Umbrellas Defend The Earth

Once, the tenfold-noble Semolian Guard stood watch over the Earth. With umbrella in one hand and las-gun in the other, they put fear into the heart of any black-guards that dared threaten Mankind. Their service was long and storied; but tragedy struck in the end. Fighting a race of space-devil-goblins, the Semolian Guard were, as one, sucked into space by an enormous vacuum, leaving only their umbrellas behind to mark their passage. It was a tragedy beyond comprehension; and it would not be the last.

With the Semolian Guard gone, the enemies of Man redoubled their assault, launching attack after attack. The deaths, the destruction - horrific! Many tried to take the place of the Semolian Guard - but, lacking their discipline and skill, nearly all perished. Only one survived the attempt - a woman named Xi Xu at her birth, but who, in later life, was more widely known as the Umbrella-Speaker, for the same reason as allowed her unique success. After the vacuuming of the Semolian Guard, their umbrellas had retreated into hermitage, mourning their failure to protect their masters. It was Xi Xu who found them, beating past the guardians that protected their land of loneliness, so that she could persuade the umbrellas - not just to rejoin the battle for the safety of mankind - but to lend the use of their hermitage as a shelter for others. It is now the safest place on Earth - protected by legions of umbrellas, training for the day when they, too, must join Xi Xu on the front lines.

When the fire rains from the sky - when the space-devil-goblins seek to wipe the last humans from the earth - the umbrellas do not shy from their assault! Instead, they laugh at space-devil-goblins' attacks - use them to train, by deflecting their fireballs into targets for points!

This is the code of Xi Xu and her Umbrellas; the code of the Laughing Warrior.

See it in action here!

you will probably not regret it

The Heroic Dr. Zhang

The time: THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE.

WORLD CHAOS unleashed by AGITATING ANARCHISTS and RAMPAGING ROGUE ROBOTS has PARALYZED governments ACROSS the GLOBE. In the confusion, ONE MAN has risen to power: the terrible NIKOLAS, whose name is TERROR and whose word is DEATH. NONE stand to oppose him...

NONE, that is, save DR. ZHANG, BRILLIANT SURGEON and LONE HERO. Forsaking friendship and even love for his mission, he hunts NIKOLAS with an undiluted passion; the PEOPLE cheer and shelter him, and the minions of NIKOLAS fear him. POLYMATH and WARRIOR with skills BEYOND COMPARE, he is not only the sole man who dares oppose NIKOLAS; he is the only one who CAN.

And TODAY...

YOU can step into his shoes!

CLICK HERE, UNZIP the FILES, and RENAME the ".py_" file to ".py". MAC users should then open it with the PYTHON LAUNCHER, in their PYTHON DIRECTORY; WINDOWS users need only DOUBLE-CLICK IT. (No idea about Linux people.) And - SIMPLE AS THAT* - YOU will be in the shoes of the great hero DR. ZHANG! FRABJULOUS DAY!



Happy birthday, Mr. Zhang! and many more...




*Assuming you already have a Python 2.6 install on your machine. But that's easy - hardly worth mentioning!

ARMA II

I had been sent to destroy a radio station.

It was 0515, just before the invasion was to begin. HQ had identified a radio station that OPFOR was probably using to coordinate their coastal defenses; so our squad had been airlifted in, in the wee hours of the morning, to mark its location for "fast movers". Or, that is to say, tactical bombers and their laser-guided ordinance.

I took the laser designator, per orders from the squad's lieutenant, and scrambled off the helicopter, getting clear of the LZ. We moved forward together, using night-vision goggles to pierce the murky pre-dawn gloom. And then... well, something of my inexperience showed.

For this was a video-game, you see, which I'd gotten on sale earlier that day, and I was not very good at it.

I wandered through the night, frequently getting lost, hearing radio chatter as my more-capable AI team-mates engaged and eliminated hostile forces. (ENEMY MAN 200 METERS FORWARD, their robotic voices would disjointedly announced. 3 ENGAGE TARGET. SCRATCH ONE.)

Our original mission had been to target the radio for a bombing run, but it turned out the radio was in the center a populated village. A bombing run would cause horrific civilian casualties. So instead, I agreed to take the radio out with satchel charges.

I had the satchel charges. I planted the charges. I had no idea of how to use them.

So: better idea.

Nearby, the local OPFORCE had a weapons cache; several automatic weapons, ammunition, and an RPG-7. (A rocket-propelled grenade-launcher.) That would do the trick! There were three rounds for it, too... but I couldn't carry more than two (of the three) without dropping something.

Looked at my inventory. What to drop, to make room? Perhaps... this now-useless laser-guide battery?

Now happily (and heavily) armed, I gained a safe distance from the radio. I aimed. I fired. Whoosh! Boom! The radio antenna was fine.

I blinked. I aimed higher. I fired again.

Whoosh! Boom! No more effect.

I loaded my last round and decided to get another angle on the situation...

Which promptly revealed that, rather than firing into the power generator for the radio antenna, I'd been hitting the wrong side of an adjacent truck.

Took aim at the generator. Nudged my aim up. Fired. Whoosh! BOOM!

Objective complete.

The mission continued. Civilians were rescued; enemies were eliminated (by my team-mates, of course); I got lost. Autosaves were made. Finally, I made it to the extraction point; our command congratulated us on a job well done, and suggested that, being already on the ground, we might be suitable for a job spotting enemy beach defenses for the bombers. (A massive invasion was about to begin, you see.)

I was always up for more. "Sure!" I agreed.

"All right," my squad's lieutenant said. "Where's your laser spotter?"

I blinked.

The battery was still on the ground, next to the enemy weapons cache.

"...I left it on the chopper," my character lamely excused himself.

"God damn it, Cooper," my lieutenant said wearily.

END OF MISSION!

I hope you were entertained by this humorous anecdote



(Plusses: I found another weapons cache en route, so I have another three rounds for my splendid RPG-7! And inventories seem to carry over between missions... man, I anticipate good times.)

Pecularity: LOVE

The first time I logged in to LOVE, after going through a somewhat arduous process to purchase and update the game, I immediately fell into the water and died.

When I respawned, I was in a much safer, stabler area, and I dismissed it as a quirk. But when the game crashed, later, and I logged back in, I spawned in the exact same place, suffering the exact same death.

LOVE is a game with quirks.

I could list a few more. There's the walls that become, from time to time, invisible. There's the Monoliths (those are crucial) that occasionally, seemingly spontaneously, explode. And there's a plethora of small spelling mistakes and bizarre phrasings - though, as the creator is foreign (Swedish?), that's quite understandable. So's the rest, really. I mean, the game's in alpha.

Let's step back for a moment. What is LOVE?

The main site has a few things to say about it, of course. But, because I'm a pure narcissist, I'll give you a few words of my own on the matter. LOVE is a first-person-shooter which has hardly any shooting; LOVE is a game of unique beauty, created entirely by procedural generation*; LOVE is a slow-paced, freeform, sandbox game in which you will be killed again and again, and all your works rendered unto dust, by a relentless and murderous AI.

I'd summarize it as "Minecraft, but bigger and stranger."

Then I'll tell you some anecdotes of play.

When I first joined the game, a few people had already set up a small base. (The game is organized by servers, of which there are, I believe, four, at present. Two in the UK, two in the US. They'll hold at most 200 people, but the one I'm on now has only perhaps 50.)

(That's not people playing at the same time - that's a total number of people registered for that server. It's a micro-MMO, a rather amusing sort of term.)

An icon at the bottom of my screen told me where the settlement was, so I made my way there. The journey was fairly long - they tend to be, when you're spawned out in the wild - but I eventually made my way there. The people there had already collected a number of 'tokens' - useful objects that will appear at random in the wilderness and can be placed near a settlement, whereupon which their associated 'tool' can be placed in one of your four inventory slots. I looked around, picking things like the Radio tool (essential - allows long-range communication), the Pavement tool (cosmetic - lets you change how a certain tile appears), and the Binoculars tool (utterly useless). I wandered around - at one point getting stuck in a teleport trap that sent me into an infinite loop of teleports back and forth between two naturally-occuring teleporters, explored, built some walls, talked to people...

After a while, there were strange reports of 'enemies in the base!' Sometimes they were dispatched. Once I was killed, shot in the back. And then, quite suddenly, the base was destroyed - the Monolith going up in flames, and all its associated Tokens vanishing with it.

