The yawntastic link of the day: The Watchman Expositor: Fantasy Role-playing Games - Downloading Danger.

Of course, the article is pretty old, as it refers to Ultima IX as being upcoming in 1997 and N64 being a new system...

Anyway. I was looking for more references about the Ultima VII's Scientology links (note the subtlety, depth, moral analysis, and sheer brilliance of this epic of a game!) and Google tosses this rambling at me. I'm not happy.

First off, I'm not particularly happy about RPGs getting condemned by people as "occult" or anything. In fact, right now, my head is completely empty of anything witty to say about the anti-D&D folks like that incoherent guy and that ol' annoying blabberer, because firstly, it's past four o'clock in the morning and secondly, this thing has been discussed before to the extent that it's even remotely discussable.

The big irony is that the article opens thus: It is important to note that not all RPG's are connected to the occult, and that parents should experience the game with the child before condemning it. Yet, the article is filled with commenting stuff on store shelves (A description of 'Warlock' provided by one toy store gives an example...) and as they're descibed in magazines. And anyone who has ever followed the modern "media industry" even passingly knows very well that there are five kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, statistics, back cover descriptions, and magazine preview articles.

The bit on Ultima IX goes like this:

Another game which may open the door to occult activity is Ultima IX: Ascension (due out in spring '97 on CD-ROM). Next Generation provides a preview of this game that contains a picture of an Avatar (used here as a demon-like figure instead of the traditional definition: the incarnation of a Hindu deity) standing in a circle of protection. Condemning the game on the basis of one picture may seem a little harsh, but this kind of symbolism is often characteristic of strong occult tendencies. Many video and computer games have these types of characters and symbols, and so they can be said to introduce players to the realm of the occult.

This is a beautiful example of how not to do analysis of moral values in a videogame! Basically, they took a preview picture - very early preview picture also - and picked the whole game apart based on that. That's kind of like saying the Bible is really evil because it contains so many "smotes", and right in the first books!

I haven't seen the picture they're talking about, but "a demon-like figure" sure doesn't sound like Avatar to me. Circles of protection... Hum, let me guess, something from the games around that: Pyros or maybe the Guardian? You see, this thing is very vague. They most likely didn't even know who this Avatar fellow was supposed to be in the picture they were looking at!

Right now, I was sort of hoping to hear some analysis of the Virtues and moral content of Ultimas in general - I'd love to hear what some other Christians could say about it. I'm fairly sure there are people who can just look at the games with open mind and not just supposedly open mind.

Here's a quote I'd like to tell to the author of that supposed article: "Not all games that have just a teeny weeny little bit of supposed occultism on the cover are evil. People who assess the moral content of the games should actually play the game throughoutly before saying any kind of judgement on the moral depravity of the game, and not base things on such obviously false things."

(Hello, I thought it might be good to not only critique the UI of the games, but also some bad design flaws. I hope this directory will fill up.)

One of the worst problems when I play CRPGs is quite simple: Game developers don't know what darkness means. Sure, every one of us who work on computers know what darkness means. Nobody just bothers to think what it really is like to be in dark in nature.

People probably think this is nitpicking, but I say it anyway: It's possible to see in dark. Above ground, nights are rarely completely lightless. Summer nights are usually pretty well lit, even here in the near-arctic land of darkness. For comparison, the winter nights are pretty dark, but you can still see somewhat.

The point I'm chasing is this: Even in the worst imaginable night conditions, the most annoying thing that can happen to you in a game is that you can't read. There's plenty of light to make sense of the surroundings, even on a very vague level. Right now, it's midnight, I can pretty much find my way to the fridge (if there were anything in the fridge, that is).

Games frequently overdo the darkness, not only making things too dark, but also failing to compensate on the fact that other senses are also suppressed. In many games, if it's dark, you can barely see where you are going. Realistic? Arguably. Annoying? Well, if the controls are clumsy compared to real-life controls, making the screen dark won't help things at all.

I was rather joyous when I heard Bioware wasn't going to do "accurate" version of Underdark in Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. Instead of a campaign in utter blackness of the eternal night of Underdark, here we had a moderately normally-lit experience - the game was beautifully merciful.

If it's not possible to let me sense, please let me be able to see.

I'm back from at least part of this summer's travels, probably more travelling to come. Which reminds me of an issue I thought of a while ago.

When Microsoft was announcing XBox 2's supposed lack of hard drive, people were assuming this meant complete and total move to server-stored profile and game data. Personally, I guess they're just using some memory card system or other. The following is just some pondering on how this supposed "Game Passport" idea might fly today.

I live in a rather technological area. Here, I have broadband Internet connection and if I felt I would have any need for networked gaming on console (net gaming is for PCs only, dammit!), it might be possible to arrange it.

In these travels, I simply picked up my Gamecube, put the thing and the games and cables into bag, and away I went. My game saves were on a memory card in my wallet. When I got to my destination - considerably less hightech neighborhood, with decent computers but where 56k modems are the height of communications tech, with lost hope for ISDN glimmering in the people's eyes - I simply unpacked the stuff, plugged the thing to my Commodore monitor, and there I was, playing SSBM.

Now, let's see how well this thing might with our hypothetical network-aware microboX NetExtremePassport in year 2008. Let's suppose Nintendo and Sony had bowed before the will of Microsoft and all console systems were finally standardized and united in harmony... yet leaving Trip Hawkins weeping on 3DO's grave.

