Journal of J

Game Review: Dungeons of Dredmor

2012-02-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

Dungeons of Dredmor has been out for a while now, but I only started playing it this week. It's a roguelike from Gaslamp Games. This is the first major title from Gaslamp Games, though the founding members of the three-man group have worked in the field on other projects before this. There's been a lot of hubbub about this game and how it's reviving the roguelike genre, but as I've never been in to roguelikes before, I hadn't gotten around to trying it out - until now.

Dungeond of Dredmor is available on Steam for Windows and Mac, and is also available for Linux. There are rumors of an iOS version in the making.

What It Does Well

I was worried going into Dredmor that I would become really frustrated with the game immediately. I'm not an especially hardcore kind of gamer, and that's the main reason I've never been into roguelikes - I don't like permadeath. Dredmor gives you the option of turning that off, though, as well as many difficulty settings which allowed me to choose what kind of experience I wanted to have. The amount of choice available in the game makes it a ton of fun - rather than choosing from a set number of classes at the beginning, you have a wide array of skill trees to choose from and you create your own class. I decided to go for a sneaky pirate who uses swords and crossbows my first time through, but I think I'd like to try a wizard of some sort next. Planning what cool skills you want to try makes the replay value very high, giving this title a LOT of bang for your buck.

What Needs Work

Indie titles are being held to a higher bar these days. While Dredmor's gameplay certainly measures up, the overall look and feel needs a bit of polish. The actual sprites are fun and stylized, and there are lots of neat little atmospheric things such as the monsters commenting (usually insultingly) as you fight them. However, the user interface is a little awkward both in functionality and appearance. The monster text could use a background or speech bubble or something. The isometric view makes it difficult to see things that are close to the wall sometimes. Tall characters or monsters sometimes lead to very unfortunate mis-clicks since it seems like you are clicking the sprite but you actually need to click the square they are standing on. All these are small things, but they add up and detract from the overall experience.

Should You Play It?

All polish issues aside, this game is truly wonderful considering it is a three-person indie title. It fully deserves the recognition it's been getting, and has actually made me interested in the roguelike genre. Plus, it's dirt cheap, so there's really no excuse for not trying it out!

Risky Business: Into the Maw (Part1.1)

2012-02-06T18:24:00.000-08:00

Risky Business: Into the Maw

Part 1: The Riddle of the Righteous Path

A Rogue Trader Campaign

[I'm starting a series of write-ups narrating the progress of my online campaign, the Risky Business. If you're interested in seeing a play-by-post campaign in action using the Rogue Trader setting and rules, you can check out the website for my campaign at http://riskybusiness.guildlaunch.com/. All of our gameplay is visible to non-members, so you can watch our progress as we play.]

...

The news is insulting to some and hilarious to the rest. It normally wouldn't have made it past the topmost spires of nobility, but the inflammatory nature of this change of leadership ensured that it passed from Lord to servant, and from there to all who would seek temporary escape from the tedium of everyday life.

Katyaina Florosa the twelfth, Rogue Trader of a well established but foundering line, has died. This in itself is not unusual; it's the heir to her Warrant of Trade that is making the buzz. The recipient of this hereditary document is Alphmire Florosa. Not surprised? Well you should be, because until now the Florosas were a matriarchal house, one of the only such houses in existence.

What is even more interesting is Katyaina was purportedly barren. She has no daughters or sons. At least she didn't, until the moment she died.

After some digging we shed a little more light on the story. This Alphmire fellow hails from Archaos, a hive world good for little more than their Scholariums and their press gangs. He comes aboard the Risky Business as some adjunct or servingman with a rucksack and the clothes on his back. But from then on his star shines brightly. He was Katyaina's right hand, and she was never seen without him somewhere in the room, resolving an endless flow of tedious logistics. He was well liked but never in the spotlight, even though by the end of Katyaina's life he was handling many important and sensitive tasks while she quietly deteriorated.

And then she dies, and Alphmire becomes a Florosa. Once he became a Florosa he was given the family Warrant of Trade and named Rogue Trader; neat as you please.

The gossip multiplies like the rats down under. He was feeding her small continuous doses of poison while winning her confidence. He was possessing her with fell powers. He was her bed-slave and manipulated her with soft words. Now his star dims. A few key officers have resigned their commands of the Risky Business in protest to what they call "a brash usurping of a noble line." The common crew are benevolently tight lipped about the whole thing, but new leadership always lacks substance at first; I doubt their discreetness is anything more than a waiting game, until they know who the winning side will be.

And trust me, there is something to win here. The crew may follow him, but he has numerous officer vacancies and no friends. For Alphmire's sake, I hope he doesn't have any powerful enemies, 'cause they'll eat him alive. Every position he fills will in truth be owned by a faction looking to better their lot.

Why will all of these new officers be his enemies, you ask? Remember when I said there is something to win here? The Risky Business is a worthy prize, one that the Mechanicus would hold in reasonable regard. And if the Mechanicus wants it, everyone wants it. It is an ancient and powerful vessel, overflowing with precious technology. But best of all, it doesn't yet belong to the Mechanicus or the Imperial Navy; it belongs to a House that is so weak, it's death would provoke no retaliation.

Battlefleet Calixis would ask no questions if the Risky Business were to show up on their docking ring, wrapped neatly in a bow. Merchant houses are always looking for convoy protection, and the Risky Business just went to market with a tempting price tag: one life. A Rival Rogue Trader could have the beginnings of a fleet, and all they would have to do is pluck little Alphmire from his bridge and sit on his still-warm throne. Whatever else is left of House Florosa will be passed over in favor of this crowning jewel, that I promise.

So it's really no surprise that Alphmire is setting course for Port Wander, and surely from there to the Koronus expanse. Out there, in the Expanse, vast influences in the affairs of the Calixis Sector mean nothing. Out there, the power of that little ship will make Alphmire a king among men, and a power to be reckoned with.

I hear he does have a few loyal crew members left. His Astropath stayed with him through the transition out of a sense of duty and faithfulness to the Florosa line. A Navigator stayed on as well, though I hear there was some kind of foul play and now some reckless youngster's holding the fate of the ship through the Warp. The rest of the officers have been picked up at the edge of the Segmentum in the last six months, as Alphmire dodged bullet after bullet and prepared for this voyage. It's his one shot to salvage what's left of the dynasty.

Game Review: The Unstoppable Gorg

2012-02-01T19:17:00.000-08:00

The Unstoppable Gorg is a tower defense game, the newest game from Futuremark Game Studio. Futuremark has developed two other games before this - a zero G first person shooter called Shattered Horizon and a casual mobile game called Hungribles. They are better known for their computer benchmarking software. Given this background I wasn't sure what to expect going in to The Unstoppable Gorg, but the play footage from TotalBiscuit's WTFis intrigued me and I decided to give it a try.

The game is available on Steam for Windows and Mac, as well as on iOS. An XBox Live Arcade version is on the way.

What It Does Well

Everything about this game's look and feel is spot on. It mimics black and white science fiction movies from the 50s, right down to the cutscenes involving cardboard spaceships on wires with sparklers for rockets. The in game graphics aren't anything special, but the way it all fits together is exceptional. The story that goes along with the game is very silly but matches the theme perfectly and the result is quite entertaining.

The game isn't all fluff, though. The gameplay is somewhat similar to traditional tower defense games in that the enemies travel along a set path, and you have set areas where you can place your "towers" (satellites in this case). If the enemies reach your "base" (a planet), they will deal damage to it until you kill them, or they destroy the planet. You can upgrade or sell your towers, as well. Unlike many tower defense games, the towers (satellites) actually have health as well, and can be destroyed by the enemies if you aren't careful. But the biggest innovation comes in the orbital design of the satellites. At any time you can rotate the satellite along it's orbit to move it to a better position. This also moves all other satellites in that orbit, though. Additionally, the path of the enemies changes throughout the level, making on the fly orbit rotations not only useful but necessary. This makes for a much more active gameplay experience compared to most tower defense games.

What Needs Work

I love the innovation of the orbits and the ability to more actively participate in the battles. However, I felt like Unstoppable Gorg became very hectic very fast - so much so that it's discouraged me from picking it back up after running through the first six or seven levels. I was playing on the default difficulty, and I've played quite a few tower defense games in the past and don't usually have nearly so much trouble. Additionally, linking the upgrades you have access to later in the game to how much research you can gather during each level adds to the stress. While I'm certain there are players who can easily defeat these levels right off the bat, the difficulty seems to me to be tuned too high by default.

Should You Play It?

I definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes tower defense and wants to try something new. It's quite entertaining, though a bit difficult if all you are looking for is something to zone out to. If you are completely new to the tower defense genre, I would recommend trying an easier game to start out - Plants Vs. Zombies is a good place to start.

Web Pollinator Coming Soon

2012-01-22T19:08:00.000-08:00

Bounder Studios will soon be releasing a simplified, sidescrolling, web version of our forthcoming game, Pollinator! This version will be a simple score attack game in which you must collect Pollen while avoiding Pesticide and grabbing Powerups (wow that's a lot of P's).

I'm writing the mini game in JavaScript, which I had the good fortune to get to learn at my internship with Intel. It's quite a lot different than working in C++, which is what the main Pollinator game is currently coded in. And by different I mean EASIER. However, I'm still very glad to be getting C++ experience with Pollinator - it's the industry standard for big games and it's what I'll be expected to know should I apply for a job with a big gaming company.

I'll be posting a screenshot of the game progress shortly, and of course I'll announce it here when the game is posted on the Bounder Studios website.

Musings on Cloud Computing

2011-11-10T19:39:00.001-08:00

It's been a while. Life has been crazy, with midterms and projects and concerts and all sorts of goings on.