It was quite perplexing.

Eventually, someone else found and planted a new Monolith. We all trekked our way over there, finding that, unlike the old base (in a sort of grassy area, named "Arden - Garden of Colossi" - the random area names can be pretty sweet), this one was on a frigid ice shelf. Also unlike the other base, this one was under constant and harrowing AI attack. I took to the field, my puny Blaster plinking away at the foe's strange, amorphous shapes (other people look really weird in the game, and AIs moreso), killing a few; but I was greviously wounded, and fell back to the base. "Nice base," I might have said.

At that point, the server hiccuped and caused the game to lock-up. When I logged back on, I learned that something of the sort had happened to most of the other people there.

It's a very peculiar sort of game, still in alpha but very interesting for that. Like Minecraft, griefers are its greatest scourge - at one point, one managed to destroy our monolith, find another, and then plant it high in the sky where no-one could reach it. (If we had our terrain-shaping abilities, we could have reached it - but we needed to touch the monolith to regain those. Catch-22.) Much later, that same griefer (who repeatedly denied he was any such thing) threw an already somewhat complicated base into complete chaos, turning it into a seemingly non-Euclidean maze. What a mess.

But for that, I would recommend it. As it stands, I still spent the vast majority of my evening on it, and plan to spend more once I finish this - perhaps visiting the UK servers, where the Rock-Paper-Shotgunites live.

LOVE: what a mysterious, many-splendored thing!

*I.e., guided randomness. Wiki can help you.

**Quick warning: despite being an alpha, there is a subscription fee for LOVE. $4.50 for 30 days. The creator says that this is because, if he were to try to pay for servers for everyone who'd want to play in alpha without a subscription fee, he'd go bankrupt. Quite plausible.

But, you know, if you thought it was free (as basically all other alphas are), that could be a bit confusing.

Persona 3

A few thoughts on the video-game I've been putting most of my video-game-playing-time into recently. It's fairly interesting, and I've been getting some 'razzing' on the matter, so.

This is a game about a group of high-school students who blow their brains out on a regular basis. (To fight monsters.)

So, yes, this. But there's more to it than that.

There's a lot of stuff in the game. It's a JRPG, which means that the game only really started an hour-and-a-half in (ridiculously!), and, sixteen hours into it, now - more, really, but a few restarts mean that the recorded time is somewhat less than the real one - I'm still perhaps a fifth of the way in. And that's only for the first campaign. See, this is Persona 3 FES, which has an added campaign nearly half as long as the first one - total estimated playtime, for the two campaigns combined, of about 100 hours...

Yeah.

Back to the point: first, there's story. Which is decent enough, more for the characters than anything else. (They're quite likeable, I find.) Then there's the combat: turn-based, indirect control of party-members, based on knocking enemies down by hitting them with their elemental weaknesses, then piling onto them in a cartooney ball of smoke. There's the titular Personas that you use to fight - the ones that you summon by shooting yourself in the head - which can be collected, leveled (independent of your character's level), fused, and turned into weapons. Like, swords. There's a shop for it.

Then there's the equipment. The side-quests. The Persona-combinations - I've already mentioned them, but there's such a ridiculously complex system involved that I feel I should mention it twice. Frankly, it puts me a bit out of my depth. There's all that... but that's not the part I'm most interested in.

It's the noncombat stuff that's most compelling to me. You are a junior in "Gekkoukon High School" - which the infamous "sib-sib", schooled in all aspects of Japanese, informs me translates to something like "School High School" - and, each day, you have some amount of time to spend on extracurricular activities. (Your nights are split between addicting yourself to coffee to improve your 'charm' and delving into the monster-filled interior of the dark tower Tartarus. Well, the coffee thing might just be me. But the monster thing is pretty general.)

In a given day, you might have many options. You could attend swim practice - or Kendo practice, or track practice, depending on which club you decided to join. Or you could attend a Student Council meeting. Or you could give money at a shrine, to improve your academics. (This is, as far as I can tell, the best way to improve your academics. Far better than studying.) Or you can take a girl from another world on a date. Or you can just throw up your arms and play video games.

But you can only do one of them.

There is a finite amount of time in the game. The calendar stretches for a year, though the internet-men inform me the actual length of the game is closer to ten months. Every day, you have pretty much only one thing you can do. (If that. Sometimes you're caught in exams, or similar situations.) And there's always a hundred things demanding your attention - an ever-increasing number of relationships to be maintained and improved.

(Why do the relationships matter? Why, because they dramatically increase the power of the Personas you can fuse, of course. It's a purely pragmatic thing. Befriend people, gain increased power.)

(Very, very weird.)

That choice - that tension-filled, perpetual decision of which thing you're going to spend your scarce time on today -

That is the thing I like most about Persona 3.

(Just wish I would stop dying to random encounters. Even on Normal, the combat can be hard. Sheesh.)

Sandytimes (or: Algae Eaters)

"Why, Nikolas, whatever have you been doing this weekend?"

"I'm glad you asked, Mr. or Ms. Sir! I am happy to tell you the answer - for the truth is, I have been making a game!"

"Oh! Fascinating! Can you tell me more?"

"Luckily enough, I kept a careful "dev-log" throughout the process - so the answer is yes!"

The game was made for this contest - a friendly sort of 'game jam' in which participants are to make a sandbox game (like SimCity or The Sims) within 48 hours time. My first idea was to make a game inspired by the Grow series involving plant growth. But I couldn't think of anything cool about it! So somehow I ended up making a sandbox tower defence game instead.

I initially named it "Monstroyka", after the half-remembered name from this game. (I just thought it sounded cool, really.) But as I was typing the code that added a title to the game window, my father walked by and noted that "like the plecostomus, you are on Team Algae Eater."

So, the game has two names, both fairly unrelated to the game content. I consider this reasonable.

My first concept for the game, verbatim from the design doc (sans hyperlink), was:

Ideas - spawn monsters, dudes. Dudes build towers, man them, shoot monsters. Monsters try to eat dudes, get to center, gnaw on delicious vegetation. (Om nom nom nom!) Killing monsters gives dudes resources to use to build better stuff. ("Spiked Walls", heh). Can eventually build citadels, palaces, unlock better monsters; also, bridges to other areas?

Nearly everything from that paragraph ended up in the game, so as concepts go, it worked pretty well for me.

Within two hours of programming, I was "through the first sentence" (of the concept), and fairly pleased with myself. (This was when I took the screenshot above, showing combat between 'froods' (the blues) and 'mooks' (the reds), as well as their vicious battle-shouts.) After getting distracted for several hours, I resumed work, adding towers (a useful feature for a tower-defence) and the basic resource, wood.

A note on the sound effects - much as with the fairly spartan graphics of the game, I was reluctant to spend much time creating 'assets'. Also, including sound would have added additional 'dependencies' for the game - I would have had to import non-standard Python libraries, which would have inflated the size of the executable and made the source more difficult for other people to run... well. In any case. I had the idea of making sound effects as little floating 'shouts', as can be seen in the screenshot. This worked well, in that I had 'sound' without taking the time to make sound effects; but it had its weaknesses, mainly that many sound effects in a small area tended to become impossible to read. (This was especially bad when creatures were being spawned or in melee combat.) At the very end of the project, I introduced several limiters on the 'shouts', which mostly fixed the problem. We'll see if it crops up again.

Unfortunately, due to Microsoft Paint's wonderful defaults, I managed to end up saving most of my development screenshots in png format with jpg compression. I.e., they look horrible. (As can be seen above.) I didn't end up saving any of my earlier code, so I can't retake the shots... it's a pity. Still, the world will not end.

After putting in towers, I had to make enemies actually collide with them - that is, make the towers solid objects, so that you could create a 'maze' for the enemy to thread. (This is a traditional Tower Defence pastime, like baseball.) The problem with this is that having enemies find the 'correct' paths is a difficult and complex problem - tending to be hard both on the CPU and the programmer. (Not to complain overly.) I'd tried implementing the 'correct solution' to pathfinding - an algorithm called A* before, with poor results. This time, though, it worked rather well - after settling some 'teething bugs', my mooks were threading my tower-mazes in no time. At least one fairly subtle bug managed to make it through there and into the 'release' version - I still haven't fixed it, despite over two hours dedicated exclusively to hunting it down. But for an essentially-first effort, it works well.

