2, though I can play him 'fine' (usually with a 1:2:4 kill ratio on headshots:bodyshot/SMG:kukri kills, I love me some kukri!). Bonus internet cookies to anyone who guesses my three favorite classes in TF2; you have a 8C3, or 1/56 chance of guessing right! Extra credit bonus cookies if you can guess my favorite loadout for each of those three classes.

EDIT: Yay, for pictures not coming out right...