One side effect of this is that I tend to hop from computer to computer quite frequently. I have my home desktop, my laptop, my work computers (windows and Linux), and the school computer lab computers (windows and Linux). It's no wonder that cloud computing has become an extremely attractive option for me.

Currently I use Google Docs for most of my documents, including class notes (type them out on the laptop during class), course planning (multiple page spreadsheet organizing my course plan several terms ahead of time), time sheets, resume, and game ideas. The organization of Google Docs still leaves something to be desired, but it's been an absolute life saver in keeping me sane and organized.

I recently looked into IDE options in the cloud, and found that while there are a few out there, they all seem to be targeted at web development with no compilers for languages like C++, though some do have C++ syntax formatting. I even found some that play nice with Github, but nothing that exactly matches my needs. I'm hoping this is an area that will continue to grow and that new and exciting tools will be developed to push development to the cloud.

I've had classmates suggest simply using a server and ssh-ing into it, and that certainly is an option. However, I still feel cloud computing is a more intuitive and easy answer.

LoL What? Beginner Guide to Kayle

2011-10-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Kayle the Judicator
Hybrid AP/Support

There is a world far away where an ancient conflict still rages. Kayle was a champion in her war, the fair bringer of justice, and there are those that call her an angel. However, there are many who would call her murderer or monster. Kayle tirelessly fought for her people, bringing enemies to their knees. That is, until the day she was summoned. Plucked from her conflict, Kayle at first raged - until she saw the cause for which she had been called. Now she has brought her role to Valoran, dispensing her brand of justice to the League of Legends in an attempt to salvage the very survival of the planet. She is a striking winged figure. Though incredibly beautiful, Kayle hides herself under armor, knowing that justice is so often an ugly thing. Despite her newfound life, there is still a part of her that yearns for her home. Kayle is, for lack of a more sophisticated term, a bruiser. She can sear enemies with what she calls holy energy, sucking the life and magic from a victim. She is capable of sharing the harm done to her with those who inflict it. Her ability to intervene can help an allied Champion return from death with haste then she can bless them with increased speed. When the time comes, Kayle can ignite her sword with holy fire, bringing out the true avenging angel within her. In the League of Legends, Justice comes on swift wings.

Kayle is a fun champion for beginners to play. She looks extremely impressive with her bright armor and wings, and her invincibility and heal gives some wiggle room that beginners can really appreciate, yet she still does enough damage to feel powerful. She can fit into most any team, and brings a lot of utility to a group so you'll be quite popular with your teammates. Your main job with Kayle is to save people's butts. If that sounds awesome, read on!

Champion Abilities

Passive: Holy Fervor

When Kayle attacks a champion, the target loses 3% Armor and Magic Resistance for 5 seconds. This effect stacks up to 5 times.

This passive is pretty pathetic. However, the effect does work for everyone on the team, not just Kayle, so it's still worth trying to get a few hits on whoever your team is focusing down.

Reckoning (Q)

Blasts an enemy unit with angelic force, dealing damage and slowing movement speed. While the target is slowed, Kayle inflicts increased damage to them.

This is your harass ability. Use it as an opener (allowing increased damage), or in particular, to allow you and your team to catch up to a fleeing enemy. It's also your longest range offensive ability, so it's useful as a poke.

Divine Blessing (W)

Blesses a target friendly champion, granting them increased movement speed and healing them.

This is your main support ability. The heal is pretty much negligible, as Kayle is a hybrid rather than a straight support character. However, in addition to the heal, this gives a speed boost that can be significant at higher levels. This is great to use in conjunction with Reckoning to allow Kayle or her teammates to catch a fleeing enemy, or to help Kayle or her teammates escape.

Righteous Fury (E)

Ignites Kayle's sword with a holy flame, granting Kayle a ranged splash attack and bonus magic damage.

This is your primary damage output, and will help in farming as it allows your attacks to splash to nearby enemies. Additionally, combined with her other abilities, this helps Kayle chase down enemies as it allows her normally melee attacks to hit at range.

Intervention (R)

Shields Kayle or an ally for a short time, causing them to be immune to damage.

The move Kayle is most known for, her ult. This makes one champion of your choice (including Kayle herself) invincible for a short time. It can be great for many things, including escaping a near death situation, tower diving, or throwing on a massive DPS to allow them to get off their full attack while the enemy team looks on, unable to stop them.

Summoner Abilities

Ghost (F)
Your Champion ignores unit collision and moves 27% faster for 14 seconds.

Ghost greatly increases your mobility. Combined with Kayle's already deadly mobility spells, it allows her and her teammates to catch or escape from enemies with ease.

Other choices: Flash

Exhaust (G)
Reduces a target's Attack Damage by 70%, Ability/Item damage by 35% and slows its Movement Speed by 40% for 3 seconds.

Exhaust is used primarily to slow an enemy. Like Ghost, it can be used both offensively (to catch a fleeing enemy) and defensively (to escape)

Other choices: Ignite, Cleanse, Clairvoyance

Mastery

Kayle works well with the go-to mastery set up: 9/0/21. This mastery set gets you the following at max level: 9% reduced cooldowns, magic penetration, increased experience, mana regen, move speed, and longer Neutral buffs. Now, this guide assumes you aren't at max level, so I'll give the order in which you should pick these masteries up.

Offense Tree:
3/3 Deadliness
1/1 Cripple (if you use Exhaust)
4/4 Sorcery
1/1 Archaic Knowledge

Utility Tree:
3/3 Perseverance
1/1 Haste (if you use Ghost)
4/4 Awareness
2/2 Utility Master
3/3 Meditation
3/3 Quickness
3/3 Sorcery
1/4 Expanded Mind
1/1 Presence of the Master

Skill Order

Skilling for Kayle is easy. Grab Righteous Fury first so you have it available, then level in the following priority:

Intervention >>> Reckoning / Divine Blessing >>> Righteous Fury

Items

This is the most generic item build for Kayle, but be prepared to substitute items in based on your opponents and the specific situation you are in.

Doran's Ring
Mercury Treads
Hextech Gunblade
Guinsoo's Rageblade
Nashor's Tooth
Rabadon's Deathcap

If you need additional survivability, a Guardian's Angel (if people are focusing you down specifically) or a Banshee's Veil are good substitutes - insert one of them between step 3 and 4 in the item list.

Laning

Kayle is a strong soloer, so mid or solo top is good. However as a beginner, you may want to stay paired until you feel comfortable.

Before Level 6
Your goal is to get as many last hits as possible while harassing the enemy and trying to keep them from getting as many last hits. Use your movement speed to keep on the move and only hit minions to last hit. Use Reckoning and Righteous Fury to harass the enemy and Divine Blessing to escape if needed. Reckoning is really your best friend in this phase, and you should do your best to make your enemies fear it.

After Level 6
Stay in your lane to harass and farm as long as you can, but coordinate with your team if you can and join up for the occasional gank using your Intervention.Do your best to get gunblade before the main teamfighting phase begins.

Team Fights

It's important to remember that while Kayle can be awesome on her own, she really shines as a support character. Remember that you can't save butts with Intervention if you are stunned or dead, so don't draw too much aggro to yourself.

Let your teammates initiate. Your moves are usually better used in reaction to the situation.
Hit the team's focus target with Reckoning, then follow up with Righteous Fury.
Heal your weaker teammates with Divine Blessing
Use you Intervention as soon as one of your powerful DPS allies begins being focused down, when they reach around 30% health.
Only enter melee range if you seem to be winning, to help chase the enemy down.
If you are losing, help everyone escape using Divine Blessing to boost their speed and Reckoning to slow the enemy down.

More Information

If you'd like more information, check out the guide by "I am the Walrus" on LeagueCraft: Kayle, the Saver of Asses. I have essentially paraphrased his guide here, making it as short as noob friendly as possible. He's got a lot more information about why this build is recommended as well as hard numbers supporting his recommendations.

Have fun!

Geek Girl Con Reactions

2011-10-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

Recently I attended Geek Girl Con, a brand new convention taking place in Seattle, celebrating the female geek. The con was very content heavy, and much smaller than PAX - a very different experience for me. The bottom line is, I loved it!

I got there a little late the first day and missed out on one of the panels I was interested in, which was sad. After picking up my badge, I met up with a friend of mine and we browsed the exhibit hall. After that, we went to a panel on Feminism, Race, and Geek Culture. The panelists included Regina Buenobra (moderator), Michelle Hu, Nina V. Reyes, and Christina Xu. The panel was interesting and brought up some awesome ideas for broaching difficult subjects such as race and gender issues in online communities. My favorite was the idea of presenting these issues in ragecomics. Another interesting point brought up was the problems of cross race roleplaying and how it can sometimes help proliferate stereotypes.

Michelle is a friend of the person I was attending the con with, so after the panel, my friend and I went to lunch with the panelists and a few other people - including a writer for ArenaNet currently working on Guild Wars 2, and a lovely woman who writes and edits for Border House under the pseudonym Quinnae Moongazer. The lunch was awesome, and it was really cool to be able to say I had lunch with people from ArenaNet.

After that, I browsed the exhibit hall some more and picked up two purchases. The first was purely for nostalgia trip reasons - I grabbed Pokemon Snap for three dollars at a used game stall. I don't even have my N64 right now, it's at my parents' house, but I'm going to have them bring it up to me - emulation is grand and all but it's just not the same. My second purchase has already gotten me a bunch of jealousy from my friends - my cactuar. I decided instead of getting a shirt, which I have way too many of, I'd spend the same amount of money on something that makes me squee in delight. So, small stuffed cactus it is. I also really wanted a goomba hat but by the time I came back with cash, it was already bought. Probably just as well.