This is rambling. Let's tighten my prose up. To the extreme.

Had some ideas for buildings and resources! Mostly followed that blueprint afterwards! Most of the stuff still not implemented! (Was probably too ambitious, which I realized at the time!)

Added a new type of enemy, a mook that was bigger than the first! Called it the 'Big Mook!' Added an area reserved for the enemy-spawning crystals, for aesthetic/gameplay reasons! Screenshot!

(That one didn't get jpeg compressed, thankfully. See if you can spot the tiny arrows flying around on the bottom! The towers don't compensate for the movement of their target - they aim at where he is, not where he'll be when the arrows get there - so they're pretty awful shots.)

A moment of brilliant inspiration! I'd created smoke-effects for a previous game! Re-use them here (which I was already doing for tower-collapses) and add them to melee combat! Cartoon-style brawling, one big ball of smoke! Wonderbar! Done!

(Bit hard to take a screenshot of something so quick-moving! So didn't! Sorry!)

Added 'barracks' to train 'froods' (the blue guys, the good guys, probably) into 'footfroods'! (Like Footmen. Bigger, stronger, armed!)

(Jpeg compression! Hooray!)

(The barracks is in the top-centre. See all the training dummies? Froods will beat those up for a while to train, while the instructor paces behind them. It's all so real, man!)

Also at this point I had arrived at Day Two! This was the second day in which I worked on the game!

Several hours spent debugging the last night's typo-strewn code! I do not work well while tired!

Excerpt from bugs:

"When froods get transformed into footfroods, they roar a constant stream of triumphant exclamations and accelerate off the screen, trailing smoke as they go. (Like motorbikes!)"

(Wasn't too hard to fix, but I was a little bit sad to. Motorbikes are wonderful. Perhaps I should add some?)

(I totally should.)

Actually this is when I added the Crystal Chamber! (The partial-octagon on the left side of the screen.) Whoops! Not quite sure how that makes sense with the third-screenshot not having a barracks! It is all very odd!

Moving on!

Added 'mooks' (enemies) that fly! Named them 'Flying Mooks!' Considered making them flap but was too intimidated by the complex maths I thought were probably going to be required! (To make them be able to flap properly while moving in various directions!) So they just kinda floated forward!

Added a demolish button! Woo! (Surprisingly useful!)

Apparently this is when that third screenshot was taken! The one which I was confused about! How odd!

Added ballistae! They shot gigantic bolts that passed through enemies! Ideally they would damage enemies while they did so! I think I fixed them not doing so but I'm not sure I did so thoroughly! It's all very odd!

At some point around here I added a 'cheat' button for debugging!

Noticed lag for the first time! Fiddled with things to try to reduce it! So-so results!

Added 'mooks' even bigger than the Big Mooks! Called them 'Bigger Mooks!' Eventually renamed them to 'Giant Mooks!' They're a bit lame! Might try to turn them into something cooler later! Or just remove them! Ah well!

Added stone resource to the game!

Had the infinite Mr. Kessler play through the game! (The peculiar Mr. Ethan had played through an earlier version the night before, calling it - not unfairly - 'very weird'!) Mr. Kessler enjoyed it! This was a good thing! (Also he understood it without me having to give him instructions, which I considered a Good Sign!)

Started adding statues to the game! (Inspired by Rocket Slime!) The idea was that they track kills (one statue for each type of enemy), and when elevated to a 'gold' status, upgraded their type of enemy to a dramatically more powerful 'gold' form. They confused Kelsey when he did a second playtest - because I hadn't had the time to put in all the 'hinting' and player feedback that I'd done for other, earlier elements of the game - so it was clear improvement would be needed. I continued in the morning.

After getting up at 6 AM on the third day, I raced to be in time to finish in 48 hours, fixing bugs and problems discovered in the last night's playtest. Stopping at 8:43 AM - I'd started at 8:44, two days before, I packed the source into an executable, uploaded it to a hosting site, started playing the game, taking screenshots... (For I needed screenshots, of course.)

Within five minutes, I encountered a crash bug.

So, I didn't exactly make the deadline. But it's here anyway - an actual game, by me, done! - and that, that, is cooltimes.

Hooray!

I Am Always Working On Something New

For instance, I'd already abandoned this before Mr. Higham persuaded me to switch back to it!

Spoiler alert: the next thing I will add is trains. Be prepared! They will rock you to your core.


(This post is basically a link to that post, which is elsewhere)

(for reference)

Homework Proves Troublesome

Kelsey awoke suddenly.

"Who are you?" he asked, blinking groggily at the shadowy figure standing before you. "What are you doing in my room?"

"My name is Geralt," the figure rasped. "I'm here about your posting."

Kelsey thought for a moment.

"Oh," he said. "You mean the thing about my homework?"

Geralt nodded grimly.

"Basically, I'm pretty busy basically all the time," Kelsey began to explain.

Geralt, still listening, began to prowl about the room.

"I've got a ton of homework - being a student, as I am - and sometimes, especially in the wrong conditions, I have a hard time getting it done," Kelsey continued.

Geralt looked at a shelf. There was an apple there. Then there wasn't.

"Of course, when I don't get my work done, it tends to pile up," Kelsey said with chagrin.

Geralt paused by Kelsey's desk. A pile of loose change vanished.

"And, well, over the last few days - I didn't get my work done at all!" Kelsey said.

Geralt examined a pile of clothes near the foot of Kelsey's bed. Half a wheel of Roquefort cheese seemed to be buried within. It vanished into Geralt's copious pockets.

"So, naturally, it mutated and transformed into a hideous homework-monster, and now it lurks within our garage, emerging at night to attempt to eat us," Kelsey concluded.

Geralt turned back to Kelsey. "An Ijjurdant," he rasped. "Vulnerable to fire, silver, and mold. Slow-moving, but deadly when provoked. I'll want $50."

"It's vulnerable to money?" Kelsey asked.

"My payment," Geralt growled.

"That's kinda a lot," Kelsey said. "I mean, I have an allowance, but..."

Geralt gave him a gimlet-eyed glare - the effect, perhaps, somewhat reduced by the dim lighting, but palpable nonetheless.

"Okay," Kelsey said. "When you get it done."

"I'll be back," Geralt rasped, and left.

Outside, behind the garage, Geralt contemplated his arsenal. From a pouch on his belt, he drew a small vial; he uncorked it, and then swiftly downed the contents. He stood a moment longer; then entered the garage, movements swift and precise.

Half an hour passed.

Geralt, covered in blood and ichor, emerged. In one hand he held a slime-covered sword; in the other, the soot-blackened, severed head of the Ijjurdant.

Kelsey was there waiting for him - along with his father and brothers. All were tensed, waiting.

Geralt ignored them. "My money," he demanded in his tortured voice, dropping the Ijjurdant on the ground and extending a hand.

Kelsey's father spoke in response. "We don't need to pay you anything, Witcher. Move along."

Geralt looked at them.

After a moment, he spoke.

"On my body, I carry two swords, an axe, a dagger, and various magic potions. I was genetically modified for improved skill at combat - then mutated, for the same - then spent the better part of two decades either training for combat or engaging in it. Also, I have telekinetic powers. You have?"

Kelsey's family huddled. After a minute's hushed, but intense discussion, they emerged with a consensus: "An excellent knowledge of programming!"

"That might have been useful if you'd used it to build a giant robot to fight me," Geralt rasped. "As it is, it's pretty useless."

Geralt considered.

"...you didn't build a giant robot."

"Did you?"

There was silence from Kelsey & company.

Then, belatedly, Kelsey answered:

"...yeah, I guess not."

"We totally should!" Kelsey's younger brother opined.

Geralt indicated his outstretched hand; reluctantly, Kelsey handed over the amount demanded.

Geralt cast one last look at the Kelsey-tribe; then stalked away, into the everpresent night.

Another episode in the grim life of Geralt, the White Wolf*!

*(Also, Kelsey, who has problems with homework sometimes.)

Dharmas

The Healer-King sits on his throne, at the centre of his glass castle so high above the earth. A petitioner kneels on the dias before him. She has come, as so many do, for healing. This she presently recieves.

