July 1st, 2008 - LoneStranger
I just finished watching RAW on my DVR a little bit ago, and I have to say that for the umpteenth time, WWE dropped the ball. Sure, we don’t know where all the new storylines with all the post-Draft, post-tragic-accident jumble, but some really good ones just slipped through their fingers.
I’ll keep this short. I don’t want to bore you with tons of small details, so as of Night of Champions, Mr. McMahon is out, his family is busy with him, RAW has no GM and both main belts are on Smackdown.
WWE chose to have CM Punk use his Money in the Bank to bring a belt back to RAW after Edge was softened up by Batista. While this may be ‘poetic justice’ considering how Edge has won the belt in the past, it’s also not CM Punk’s character. Instead, it should have been drawn out over the summer or even longer to help bolster ratings in this traditionally slow time of year.
Here’s what I would have done.
Read the rest of this entry »
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April 20th, 2008 - LoneStranger
I managed to cobble together a mildly playable version of my game in time for the end of the Ludum Dare 48 Game Development competition this weekend.
It’s a concept that I had been toying with this past week, jotting down some ideas and refining it along the way. Quite simply, it’e the game Breakout, only with a twist. In regular Breakout, you move the paddle back and forth on the bottom to keep the ball from falling off the screen. At the same time, you are trying to use the ball to destroy all the bricks on the screen. In my game the computer plays the part of the paddle and you instead try to defend a goal at the top of the screen by placing bricks.
It’s a neat idea, but I by no means was able to implement all my ideas. The number one thing that was lacking is multiple types of bricks. This version only has two: normal and 2X Hit. As you can probably guess, normal takes one hit to be destroyed and 2X Hit takes two. I wanted to add more bricks that did weird and interesting things when the ball hit it, like explode or eat it.
You build your wall of bricks by buying them from money you’ve earned while playing. So far, the only two ways you can earn money is to play, where you get one credit every so many seconds, or when the computer misses the ball with the paddle and it goes off the bottom of the screen. Eventually you’ll be able to get money by doing other things.
One thing that doesn’t seem to work very well is the collision. The ball seems to react well when it hits the top or the bottom of the bricks, but if it hits the side of two bricks, it can sometimes bounce in a way that causes it to go ‘inside’ the wall. I have a few ideas on fixing that but I didn’t have enough time to implement them.
The AI could be improved, letting it think ahead instead of having it just react to the current position of the ball. If I project the location it will be at when it gets to the bottom, I could have the paddle waiting for it.
There are no skill levels implemented. Smarter AI, less money and multiple bouncing balls would make it more challenging and could be set to differing degrees.
I also didn’t do any sounds for it, as the compo requires that all resources be generated within the 48 hours and my recording soundcard is not quite working. I will create some for the post-compo version of the game. Same for music.
I tested it on the Sun JVM 1.6.0, though it should work on on JVM 1.5.0. It will not work on the JVM 1.4.2, as it requires System.nanoTime() that was introduced in JVM 1.5.0.
I programmed it in Eclipse 3.3.2, and used Photoshop for the graphics.
You can download the game here or the source code here.
[update: changed the above link to the .zip file. The jar just wasn't handling some class-pathing stuff well and I don't have time to troubleshoot it right now.]
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April 18th, 2008 - LoneStranger
The LD48 #11 Game Compitition starts in about eight and a half hours. The theme has yet to be decided, but it seems like it will most likely be one of the following: Minimalist (+28), Endless (+24), Defense (+22) or Flood (+15). My personal wish is to get Defense, as I’ve been thinking about a good concept this week for it. I haven’t been able to come up with anything decent for Minimalist yet, and Endless and Flood shouldn’t be too hard to design about. I don’t think we’ll get too many Tower Defense entries for the Defense theme, but even if we do, there has got to be at least one of them that does something in a new and interesting way.
When all is said and done, and I’ve completed a game, I’ll post it here. If for any reason I don’t get it done… well, I’ll still post something.
So if you have a (mostly) free weekend and you want to try your hand at designing and coding a game in 48 hours, come by the compo. Even if you don’t have the time, come by and check out the reports and progress of those who are. You can also check my personal coding blog at LD.