Next up was The Designing Women of Bioware. It was awesome to be in the same room with the minds behind much of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and KotOR. Their stories provided great insights into the operation of a game company. I noticed many of the level designers got their starts at Bioware as interns, and I'm a little concerned that I won't have that option available to me as there are no video game dev studios in my area. Despite this, I came out of the panel excited and inspired.

Sunday had one of the panels I was most looking forward to: Girls Make Games Too, which was about women getting into the gaming industry. I was a little disappointed that most of the people on the panel were on the art side of things, but there was one gameplay engineer as well as a team lead - in fact, THE team lead for Portal 1! The gals had some awesome advice for people getting into the gaming industry. They said they hadn't ever experienced blatant sexism, but there was a lot of unintentional separation that they'd had to break down. Often when a woman comes on to an all-male team, the boys worry that she'll ruin their culture, that they won't be able to joke around the same way or tell raunchy stories. Without any exceptions, the girls at the panel dealt with this the same way: be more raunchy than the boys. One mentioned that the first thing she did when coming into a new team was to crack a dirty joke. Another said she always makes sure to drop a "tactful" f-bomb during the interview. That sort of blew my mind, and jolted me into the reality that I'm in a creative industry now, not the dry boredom of typical engineering jobs. Almost all of the girls had tattoos and piercings in visible places. They dressed casually and stylishly, not in button up shirts and slacks. These are my people, this is where I want to work, and I'm just so excited to be getting started in this industry.

The last event I attended at the con was a spontaneous jam of three nerdy bands just outside the main conference area. They same some original nerd-feminist themed music, then had a sing-along for Birdhouse in Your Soul and Still Alive. It was an awesome note to end on, since I couldn't stay for the closing ceremonies.

Overall this con was a great jolt of inspiration for me, not only as a girl gamer but as someone who hopes to make games. The camaraderie and heartfelt support was palpable, and the issues discussed were thought provoking and important. It was a great start to an awesome new tradition, and I don't have any doubt that it will be continuing next year.

X in 10 Minutes

2011-10-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

Hello, my wonderful readers!

I'm planning on starting a new series of videos called "X in 10 Minutes", in which I attempt to give a succinct overview of a game in under 10 minutes. These will have actual footage of gameplay, and will be targeted towards those who haven't played the game but who may be interested in trying it out, and just want a little more information about gameplay first. They'll have a very high level "how-to" but won't get into any details. There will be a very light element of review as well, just my basic reactions to the game, but that won't be the main focus.

Since I recently got into the beta for Wakfu, I plan to do a video about it first. After that, I'll probably just do a video based on whatever I happen to be playing!

I'm excited to start doing videos again, and hope you guys will enjoy them!

Session Summary: Worse Things Wait (Part 1.3)

2011-10-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

Audio Log for Acolyte Ziapatra Havelock

--- Continued from Part 1.2 ---

The whole assignment seemed pretty ridiculous to me. Who cares about books? Can't they all be accessed by data slate, anyway? And this wasn't even an important book - it was just some progenium book for recent parents. There was also some political mumbo jumbo that the official explained that went right over my head, but I guess Gaius is pretty good at that kind of thing because he handled the meeting like it was nothing. The only good thing that came out of it, as far as I'm concerned, was a truly delicious meal.

Our mission was simple: a book had been checked out by an archivist, and hadn't been returned when it was due. Apparently this scribe wasn't involved in whatever political muck was going on, and was known to have a good service record. So probably she hadn't stolen it - something else must have gone wrong. Well, we located her house and found the place deserted, so I nicked the door open and we checked inside. We found evidence that the archivist and her husband and young daughter had previously left for an annual family vacation trip. Based on the family's travel plans, they should have returned one week ago. The book was nowhere to be seen.

At this point our best course of action seemed to be to head out to the vacation home, so we did. This is where things start to get really weird. The father, another scribbler, answered the door. He looked haggard, like he'd gone a week or so without bathing or changing clothes or maybe even sleeping. He tried to get rid of us, pretty bluntly I might add. Well, after having the door closed in our face, we decided a more direct approach was needed. Valentina snuck around back while Gaius, Cyniska, and myself readied ourselves at the front. Using our vox coms to coordinate, we charged through the windows and doors on both sides of the house all at once. Unfortunately, this made an awful racket - and woke the baby.

Until then I'd been blessed with never having to deal with any psykers or their cursed powers. So this mission... well, it was a crash course in the most literal sense. We barged into the entry room of the house just as this kid started screaming at the top of her lungs. We got a brief view of the parents, both sitting there with blank stares, like servitors with their circuits fried. Then the wave of psychic power hit us and threw us right back through the windows and out of the house - a good ten feet at least. It turns out, when you're being thrown through the air with psychic power, the ground hits like a fraking truck!

After that it was touch and go with the psyker. We tried a few tactics to calm her down, tried assassination from afar, tried kidnapping the father to get information. THAT was an exercise in futility. We managed to capture him, but all he'd do is babble constantly about needing to get back to the house, and he squirmed like a hive rat. We DID manage to grab the book during one of these sessions, but we couldn't exactly leave a rogue psyker on the loose.

Valentina even tried to befriend the witch. I agree that it didn't sit right with me to kill a young child, even if she was a psyker, but I wasn't about to get close to it after seeing (and feeling) what it could do. But Valentina - that woman has the Emperor's own courage. She walked right up to the girl, bold as brass, offering her some of the desert lizards that seemed to be common there. The child seemed frightened, though, and the mother told Valentina that she didn't want her there. We learned later that psykers can recognize the psychic signature of a mind, and that the little girl most likely remembered that Valentina had crashed into her house and frightened her badly only hours before.

Well, at that point all our tactics had failed and we'd been on the planet for a long time. It was time to report in, and to get some more powerful ordinance if we wanted to do this properly. I guess it never occurred to us to call Nomura in the first place - or that this wasn't the job we had been assigned to do. Shows how far I've come, I suppose. It makes sense that Valentina or Cyniska would see this as a threat to the law and order of the empire and want to stop it, but back in my hiver days I would have seen it as "not my problem" and left well enough alone.

Anyway, once we called Nomura, he offered to send down a kill team. As much as we wanted to prove ourselves, we decided that would be for the best. The witch had already bested us multiple times, and it was probably time to call in those who could properly deal with the threat.

Well, the sororitas came down and took care of the psyker.

+++ Sigh. Silence for 10 seconds. Nervous shifting.

I feel awful thinking about it. Imagining that scared little girl in that house as they descended on it with meltas and flamers, her mind blanked mother holder her. I know she had to be dealt with, but she was far to young to have comprehended or controlled the power she was using. Her father was outside, and I pleaded with Nomura to try to help him, at least. He said they would do what they could, and I guess that will have to be enough.

After that it was just cleanup. We returned the book to the administratum official, saying nothing about the girl or her parents. Then it was back to the ship, and here I am. My first mission for the Inquisition, and nothing went as planned. I guess that's only to be expected, though. As frightening and unpredictable as this new life is turning out to be, at least it's exciting!

--- To be continued in Part 2.1 (After the next session) ---

Session Summary: Worse Things Wait (Part 1.2)

2011-10-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Audio Log for Acolyte Ziapatra Havelock

--- Continued from Part 1.1 ---

+++ A pause, silence for 10 seconds. A sigh can be heard.

Well, once we were underway, there was a whole lot of nothing to do. Unlike my technomat friends, the team and I didn't have a job. I spent a lot of time with Valentina at the shooting range, and kept up my strength and wind in the gym. I also visited the temple with Cyniska several times. When all that stands between you and roiling madness strong enough to tear your soul apart is a flimsy bit of techno-craft, you tend to want to be on the Emperor's good side. But I guess we didn't pray hard enough, because only a few days into the trip, there was a fluctuation in the geller field.

I was alone when it happened, wandering the hallways of the ship, lost in thought and admiring the machinery around me. That same horrible, nauseating feeling gripped me, and I watched the ice climb the walls - it was like a delicate and deadly spiderweb. The feeling... I can't really describe it proper. I felt like the fire inside me, that glow that flares up strong when I pray to the god-Emperor, was being smothered. I felt like I couldn't breathe, like some great invisible hand had grabbed hold of me and was squeezing. And with it was a dread so strong...

+++ Her voice cuts out. A few deep, shuddering breaths, slowly calming.

It passed, though. Thank the Emperor on his Throne, it passed. I lay there on the ground, disoriented, until I heard Valentina's sharp command to report. That got me moving - when Valentina gives you a command, you don't ignore it. I met up with her and Gaius in the hallways on the way to the chapel - apparently Cyniska was in some kind of trouble there. Seeing Valentina with the steady, unflapable attitude I had become accustomed to did a lot to improve my mood - seeing my autopistol which she had brought me did even more. Gaius looked about as sick as I felt, but he held up well despite it.

We weren't really sure what we were going to find - but we definitely didn't expect what we saw when we got to the chapel. Cyniska was just kneeling there, praying, staring with her eyes wide as potholes at His great aquila. It feels like heresy to even say it... it was cracked. Right down the middle. And the two holy servitors who had frightened me so the first time I visited this place were on the ground in a bloody mess, their heads... gone. Splattered, really, all over the room. I've seen my share of violence, mind - but this was like nothing I've ever seen.

Wasn't long after that before the big wigs showed up with a whole mess of soldiers to clean up the place. They grilled Cyniska a bit, but we all stood up for her. She was still pretty messed up by the whole ordeal, and had seen something that frightened her badly in that chapel. I don't rightly understand it all, something to do with the servitors, but it definitely had her shook up. But, after investigating the seen, the man in charge commended Cyniska for her faith and her bravery, so I guess it was all alright.

