a peek into the geeky past
Among other things I've been doing lately, there's Dynasty Warriors 4. This series of games is for the people who want to take part in the glorious history of the Three Kingdoms era of late second century China, but not in the intellectually challenging manner that you would get from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games. No, this has more to do with choosing a hero of the time to represent your badass self and wade into the thick of it, hacking and slashing left and right. There was a time when Willis lived here and was not a jackass to me, and his method of asking me to play was to check if I felt like "killing chinks". That is what the game is like.
By the way, don't give any other company money. If you want something a little more stimulating, they've caught on enough to make Dynasty Tactics.
Now, one of the things that has changed in this latest installment of the series is your bodyguards. They're not smarter or anything - it seems Koei has as much trouble creating a bodyguard that isn't a complete dolt as EA does conceiving a goalie who will act like he's even been on a football pitch before. They can get much stronger than before, however, and you have some control over how they progress. In fact, if you do things just right, you can get them a special title and elemental attack to go along with it. Now, this is something of a factor in the game, but how important is it? Is it important enough to warrant this much research?
This question suddenly forces me to think of the sort of things I have done before, am doing now, and will do. Maybe it does warrant that much research.
I can't speak for what I will do in the future. One of the things I am doing presently is graphicartfart, and the effort only really makes sense if you consider it an escape, a hobby, a flight of fancy. A flight of fancy, much like some of things I have done in the past. I was reminded recently of one in particular, which had to do with a MUD.
I'd never been much for role-playing in general. Maybe I never had the right mindset, the right environment, the right friends, the right creative minds to think up a campaign that would keep me interested, but that's how it worked out. Having not had much to do with role-playing in the physical world of pencil and paper, maps and dice, Chee-tos and Mountain Dew, I felt little pull to the electric analogues in computer role-playing games. Then I started college, and I was bored. To risk sounding immodest, I was not challenged. I had the right mindset now, and I met the right people, and I found myself in the right environment. They all played on a MUD together, and I tried it out. It worked out pretty well, and so I had something to fill my void.
I, however, played differently from some others. I cared for the effort it took to fight and gain levels and became something of a loner until I reached the end of the road, the point at which you stop advancing and, well, just be. It took a time, but it felt good, better than it would have to let them yank me from beginning to end in a two hour whirlwind of smoke and mirrors. Oh sure, they knew all the tricks, and they felt no qualms about using them.
One of the tricks was knowing what to name your character. It's well-known that the race (elf, dwarf, human, troll) you choose affects starting stats, and it's pretty common to have class (cleric, thief, druid, fighter) do so as well. This was the first I'd heard about name having anything to do with it, but that was the way this place worked. Of course, one of the guys found out the entire setup - there was a stat affected by every letter in your character's name, and he knew his way around it all. With this information, you could check any name to see whether or not you wanted to deal with the penalties or if the bonuses were high enough for your liking, but that took some time. I can't remember if they asked me or if I offered my services, but I wrote a program to make this calculation.
It was a pretty simple affair. One thing I remember is that I wrote it in C. Although I was learning Perl at the time and wanted to use this as an exercise, they wouldn't have been able to run it on their own without more effort than they were prepared to go through. After it was finished and tested, we ran a few names through to see the results. My druid Korvendakh had a very good stat name even though I didn't try, and because of that I still remember to this day that starting a name with a K gave you a boost to charisma. 'Alucard', while (obviously) a great name for a vampire, was hell on your stats. And of course, Henry's character names that looked like an elderly man trying to pronounce names of Saxon royalty with a throat full of phlegm were amazing - he was the one that provided the letter/position/result table.
I stopped playing after a while and realized it was a fun time, but not an important part of my life. I work with computers quite a bit, and I play with them some. I like the physical world too.
Out of all this, the bit that sticks with me the most is what we found to be one of the best stat names ever devised. Sure, you could try to create one more suited towards a particular character, but "YerMomma" gave boosts no one would have dreamed of.
From Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon:
"How about this guy we're going to see in Seattle? He's a computer guy too? Ooh, you're getting this look on your face like 'Amy just said something so stupid it caused me physical pain.' Is this a common facial expression among the men of your family? Do you think it is the expression that your grandfather wore when your grandmother came home and announced that she had backed the Lincoln Continental into a fire hydrant?"
"I am sorry if I make you feel bad sometimes," Randy says. "The family is full of scientists. Mathematicians. The least intelligent of them become engineers. Which is sort of what I am."
