Author. Gamer. Thinker.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Networking woes of Torchlight II

My two sons have been playing Torchlight II (with the blood splats turned off) and are having a great time with the solo game. They've been begging to group up and play together, but the game's out-of-the-box multiplayer capabilities are useless. The first 4 times I tried to set them up for internet play our router crashed. I've never had that happen before with any other game, so I didn't realize what was happening initially.

Now, I'm going to have to dig out an old router and set up a lan game for them on the internal network that I can safely disable all the security on.

Despite the game's high entertainment value, I feel like the online play aspect was completely neglected. I believe the game uses UPnP exclusively for multiplayer without any other options for route traversal. I haven't researched the issue very long, but frankly, I expect modern games to work out of the box.

I give Torchlight II five stars for single player fun and zero stars for multiplayer. Once I have my book safely out the door, I plan to spend some quality time with my boys playing the game, but I really hope that we come up with a better multiplayer solution than hooking up to an old router.

An Agile Story

Applying a development methodology to storytelling


I write software. I have been a developer on games, databases, distributed queues, web browsers/servers, proxies, voice over ip clients/servers, VNC clients, and even a search engine. However, in my spare time, I write stories.

With both my books, I followed some of the principles of the Agile development process:

  • Maintaining working a copy. From day one, I started with a one page summary of the story, and then, rather than start at chapter one and write to the end, I wrote sketches of each chapter all the way to the end. When I say "sketch", I don't mean that I pulled out Crayons. I wrote brief summaries for each chapter that summed up the action, the motivations, and the plot. Then each pass through the manuscript, I would flesh each of those sketches out more. At any point, you could read my story from start to finish and know what was going to happen. Were each of the half-dozen phases as dramatic, funny, or exciting as the final product? No. However, it was complete and told a story.
  • Iterate. I chose short two week periods that I set goals for myself on what I would accomplish on the story. Early on, I designed the characters with their motives, yearnings, codes of conduct, and for major characters I established what dilema they would face. Each iteration, I fleshed out different aspects of the story and brought it closer to completion.
  • Simplicity. Rather than focus on every possible detail of universe building, I waited to sketch out details until I needed them. I keep spreadsheets and documents with nothing but these universe building details, however I didn't write up anything that I didn't have to use for the current story. Not really the Tolkien way, I'll admit.
  • Focus on the customer. With every chapter, I try to pay attention to the entertainment value of the story. Is it funny when it needs to be funny? Sad when it needs to be sad? Exciting? Engaging? I happen to be my first and most critical customer, so the story has to entertain me. I know that I can't please everybody, but I try to be consistent with my work so that people who found my first book entertaining will find my second equally enjoyable.
  • Share with the customer. I selected beta readers and let them see the story in its form starting with the first draft that was rich enough to resemble the final product. This was around 45,000 words. The final product, after iterating through, is more than 70,000 words. This aspect of the process was probably not ideal. Stories take a long time to read and tales that resemble sketches lack the same entertainment value that a finished product will have. I'm not certain how I will address this in the future, but I see it as a weakness in my process.

I would say that, with the exception of utilizing beta readers too early in the process, I think that the process has been successful for me. I'm going to continue to refine how I write. I think the strength of starting with a working story and iterating over it to refine a finish product reduces the risk of making major mistakes that require rewriting the whole manuscript. I think the disadvantage is that you have to know when to call it done because you could spend your whole life polishing.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Pen & paper

I'm not sure where this feeling has come from, but lately I've had an itch to play one of the old fashion pen and paper RPGs. Any of the classics would work for me right now: D&D, Shadowrun, GURPS, or even Paranoia (the game where everybody is your frenemy.)

I don't remember the last time we faced the insurmountable odds of a frontal assault on Tiamat's lair while being improbably flanked by Orcus on one side and Strahd von Zarovich on the other. A battle that would take four hours to fight with the use of many twelve and twenty siders (that would frequently--and quite accidentally--fall to the floor whenever they teetered on the edge of a one), and six more hours to roll loot using the complicated treasure table where everybody would groan when they found art.

Our characters would then face the daunting task of trying to lug the billion electrum back to our castles. There would always be at least one girdle of giant strength and one girdle of gender change...and despite our abilities to alter realty at will, nobody could determine which was which.