Thank the Emperor, that was the only warp related event on our voyage. Later Valentina told me stories about other warp jumps, and talked about the procedures she and her security crew would go through if the geller field malfunctioned. I'm lucky, I guess - the most I had to worry about in my earlier life was hive rats, and maybe getting my throat cut in my sleep if I was careless.

One other noteworthy thing happened during the trip - we were introduced to our lighter. Not too much to say about that - it's a gorgeous piece of machinery, and Valentina and I spent some time looking the bird over. I wouldn't know the first thing about actually piloting her, sadly, but I guess Valentina is skilled in piloting light aircraft. She probably won't be driving this one, though - we had a pilot assigned too.

Well, after what seemed like forever, we finally got to our destination. It was an administratum planet, and to me, it seemed pretty much the most boring planet imaginable, as well as being bright and wide open and unnerving. Not really frightening, mind you - nothing so mundane as a strange planet could be frightening compared to what I'd already seen on the ship. But the white rocks and the bright sun and the lack of proper hab grated on me, I won't lie. Emperor bless Valentina, who thoughtfully bought me a pair of shade goggles to keep out the worst of the glare.

I guess I'd better explain why we were down there in the first place. Our ship was carrying a load of goods for the planet - we were traveling under the cover of making a Coblast Assay delivery. Upon arrival, one of our contacts on the planet sent us a request for assistance. Now, this contact was only aware of us as the Coblast Assay, and had no knowledge of our Inquisitorial association. So my team was sent down to do our best to help this contact out, but we were not to reveal ourselves as acolytes in the holy Inquisition. It's funny really - up until a month ago, I was working for the Coblast Assay as a reclaimator - someone who finds things. Now I had to pretend to be one again, because that's exactly what this administratum official wanted. Only this time, instead of machinery, I was helping to find a book.

--- To be continued in Part 1.3 ---

Session Summary: Worse Things Wait (Part 1.1)

2011-10-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

Audio Log for Acolyte Ziapatra Havelock

I was told I needed to make a log for my first mission. I'm not really sure where to start. I'm sure the others will be much better at this than I am, but Interrogator Nomura insisted that I record one as well.

+++ Silence for 15 seconds. Some nervous shifting can be heard.

I'd been on the ship for about a week when I met my new teammates. It's quite an experience. Being on the ship, I mean. Though meeting them was quite the experience too. I've never been on a ship before - never been off world before. Never been out of the hive before, actually. Funny how things turned out. At first I was really uncomfortable here, but once I started exploring... Well. I made friends with the technomats in my part of the ship and traded some stories, then some tools. I even got to meet one of the mechanicus. He was creepy, but also pretty interesting. I like machines and all, but I don't think I'd want to be one.

Anyway. The team. They all seem so experienced, so strong. I'm just a hiver girl, a scummer really. What's the likes of me doing with one of the Sororitas? And Gaius. I could tell he was trying to be nice, but he looked at me like I was something he scraped off his boot. Not anything malicious about it, mind. It's just how he was brought up. It's like he knows he's better than you, but he doesn't hold it against you, since it's not your fault. I mean, he's from a hive too, but... when I asked him about his home, he mentioned windows. Windows!

At least Valentina and I seem to get along. She's a strange one. She's huge, but as loud and brash as she is, she doesn't intimidate me, not like the other two do.

Well, I guess I ought to talk about what actually happened, and not just blather on about my teammates. When I met them, they had just returned from their last mission. Shortly after they boarded, our ship shifted into the warp.

I feel a little silly about it now, but when we first shifted, and I saw Cyniska start praying, I dropped right down next to her and started praying along with her. Now I know she prays pretty much anytime anything happens, but that first jump... I had never felt anything like it. For a moment, the whole ship was covered in ice, and I felt this feeling in the pit of my stomach like something was grabbing me and twisting me inside out.

+++ A shudder.

But that passed quickly, and we were sailing through the warp to our destination. I learned later about the geller field that protects the ship while we travel, and that in that instant when we first make the jump, the geller field takes a moment to snap into place. Kinda scary to think that in that instant, that brief moment, we experienced the warp in it's unfiltered, unshielded, raw form. Of course, that's a good deal less scary than what happened later in the journey.

--- To be continued in Part 1.2 ---

LoL What? Beginner Character Guides

2011-10-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Way back in my original League of Legends article, I mentioned that I wanted to write some character guides. Why should I, a beginner myself, make character guides to LoL? Wouldn't it be better to just read the guides on LeagueCraft? Well yes, it would, if you are looking for in depth strategy and tips relevant for high level summoners. If, however, you are looking for tips for summoners level 10 or below, just learning the game, the best person to ask is someone who just went through the learning process themselves.

Don't expect tips here for high level competition - this is guide is for lower level summoners who want help starting out. I plan to make LoL What? a series, and I'll be covering the following things:

Champion Abilities: To even begin to understand how to build your champion, you must know what their abilities do. For each champion I cover, I'll describe in simple terms what their abilities do and how to use them effectively.
Summoner Abilities: The recommended summoner abilities for the champion will be given, with a short explanation as to the reason for the choices.
Mastery: The recommended mastery spec for the champion will be given, with a short explanation as to the reason for the choices. NOTE: Runes will NOT be discussed as this is intended for beginner summoners, and you shouldn't really buy runes until level 20. However, a more in depth guide will be reference at the beginning of every guide, where you can find Rune recommendations.
Skill Order: The recommended order to setting up your skills for the champion will be given, with a short explanation as to the reason for the choices.
Items: Recommended item choices and order will be given. I'll give a few choices for different situation but the focus will be on brevity.
Laning/Jungling: This section will cover early game strategy and tactics for the champion. I'll give a few choices for different situation but the focus will be on brevity.
Team Fights: This will cover late game strategy and tactics for the champion, revolving around team fights. I'll give a few choices for different situation but the focus will be on brevity.

In general, I will be trying to keep these guides as short and concise as possible. I will NOT be including much advice for specific situations or alternative builds. The idea here is to get someone up and running as quickly as possible, then point them in the direction of more advanced guides.

Look forward to my first guide coming later this week, for the champion Kayle!

Life of Jiya: What Free Time?

2011-10-03T10:55:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! With all the article style posts I've been making, I thought I should drop in and give you an update on what's actually been going on in my life.

I'm finally done moving and have settled in to my new apartment. It's a nice little place that's much closer to work, but it's frustratingly still a decent distance by transit. Luckily I've worked out a schedule with Andrew that allows me to drive most of the time, which saves me a lot of time. The downside to this schedule is that I'm away from home literally from when I wake up to when I go to bed. I have a feeling this is going to take it's toll over the course of the term, but I'm actually sort of delighting in the business of it right now.

I'm making a point of making new friends and contacts at school this term. I've got a few people who want to study together already, which is exciting. I've also made some friends at our weekly ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, the CS club) "meeting" - in which we sit around eating pizza and playing board games. Overall I have really high hopes for this term and I'm looking forward to seeing where it will take me.

Not only are my weekdays busy, but I've got plans for every weekend this month as well. Next weekend is GeekGirlCon in Seattle. It's the first year for this new con and I'm very excited to see how it goes. I'll be reporting back in with my impressions of the con next week.

Not your typical magician.

After that, I'm going to see the anti-conjuror, Dan Sperry. My aunt booked him in her local theatre as a benefit to the local humane society (she's a veterinarian). When my mom asked how much that cost, my aunt just told her not to ask. I'm really looking forward to the show, as I've always loved magic shows and this one looks like it's got that awesome blend of creepy and charming that I really enjoy.

After THAT, I'll be running Zee at my second session of a Dark Heresy group I've joined. I do plan to post a session log for my last session with them, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. This group has been a blast so far, and I'm really enjoying the "marathon" style session - instead of meeting weekly for a few hours each time, we meet monthly for the entire day. I've found I really start settling into the feel of the world after a few hours, and I just don't have time to do that with a three hour session. The GM also uses music to help get us in the mood for different scenes, and that's been fun to experience as well.

Best vegetable ever.
Except for maybe peas.

And, finally, this month would not, COULD NOT, be complete without pumpkins. I have a strange and overwhelming fondness for this fall vegetable, and October is it's month to shine. I plan to have a pumpkin party (as I do every year) where we'll carve pumpkins, eat baked pumpkin with butter and brown sugar, roast pumpkin seeds, make pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie, and generally enjoy everything involving pumpkins. I know, I'm weird.

Amidst all this, I'm trying to continue both playing and making games. I've begun playing WoW again, and am working on getting my rogue raid ready. It's actually going fairly quickly, and I'm hoping after my slew of crazy weekends I'll be able to start up a weekend raiding group within my guild (which sadly normally raids on weeknights). I've also recently played through the masterpiece that is Bastion, which I need to do an article on sometime soon. I picked up a new game for my DS recently as well - a remake of the classic Chrono Trigger. I started playing the emulated version, but I thought a portable might be easier for me to work in to my busy schedule. I'm planning on starting a play by post Rogue Trader game soon as well. And, of course, work continues on Pollinator. I just got some images from my graphics guy, and I'm super excited to see them in action. I'm also still working on getting a website up and running for Bounder Studios. More on that to come!

All in all, my life is totally crazy in the most awesome way possible. I'm loving it and hope it never stops!

Catching Up in WoW

2011-09-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

I've recently (last weekend) hit level 85 with my rogue in World of Warcraft. There's a special place in my heart for this rogue, as she was the original use of the name "Jiyambi" and was my first "main" in WoW. But at the moment, she's terribly far behind the other characters in my guild, and the task of catching up to them in order to be able to participate in current raids is somewhat daunting. I thought I'd share my philosophy on how to catch up quickly, in case anyone else is in a similar position to me.