"Excuse me, did you just say you were one of the least intelligent?"
"Least focused, maybe."
"Hmmmm."
"My point is that precision, and getting things right, in the mathematical sense, is the one thing we have going for us. Everyone has to have a way of getting ahead, right? Otherwise you end up working at McDonald's your whole life, or worse. Some are born rich. Some are born into a big family like yours. We make our way in the world by knowing that two plus two equals four, and sticking to your guns in a way that is kind of nerdy and that maybe hurts people's feelings sometimes. I'm sorry."
"Hurts whose feelings? People who think that two plus two equals five?"
"People who put a higher priority on social graces than on having every statement uttered in a conversation be literally true."
"Like, for example … female people?"
Randy grinds his teeth for about a mile, and then says, "If there is any generalization at all that you can draw about how men think versus how women think, I believe it is that men can narrow themselves down to this incredibly narrow laser-beam focus on one tiny little subject and think about nothing else."
"Whereas women can't?"
"I suppose women can. They rarely seem to want to. What I'm characterizing here, as the female approach, is essentially saner and healthier."
"Hmmmm."
"See, you are being a little paranoid here and focusing on the negative too much. It's not about how women are deficient. It's more about how men are deficient. Our social deficiences, lack of perspective, or whatever you want to call it, is what enables us to study one species of dragonfly for twenty years, or sit in front of a computer for a hundred hours a week writing code. This is not the behavior of a well-balanced and healthy person, but it can obviously lead to great advances in synthetic fibers. Or whatever."
"But you said that you yourself were not very focused."
"Compared to other men in my family, that's true. So, I know a little about astronomy, a lot about computers, a little about business, and I have, if I may say so, a slightly higher level of social functioning than the others. Or maybe it's not even functioning, just an acute awareness of when I'm not functioning, so that I at least know when to feel embarrassed."
Amy laughs. "You're definitely good at that. It seems like you sort of lurch from one moment of feeling embarrassed to the next."
Randy gets embarrassed.
"It's fun to watch," Amy says encouragingly. "It speaks well of you."
"What I'm saying is that this does set me apart. One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for many people, is not that he's socially inept-because everybody's been there-but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it."
"Which is still kind of pathetic."
"It was pathetic when they were in high school," Randy says. "Now it's something else. Something very different from pathetic."
"What, then?"
"I don't know. There is no word for it. You'll see."
By the way, don't give any other company money. If you want something a little more stimulating, they've caught on enough to make Dynasty Tactics.
Now, one of the things that has changed in this latest installment of the series is your bodyguards. They're not smarter or anything - it seems Koei has as much trouble creating a bodyguard that isn't a complete dolt as EA does conceiving a goalie who will act like he's even been on a football pitch before. They can get much stronger than before, however, and you have some control over how they progress. In fact, if you do things just right, you can get them a special title and elemental attack to go along with it. Now, this is something of a factor in the game, but how important is it? Is it important enough to warrant this much research?
This question suddenly forces me to think of the sort of things I have done before, am doing now, and will do. Maybe it does warrant that much research.
I can't speak for what I will do in the future. One of the things I am doing presently is graphicartfart, and the effort only really makes sense if you consider it an escape, a hobby, a flight of fancy. A flight of fancy, much like some of things I have done in the past. I was reminded recently of one in particular, which had to do with a MUD.
I'd never been much for role-playing in general. Maybe I never had the right mindset, the right environment, the right friends, the right creative minds to think up a campaign that would keep me interested, but that's how it worked out. Having not had much to do with role-playing in the physical world of pencil and paper, maps and dice, Chee-tos and Mountain Dew, I felt little pull to the electric analogues in computer role-playing games. Then I started college, and I was bored. To risk sounding immodest, I was not challenged. I had the right mindset now, and I met the right people, and I found myself in the right environment. They all played on a MUD together, and I tried it out. It worked out pretty well, and so I had something to fill my void.
I, however, played differently from some others. I cared for the effort it took to fight and gain levels and became something of a loner until I reached the end of the road, the point at which you stop advancing and, well, just be. It took a time, but it felt good, better than it would have to let them yank me from beginning to end in a two hour whirlwind of smoke and mirrors. Oh sure, they knew all the tricks, and they felt no qualms about using them.