I'd arrive to my destination, drop the Gameicosahedron on the table, and plug the thing to the monitor and wall. Then, I'd find the huge three-prong plug telephone cord, plug the other end to the tiny little RJ11 on the back of the unit... wait, I'd probably have to plug in an external modem first - after all, no one's using these modems in 2008, at least in sweet theory!... and then spend next 15 minutes messing around with the controller and putting these modem settings right. (Presets for multiple locations? Surely no one will use the thing in multiple locations? Huh? Some NetExtremePassport licensee making a portable console?! Unheard of!)

And then, finally, everything is set up. I'd hit Connect. Modem handshake. Wailing. Wailing. Wailing. Modem handshake. Wailing. Wailing. Modem handshake, with hang up in middle. Reconnect in 10 seconds. Modem handshake... and so on. (Don't you love mysteriously low-quality rattling phone wiring? No wonder they invented error correcting protocols!)

Connecting to server, slow as usual. Wait, it's down. Retry in 5 minutes. Yaaaawn.

Skip some frustrations. Wind Waker's data, for comparison, would be close to a mebibyte, if I calculated right (which I probably didn't). That's a couple of minutes of waiting. And the games of 2008 are probably even more save-space-hungry than current games...

Oh, and when I save the game, I'd have to do all this connection nonsense again.

And somewhere, on the comfort of their couch and a broadband network, a lone gamer reads the message from their screen: "The server is down. Apologies for the inconvenience." Another night that was going to be wasted on playing games is going to be spent on even more pointless things.

Argh, this is too silly to even think of. I was going to say that networked game data storage isn't going to happen as long as communication systems are what they are, but instead, I'm just going to say that networked game data storage isn't going to happen - things over the network are always going to be slow and frustrating.

As an option and alternative, it is going to work, but never ever as the primary save method.

Aside of the delirious ramblings of Electronic Arts, it is fairly clear that Ultima series has always been about innovations in game engine, and depth of the game world and story. Regrettably, I'm not the perfect person to design Ultima games what comes to the game world and stories - I think the games are pretty damn good in that respect already. I can only hope that should EA make Ultima remakes, they'd just refer to the original games, and if they'd have to improve them, they'd just get the original creators on the job.

But I can think of various ways the game engines themselves could be improved. So, if EA, or fans, will ever will rerelease Ultima games with a single, improved game engine, here are some ideas for it. (Being Electronic Arts, however, they'll probably not only ignore the pleas from desperate fans, but also butcher the story in remakes. This is why I hope they'll not listen to me anyway. Maybe fan-Ultima-production people who aren't afraid of the Perpetual Limbo might be able to listen, however...)

What I personally long is a "multiparadigm" engine. This is just a cool-sounding buzzword that can easily be used to convince the evil EA managers. What I actually mean is this: U4 had turn-based combat, U7 has near-real-time combat, U4 had variable map scale, U7 had constant map scale - and the bad thing is, both ideas worked! Even dialogue had their sides: U1-3 told what to do, U4-6 had pseudo-tree that hid some things well until time was ripe, U7-9 had proper dialog trees. Why not let the user choose what map scale they're looking at, what kind of combat they prefer, heck, what kind of dialogue they prefer?

At times, in U7, I find overland travel boring and I just cheat and teleport to the target to save my nerves - but on some days, I find the travel through woods and whatnot fun. Turn-based combat is tactical and interesting, semi-automatic real-time combat is fun, effortless and allows me to focus on story and exploration - both have their sides. People who don't care about plot probably like to be just told what to do à la 1-3, while the plot fans will love modern, full-blown dialog trees - and some hard-core folks might even enjoy keyword guessing in U4 style.

Why not allow people to play the game the way they want the game to be played? Why does no RPG allow people to choose between both of the extremes? Make inter-location travel as detailed as you need. Make combat either tactical turn-based or dramatic real-time. Hell, let's just throw in a simplistic "Fight/Spell/Item/Flee" combat system as one of the options to lure in the Square fans - after all, it's just one of the choices, no one needs to use it...

Likewise the game could even lend itself to "multiple paradigms" in graphics and sound... everything from pixely stuff to full-blown 2D, maybe? Or, at least 2D stuff might be simulated properly with 3D. Music, of course, could be likewise done in appropriate way depending on preference.

I know what you are thinking - letting users to choose how they play the game makes the system easy to abuse and hard to balance. This can be made balanced, however. Yet, strict number-tumbling isn't what the games are about. In fact, it'd be good if the game had hackability - not necessarily changing the actual code, but it should be possible to mess around with the actual game state without the need for a hex editor or something like that. One of the good things about U7 is the fact that cheats, at least in Exult, can be used to make game more interesting as well as the obvious thing of making things easier. If the engine could somehow half-expose the underlying game logic, that would make things infinitely more easier. I don't ask for cheats - I ask that the game is actually hackable. U7 already pretty much is, it would just need to be more so.

More Ultima ideas possibly coming... or not. I don't know yet.

My sister and I invented two new cool games, based on Super Smash Bros. Melee. These game ideas are presented here, in the glorious tradition of the local Nintendo magazine of early 90s; in other words, these things are pretty silly and not many people necessarily find them cool, but for some reason, they got published anyway in a less than reputable publication. But silliness is a good thing.

Spot a Fox

Preparation: View all trophies, zoomed all the way in. Other player must move the view around. Rules: Whoever finds the Fox McCloud trophies first wins. This is easy if you've only beaten Classic and Adventure modes with Fox, slightly trickier if you've also beaten All-Star mode - the All-Star trophy is a bit harder to find among the trophies.

Guess Who?

Players take turns zooming into individual trophies. While the other player looks away, the other tries to find an interesting viewing angle to an individual trophy, and when that is found, the other player can look, and tries to guess which trophy it actually is. Special conditions: Zooming too far is not allowed (in other words, you aren't allowed to do misclipped views, like zooming inside someone's head or something).