Know Your Class

You can't find good gear until you understand what makes gear "good" in the first place. There are a lot of awesome sources out there for determining what kind of stats to look for for your class and spec, but my personal favorite is the Elitist Jerks forum. They typically have guides for each raiding spec as well as cutting edge research into what talents, glyphs, gear, and rotation to use. The information overload can sometimes be a bit daunting, however, and they usually only care about the very top level content. This means that if you're just gearing up for heroics, their advice won't always be applicable, but it will often be close enough.

If you want a simpler approach, just punch your class and spec into the item filters in WoWhead. This will give you the Wowhead developer's opinions on what the best stat weight is for you. For rogues, stats are very simple, and I've found Wowhead's suggestions agree pretty much exactly with the "equivalence points" assigned by the Elitist Jerks folks. However, for classes with more complex stat needs, such as healers, your mileage may vary.

Know The Gear

Not surprisingly, in order to get good gear, you need to know what's out there. It would be really unfortunate to spend thousands of gold getting a cape crafted only to discover there is an awesome cape as a quest reward (incidentally, there IS an awesome cape as a quest reward for the Firelands quests).

One resource for finding gear, which can also be found on the Elitist Jerks website, or downloaded and run locally from your computer, is Rawr. Rawr is a simulator which actually tries to simulate combat based on whatever gear you feed into it, taking into account spec, rotation, glyphs, and even what buffs you usually have on, how long the fight is, or how much you have to move or switch targets. It's somewhat clunky, however, and takes up a lot of computer resources to run, making it difficult to run alongside WoW on older computers. It also is sometimes not actively maintained, depending on your class, so use it with caution. For my rogue, as gear for rogues is relatively simple, I primarily use Rawr to determine the best trinkets. Trinkets can't easily be ranked based on equivalence points alone, and simulators are great for finding out exactly how useful one might be.

Wowhead is definitely high up in the ranking for finding gear - it is a database, after all. You can use their pre-built stat weighting to look for gear or enter your own, and add filters for your class, armor type, and how the gear is acquired. In my recent gear quest, I used this tool almost exclusively. I found it to be far more transparent and much less buggy than Rawr, but again my class is very simple. For more complex classes such as healers, Rawr is nice since it takes your current gear into account when determining upgrades.

I kept track of all of the potential gear and it's stats in an Excel sheet. This is above and beyond what most people will want to do, but I'm an engineer. I love spreadsheets and I'm not afraid to admit it. Having everything in an excel sheet let me see at a glance what the stats were on the gear, helped me automatically calculate equivalence points, and reference a sheet with my current gear to determine the amount of an upgrade. Which brings me to my next point...

Know The Upgrade

So you know what it means for gear to be good and you know what good gear is out there and where to get it. The next question is what to do first. I organized my gear list by source. I had all the gear available in heroics into groups based on which heroic you could find it in. Similarly all the gear available by reputation was separated into groups. This let me pick which rep I wanted to grind first, and which heroics I was most interested in running. I also looked at what was available in justice points - these items would be pretty easy to come by, and it would be a shame to grind reputation for an item when you could get one of comparable quality (or better!) simply through justice points. For rogues, it's really easy to rate how big an upgrade something is because we have a value known as equivalence points - essentially, how much an item will contribute to our DPS. For other classes, though, upgrades are more qualitative, so you'll have to decide for yourself how to rate these.

Keep It Simple

Of course, all this might not be necessary for your situation. I enjoy creating spreadsheets and figuring out the exact most efficient use of my gear grinding time. But you may simply pop on once a week and run whatever dungeon you get in the random finder. If that's the case, here's my suggestions for you:

Get the addon RatingBuster and turn on stat summaries. Every piece of gear you mouseover will now be compared to what you currently have. When a piece of gear drops in a dungeon, if the green numbers are for stats you like (see Know Your Class above), and they offset any red numbers, then it's an upgrade!
Always wear a tabard for a rep you haven't maxed out yet. Max out the rep for your arcanum faction (look it up on Wowhead if you don't know which one you need) and Therazane first, as you will always need an arcanum and inscription (head and shoulder enchants). Get all your reps to at least friendly and carry the tabards around for those you haven't maxed yet so you can switch if you max one out. Each time you reach a new level, either look it up on Wowhead or just head to the vendor and use your RatingBuster addon to check for upgrades.
When you are about to cap out on Justice or Valor points, head to the vendor and buy something that's an upgrade. At least at first there will be a LOT of things to upgrade. Try to find something not easily replaceable via rep or quest, but if you don't want to do a bunch of research, just replace the item that has the lowest ilevel in your current gear. These days it's somewhat of a waste to buy blue gear with your Justice points, so try to stay with purples.

Have Fun

As always, it's important that you have fun as you work on your gear. It's a game after all! If you absolutely can't stand a dungeon, DON'T RUN IT even if it happens to have good gear. Having good gear is not worth being unhappy while you are supposed to be having fun.

Character Profile: Gavin "Red" Lockees

2011-09-24T12:18:00.000-07:00

SP131-6847

Contact Gavin "Red" Lockees

Name: Gavin "Red" Lockees

Vocation: Technomat

Inquisition Ident: AR013:123:M41:031SP-131

Homeworld: Hive Dromis - Scintilla

Age: 24 solar standard

Gender: Male

Background: Born to unknown parents on hive world Scintilla in the lower levels of Hive Dromis. Given name "Gavin Lockees" by schola officials, however immediately nicknamed "Red" by fellow orphans. Early years spent in care of a schola progenium orphanage, was reported missing at age 7 [ref. Arbites record P10:AFT-522]. Lived on the streets, multiple incidents of gang involvement and petty theft. Later became involved in Inquisitorial affiliated cover organization Coblast Assay as a reclaimator. Contact distinguished himself by locating thieves responsible for stealing Coblast Assay property [ref. Arbites record P12:AFT-003]. When working partner was recruited into Inquisition service under Inquisitrix Sola Prinn [ref. Inquisitorial record AR013:123:M41:031SP-022], was stationed on the interstellar freighter the Black Grox. Contact currently works on the freighter as a technomat, but has known dealings with grey market merchants on several planets. Known continued association with acolyte Ziapatra Havelock [ref. Inquisitorial ident AR013:123:M41:031SP-022].

Aptitude Profile: Known close combat and street fighting abilities. Skilled in knife use. Combat rated for basic solid projectile shoulder- and side-arms. Illiterate. Some tech-use knowledge and abilities despite lack of mechanicum training. Skilled in security circumvention, search, and inquiry. Comfortable and confident in working with underworld contacts. Strong interpersonal and leadership abilities.

Pict-Record Ref: SP131-6847

General Appearance Profile: Lean, stringy build. Tall, lean height to weight ratio. Pale complexion. Bright red hair. Aquiline nose, angular face and cheekbones.

Preferred Equipment: Multiple mono-molecular bladed knives. Silenced Sturm & Drang Hailstorm-pattern autopistol. Multikey, combi tool, and other paraphernalia of the technomat and reclaimator trades. Seldom seen in armor aside from piecemeal street leathers, primitive protection at best.
Contact Status: Trusted contact. Can be counted on for unusual favors, as well as weapon procurement and discount.

Character Profile: Ziapatra "Zee" Havelock

2011-09-21T20:45:00.000-07:00

SP022-5668
Acolyte Ziapatra Havelock

Name: Ziapatra "Zee" Havelock

Vocation: Reclaimator

Inquisition Ident: AR013:123:M41:031SP-022

Homeworld: Hive Dromis - Scintilla

Age: 20 solar standard

Gender: Female

Imperial Divination: ‘Even a woman who has nothing can still offer her life.’

Background: Born to parents Dracus and Jedia Havelock, skilled workers and supervisors at Hive Dromis' Red Lens manifactorum. The manifactorum was destroyed via heretic sabotage [ref. Inquisitorial record SNH-931-2255]. Family fell into poverty in the lower hive. Recruit forced to live on the streets when parents died due to overwork in a lower manifactorum. Despite early gang involvement, later became involved in Inquisitorial affiliated cover organization Coblast Assay as a reclaimator. Recruit distinguished herself by locating thieves responsible for stealing Coblast Assay property [ref. Arbites record P12:AFT-003].

Recruitment: Psy-trance divination undertook by Inquisitrix Sola Prinn and her Astropath Kevil Stass revealed a connection to recruit which lead to agent traveling to Hive Dromus for recruitment.

Aptitude Profile: Literate despite humble origins in the lower hive. Combat rated for basic solid projectile shoulder- and side-arms. Skilled with the knife and other primitive melee weapons. Some tech-use knowledge and abilities despite lack of mechanicum training. Skilled in security circumvention, search, and inquiry. Comfortable and confident in working with underworld contacts.

Pict-Record Ref: SP022-5668

General Appearance Profile: Wiry build, short, lean height to weight ratio. Ruddy complexion, dyed hair (blue as of this writing). Gray eyes. Abstract tattoo covering left shoulder and side.

Preferred Equipment: Modified Sturm & Drang Hailstorm-pattern autopistol, Drystan Growler-pattern shotgun, brass knuckles and mono-molecular bladed knife for close combat. Carries a multikey at all times. Prefers a flak coat for armor which provides protection but does not inhibit mobility.

Bounder Studios is on the Nets

2011-09-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I've been pretty quiet lately. But there's been reason - I've been working day and night on development for Pollinator, and on organizing and establishing Bounder Studios on the internet!

That's right, my game development team now has a website, http://www.bounderstudios.com! We're also on twitter @BounderStudios, and on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bounder-Studios/281096775253183. Our website is currently a placeholder, but I'm hoping to get something more substantial up there this weekend. Eventually we'll have a development blog, screenshots, videos, downloads, an about page, and more. I'll continue to post my progress here so you can check it out when I add new features!