One of the tricks was knowing what to name your character. It's well-known that the race (elf, dwarf, human, troll) you choose affects starting stats, and it's pretty common to have class (cleric, thief, druid, fighter) do so as well. This was the first I'd heard about name having anything to do with it, but that was the way this place worked. Of course, one of the guys found out the entire setup - there was a stat affected by every letter in your character's name, and he knew his way around it all. With this information, you could check any name to see whether or not you wanted to deal with the penalties or if the bonuses were high enough for your liking, but that took some time. I can't remember if they asked me or if I offered my services, but I wrote a program to make this calculation.
It was a pretty simple affair. One thing I remember is that I wrote it in C. Although I was learning Perl at the time and wanted to use this as an exercise, they wouldn't have been able to run it on their own without more effort than they were prepared to go through. After it was finished and tested, we ran a few names through to see the results. My druid Korvendakh had a very good stat name even though I didn't try, and because of that I still remember to this day that starting a name with a K gave you a boost to charisma. 'Alucard', while (obviously) a great name for a vampire, was hell on your stats. And of course, Henry's character names that looked like an elderly man trying to pronounce names of Saxon royalty with a throat full of phlegm were amazing - he was the one that provided the letter/position/result table.
I stopped playing after a while and realized it was a fun time, but not an important part of my life. I work with computers quite a bit, and I play with them some. I like the physical world too.
Out of all this, the bit that sticks with me the most is what we found to be one of the best stat names ever devised. Sure, you could try to create one more suited towards a particular character, but "YerMomma" gave boosts no one would have dreamed of.
From Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon:
"How about this guy we're going to see in Seattle? He's a computer guy too? Ooh, you're getting this look on your face like 'Amy just said something so stupid it caused me physical pain.' Is this a common facial expression among the men of your family? Do you think it is the expression that your grandfather wore when your grandmother came home and announced that she had backed the Lincoln Continental into a fire hydrant?"
"I am sorry if I make you feel bad sometimes," Randy says. "The family is full of scientists. Mathematicians. The least intelligent of them become engineers. Which is sort of what I am."
"Excuse me, did you just say you were one of the least intelligent?"
"Least focused, maybe."
"Hmmmm."
"My point is that precision, and getting things right, in the mathematical sense, is the one thing we have going for us. Everyone has to have a way of getting ahead, right? Otherwise you end up working at McDonald's your whole life, or worse. Some are born rich. Some are born into a big family like yours. We make our way in the world by knowing that two plus two equals four, and sticking to your guns in a way that is kind of nerdy and that maybe hurts people's feelings sometimes. I'm sorry."
"Hurts whose feelings? People who think that two plus two equals five?"
"People who put a higher priority on social graces than on having every statement uttered in a conversation be literally true."
"Like, for example … female people?"
Randy grinds his teeth for about a mile, and then says, "If there is any generalization at all that you can draw about how men think versus how women think, I believe it is that men can narrow themselves down to this incredibly narrow laser-beam focus on one tiny little subject and think about nothing else."
"Whereas women can't?"
"I suppose women can. They rarely seem to want to. What I'm characterizing here, as the female approach, is essentially saner and healthier."
"Hmmmm."
"See, you are being a little paranoid here and focusing on the negative too much. It's not about how women are deficient. It's more about how men are deficient. Our social deficiences, lack of perspective, or whatever you want to call it, is what enables us to study one species of dragonfly for twenty years, or sit in front of a computer for a hundred hours a week writing code. This is not the behavior of a well-balanced and healthy person, but it can obviously lead to great advances in synthetic fibers. Or whatever."
"But you said that you yourself were not very focused."
"Compared to other men in my family, that's true. So, I know a little about astronomy, a lot about computers, a little about business, and I have, if I may say so, a slightly higher level of social functioning than the others. Or maybe it's not even functioning, just an acute awareness of when I'm not functioning, so that I at least know when to feel embarrassed."
Amy laughs. "You're definitely good at that. It seems like you sort of lurch from one moment of feeling embarrassed to the next."
Randy gets embarrassed.
"It's fun to watch," Amy says encouragingly. "It speaks well of you."
"What I'm saying is that this does set me apart. One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for many people, is not that he's socially inept-because everybody's been there-but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it."
"Which is still kind of pathetic."
"It was pathetic when they were in high school," Randy says. "Now it's something else. Something very different from pathetic."
"What, then?"
"I don't know. There is no word for it. You'll see."