With a regal wave of his hand, the King causes a great light to come forth. It swirls about him, leaving a trail of stars, and returns to him; in this moment the woman's ailments are healed. She looks at herself with astonishment, and then, remembering herself, retreats off the dias, bowing profusely as she goes. She leaves the throne room; the next petitioner, a man in a white robe, approaches.

"What is your sickness?" the Healer-King asks. "I sense no affliction in you."

"It is not an ill of the body, your Majesty, but of the spirit," the white-robed man replies. "My driving purpose is incomplete, my dharma unfufilled; it was for this reason that I came to you."

"Is this so?" the King asks. "Perhaps you should have travelled to my brother to the west, the Philosopher-King, or my brother in the east, the Bodhisattva-King; either might have aided you. Certainly I can assist you to reach them; but I am uncertain as to how I might otherwise be of use to you."

"Ah, Your Majesty, but you misunderstand the nature of my trouble," the white-robed man replies. "I am of the order of the Hashashin; and my dharmas is that of the Killer."

The King pauses. "You are here to end my life, then," he says slowly.

The Hashashin nods. "It is so."

"Why will you do this thing?" the King asks.

The Hashashin answers:

Your life must end.
Perhaps you committed some great sin;
Perhaps your very existence is an obstruction to the Great Design.
I know not.
I care not.
I am the Killer; and so I will deliver you to the greatest dharma of all,
that is,
Death,
which subsumes all others.

The King considers further.

"How will you do this thing?" he asks.

The Hashashin answers:

I will approach you.
and in my hand will be a knife.
Quickly, painlessly, your life will end,
and you will be delivered to the greatest dharma of all,
that is,
Death,
which subsumes all others.

The King again pauses.

"Is there any way in which this fate may be prevented?" he asks. "For, you see, I have helped many people, and would like that to continue; and, further, I am quite fond of my life, and would not like it to end in this way."

But the Hashashin feels no pity.

There is no branch in this path;
there is no fork in this road.
Your course was set a thousand years ago;
My purpose is what it is, and may not be halted;
I will deliver you to the greatest dharma of all,
that is,
Death,
which subsumes all others.

The King, having heard and understood this, now answers with decision in his voice.

"Come before me," he says. "Kneel, as a petitioner, as all who come before me, on the dias before my throne at the heart of this glass castle in the sky. In this way ritual may be maintained and tradition may be appeased; when this is accomplished, I will offer no resistance, and you may do whatever you must."

The Hashashin seems somewhat suspicious of this offer.

"I see that dagger at your side," he says. "Golden, yes; ceremonial, certainly; but might it not still descend, and wreak a bloody and unfortunate ending upon me, kneeling helpless upon the dias? This seems a fate which I would be ill-advised to consent myself to."

The King expected this; he now draws his dagger, and with a flick tosses it away. It flies past the Hashashin, and into the far recesses of the throne room. "Behold my goodwill!" he declares. "Even now, I render myself helpless; should you wish, you might even now stride directly to my throne, and there work your bloody trade. Such is my trust in you, that one of your order might do proper honor to a King, that I will make such a gesture."

The Hashashin considers this. "For my respect for you as a King, and as a Healer, I will do this thing," he decides; he walks up the dias, and kneels before the King. "Is this as you wish it?" he asks.

"Entirely," the Healer-King agrees, and pulls a cord hanging from the side of the throne.

A hole appears in the dias; and the Hashashin falls.

His dharma is subsumed to Death.

nikolas dreams and anticipation

THE KORMIKOLS OF DESMONE

désmònd was borne tò a poor familiè in the citie along the sea-chòast, and it wass güarded by 12 menn oütside the postte. in the dream time, this citie was cursèd. then desmond was a backer in the citie square. he maked crackers and cookees in his oven and he sold them for 23 ducats in the haymarket. but then there was a terrible myst that came into the citie that caused the people to be very sicke and pale. desmond ha detto che devo trovare una cura per la malattia, altrimenti non sarà in grado di vendere il pane in piazza del mercato. then how can he make 23 ducats to feed his mounting humger? he said to him self, i need to go to the moon temple and summone the moon, that way i can lift the ship out of the watter and pilfer its treasor. poi posso salire in casa del re e la sua lotta contro i patogeni nelle sue viscere. Then a white dog came into his house. dogge, he said, can you save the citte from the cirse? he asked the dog. Then, suddenly, the curse was dispelled from the lande. Thank god! he said. poi tornò al forno e ha fatto diversi pani e li ha venduti come al solito. then desmond said to himself, i am a lonely man i need to go take a virgin and lay down with her. He looked all around the town but he could not find any young girls that were interested in him. è tornato al suo lavoro. then a wondering traveller came into the the town. nikolas saw this traveller and it was a young girl, and he thought she was hot and he wanted to have her. so he said hello and he gave her a breadloaf for free and they talked under the shade of the banyan tree. he said:" call me if ur lonely, lol" then nikolas went back home and he waited for 7 days and 7 nights but the traveller did not call him, and he became very sad, and he baked a cake of ashes from his oven, and he buryd it in the ground to feed the birds, to show god that he was sad. then desmond said, i will not let this plauge me this no more, i must find a new young traveller, and sure enough one came in the next day, and he repeated the procedure, but the same thing happened and he was very sad and angry and he make a loaf of beread in the shape of penis, and the hanged it on a tree.

The Dawn of the Last Age

In the time following the Human invention of the Hyperdrive and the shattering of the interstellar gate network, seven Major Races rose to interstellar prominence. For one year, they expanded into the stars without war, planting the flag upon a hundred virgin worlds. Two races grew thus without any knowledge of the others. The Altarians, a peaceful race with a strange resemblance to humanity, expanded from their homeworld into the surrounding star cluster; the Torians, a former slave race, did likewise. But the star cluster of the Altarians was a small one, surrounded by a terrible void not even the Hyperdrive could readily surpass; so their dominion was equally small, and they found themselves nearly powerless when they encountered the other Major Races; first of which was the newborn Terran Empire. Unlike the Altarians, the star cluster in which the Torians were isolated was vast, and the Torians expanded into a great sphere, many times the size of the Altarian dominion; they found themselves a Great Power when first they encountered the other Major Races, the first of which they met was the Arceans.

The Arceans were a race of Stoics, whose skill at war was already known to be great from the days of the Interstellar Gates; but for the game of interstellar expansion they were not so well prepared. Both they and their neighbors, the Yor, a race of malevolent robots who had exterminated their creators, grew outwards as best they could; but each claimed barely half a dozen stars before they found the rest claimed by another race. The Thalans, last of the residents of that star cluster, had grown faster and further than the Arceans and Yor alike; both were thereby relegated to secondary status, leaving the Thalans to take on the mantle of Power. The Thalans were a strange race; they claimed themselves to be time travellers from an era in which humanity had brought devastation upon all thinking creatures, and although they started on par with the other races technologically, the rate at which they progressed upwards was remarkable, leaving the others hard-pressed to catch-up, even in that first year. Whether or not they were truly from the future was unclear; they certainly showed no evidence of further time travel, but certain artefacts on their homeworld seemed far more advanced than anything the Major Races could produce, and their bias against humanity seemed a strange thing to simply invent.

At last we turn to the last two of the Major Races; humanity, united at last under the Terran Alliance, and their nearest neighbors. The Terrans grew swiftly, building an empire of stars close to that of the Torians and the Thalans; they became the third Power, and though somewhat lesser than the others in size and technology respectively, their diplomatic, manipulative abilities was second to none. Their neighbors, the Korath, were quite the opposite. Limited by the presence of the Terrans, they found themselves relegated to a handful of stars, as were the Yor and Arceans; but unlike those races, there was a malevolent drive within the Korath, whose philosophy called for the ultimate extinction of all other races. They manufactured war-ships as swiftly as any of the Great Powers, despite their smaller size, aided by their willingness to act as brokers for technology trades between the races. By diplomatic means they gained wealth, and spent it just as quickly for quite different purposes; a small armada of warships and troop transports was stealthily assembling itself by the Terran border at the end of that first year, the year of peace.