On the game front, I've been coding up a storm on Pollinator. Progress has been slowed somewhat because I've switched to Allegro 5, from Allegro 4 which I was using before. Allegro is a game development library that helps make graphics, sound, and input easy. Allegro 5 is a HUGE improvement over Allegro 4, but it's taking some getting used to. I'm literally re-writing the entire game from the ground up, which allows me to keep things in mind for future ports to Android and other platforms.

In other exciting news, I've met with my sound and graphic designers. My sound designer has already produced a set of sound effects and is working on more, as well as music. My graphics designer is getting some mock-ups to me this week so we can decide on a style and begin sprite work. It's been an amazing experience explaining the game to people who actually have to create things based on what I'm telling them. It definitely forces you to see the things you haven't quit figured out yet!

Nerd Crafts: How to Make a Creeper Shirt

2011-09-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

As you may have guessed, I'm not the "girliest" girl outthere. I don't typically do arts and crafts projects. However, Ineeded something appropriately nerdy to wear to PAX. Rather thanpurchase an expensive shirt from Jinx or some other nerd-ware site, Idecided to follow this simple video I found to create my very owncreeper shirt!

Note: this video was NOT made by me, it is the property of Evange. Check out more of her awesome crafts and recipes!

The method is really quite easy. I'll lay out the steps in textform, since I think it's nice to have that to accompany the video.

STEP 1: Gather your materials.

You will need:

A green shirt with room for the creeper's face on the front.
Black paint. Fabric paint is best, but even black acrylic paint would work.
Pencil. Make sure it's not very sharp - softer pencils are best.
Ruler.
Masking tape.

STEP 2: Draw the grid.

Spread out the shirt on a flatsurface. Using the dull pencil, draw a 6x6 grid of boxes. My boxeswere about 1.5 inches to a side, and that worked well for my shirt,but use your best judgment.

The diagram shows suggested placementon a shirt, but you might want to try the shirt on and think aboutplacement of the design on your body.

STEP 3: Tape off the eyes and part ofthe mouth.

Tape off the area around the creeper'seyes and part of it's mouth, as shown in the diagram.

STEP 4: Paint the eyes and part of themouth.

Paint in the creeper's eyes and partof it's mouth, as shown in the diagram. Use a stippling motion ratherthan brush strokes, being careful to cover everything evenly, but notpush paint under the tape.

STEP 5: Wait for paint to dry, thenremove tape.

Wait until the paint is dry to thetouch. This depends on the type of paint used. Carefully remove thetape.

STEP 6: Tape off the rest of themouth.

Tape off the area around the rest ofthe mouth, as shown in the diagram. If you are sure your paint isfully dry, you can place tape directly on the previously paintedsections. If you are unsure, cut your tape carefully and only taperight up to the edge of your previous section.

STEP 7: Paint the rest of the mouth.

Use a stippling motion, as before.Where the new mouth sections meet the old, you may want to paint overthe edge a bit to make the transition look smooth. This reallydepends on the type of pain you have, so just do what seems to lookgood - you can always touch it up afterward, too!

STEP 8: Wait for paint to dry, thenremove tape, and wash.

Again, wait until the paint is dry tothe touch, then remove the tape. If you have fabric paint, it shouldtell you on the bottle how long to wait until washing. If you aren'tsure, wait three days. After washing, the pencil marks should comeoff and you'll be left with an awesome creeper shirt!

While you can certainly make one ofthese on your own, I decided to throw a small party with some of myother nerdy friends, and we made them together. It was a great excuseto get together and do something creative, and away from a computerscreen for a while!

I got lots of compliments on this shirt at PAX, and people even asked where I bought it - when I told them I made it, they were disappointed that they couldn't get their own at the con, but I directed them to Evange's video so they could make their own! So you can really make something that looks professionally-made for a very cheap price, and have lots of fun in the process. Enjoy!

Geek Girl Con in October

2011-09-04T12:00:00.001-07:00

I am a geek, and also a girl. So it's little wonder that I'm interested in the upcoming Geek Girl Con in Seattle this October. The con celebrates all things nerdy with a focus on gender-female geeks, but welcomes geeks of all types.

There are a lot of interesting panels lined up, though they don't seem to have a schedule listed yet. Here are some of the ones I'm most interested in:

Killing Cattiness, Creating Community - "This panel discusses how Geek Girls can put aside being negatively competitive, divisive, and catty to our sister Geek Girls. Panelists will give examples of both positive and negative experiences and answer questions from the audience."

As a child, I was often teased by other girls. Even now I often see other girls as threats or as people likely to be rude to me or put me down, but seldom (at least initially) as allies. I'm curious if that's a mentality common to geek girls, and how we can overcome it.
Girls Make Games Too - "How do you start out in the gaming industry? This panel of women have various roles with in the games industry at Microsoft Game Studios and will speak about their careers and their experiences. Useful information like the skills required for their jobs, what it is like being women working in the games industry, and how they got their feet in the door. The panel will address how the industry has changed, outlining where we were, where we are, and how we move forward in the gaming profession."

Obviously of direct interest to me, I'm hoping to get some advice in this panel on how best to get into the gaming industry.
Rocking the geek niche: Nerdiness is your superpower - "The Offbeat Empire is an enormously popular web publishing network owned and staffed exclusively by geeky women who’ve learned how to use their nerdiest qualities to their best business and personal advantages. This panel will address not only how the Offbeat Empire is built on celebrating geek culture, but also how each panelist has applied her individual techy/nerdy qualities in her career development."

I've always felt my nerdiness gave me an edge over other people in some ways. I was used to standing apart, to being put down, and to being quirky. I'm interested in seeing how others have turned this to their advantage.

I'm really excited for it and can't wait to see how this brand new con turns out! I'm hoping to attend at least one full day, possibly both days. I'll definitely report back in with my reactions, and hopefully it will be an awesome event that continues in the future!

PAX Reactions

2011-09-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

PAX is already a week behind us. This year it was bigger than ever. Sadly I was only able to attend Sunday, and spent most of my time running around the convention center craning my neck to look at all the awesome stuff, and generally soaking up the atmosphere. Most of the goodies were already given out, though I did score some League of Legends skins.

I didn't attend any of the major events or panels, but I did stop by one of the tabletop RPG workshops. It was a very small affair, only about 8 people in attendance. The subject was dungeon design, and I really enjoyed a chance to talk with professional dungeon designers and bounce ideas around to use in my own tabletop RPG campaigns. My friend stayed for a workshop about integrating the horror genre into games (with one of the writers for Call of Cthulhu), but I decided to go exploring on my own after that.

I waited in line for half an hour to try out Wakfu, a new MMO on the way from Square Enix. I didn't get to play long, but it seemed charming enough and I should be receiving a beta invite for it shortly, so I'll comment when I get the chance.

Last but not least, I got to talk to a wonderful gal named Epona from the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. The AIE is a workforce training school that's very big in Australia but has only recently landed in the US. As I mentioned in my previous post, I managed to score a $15,000 scholarship to the first year of their two-year program, but unfortunately had to decline. However, it's still something I'm really interested in. Seattle is an awesome place to live, I've got good friends there, and it's definitely a gaming hub.

I left PAX with a T-Shirt, a small amount of free swag, and some good memories with friends. I was also randomly given a "team notch" button by someone on the elevator who liked my creeper shirt. Overall it was a successful venture, but I definitely want to get a three day pass next year so I won't feel so rushed.

Hard Decisions Suck

2011-09-02T13:58:00.000-07:00

Just had to turn down a full ride ($15,000) scholarship to the Academy of Interactive Entertainment in Seattle. I would have had to start school next week, move again, find a place to live and a job to support myself while in school (scholarship only covers tuition), and leave my roomates in Portland in a lurch. Still the hardest decision I've ever made. Hopefully something that awesome will come along again!

Moving, moving, and more moving

2011-09-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

Well, everything's finally been moved into my new place. However, it's all still in boxes all over my floor. I will probably be spending the next few days unpacking everything and getting myself settled. That said, I'm going to try to resume blogging as soon as possible, with updates from PAX, progress in Bounder Studios' development of Pollinator, and some other article ideas I have been kicking around.

I am getting excited for the new school year, which starts at the end of September. Sadly, I was unable to register for my math class, which leaves me with a light course load this term (only 9 credits). However, I've decided to use this extra time to work on my game design stuff. Due to my ride situation, I'll be at the school early each day, and this will be an ideal time to meet with team members. I'm hoping to have a finished version of Pollinator for at least one platform at the end of this year. I have ideas for two games after that - one a Pollinator spin off tower defense game, the other a Dungeon Overload meets Recettear meets Monster Rancher.

I'm also hoping to get a website going soon for my game company, Bounder Studios, as well as a personal website that will act as a portfolio. I've been working hard on career development things lately, and am actually considering going to a specialized game design trade school instead of finishing up my traditional CS degree - or maybe I'll do both! Either way, I'm very excited for the future and hope I can find a wonderful place to work when I'm done with school.

Dark Heresy - Introductory Adventure - Part 2

2011-08-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

We ran through the second part of my current Dark Heresy adventure on Wednesday. It was a blast, and I felt like it went a lot smoother than the first session. It was a fairly short session, but fun all the same.

Now Entering Stern Hope

Upon entrance to Stern Hope, the PCs were met by Brother Lamark. They immediately took a liking to him, and he to them. They also met a new PC, the arbitrator. Their first stop was the inn, the Crying Clota. Now, I didn't have a chance to look up what a Clota was before the session (apparently it's some herd animal native to Iocanthos). So, the arbitrator's player decided to define it for us, as a limb that was cut off by a chain sword. I love it when the players take on some of the creativity of the game!