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April 2nd, 2008 - LoneStranger
Last weekend I made some predictions about this year’s Wrestlemania matches. I pick who I think should win, along with who I think the WWE will actually have win. I keep track of how I do for the ‘who will win’ pick. The ‘who should win’ pick is merely my thoughts on what is best for future storylines or in developing stars. It’s what I would do if I were writing this stuff. On with the results…
24-Man Battle Royal - Winner faces ECW Champion Chavo Guerrero
Who Should Win: Jamie Noble
Who Will Win: I said either of Tommy Dreamer, Hardcore Holly, Kane or Jaime Noble would have a good match with Chavo.
I actually didn’t get to watch this match, so I can’t tell you much about it. If I was watching this match as it evolved and wrestlers were eliminated, I would have never expected it to finish the way it did. It came down to two big men, Kane and Mark Henry, which I wasn’t really surprised to see, with ECW recently focusing on powerful large guys. Normally, I would have expected Henry to win, since Kane never really ever seems to get any kind of legitimate title shots. I figured they would make Henry their challenger, even if it was heel against heel. But I was pleasantly surprised and Kane came out on top. I can’t really take credit for this one since I basicly said four guys. Winner: Kane (0-0)
Belfast Brawl - Fit Finlay vs. John Bradshaw Layfield
Who Should Win: Finlay
Who Will Win: FinlayThis was a pretty good and basic hardcore match. They used weapons, but didn’t stray from the ring. Each of the men beat each other silly. I don’t care a whole lot for JBL, but he’s got a very good focused attitude when he wrestles that comes across the television well. Every time Finlay gets into a ring with a table, I think about the time his leg went through poorly gimmicked table top in WCW and sliced through to the bone, putting him into retirement. I was glad this was a simple match. It didn’t really need to be a fancy hardcore match because WWE has been taking it easy with these things so that they mean something more when they actually do happen. I’m not sure where they are going to go with JBL winning, but I’m going to guess that their feud isn’t done yet. Winner: JBL (0-1)
Money in the Bank Ladder Match - Mr. Kennedy vs. Shelton Benjamin vs. Chris Jericho vs. Carlito vs. Montel Vontavious Porter vs. CM Punk vs. John Morrison
Who Should Win: Mr. Kennedy
Who Will Win: Mr. Kennedy
This was a pretty good ladder match, but you could expect that with the level of talent they had in there. The surprise of the match was a returning Matt Hardy getting his revenge on MVP as he went to grab the briefcase. I thought that they would give the title shot to Mr. Kennedy because he seemed like the most main-event ready performer in the match. As I was watching the match though, I realized that having an ECW wrestler win the title lets them not have to worry about working it into the main storylines in their top two shows. Of course, if they wanted to really throw a wrench in things, they should have C. M. Punk use the contract to go after either the RAW or Smackdown champion. Winner: C.M. Punk (0-2)
SmackDown vs. Raw: Batista vs. Umaga
Who Should Win: Umaga
Who Will Win: Batista
I don’t really care much for either of these wrestlers, so I didn’t pay much attention to their match. It went about as I expected. Batista didn’t need the win to be seen as a main eventer, but Umaga does. Instead of trying to build up a top heel, they went the easy route. Winner: Batista (1-2)
Chavo Guerro vs Kane (ECW Championship Match)
I didn’t predict this one, though I did say that Kane could have a good match against Chavo. It wasn’t a good match, but it definately was an interesting match. Kane appeared in the ring while Chavo was looking up the ramp and then he chokeslammed the champion to the canvas pretty forcefully and got the pin 1-2-3 with no resistance. Since C.M. Punk had the belt taken from him not that long ago, and he now holds the title of Mr. Money in the Bank, I imagine he’ll be using it to face Kane. Winner: Kane
Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels (Career Threatening Match)
Who Should Win: Ric Flair
Who Will Win: Ric Flair
A great match between two great workers. And before the ref had even counted three I was trying to think of a way they could reverse the decision and get Flair out of that retirement stipulation. The reaction of Michaels right after the match and of the crowd and Flair’s kids was definately touching. I still think that there had to have been a better way to have Flair retire rather than having him lose to another legend on the backside of his career. I’m certain we haven’t seen the last of Ric Flair, but that’s material for another entry. Winner: Shawn Michaels (1-3)