The Torians had been enslaved by the Korath, once, in the days of the Interstellar Gates; the shattering of that network allowed them to throw off their chains. Now, many times more powerful than the Korath, they struck. Attacking the planet the Korath dubbed "Bloodthorn", the Torians landed with a hundred troop transports and took the planet for their own. Torian warships fluttered about the system, rendering ruin unto Korath troop transports hastily summoned from the Terran border in an attempt to recapture Bloodthorn; the Korath ships, individually superior to their Torian equivalents but strongly outnumbered, were unable to secure the planet. Had the Torians continued the attack into the Korath home system, it seems likely that the Korath would have been crushed.

But they halted; perhaps to consolidate their gains, or to manufacture more troop transports and warships to replace their losses. While their fleets swarmed around Bloodthorn, the Korath ships launched themselves toward the Torian cluster, two months travel away by the best drives the Korath could build. There, they launched an attack on the Torians' greatest weakness: their neighbors.

There were seven Major Races, as has been related previously; these being those sentient races who expanded outwards upon the discovery of the Hyperdrive. Some of them grew to a greater extent, some lesser, but each possessed an empire. But to the attention of the Major Races came also another sort of species, which we will call the Minor Race: a species which, by some quirk of circumstance or disposition, gained the Hyperdrive but remained relegated to their home star. The Torians seemed adept at finding these species; three of the four known were either in or bordering Torian territory. The Minor Races had proven useful for the Korath in the past; they were perpetually technologically backwards, meaning that any innovations they created could be easily bought, and technology traded back to them would fetch a handsome price. But their time was up; the Korath could use their planets better than they could. The Korath struck twice by surprise, wiping the skies clear of any ship before the transports came raining down. Two planets they took, exterminating the inhabiting Minor Races entirely; their manufactoriums the Korath took for their own, setting them to produce warships on the Torian doorstep. With this triumphant momentum they took two Torian worlds in the same brutal way; but then they, too, faltered.

For months no more planets were taken by either side; instead, there was only a battle of brutal attrition. Torian mass cannons pounded against Korath hull armour while plasma lances cut through the Torian warships with disdainful ease. The Korath armada was better designed for the opponent it faced, making one Korath frigate more than a match for two Torian ships of the same size; but the Torians could build three frigates for each Korath one, and did. So the war dragged on, as countless ships were reduced to superheated scrap by ever-slightly-better weapons.

It was a Korath innovation, researched over the course of the long stalemate, that allowed them to break the stall. Troop transports, necessary to conquer planets, were expensive: they cost nearly as much as a frigate of the same generation, and the number of slaves required to fill them to capacity could cripple the economies of smaller worlds required to launch them. (The Torians used volunteers to man their troop transports; the Korath did not.) The expense of troop transports - and their extreme fragility, readily destroyed by even the smallest fighter-craft - had been a large contributor to the stalemate that persisted for most of the length of the war. So the Korath devoted their scientists to finding a better way: and they did. Spore Weapons: small ships, manned by a skeleton crew, that were designed to slip into the atmospheres of enemy planets and attack with a virulent suite of germ weapons. The entire population of the afflicted planet would be wiped out, the atmosphere would be rendered toxic; and the Korath, who had already prepared themselves for such toxic conditions, would be free to take the planet at leisure.

The Torian empire fell. Bloodthorn was the first to be taken; then the Korath struck against the worlds in the Torian sphere, moving from the outside in. As the balance of manufacturing power began to tilt towards the Korath, they gained an ever-greater control of Torian space. With three months of the discovery of Spore Weapons, no ship could venture off the Torian homeworld without facing destruction. The Torians' fair-weather friends, the Terrans and Thalans, opportunistically attacked the defenseless Torian worlds, taking with troop transports any worlds the Korath had not yet reduced to virus-filled wastelands. With a pathetic handful of worlds left from their once-great empire, the Torians surrendered.

To the Thalans.

The Terrans had not been idle in the meanwhile. Midway through the Torian-Korath war, they had launched a surprise attack on the Altarians, winning several battles. They conquered no worlds, seemingly intent on rooting out all armed opposition off-planet before sending vulnerable troop-transports into battle. This state persisted through the end of the Torian-Korath war; at which point the Korath, irritated at Terran opportunism, decided to play the same trick. They sent their now-idle warfleets to Altaria and, once all were in position, attacked at a stroke. By the end of the week, half of the tiny Altarian empire had been virus-bombed and taken by the Korath. Their military was in a shambles. They surrendered.

To the Thalans.

It grew increasingly clear, to Thalan, Terran, and Korath alike, that the newborn peace could not last. The Thalans and Terrans were closely allied; together they controlled two-thirds of Known Space. The Korath, thanks to their recent conquests, held a fifth, much of which had been taken by use of spore weapons. The Terrans and Thalans had no interest in the same happening to them; the Korath knew that they could not oppose both at once. Over the next month and a half, they called their armadas back from the far-away Altarian star-cluster, setting them in a ring about the Terran empire. The Korath planned a surprise attack, as had served them against the Altarians; with the Terrans, if not completely conquered, than certainly reduced in strength, they would be in a much better position when the war came.

The week before the Korath battle preparations would have been complete, both the Thalans and the Terrans declared war.

Known Space might readily be divided into four quarters; not equal in size, but similarly distant from each-other. The first quarter holds only the star-cluster which was the Altarians', and now was split between the Thalans and Korath. It had been an irrelevant backwater for the past three year, and would remain so in the Great War. The second quarter had been the Torians'; now a fifth of it was in Terran hands, with the remainder evenly split between the Thalans and the Terrans. Its worlds had been powerful once; now ruined by warfare, they were unable to contribute to the initial stages of the war. (A notable exception would be the planets of the Minor Races, taken by the Korath before they invented Spore Weapons; their manufacturing might would prove vital for the war to come.) The third quarter was largely in Thalan control, with a few pockets reserved for the Arceans and the Yor (now at war with each-other), as well as isolated Terran and Korath colonies. From the latter the Korath would launch occasional raids, but the Thalan heartland was thickly filled with war-fleets, and the meagre Korath presence could make no impact on them. So we come to the last quarter of Known Space, the major theater for the first part of the war: the cluster split between Korath and Terran.

CONCLUSION BY A SPECIAL GUEST:

The Thallasians were armed with a small fleet of 33 capable spacecraft, which they defended their border with adamantine grit and determination. The Korths on the other hand had only a handful of small unimpressive space frigates but their determination to fight to the death would prove a powerful weapon. On the forefront of battle the commander of the Korths forces cried out over the telecommunications, "Prepare to be penetrated like a nubile virgin." The Thallasians, not prepared to withstand such an offense retorted, "That I shall be glad to take it, in any position, at any time, so bring it on." The interchange continued, "You shall be ravaged in every lustful manner known to either of our races" "Come and get me, you muscular cretine". The battle began. Amidst the firing the captains of the main Thallasian spacecraft captured the frigate of the Korenth commander and they proceeded to brawl physically as soon as they saw each other. But then things took a turn for the unexpected as the commander of the Koreth suddenly stripped off the battle armour of the Thalassian captains trousers. Then they embraced and ripped off all of their clothes in full view of the subordinate officers on board. Compelled by this the subordinate officers too joined in and commenced a bacchanalian event of immense magnitude. They remained in each others embrace until such times as the Teran space command took a laser to the space craft and demolished, thus ending a most bloody war.

THE END

(Draft written Oct. 20, 2008; conclusion written May 19, 2009.)

Electrogame Update Episodical

Thought I'd catch you up on the latest and heppest happenings on the interwaves! Behold:

Windosill! A game about doing things with stuff - with physics. There's a free version that is a pretty good time, and a paid version ($3) to the quality of which I cannot attest. (Because I am a cheap-steak.) (That is a steak which has been cheaply prepared. It doesn't taste very good.) But Windosill tastes excellent, despite the missing "w' in its name. Have a look. (PC or Mac.)


Rails! An adaptation of a board game, apparently. (Does look it rather a bit, doesn't it?) I haven't played the original, but the video-game is quite nifty. (Even though I had no idea of what I was doing.) You deliver things to places! Sometimes, you even deliver cheese. Also your train goes choo-choo! I do not think there is anything more which can be asked of a train. Or a game.

Plus, according to the change-log, "Options on the Stats menu no longer corrupt the game"!

What more could you ask? Direct download here. (PC only, sorry.)