After dropping Aristarchus off at the Crying Clota, the PCs decide to wonder around town and see what they can learn. Since they hadn't done much of this back at Port Suffering, I was glad they were starting to do some investigation. They stopped first at the Priory and talked with Brother Lamark. I had a lot of fun RPing him, though I may have made him a bit too silly. After that some of them wandered up into the hills, but without a guide or good directions, they got a bit lost and finally ended up back where they started. The psyker decided to try psyniscience to sense any disturbances in the warp - but all he sensed was an eerie silence, like the calm before a storm. Finally they headed to bed.

On the Heights

The next morning they met Abbot Skae and Brother Severus. They didn't ask too many questions or interact with him too much, but headed right out to talk to the people of the settlement. Specifically they targeted the camp of Ashleen warriors. This was good, since the Ashleen seemed to have the most interesting information about the situation. The arbitrator's high inquiry skill got them a few answers, and they managed to bribe one of the townsfolk to accompany them up into the hills, where strange lights had been rumored to be seen. Lamark also accompanied them.

In the hills, they were ambushed by a strange creature called a hexalid. Again, the arbitrator proved to be a valuable addition to the party. His high awareness allowed the party to notice the hexalid before it attacked, keeping it from surprising them. Additionally, his quick reactions, trusty shotgun, and high ballistic skill (and good roll!) allowed him to nearly take out the creature in one shot. Upon it's death, the hexalid was revealed to be mostly rotten, with it's eyes pecked out. Creepy!

Session End

I ended the session rather early this time since I needed to pack and people had places to be the next morning. We stopped as the acolytes were returning to Stern Hope, at dusk. The next morning would herald the arrival of Esha Raine, the wisewoman, and later in the afternoon, the consecration of the cathedral. Will the ceremony go smoothly? Or will dire and unnatural forces keep it from succeeding? We'll see next time!

Lessons Learned

The hexalid fight would have been more challenging (and more interesting, and possibly more fun) if I had done a few things differently. First, I completely forgot fear rolls again. The hexalid is a frightening creature and should have required a fear roll of 1. Secondly, the creature had a few special qualities that I neglected to look up ahead of time which may have effected the fight. Finally, I handled the hexalid the same way I handled the thugs, which was a mistake. The thugs were somewhat weak, individual enemies which I allowed to die upon taking any critical damage. The hexalid, however, should have kept on fighting until killed by excess critical damage, just like a PC would. This would have made the fight significantly more interesting, and is something I'll definitely do for any tough NPCs or monsters in the future.

The next session in the adventure will be run sometime in the next two weeks. Hopefully it will go well, as I apply everything I've learned so far!

Dark Heresy - Introductory Adventure - Part 1

2011-08-26T12:00:00.001-07:00

I'm currently running the introductory adventure of Dark Heresy for my local gaming group. I thought I'd bring you a brief summary of how it was going, what I've learned, and what I hope to do better next time.

The Acolytes

The group of PCs is a motley crew (but aren't they always?) consisting of a tech priest, cleric, psyker, arbitrator, and scum. Only the players for the cleric and tech priest have significant knowledge of the Warhammer 40k universe, though the arbitrator has some inkling from the Dawn of War games. So far, none has ventured far from their iconic roles, but that's to be expected as many are new to both the system and the lore.

The Brazen Sky

The characters began play on The Brazen Sky, a interstellar freighter taking them to the planet Iocanthos, where they would investigate some "phantasmagoria" (best word ever) surrounding a soon to be consecrated temple to Saint Drusus. The time on the Brazen Sky is intended to allow the characters to get to know eachother and interact with an overbearing purser who had access to the "gray market", a market for illegal and hard to find goods. However, I found it difficult making this work, and we ended this section early.

Port Suffering

The next section of the adventure had the acolytes land at Port Suffering. I enjoyed role playing the self-important official who meets them at the drop location, and I felt like the players did a good job of getting into the roleplay and handling him. On the way to meet their contact, the players came across a crazy old man. They succeeded on their rolls to decipher his mumbled ramblings, which was fun. And the scum provoked a combat encounter by roughly grabbing the old man's arm.

Here's where things started to go wrong. I'm simply not familiar with the combat mechanics for Dark Heresy yet, and the combat was one bumbling mistake on my part after another. Still, I feel like we all gained some valuable (out of game) experience on how the combat system works, which I feel was the main point of this particular combat. The PCs were wounded, and learned that working together might have prevented that, as well as being prepared for combat rather than letting it happen to them. These are two important features of Dark Heresy.

After the combat, the PCs would normally have continued on to meet their contact, Aristarchus the Seer. However, they were accosted by the local authorities due to the gunfire in the combat with the street thugs. I (and the book) expected them to try to talk their way out of this, but players always find a way to ruin your plans :) So, Aristarchus met them at the town watch station and collected them there.

The Trip to Stern Hope

The next leg of the adventure involved the trip to Stern Hope, where the cathedral due to be consecrated is located. While there were no combats on the trip, there were two important events. First, during the night, a dead body stumbled into the PC's camp and collapsed. It appeared to have been dead for days. Second, later the next day, the PCs encounter a strange apparition on a nearby outcropping of rock, which disappears right after being seen. Moving closer, they see a symbol of Saint Drusus burned into the rock.

I feel like I didn't handle either of these particularly well. The dead body moving around should possibly have required fear rolls, and could have been made a lot creepier. The strange apparition could also have been made creepier. I need to work on how I describe the strange phenomena going on around the players, to help get them in the mood.

Session End

I ended the first session here, as they were about to reach Stern Hope. One of the nice things about Dark Heresy is that experience is awarded on a per session basis, so that each time players have a chance to get something new. Their fate points also recharge on a per session basis. This also allows players to bypass some of the harshness of the healing rules - a fate point can be expended to regain 1d5 wounds, so at the end of the session the PCs can spend their fate points to recover, then regain the fate points back at the beginning of the next session.

Lessons Learned

This first session was extremely useful in familiarizing myself and my players with the combat system. I also think it helped get them used to the Warhammer 40k lore, though that will take more time to sink in fully. I also became more comfortable with roleplaying 40k NPCs, which I think I did a much better job of in the second session. Finally, it gave me some ideas on how to handle experience, healing, and fate point recharge in the play by post game I have planned.

I've already played through a second session of this adventure, and I'll post a summary of that in the near future!

Personal Update: Moving and PAX

2011-08-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

I'll be quite busy during the next week, with moving and with attending PAX (well, one day of it). I'll try to post a few things but it's likely you won't hear much from me until later next week. I'll give my impressions from PAX at that time, as well as a few other fun articles I have planned!

Revenge of the Jiyas: Coldridge Valley

2011-08-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

Revenge of the Jiyas returns today with an article on Coldridge Valley, the dwarf starting zone. As usual, I'm documenting my speed testing of the WoW-Pro Leveling addon.This time our intrepid adventurer was Jiyadwarf, a dwarf warrior.

Note: The 1-5 starter zones are very quick, with levels flying by so quickly it's hard to get an accurate measurement. Additionally, the pacing of some starting zones is vastly different than others. It will be nice to have a comparison of how long each takes, but not too much should be read into these tests. The higher level tests will be much more accurate and indicative of zone and guide quality.

Total /played at level 5.5: 33min
Coldridge Valley (1-5.5): 33min

7.3 min/lvl

Previous Chapters:

Project Overview
1-5: Valley of Trials | Echo Isles | Red Cloud Mesa | Kezan | Deathknell | Sunstrider Isle
Northshire Valley

I rather like dwarves, and there were a lot of charming things about this zone that worked well. However, there were lots of things that did NOT work, as well. You'll notice right away that the time for this zone is very long compared to other speed throughs. Yes, I ended at a slightly higher level, but I felt like this zone simply didn't want to let you leave.

But first, the good things. I enjoyed that it looked like an actual battle was taking place. There were NPCs helping you fight the troggs. You were gathering supplies the civilians needed (though this had us killing boars and wolves forever to get less than 100% drop items. I guess that's just a thing with dwarves). Your quests had purpose and seemed natural, and at first, weren't ridiculously long. Then, all of a sudden, you are sent by yourself to the caves swarming with trolls and told to kill 10 of them, then 10 more. Bleck. The troll quests seemed to take forever. Finally, when it's time to leave, you find your way blocked. But do you immediately hop onto the gyrocopter offered to help you continue on? No, you have to go back inside and gather a bunch of your stuff (why didn't we have it with us to begin with?). It felt very arbitrary. That said, the gyrocopter ride was awesome, and a good way to introduce the rest of the zone.

The guide for this zone was very good, aside from a couple auto-complete issues. I liked the use of single objective steps as well as a hearthstone use to get you back to town quickly.

I've updated the guide page for this section on WoW-Pro.com, and the changes will be included in the next addon update. I wouldn't recommend trying to update the file on your own unless you are experienced working with addons. If you do decide to update early:

Go to the Coldridge Valley page and copy the contents of the guide.
Open up your WoW folder and go to Interface > Addons > WoWPro_Leveling > Horde
Open up 01_05_Gylin_Dwarf_Starter.lua
Copy the guide contents there.

Next Up: ALLIANCE - Shadowglen!

Revenge of the Jiyas: Northshire Valley

2011-08-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

We're back to speed testing today with a new Revenge of the Jiyas article! In this series, I document my speed testing of the WoW-Pro Leveling addon. This time through I was in Northshire Valley, on Humanhiya, the human warrior! Sadly I forgot to take screenshots. Oh well, there's always next time!

Note: The 1-5 starter zones are very quick, with levels flying by so quickly it's hard to get an accurate measurement. Additionally, the pacing of some starting zones is vastly different than others. It will be nice to have a comparison of how long each takes, but not too much should be read into these tests. The higher level tests will be much more accurate and indicative of zone and guide quality.