‘Playboy’ BunnyMania Lumberjack Match featuring Snoop Dogg - Ashley & Maria vs. ‘The Glamazon’ Beth Phoenix & Melina
Who Should Win: Maria
Who Will Win: Maria
As far as women’s matches go, this was pretty good. I don’t see why they had Maria lose though. It didn’t make much sense. Jerry Lawler clocking Santino was ok, but I don’t want to see a feud between the two. Maria should pick someone else to represent her White Knight and teach Santino to respect her. Snoop did end up getting a little taste of Maria afterward. Winner: The Glamazon and Melina (1-4)
Triple Threat Match for the WWE Championship - Triple H vs. John Cena vs. Randy Orton
Who Should Win: Randy Orton
Who Will Win: John Cena Having the marching band play Cena entrant’s music was a really unique touch. I was really surprised with the results of the mobile text voting. I figured that HHH (40%) would have a higher percentage than Orton (52%) and I didn’t think that Cena would have such a low number (8%). Will WWE finally realize that forcing Cena as a face is a bad idea? I can see his career parallel the Rock’s (albiet with a lower level of electricity) if they turned him heel and let the fan’s cheer him back to a face. Lots of good action in this match. Orton won in a way that was very Orton-like, with a kick to the head of HHH while he was going for the pin. Maybe they will be changing Cena’s character since he wasn’t a factor at the end of the match. HHH goes on to feud with Orton while Cena starts to terrorize anyone in his way, ala Stone Cold? Winner: Randy Orton (1-5)
Floyd “Money” Mayweather vs. Big Show
Who Should Win: Big Show
Who Will Win: Floyd Mayweather
This was a better match than I expected. Big Show is a great sport to lose to Mayweather. He showed a lot of power and spent a good deal of the time throwing that power around. I think Mayweather did a pretty decent job in the ring and if he wanted to give up boxing, he’d be an entertaining full-time cruiserweight wrestler. How do they procede with Big Show now that he lost to a non-wrestler? Winner: Floyd Mayweather (2-5)
World Heavyweight Champion Edge vs. Undertaker
Who Should Win: Undertaker
Who Will Win: Undertaker
This match was a sort of best-of-both-worlds. Edge got to work over Undertaker pretty well, but he also took a lot of punishment. Loads of near-falls to get the crowd riled up. I think it cements Edge’s place at the main event level even though Undertaker gets the win and keeps his undefeated 15 win record at Wrestlemania. Both men left it all in the ring and they definately showed that they deserved the closing match on Wrestlemania. Fans went home happy, as it should be. Winner: Undertaker (3-5)
Final Record: 3-5
Not horrible, but not good either. While watching the matches I realized that there were probably some good reasons to go with the other guy that I didn’t think of the first time around. I promise to try harder next time.
How’d you do?
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April 2nd, 2008 - LoneStranger
My wife and I went to the real home opener for the A’s last night and watched what I hope is not an example of the kinds of games we’re going to see all season long. They lost the game 2-1 against the pitching of Daisuke Matsuzaka who was definately on his game.
Frustrating rookiee mistakes were made with a Barton-off-the-shoulder foul-ball drop and Hannahan’s indecision after making a fantastic defensive stop down the third base line. They weren’t the only ones. Jason Varitek hit a ball that bounced off the white line on the right field wall back into the field. The referees ruled it a double instead of the home run the replays showed it really was. It ended up not mattering much because the A’s couldn’t manage to get anyone else home.
The two bright spots of the night were the solid six innings pitched by Joe Blanton and the solo homerun that Jack Cust hit on the first pitch in the second inning. I managed to snap a picture of Cust making contact from our vantage point all the way down the left field side in section 234. Except it was blurry. Oh well.
Next up on the list of games is Travis Buck bobblehead day on April 19th against Kansas City.
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March 30th, 2008 - LoneStranger
Spring is here and it brings pastel eggs, flowers, and rainbows. Oh, and suplexes, DDTs and chokeslams at the biggest event of the year, Wrestlemania. This year they are celebrating the twenty-fourth edition of the over-the-top wrestling special in Orlando, Florida.
The card for the show doesn’t seem quite as spectacular as shows they’ve had in the past. Perhaps they’re saving their extra special ideas for the 25th anniversary show next year, or perhaps they just don’t have the same level of talent. Or I just don’t get the same entertainment from these guys as a whole than I did from the guys a few years ago. Anyway, let’s get on with the predictions.