Oh, and why is the effing rogue passing notes back and forth with the DM and smiling so much. Sure, we all should be happy we won the day against impossible (and rather unlikely) odds... well, except the paladin who died to friendly fire (oops), but the rogue seems more pleased with himself than usual, which is saying something. And to think, the entire adventure began in a tavern after a brawl with dwarves who didn't like the smell of our beer. No matter what devious attempts we made to avoid the DM's well laid plans, he kept his smile. Though, how we found ourselves in the fifth circle of hell, I'm still a little confused over.

Sometimes I wonder if MMOs are robbing the teenagers and twenty-somethings of the experience of playing games fashioned only in the absurd imaginations of their friends. These adventures, no matter how ridiculous they were, have left an enduring impression on me, even after twenty years. Unfortunately, these games take so much time to play and require physical proximity, that getting the guys together from across the city, state, or country is nearly impossible to schedule. Add in the scheduling complexity of the kids' ballet, basketball, soccer, karate, and then there is the all important wife-time. I'm not blaming kids or wives for the lack of RPG time. I'm just saying that growing up and having a family makes it difficult (and maybe a little, tiny-bit irresponsible)  to waste 40 hours in a weekend on fighting imaginary demons. At least I have those memories from college and high school.

Before they grow up, get real jobs, and get married (which if you are reading this you probably are still safe for a few years), I hope that kids today get a chance to get off their computers long enough to waste time with their friends IRL, eat pizza, drink soda, and laugh so hard that they made somebody very uncomfortable about touching that twenty-sider that's just been spit on.

On a personal note, I'm spending nearly every waking hour finishing my latest book. If you are interested in seeing what I'm working on, please consider stopping over at my kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/966068625/mercurys-curse-book-two-of-the-max-and-miranda-ser

I'm offering the book for $1 for the first hundred people.

Thanks!
Erik

Monday, October 1, 2012

City of Heroes, Guild Wars 2, Torchlight 2, and Pandas

So, I'm behind the times. I read today that City of Heroes is going away. At first I felt saddened by the news and then began examining why I hadn't logged in in ages, even though they went free to play some time ago. I bought the game to play with my friends and it initially had seized my imagination.

What I think eventually turned me away from the game were a few factors. First, they attempted to build group roles into characters rather than let people explore completely new sets of abilities and finding a way to work together. I think this is one of the more recent flaws with other games like World of Warcraft. Early games like Everquest didn't so much set out with the goals of having a character be a tank or healer or whichever. The characters were designed around an idea. Some point of imagination and the roles sprung up around those ideas. Part of the fun and enjoyment of those early MMOs was discovering the characters, getting caught up in their uniqueness and flaws and then making them work. Sure, the games could be horrifically unbalanced at times, but it wasn't about balance. It was about having our imaginations run wild. To have possibilities and to sometimes abuse them a little.

I have played a little Guild Wars 2 lately. Very little, since I'm spending nearly all of my "free" time  working on the sequel to Tritium Gambit. Still, a guy has to play a little, right? Unfortunately, the game might be pretty, but it runs far too slow on my laptop to be enjoyable. The only reason I haven't uninstalled it is because even if eight-frames-per-second is agonizing, at least I get to spend time talking to a friend on Skype. Should I get a new computer? Probably. First, I need to sell a whole crap load more books.

Related to Guild Wars 2 being a complete turd on my machine, a friend of mine pointed out how much fun Torchlight II has been for him. He and I had spent quite a few hours playing Diablo III and that was enough to get me to install the game. I haven't had time to play it yet, but the first hour or so that I experimented with it were excellent. I'd highly recommend to folks to at least download the free demo from Steam. The game was built on the Ogre rendering engine, which I think is a fantastic accomplishment. Runic has said they will release a Mac version of the game eventually and I'll be first in line to purchase it.

I still play World of Warcraft weekly with my dad and two sons. My boys are loving the Pandarians. I think this really breathes new life into the game for them. Personally, it didn't really stir enough emotion in me to want to commit any extra time to the game, but I do appreciate that it gives my kids new material to explore and enjoy. From what I can tell, the starting quests aren't as painful as the ones for the Worgen or Death Knights. Yes, yes. You did the starting quests for both the Worgen and the Death Knights in less than two hours. However, you aren't six-years-old, like my youngest, and you didn't need to have your (very patient) dad read all of the quests forty-billion times whenever you decided to delete your character and start over. Why would anybody delete their character and start over? Apparently, because that's what you do when you are six-years-old.