And now two games, from one man. Both rather similar to Gate; the creator refers to them as "Games for Engineers", which, as an Engineer, seems entirely correct to me. In no particular order:


Bureau of Steam Engineering! A game about building great big walking 'mechs', armed with weapons ranging from flamethrowers to buzz-saws to repeating rifles - to fight against other Civil-War era mechs. (Yes. This is in the Civil War.) Your mech is powered by steam, and the gameplay is mostly about cobbling together its internals to make it shoot things properly... it's a bit fiddly, and sometimes counterintuitive, but quite a good time! (It distracted both me and an number of collegues while we really should have been working on a math laboratorium project. So multiple people are guaranteed to have liked it! You should need no more assurance to be confident of this game's quality.) Direct link here - it's Flash, so all OSes are welcome to frolick.

KOHCTPYKTOP! This one is really close to Gate - they're both about low-level circuit design - but KOHCTPYKTOP is even lower-level - you start with nothing but silicon and metal, and have to build your own AND, OR, and NOT gates. (Not in that order.) I'm stuck on the second puzzle (pictured above), so I'm not sure I can recommend it - but it really is very interesting, testified to by the fact that I've been thinking about that blasted puzzle for hours. So maybe try it? It's a flash-o-tron, so you don't even have to download it. (Plus, apparently, there is a HIDDEN SURPRISE at the end. That sounds... alluring!)

See you next time! In... the land of the video-game.

The Cure (not the band)

From one of my electro-video games, as ever. Bear with me, perhaps - this requires a little bit of explanation, but it's worthwhile.

Video-game: The Last Remnant, a JRPG, or game in which dudes with swords run around hacking at monsters for 80 hours. Or possibly ladies with swords. The difference is often slim, in the JRPG.

That established. The Last Remnant's key new-thing is "Unions"; a rather poorly-named innovation, but still an innovation. In most JRPGs, you manage each character individually; from the 4 you had in Final Fantasy 1 to the - what - two-dozen (?) you have in most recent JRPGs? (I only dabble in the field.) This can become rather cumbersome! So The Last Remnant simultaneously scales things up - midway through the game, I have ~20 characters in my party, 15 of which are in every battle - and scales things down. Because you don't control characters individually - with 15 characters in a battle, that'd take forever! No. You control them by group, by union - before battle, you set up your unions, configuring formations and groupings of characters and what-not, and then in-battle, you assign commands, each turn, to each union. (I currently have 3, with a maximum of 5; not sure how many you can get as the game goes on.)

Owing to the fact that all of your units have different abilities, the commands you give your 'unions' are rather vague - ranging from 'Attack!', 'Attack with mystic arts!', and 'Attack with combat arts!' - these being both bread-like and strongly resembling butter - to 'I know you can hear me... unbind yourself!', 'Bring them back!', and 'Save them, no matter what!'. (Thankfully, they have short descriptions that appear when you select them, which usually help disambiguate them to some extent.) Many of the commands are context-sensitive, and can appear and disappear at seemingly arbitrary times - even rather key commands, like the ones that let you heal your party members - and so new ones are always appearing as you progress through the game. Like the one I saw just recently, the inspiration for this post.

Back up again. There's a very annoying monster called the Spiritlord - great big bird, big as a house, roughly as tough as one - that has a very annoying tendency. On the first round of a battle, it will use its special ability on any attackers that approach - "Curse". This has the lovely side effect of, for the next few rounds, giving each character afflicted with the Curse a significant chance (20%?) of dropping dead.

This is rather inconvenient.

In the past, I had great difficulty when fighting these creatures, but now I came back for revenge. On I came, with my much-more-powerful characters, going to Teach Those Spiritlords A Lesson (Or Two). First round, most of my 'unions' stay back, while one group goes forward to engage the Spiritlord. The Spiritlord, of course, curses the poor attacking union, and they all get purple skulls floating over their heads...

And in the next turn, both of my other unions have a new command available: "Cure them even if it kills them!" This has a description reading something like the following: "Kills the targeted union to remove the curse on it."

Back up one last time.

In this game, as in many JRPGs, there are items and abilities that will bring characters back from the dead* - the only one that I currently have available being termed the Vivification Herb. (It's green.) Owing to The Last Remnant's union-system, though, you can't revive individual characters - you can only revive an entire dead union. Meaning that if individual characters in a union drop dead from a curse, the union's firepower will naturally drop, but even if you have any super-herbs handy, you'll be unable to do anything about it. (Plus there are leadership issues if the leader of the union dies...)

Unless, of course, you kill the afflicted union and then immediately bring them back - which, of course, removes the curse, along with any other afflictions they have.

It's insane!

But it totally works - and more than that, the game designers specifically put the option in the game to let the players do it.

The heck, guys.

The heck.

*"Revive" them from a "KOed state". Splitting hairs.

Can't Stand the Distance

"You'll never be able to stand the distance, old fogey!" the newcomer taunted. "Soon you'll be nothing but dust - and all your dreams with you!"

"I am stronger than you think," his opponent said creakily.

"Hah!" the newcomer laughed, tossing his sword in the air and catching it with his off-hand. "You really think you're a match for me? I'll smash you into powder and turn you into grout!"

"Try me."

The newcomer tossed his sword up into the air again, watching it spin lazily into the air; then, as it reached the apex of its arc, he charged forward, pulling his sword from the air behind him and into his foe in a tremendously flashy, tremendously powerful arc, an arc that could slice through flesh and shatter bone -

- and that ended, with a loud thunk, embedded in his foe; who seemed, oddly, quite undisturbed by all this.

"Huh?" the newcomer asked. He drew his sword back; and gasped, for only half of it remained in his hand. The rest stuck, jaggedly, from his foe, lodged too firmly for any amound of tugging or pulling to retrieve it.

"But how can this be?" the newcomer asked histrionically. "My technique - it's unstoppable!"

"Ho ho ho!" his opponent chuckled. "No-one can defeat me without finding my secret weak spots. And that's just impossible!"

With a thud, he brought his staff down; rotten eggs pelted down onto the newcomer, who fled towards the entrance of the cave, hands held over his head in an attempt to shield himself. "Yeah, that's right, you better run!" the Blockhead cried after him. "I am your better! None will ever defeat me! All shall pass!"

The Blockhead considered. "Wait, no. That's not right."

"Some shall pass?"

"Many shall pass?"

"Many shall pass..."

EDIT:

Eveningtide

The blag is becoming ever more blog-like, isn't it? I mean, here's Nikolas again, writing about his mundane personal life in his boring way. So typical! I am very ashamed of myself, and blame this trend on lack of inspiration of late.

Of course, the last post was a 2500+* word fiction-post, in an ongoing series which, by the time of its completition (assuming it will be completed, of course), will reach novella length. But I'm referring to trends, not specific anecdotal evidence.

I digress.

So. Last evening. Having had a moderately productive day, I tried out Eternal Silence, a space combat/FPS multiplayer electro-video-game-mod - surprisingly enjoyable! (The very first thing I did was hop into a space fighter and, without benefit of joystick, shoot down two enemy fighter-ships piloted by human beings. I felt like a Space Ace!) Then I went to bed. Unfortunately, certain of my more alcoholic suite-mates were hosting a party in the common room, about ten feet away from my door. Loud music, loud chatter and laughter... hadn't the energy to get out of bed and tell them to stuff it. Eventually ended up sleeping around 1 AM. (That's what I get for trying to sleep in my own bed on a Saturday night, I... guess?)

Dreams. Dreamt that a particular lady of my acquaintance - though, now that I've awoken, I can't remember who - had agreed to date me. (More or less propositioned me, in fact!) Went to tell my friends - first Roland, who was in the back-yard, for some reason; and woke up. That was not a fun awakening.

Still makes me unhappy to think about it, actually. The whole lady/dude interaction has been weighing ever more heavily on me over the last few months - probably, at least in part, owing to the dramatic spike in people I know who have girlfriends - and man, it just seemed perfect and so forth...

Feh. Because I am not 'emotional', I will conclude this post on a brighter note. Behold! And enjoy.

*2671 words.

Edit: The guy hosting the party in question notes, as of one hour ago:

"As we all know last night got quite a bit out of hand. [Various unpleasant consequences listed]. For what it's worth, I'm sorry to all the people I pissed off. No more parties in the common room, no more loud ass music..."

Perhaps I should have complained after all.