24-Man Battle Royal - Winner faces ECW Champion Chavo Guerrero
This is the ‘we want to give these guys something to do but we don’t really have anything else’ match. I think the four guys with the best chance of winning this are Tommy Dreamer, Hardcore Holly, Kane, and Jamie Noble. Dreamer is always a good choice to go up against ECW bad guys whether he beats them or not. Holly has the respect from the fans and also would be a good guy to throw up against a hated champion. Kane has to have a legitimate chance, as he’s been involved in matches with ECW wrestlers for the past couple months. Noble has just turned face again during a feud with Chuck Palumbo and deserves the boost of a run at the title.
Who Should Win: Jamie Noble
Who Will Win: Any of those previous four would have a good match with Champion Chavo Guerrero.
‘Playboy’ BunnyMania Lumberjack Match featuring Snoop Dogg - Ashley & Maria vs. ‘The Glamazon’ Beth Phoenix & Melina
A women’s Lumberjack match should make this interesting, as will the inclusion of Snoop Dogg. Champion Beth Phoenix will probably destroy whoever is in the ring with her, but I think Maria is going to get the win, since it is a Playboy match, and she’s on the cover this month. The next contender for Beth’s championship will probably come out of this match, I’m guessing Ashley. I’m also predicting that at least four girls will have their costumes ripped off. Snoop will get smothered by boobs.
Who Should Win: Maria
Who Will Win: Maria
Belfast Brawl - Fit Finlay vs. John Bradshaw Layfield
It has been revealed that Fit Finlay is the real father of Hornswoggle, not Vince McMahon. JBL put the little leprechaun in the hospital and Finlay wants to hurt him for it. I hope they take this fight all over the arena; through the stands, past the merch tables and into the bathrooms. It will probably be bloody and both men will expend themselves. JBL might be working on a way to trick his opponent, but Finlay isn’t dumb. I expect he will drag JBL into a trap of his own so a little short man can pull off a splash and set JBL up for the losing side of a 1-2-3 count, end of feud. Finlay takes Hornswoggle home for good to retire the angle, and JBL finds someone else to pick on until he’s ready for one last championship chase.
Who Should Win: Finlay
Who Will Win: Finlay
SmackDown vs. Raw: Batista vs. Umaga
I don’t really care much about this match, or maybe I just don’t care much for Batista or Umaga. Batista came back from his time off a little too close to Wrestlemania, so they are using this match to give him a decisive victory over a ‘monster’ and propel him directly to the championship level again. Umaga could probably use the rub of a win better than Batista, however.
Who Should Win: Umaga
Who Will Win: Batista
Money in the Bank Ladder Match - Mr. Kennedy vs. Shelton Benjamin vs. Chris Jericho vs. Carlito vs. Montel Vontavious Porter vs. CM Punk vs. John Morrison
The Money in the Bank Ladder Match is one of the best gimmick matches that the WWE has come up with in the past few years. The winner of the match not only beats six other near-main eventers, but they constantly remind everyone of that fact by carrying around a briefcase containing their contract. One of the neat things about the contract is that it is good for the next year, so the WWE doesn’t have to immediately send the winner into a championship match. They can wait until the time is right and spring it on us at the most surprising moments. Out of the contenders, I think only two have a legit chance: Mr. Kennedy and Chris Jericho. The others aren’t quite up to the task of going up against a world champion just yet. But that’s part of what makes this gimmick great. If the WWE has a good plan, they could pick any of these guys, and baring an injury, push them to a believable position so they can use their title shot. However, at the moment it’s Kennedy and Jericho. Based on what I heard WWE wanted to do with Kennedy last year, I think he’s the winner here. He’s very entertaining both on the mic and in the ring and I think he is the type of wrestler that can be on the top for many years to come. Jericho just came back from a long layoff and needs a few more months before getting a legit title shot.
Who Should Win: Mr. Kennedy
Who Will Win: Mr. Kennedy
Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels (Career Threatening Match)
Flair’s career is on the line here. The next match he loses will be his last. I really like this angle. I don’t know where they are heading with it, but as long as he loses to someone who uses the rub to take themselves to the highest level of the sport, I’m fine with it. Shawn Michaels, however, is not the right person to end Flair’s career. Michaels already made his name and doesn’t need anyone or anything to make him a legit challenger to a title, so I don’t see him going over Flair here. It’s probably Flair’s last Wrestlemania as a wrestler and beating someone of the caliber of Shawn Micheals is special. Flair will lose before the end of 2008, but it won’t be here.
Who Should Win: Ric Flair
Who Will Win: Ric Flair
Floyd “Money” Mayweather vs. Big Show
A few years ago, Vince McMahon said that they didn’t need to bring in stars from other places anymore to get people to watch Wrestlemania; the wrestlers were the superstars. I guess the current batch of superstars aren’t so super, so they brought in welterweight boxer Floyd Mayweather. He’s entered into a feud with 400-pounder Big Show, who is returning after 100 pounds and 14 month away from the ring. Mayweather has brought a little bit of extra attention to Wrestlemania, but not nearly the amount that Mike Tyson did a decade ago. The funny thing about this match is that the crowd doesn’t seem to care much for Mayweather. Maybe it’s his ‘I’m the greatest’ attitude, or the fact that he’s an outsider, but I think this was a waste of cash by the WWE to bring him in. Big Show trained to become a boxer at within this past year, but I guess he thought better of it and came back to the wrestling. If Big Show doesn’t win then his returning momentum is stunted and he’ll have to fight harder to get it back over the next few months.
Who Should Win: Big Show
Who Will Win: Floyd Mayweather
World Heavyweight Champion Edge vs. Undertaker
Undertaker has a 15 and 0 record at Wrestlemania. If this were last year, I would say that Edge had a shot at the win and could use it to vault up the company ladder. Since last year, however, he’s won the title twice. The first time was from cashing in his Money in the Bank contract for a match with the Undertaker in his weakened state right after a draw against Batista. I think he’s a good main event heel and can get a title shot later on this year without having to prove himself. Undertaker is nearing the end of his career and will probably get one last title run before calling it quits next year at Wrestlemania 25, not to mention getting his revenge.
Who Should Win: Undertaker
Who Will Win: Undertaker
Triple Threat Match for the WWE Championship - Triple H vs. John Cena vs. Randy Orton
This match is the hardest to predict, and that’s probably how the WWE wants it. Each one of these guys has been able to one-up the other two over the past three weeks. Triple H doesn’t really need a title right now. He is better used building up some young stars and I think a belt would hinder that. The young stars don’t have a legit reason to be going after the belt yet so it’s easier if he doesn’t have it. Randy Orton is a good heel champion. I don’t think he’s fully solidified himself as a perennial championship contender just yet and it would do him good to hold onto the belt for awhile longer and perhaps take on some challengers who haven’t been at the top yet. John Cena still gets a pretty split reaction from the crowd. Half the people like him and half the people hate him. As long as the crown hates to love someone more than they love to hate Cena, he’ll be ok. Giving him the belt won’t do him any good as I think being the underdog helps him more than holding the belt will in the crowd’s eyes. Knowing the WWE though, they’ll give the belt to Cena because they like shoving him down our throats to prove that they know what is best for us.
Who Should Win: Randy Orton
Who Will Win: John Cena
We’ll check back in next week to see how my predictions fared.
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March 10th, 2008 - LoneStranger
I saw a neat post on Playstation.Blog this morning about an internal event held by thatgamecompany called 24 Hour Game Jam. The object of the event is to create a fun complete game in 24 hours on the PS3, with the specific goal being that they could play it in the office and even more importantly, it had to be fun. They start at 10am on a Saturday and finish up the next morning at the same time. When 10am hits, that’s it, they are done.
In this first jam, they created a game called Gravediggers. The post includes a video with five people playing through a round. The graphics themselves remind me a little of the original Joust game, with the brown floating platforms and blockish characters. The players are represented by small rectangular blocks, and the playing field offers a lot of space to run around and shoot. The object is to kill the rampant zombies with a gun and collect the heads to return them to the crypt for points. Heads of the other players can be returned for extra points. The side-view perspective shows generated terrain and two crypts randomly around the field. The players hop from platform to platform, and over little hills. They can also shoot through the terrain if they can’t get around it to score those zombie heads.
This reminds me of Ludum Dare’s 48 Hour Game Programming Competition held twice a year (voting starts for the LD11 theme April 11th). There are a lot of neat little games that come out this competition, many of them that look as good or better than the NES games we used to spend hours playing as kids. They’re just as fun too. Entrants are allowed to use a wide range of development tools and can create on any platform they wish. The only caution is that if other people can’t play your game, they can’t vote on it, so most entries are done on Windows. If you are an amateur game programmer, give the LD11 a shot. If I can get a decent desk for my computer by April 11th, I may try to enter. Trying to type with the keyboard on an endtable is not fun. I submitted a sad entry for LD2, many years ago. Sad enough that I won’t bother to show you.