Muffins!

Hello, Leigh Alexander!
Hello, Kieren Gillen!
I have muffins!
Wow! You have muffins!
Would you like to eat my muffins?
Oh, I don't know...
They are delicious muffins.
Oh all right then
om nom nom nom
oh no now there are crumbs everywhere!
It is all right, I will use my Roomba
Oh wow you have a Roomba!
wooooom
HELLO I AM THE ROOMBA I AM A ROBOT FOR CLEANING
Mr. Roomba, will you clean up the muffin-crumbs?
NO INSTEAD I WILL KILL YOU WITH MY EVIL
Oh no, it is an evil-roomba! Run away!
Aaaaa!
Aaaa!
Aaaaa!
wooooom
STAND BACK IT IS I THE REAL ROOMBA (WHO WAS IMPERSONATED)
Oh hooray it is the good roomba!
Stop the bad guy, Roomba-I! And then clean up the muffin crumbs
wooom
wooom
Vssssht
preeow
fsssht
Yaaaaaaaay!
Now we can eat muffins any time we like!
THE END.

Nikolas-Game: Status update!

So, how's my game going these days? That one I was programming in Python, for which I gave a link to an early version some time ago, and later a link to an early version of the map editor? (In each case accompanied with short, yet delightful, stories.

I'm glad you asked!

Matters have proceeded quite far in both cases. At the time of my previous post, the game itself had progressed to the point of including:

• Units you could command to move, attack, or follow, which would shoot at each-other automatically
• Sound (not music)
• Explosions

Since then, I've:

• Changed the way in which weapons work, so that units can reload weapons, switch weapons, and even pick up new weapons, (somewhat) intelligently responding to their circumstances
• Added many new types of projectiles, such as instant-hit rounds (simulating things like railgun-rounds and lasers), homing missiles, and the mysterious 'swirlers'
• Added new weapons and units to use the aforesaid projectiles - like the Super Rocket-Turret, and the Invincibot (who is only slightly invincible)
  
• Added unit names (randomly generated!) and portraits
• Switched the game to 3D (though it still displays on a 2D canvas)
• Added terrain, including collision for both units and projectiles
• And a number of other bug-fixes and improvements.

"So marvelous!" you cry. "Surely he cannot have so much to say for the map editor!" We'll see about that.

• Doubled terrain resolution
• Added automatic .gif exporting on saves (still a work in process)
• Added noise generator
• Added 'snow' terrain
• Fixed a rather startlingly inefficient function

Huh. I guess you were right, hypothetical naysayer.

But still - so much accomplished? How much can possibly remain to achieve?

The world remains. Imagine - victory conditions! (Campaigns! Music!) Pathfinding algorithms! (Aeroplanes! Zeppelins!) Multicomponent units! (Tanks! APCs! Battleships!) And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

Though I really need to get pathfinding done first. It's going to be tricky. (C.f. this recent post.)

In any case - thanks for all the support and offer of help! I really appreciate it; this project has been immensely satisfying for me, and it would have never gotten as far as it has without you. (With the exception of the Hon. Rebert.)

Just wait until next time; you will be stunned to death by how nifty things will have become by then. I may have even gotten terrain shadows - or - gasp - 3D rendering working!

(Also, I may at some point get this thing into an executable, so that could theoretically run on a computer which is not this one.)

(No promises.)

P.S.: Add your own requested features in the comments!

Iji.

This is Iji.

Iji is a platformer. It's closest to the old 2D Metroid games - you jump around, shoot enemies with an ever-growing collection of weaponry, hunt to find hidden rooms and items. (There are a lot of those.) The big differences come in the structure - it's a fairly linear platformer, moving you between distinct stages, although (in the later stages especially) the areas grow large enough to allow you a significant amount of freedom to roam - and the RPG elements. As you kill enemies and collect 'nanites'* (mostly, though not always, harvested from said enemies' corpses), you 'level up', letting you advance any one of a wide range of statistics. You could improve health, or attack, the affects of which are fairly self-explanatory. Or you could improve 'assimilate' - which lets you store more ammo - or 'strength', which lets you kick down tougher doors and tougher foes. Or you could improve 'crack', which lets you hack more advanced doors (and enemies!) and synthesize superior weapons; or you could improve either of the weapon skills, which let you acquire fancier and better weapons' from your opponents' arsenals. You get one and only one point per level, and no more than four levels per stage. The stages can be quite long.

What I am saying here is: there are tough choices to be made.

So - mechanically, as I described above, the game is quite good. There are a few, fairly small problems; you only move at one speed (which can make backtracking a small ordeal), and you can't fire while crouched or jumping; the latter, especially, being a significant hindrance. These do not overweigh the good in the game design - and it does so much right! - so if there were no plot at all to the game, I would still recommend that my reader have at least a brief look at it.

But, of course, that is not the case.

The key things about the game's plot are these:

• It's somewhat sterotypical - especially at first -but very well-written, and moves beyond stereotype fairly quickly.
• It forks.
  

There's not much more I can say about it without spoiling things. The nature of plot. But it's quite good, trust me.

But perhaps the plot isn't what I meant at all. Here is the thing: the game evokes emotion in me. Not rampant joy - 'Ha, ha, I have slain you all, monsters!' Ah - sometimes that, though rarely. More often, I feel - pity. Regret.

Why?

Because I know that, for all the many weapons the game grants you, there is a choice not to kill; the game can be won without ending a single life, an achievement the game recognizes. Because I have this choice, and because of the journals scattered around the levels, giving some element of personality to my endlessly butchered foes - my choice to kill has meaning. There is a weight to it - a rather evil weight, to be honest - that simply does not exist in a simpler game.

And something more - perhaps a spoiler -

At the beginning of the game, the protagonist is extremely reluctant to kill. With nearly every enemy death she causes, she cries out in some way - "Why?" or a sob.

As the kill count rises, she falls silent. And then, eventually, she begins almost to celebrate the killing - "Just die!" she shouts.

She is losing her humanity - becoming a sort of killing machine. And it was my choice that determined that.

That affected me.

In any case! It's a very good game, and well worth a look, especially as it's free. Download from here. Windows only, sadly.

I started on Hard, but this was probably a poor choice. I would advise others to begin on Normal, especially as the manual hints that certain unlockable-things are only to be found on that difficulty level.

Beware the grass-mud-horse.

*This is probably the game's greatest weakness: technobabble. I mean, really. Nanites?

It's only really intrusive at the beginning, though; there's less reference to the nano-nonsense later.

In compensation, there are laser-daggers.

Events of the Evening: Hill Fort

Playing Empire: Total War, a quite lovely game which I purchased on an impulse last night. (Not on Impulse, mind you. On Steam.)

George Washington, under my command, marches on a French fort in the northern Ohio Valley. The French, along with their native allies, are waiting for me - but my troops outnumber them four to three, and are of far superior quality besides. I expect nothing but victory.

As the map loads, I behold a rather impressive sight: a wooden fort, in itself unintimidating, perched on the crown of a very tall hill. Two roads wind up the hill, and there is an open clearing outside the fort and somewhat further down the hill; the rest of the map is enveloped in thick woods. The French may be cowardly scum (and in the game), but this could be tricky going.

I arrange my cannon on the top of a smaller, opposing hill, and leaving George Washington there, along with a guard. The rest of my soldiers I divide into two groups, both converging on the base of the closer road up the hill, one with lighter infantry and cavalry, the other with the bulk of my heavy infantry. There is little opposition as I first begin to move; the French seem to have huddled into their fort at the top of the hill, with the exception of their cannon, which they have left in the middle of the lower clearing, utterly unprotected. As their cannon trade volleys with mine, I advance.

The first opposition comes at the base of the road; Iroquois musketmen, lurking in ambush. They surprise the infantry column that stumbles upon them, caught in loose order, but I swiftly order them into line formation; they blast the Iroquois with volley after volley of musket-shot, pinning them in place. I order my cavalry forward from the other column, hoping to catch the Iroquois on the flank and break them; but another formation of Iroquois appears before them, felling fully a quarter of their number in a single volley. The only choice is to flee or to charge. I order the latter.

The charge stuns the Iroqouis, for cavalry strike with a strength many times that of their numbers; but it does not break them. The fight in the woods becomes a bloody stalemate, but as more Iroqouis arrive to relieve their struggling brethren, so does my second column. I order Washington's Rangers into the fray.