Shake these two things together in a glass, add a little lemon–here’s my third topic.
Sony hasn’t moved forward with any kind of amateur software development kit for creating PS3 games. Sure, it is possible to create games for the PS3 running on Linux, however, there is no formal tool package to make the process easier. Requiring an install of linux in order to play these also doesn’t do anything good for widespread distribution to the community.
I don’t have a 360, so I haven’t tinkered with their system but based on what I have read, Microsoft seems to be doing a good job with their XNA community development project. Everything from providing the tools, developing on a PC, MSDN reference, and the end-user distribution is fairly well thought out. Of course, Microsoft has been giving out development tools for years now, whereas Sony has only been distributing professional tools directly to the game developers. They have been touting how much easier the Playstation EDGE dev kit is for developers so perhaps a stripped down version of it would be the answer for the amateur side.
These little amateur games fill a niche in the games industry but they haven’t really penetrated console systems. How many hours are spent each day playing silly little Flash-based games. It doesn’t take a three year cycle to create an interesting game people will spend hours playing. All you need is a simple concept implemented in a way that is fun. Bejeweled and Tower Defense are good examples. PixelJunk even took the Tower Defense idea and twisted it enough in an attempt to get Japanese players to like it.
While we’re at it, I think I’ll mention that Microsoft is expanding their XNA in version 3.0 to allow development on their portable Zune system. I don’t know about the technicalites of the PSP hardware and how software is run on it compared to the PS3, but I think that Sony should not forget the PSP when working on their dev kit.
There are more high-profile things that people might like Sony to work on, including Home and better in-game communication with our friends. I agree, these things are important. In fact, Home has arcade machines in some of the spaces, and I think that is an opportunity for people to create mini-games.
There are many aspiring game developers who could use this kit as a valuable experience for a future job. There are also people who don’t want to submit themselves to the grind that is the professional development cycle and they can use it as a way to express themselves in a less-demanding manner. There is no reason why Sony shouldn’t spend the resources to get a dev program going. It really is the ultimate in user-generated content.
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March 7th, 2008 - LoneStranger
Jeff Gerstmann has finally announced the next big thing: Brock Lesnar. No, that doesn’t sound right.
Giant Bomb. Yea, That’s it.
Even with his termination from a large gaming website last November, it seemed pretty obvious that Jeff wasn’t done with the gaming industry. He started a personal blog to post a few game reviews, talk about Tiger Gatorade, let us know when he’d be doing a tv, podcast or webshow, and of course, keep us primed for the announcement. Giant Bomb is a new gaming website where people can go to get their dose of gaming related information. This first stage of Giant Bomb is merely lighting the fuse to a greater grand opening explosion later on this summer. As of now, it’s in a blog-style format while they finish designing and implementing the full site.
There is another man behind the bombness, fellow former-large-gaming-websiter, Ryan Davis. He’s been keeping his own personal blog, including a fairly-weekly podcast featuring Jeff and Alex Navarro. The podcast will morph itself into a round ball with gunpowder inside sometime soon, featuring the same wacky conversation about games, drinks, movies and whatever else happens to be brought up. They probably already have a title in mind, but here’s my recommendation: The Bombcast. I don’t know if it’s in public-domain or not, but they need to secure that famous sample of some guy in a deep voice saying “The Bomb” over some of RyDeezy’s synthesized beats.
It looks like they’ll be using a new rating system for games, and I am sure it isn’t totally finalized. The reviews of Burnout Paradise and Poker Smash have a five-star system to keep it simple. There are a lot of different dimensions to score a game on, however an overall rating pounds and pummels all that down into a one dimensional meterstick. You can never know what part of it either bumped the score or dragged it down, so there isn’t much of a point in using a stick with infinite tickmarks. That only invites people to nit-pick over a scoring detail (8.8, anyone?). A five-star system can help you decide which games were properly executed at a glance (or should be executed) and then the review will tell you why. Depending on your own likes and dislikes, you can make your own decision. The review is, afterall, just an opinion, and everyone puts different values on each of those different gaming dimensions.
As Jeff said in his announcement, they’ve been listening to the feedback from their site visitors and podcast listeners and have been using that to help form the ideals of the final site. It sounds really interesting and I can’t wait to see what they are going to do with the site to help video game players make their purchasing decisions while at the same time showing us an entertaining product. So add it to your RSS list!
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February 11th, 2008 - LoneStranger
For the past week I have been addicted to a new online game. It’s a baseball management simulator called SimYard. Like other baseball sims, you pick a team name, logo and colors, and pit your team against others.
SimYard has an interesting twist to it. Your team is made up of semi-pro players who you find while interacting with the fans around The Park. You pick a field at the park and wait for someone to accept your challenge, or you find a field with another team waiting and accept theirs. There is no set game schedule or requirement to play specific teams. It’s more like pick-up baseball.
Currently, your team has a roster limit of 40 players comprised of the usual positions. Each player has a set of internal stats that make up what kind of player they are, ranging from 1 to 20 (I assume it’s 20. The highest I’ve seen is a value of 17 on one of my pitchers). The stats fall into one of three disiplines: batting, pitching and fielding/baserunning. Batting, for instance, is made up of the Hit, Bat Speed and Power stats. They go up against pitchers who use the Finesse, Pitch Speed and Endurance stats.
Each individual matchup in the game is determined by the server using these stats, pitch by pitch. You can see the current number of balls and strikes on the status display and the results of the matchup show up on a representation of the field. You have as much control over the batter or pitcher as a real manager does in the dugout. Sure, you can call substitutions, but like in the real game, you don’t have time to think it over too much before play continues on. Each pitch takes about one second, and a full game can be completed in anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes. The automatic manager does a pretty decent job replacing pitchers when they get tired and ineffective batters in the later innings, so don’t feel overwhelmed with figuring out who to pull and when. The pitcher’s endurance stat determines how long they can go in the game and how much rest time they need in between starts. Typically, it’s anywhere from 10 to 20 hours, which would equate to about four to six days in real life.
The games go much like any game you watch on TV. You root for your players like you would your favorite team, yelling at the screen when hitters can’t seem to do more than create a breeze and your pitchers appear to be throwing underhanded. Of course, you do the same when your four-slot knocks a grand slam or your pitcher goes a complete game.
The baseball season is 24 days long, plus two days of spring training at the start of the month and two days of a post-season tournament at the end of the month. Even though there are no official leagues in The Park, standings and stats are kept. A simple games behind calculation determines where your team is in relation to the others. Since everyone plays a different number of games in the schedule-less format, you can play half as many games as one team and still be next to them in the standings. The date of the seasons is set in the late 1890’s, which some consider the beginning of modern baseball. Everything from then to now is a blank slate… ready for you to make history. Each new month bring a new season, new standings and new opportunity.
The top teams will play in the post-season, however not much about that has been revealed to the public yet. I do know that you’ll set your starting rotation and closers to pair up against your opponents, and the computer will schedule the tournament with as many as 64 teams.
All of that is free. Starting next month, there will be a way to take your team to the next level, by purchasing a stadium license and joining a league with it’s own schedule, standings and playoffs. Not only will you be playing against better teams, you’ll also have to keep the fanbase you built at The Park happy with good seats, concessions and souveniers. They’ll show their happiness by attending games and spending money at the park so you can turn around and offer your players contracts and keep them on your team.
The game is currently in beta, so you may notice some changes as the month goes on, as SimYard developer Erick Robertson tweaks things and adds features. Erick sure did his homework when he came up with the engine behind the whole thing, so be sure to let him know you enjoy the game if you see him in the game’s chat or forums.
So come on out and check out SimYard. Anyone who is interested in baseball, especially those who take part in fantasy baseball should find enjoyment in taking a team of players and trying to beat the pants off of everyone at The Park. You can find me in there as, who else? LoneStranger.
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February 8th, 2008 - LoneStranger
Hey all. Welcome to The Lone Stranger Network blog. I figured all the cool kids were doing it, I should too. Mainly, I needed a new launching point for my projects and interests. The old page just wasn’t cutting it anymore ever.
The first project is my Star Wars site, SWNovels.com. It’s got a chronology of the novels with release dates and back-of-the-book text. There is a list of authors and books they’ve written and some extra information relevant to Star Wars novel readers.
Along the way I’ll also spout a bunch of nonsense about whatever subject that comes up. Baseball, football, wrestling, videogames, the web, whatever.
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