The fight lasts a little while longer; but the Iroqouis break, as I know they will. The cavalry, now much diminished in number, I send to hound them down - for if given any respite, they will regroup and cause more greviance to my men - and then to disable the enemy artillery that still duels with my own. (My cannon I reassign to reduce the walls of the enemy fort, so that their shot will not hit my cavalry by mistake.) The infantry marches up the hill.

The next events pass quickly. One unit of cavalry, having lost two-thirds of their number in the fighting in the woods, breaks and flees when striking the enemy artillery. (Of all things to be put to flight by - unarmed artillerymen!) The artillerymen abandon their guns regardless, and my infantry, approaching behind the cavalry, put an end to their threat. One wall of the fort falls, leaving a traversable breach in the resulting debris; then another wall tumbles. Smoke billows blackly upwards. My infantry attack.

But progress is difficult to make. My infantry are twice the number of the foe, but attacking through the narrow breach, their greater numbers cannot tell. It becomes a bloody battle of attrition; melee fighting through the breaches, French marines (finally I fight the foreign foe!) firing from the surviving battlements, my own redcoats butchering soldiers in the courtyard with musket-shot from above. (They scaled the battlements with grappling hooks.) The battle swings back and forth, back and forth; then one of my units of colonial militia, pushed beyond the breaking point, flees. The enemy pursues, following through the breach; and my waiting men, five times their number, blast them with musket-volleys from three sides. The enemy wavers. Then - at first just one unit, then two, then nearly all - they rout. Their flags flutter white in the air, and they flee.

It is nearly over - but I must go - I have delayed too long already. Regretfully, I pause the game.

It sits for an hour's time.

I return. Within two seconds of my unpausing, victory is mine.

(This causes some chagrin.)

I wait for the campaign map to load; observe statistics; consider the reshuffling of my damaged units. I combine the remainder of my cavalry, to make room for a fresh unit coming in from the south.

The game crashes to desktop. All progress is lost.

But at least it makes a good story.

I Am Impressed: Godot and the Nature of Surprise.

This is a post about the plot of one of the Phoenix Wright games, much like this one. Unlike that one, this covers only half of one case, specifically the former half of the second case in the third Phoenix Wright game, Trials and Tribulations. (Got all that?) Like that one, it contains MASSIVE SPOILERS. Well. Less massive, owing to slighter scope. But still spoilerish.

Okay, that was all the necessary warning. Let's start now.

It began with a choice.

The Phoenix Wright games are inherently linear. This is perhaps an artifact of their Japanese origin - and I could ramble on about this - but in any case, a choice within the game is only ever right or wrong. You can present the right evidence or the wrong evidence; you can ask the right question or the wrong one. In no case can you influence the direction in which the plot moves - choose one line of argument or another, get your client off on some charges but not the rest... (though this being Phoenix Wright, your client is only ever being tried for one charge: murder.)

(It's surprisingly varied, for all that. Note again my previous post on the subject.)

So there's no choice in Phoenix Wright games - that I'd seen. But here, near the beginning of the second case, I was presented with a choice: do I defend Ron DeLite?

(Forgive the last name. The designers really like puns. There's another fellow - we'll discuss him later - name of Luke Atmey. Ugh. Took me all of three seconds to get that one.)

Ron's an interesting character. He's a timid, retiring character - has a habit of alternating high-pitched whines with shame-filled, mumbling corrections that inevitably trail into silence. And he's accused of being MASK★DEMASQUE* - world-famed criminal mastermind and flamboyant thief!

He has, of course, no alibi, but the idea of him as an internationally famed thief is just ludicrous. The ludicrousness is not helped by the fact that he turned himself in - claiming, over and over, "I'm him! I'm MASK★DEMASQUE! Convict me!" And so forth.

(Oh! Also, he has a Princess Leia haircut. With the danishes. This. They unfurl into hair-corkscrews when he's agitated.)

So - do I defend him?

I do, in the end. Phoenix Wright is a defense lawyer - that's what he does. And I suspect, in my gut, that Ron is innocent. So I choose that option - one of my allies, who I was originally trying to help recover one of the stolen items, condemns me furiously and storms off - and I wonder.

All in all, there was probably no choice - if I'd chosen not to defend him, I'd have gotten some different dialogue but ended up doing the same thing anyway -

- but I wonder.

In this mood I entered into the trial. There's some tricky thinking to be done, but nothing that stalls me for long, and I pour on argument after argument relentlessly, dissecting the witnesses' testimony in cross-examination. In this trial, I'm facing a new opponent, the enigmatic Godot, who claims that he has returned from the gates of Hell itself to fight me. Why? How? And who is he, really, beneath that cyborg visor of his? Beats me. But he sure does love his coffee.

(This gets it about right. Thanks, Google Image Search! I believe the quote in question is from the game.)

So, Godot. He's the obligatory "new nemesis-prosecutor" for this game, as there's been in each preceding game, but he's new enough and different enough (like the others, he's never lost a case - but only because he's never practiced law before!) that he's interesting. Admittedly, he doesn't do much as I continue to plow through the witnesses - contradiction here, contradiction there, OBJECTION! There's one point at which I'm stumpted, but I correctly guess that I don't actually have the evidence I need, and, in the nick of time, an ally arrives to deliver it. Godot is unfazed by all of this. Mostly, he muses about whether or not he should adjust the bitterness of his current blend of coffee, Godot #107. (It's a difficult question.)

Ah - what I just said wasn't entirely true. At one particular setback, Godot does become somewhat upset. Specifically, he becomes upset enough to throw his coffee mug at me, drenching poor Phoenix Wright in coffee. Ow. But I'm going to call that a one-time exception.

I find the real MASK★DEMASQUE - who has, conveniently, appeared on the witness stand - drive him insane by revealing the truth (as appears surprisingly frequently in these situations), and sit back to enjoy a good victory. "That was a bit quick," I think, "And there are a lot of loose ends lying around... I guess they'll be tied up in the next case. Wonder what -"

Hm.

Ron DeLite has appeared on the stand, just as he was about to be declared NOT. GUILTY., and clamours to be convicted. Godot, helpfully, encourages him.

Well, all right. All I have to do is prove that he couldn't have been at the scene of the crime when he was supposed to be. That's easy enough - one of those loose ends I mentioned, a security card and a wallet, show that he must have been at KB Security at the time of the theft. Why was he there? Oooh, tricky, but thanks to my kleptomaniac tendencies (it's perfectly legal - it's evidence, after all!), I have a blackmail letter from Ron's desk in my hand. The game's flying along beautifully - I'm perfectly in tune with it, or vice-versa, none of those idiotic leaps of logic that were sometimes necessary in previous games appearing here. Everything makes sense. So - there you go! Ron can't be MASK★DEMASQUE, because he was being blackmailed by his CEO at the time! NOT GUILTY!

Ron's despondent - but hey, what can you do? Can't please everyone. At least he's not in jail. Still a few loose ends - but they're pretty minor by comparison. Guess they were just red herrings.

In the lobby outside, I have a celebratory chat with the characters involved. My sidekick congratulates me, Ron's wife congratulates me, Ron himself isn't that happy, but -

Wait. Godot's here. Why's Godot here? He wants to say "well done" too? Huh, that's strange, but okay -

- he's got something else to say.

The CEO of KB security was just found dead. Locked in the room that I'd just proven Ron was at. Killed at the time I proved Ron was there.

...holy !#*#.

So, it's a murder case after all.

This could be tricky.

And this sort of thing - this skillful manipulation of expectations to tell a story within a game-like context - that is Phoenix Wright's finest attribute, when it does it right.

I still haven't finished the case - I can't tell you whether or not Ron is guilty (though I doubt he is), and certainly can't offer an explanation for affairs - though I have my ideas. (The CEO is guilty as sin, and MASK★DEMASQUE is not exactly what he seemed.) But this fragment- this portion of the case, from midway through the investigation-part of the first day to the end of the first day of trial - is just amazing. That's why I had to write about it.

*The ★ is part of the name. Phoenix Wright is criticized when he says the name without it. How can anyone tell? How can you even pronounce that? Who knows! But I obviously had to include it. I wouldn't want to be yelled at, after all.