Total /played at level 5: 18min
Northshire Valley (1-5): 18min

4.5 min/lvl

Previous Chapters:

Project Overview
1-5: Valley of Trials | Echo Isles | Red Cloud Mesa | Kezan | Deathknell | Sunstrider Isle

This zone was FAST. I have to confess I stopped paying attention occasionally and killed too many creatures for the kills quests, and I still got through it faster than any starter zone so far. That said, it was also incredibly boring. The kill quests were only a small step above the originals for this zone, and they seemed longer for some reason. It also felt like there was a lot of pointless running back and forth, that had nothing to do with the guide and everything to do with bad quest design.

One thing I noticed for this zone, that makes a LOT of sense to me, is that quests are class specific and so are rewards. This makes it impossible for a newbie to accidentally chose the wrong type of gear.

The guide itself was pretty good, but there were definitely some occasions that it needed to say a little more. In particular, it was difficult to know what quest givers where inside the abbey and which were outside, so I'll be adding notes to that effect. I did appreciate the use of hearthstone to return from the final quest objective!

I've updated the guide page for this section on WoW-Pro.com, and the changes will be included in the next addon update. I wouldn't recommend trying to update the file on your own unless you are experienced working with addons. If you do decide to update early:

Go to the Northsire Valley page and copy the contents of the guide.
Open up your WoW folder and go to Interface > Addons > WoWPro_Leveling > Horde
Open up 01_11_Kurich_Elwynn_Forest.lua
Copy the guide contents there.

Next Up: ALLIANCE - Coldridge Valley!

Dark Heresy - Grim Dark Awesome

2011-08-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've recently begun GMing (acting as game master for) a game called Dark Heresy. Dark Heresy is a tabletop RPG set in the Warhammer 40k universe. For those unfamiliar with the setting, Warhammer 40k is a science fiction setting in the year 40,000, and the future is not nice. In fact, it's termed "grim, dark" in the official book descriptions, and "grimdark" has become a minor meme around the internet to describe the gritty, harsh conditions that characterize this setting.

Rather than attempt to describe the setting further, I'll give you the official description:

"It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defense forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to humanity from aliens, heretics, mutants -- and far, far worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."

Basically, the human regime is harsh, xenophobic, and violently intolerant. The average human can expect a short life filled with little more than work and duty, often cut violently short. But the alternative to the Imperium is much worse - chaos powers and violent aliens are barely kept at bay by Imperial armies.

I've read several books set in this universe - they can be very good, but also very bad, as books commissioned and controlled by a company can be (other examples include Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, Star Trek, and others). If the setting sounds interesting and you'd like to try some of the novels, I'd highly recommend the Last Chancers series, or for a lighter and more fun introduction, the Ciaphus Cain series.

Warhammer originally began, and is best known, as a tabletop wargame. However, the RPG (both the fantasy version and 40k) have become more popular recently. The 40k RPG is called Dark Heresy. In it, the characters play as Acolytes, servants of the Inquisition. Their missions from their Inquisitor can vary greatly, but examples include investigating strange phenomena, possible alien activity, or rooting out heretical tendencies. Unlike in D&D, characters are not (in the default rules) particularly powerful compared to other people. Combat is extremely deadly, with characters easily ending up maimed or killed. Additionally, healing is not easy to come by, and unless extraordinarily lucky, characters have access to at best similar medical conditions as those in real life. Often, the party will be visiting a backwoods planet with much lower caliber medical facilities. So an emphasis on investigation and avoidance of combat is the best way for characters to survive.

I've been running the basic, vanilla game. However, there are many supplemental sourcebooks. Additionally, Games Workshop (the Warhammer publisher) has released two standalone expansions to the game called Rogue Trader and Deathwatch. In Rogue Trader, rather than playing Acolytes in the Inquisition, the characters are rogue traders in a ship out to seek their fortune. A rogue trader is a combination of freelance explorer, conquistador and merchant. They are Imperial servants, given a ship, a crew, a contingent of Marines or Guardsmen and carte blanche to roam the worlds beyond Imperial control. Rogue Trader uses a different system for wealth than Dark Heresy, and in general the players have access to more stuff right off the bat since they are more autonomous and have their own ship.

In Deathwatch, the characters play as Space Marines, the Adeptus Astartes. Anyone familiar with the setting knows that space marines are pretty much the scariest thing the Imperium has to offer. They are huge superhumans genetically modified to be tougher and stronger than a normal human. Their skeletal structure has to be strengthened to carry their massive muscle bulk as well as to protect them in battle, they have redundant organs as well as new organ such as one which allows them to ingest and breathe most poisons harmlessly. They wear power armor which is extremely tough, as well as having climate control features and drug delivery methods to pump medical drugs as well as combat drugs into the marine as needed. They use primarily bolters as weapons, somewhat expensive personal firearms whose bullets detonate on impact. Additionally, most have chain or power weapons as well. Yes, chain swords (think chainsaw swords) are really a thing in Warhammer 40k. Deal with it.

Deathwatch space marines fight primarily xenos (aliens) and are usually called in by the Inquisitorial Ordo Xenos. Obviously the Deathwatch RPG is at a much higher power level than the other two RPGs. I don't have the pleasure of owning this rulebook, so I can't comment on much other than that, but I do hope to play it sometime in the future!

I'm currently running the introductory adventure in Dark Heresy for my local gaming group. I'm also considering running a play by post version with my guild. Finally, I'm hoping to join a Dark Heresy game next month as a player. I'll update here with how each have gone, perhaps including the full play by post if we complete it!

Novel Review: Ender's Game

2011-08-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

Those who follow my blog know me to be a book lover. So it may be somewhat surprising that I'd never read, until this week, Orson Scott Card's classic Ender's Game. Ender's Game and one of it's sequals, Speaker for the Dead, are among the most influential science fiction novels of the 1980s. The bottom line? I loved this book, and would highly recommend it to anyone even vaguely interested in science fiction, war strategy, or psychology. The book is not particularly long or dense, so even light readers shouldn't have trouble with it.

I purchased Ender's Game on audiobook earlier this week, and finished it in three days of listening. It's not a long book, after all. The story follows the life of a young boy who is a third child, something that is seriously frowned upon in the future Earth where the book takes place. However, it seems his parents had special permission to conceive him. Little by little the reasons for this, and many other strange events in the boy's life, are revealed. It's no secret that the boy is a genius, but to what purpose, and in what fashion, his genius will be used is the focus of the book.

I found Ender's Game to be a beautiful combination of sports, war strategy and psychology. The characters were intriguing and deep, in particular Ender was believable both as a young child and as a genius. His schoolmates were also a delight, and I'm looking forward to other books in the "Enderverse" which follow the other characters. The rules of the battle games played at Ender's school were complex and interesting, and the strategies and gameplay unfolded in a very natural pattern.

Since this was an audiobook, I'll also comment on the audio quality. There were three (as far as I could tell) cast members for this reading, though it's possible there were more. The first was an older man who did most of the narration, in particular the sections where Ender was the point of view character. The second was a younger man, who mostly did voices for various characters (not all characters were voiced specially). Finally, there was a young woman who narrated and voiced Valentine, Ender's sister. Overall the voices and narration was very high quality, and certainly didn't detract from the experience. The sound quality itself was a little low - I could tell it was rather old. But it wasn't a significant distraction from the story.

Books in the Enderverse (from Wikipedia). Short stories are in red, novels in blue.

Ender's Game was short, but I'm excited because there are a lot of other books and short stories set in this world, about Ender and the supporting characters. People describe the collection of books loosely as the "Enderverse" (or more boringly, the "Ender Series"). There are roughly 5 novels, give or take some short stories, in the main storyline. There is also a concurrent storyline known as the "Shadow Saga" which follows the supporting characters of the main storyline. I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the series. I also found out that there is a comic series based on the Ender books. I'll have to check that out as well, and report back here with my impressions!

Revenge of the Jiyas: Sunstrider Isle

2011-08-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another Revenge of the Jiyas article! In this series, I document my speed testing of the WoW-Pro Leveling addon. This time I was testing Sunstrider Isle, the starting zone for blood elves. Join me as I share the beginning of the journey of Jiyelf, the blood elf warrior!

Look at that mocking salute.
She looks like she's going to kick somebody's butt.

Total /played at level 5: 29min
Sunstrider Isle (1-5): 29min

7.4 min/lvl

Previous Chapters:

Project Overview
1-5: Valley of Trials | Echo Isles | Red Cloud Mesa | Kezan | Deathknell

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this zone. It's not a bad zone, and it's still better than Valley of Trials, but they simply didn't bother updating it at all with Cataclysm. You still do the same old quests, with very little story involved, killing creatures and looting them. And, as the time above shows, it's not particularly fast.

Despite their datedness, the Eversong Woods are still pretty nice looking.

The guide for this zone was in good shape. There was one note that was a bit out of date, describing a method for pulling mobs that used to be hostile. One step could also be moved forward. Overall the guide was really good, though, and incorporated use of the hearthstone, which I approve of.

I've updated the guide page for this section on WoW-Pro.com, and the changes will be included in the next addon update. I wouldn't recommend trying to update the file on your own unless you are experienced working with addons. If you do decide to update early:

Go to the Sunstrider Isle page and copy the contents of the guide.
Open up your WoW folder and go to Interface > Addons > WoWPro_Leveling > Horde
Open up 01_12_Snowflake_Eversong_Woods.lua
Copy the guide contents there.

Next Up: ALLIANCE - Northshire Valley!

Revenge of the Jiyas: Deathknell

2011-08-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Revenge of the Jiyas is back again, and this time in Deathknell, starting area for the Undead. In case you've forgotten, this is a series of articles in which I speed test the WoW-Pro Leveling addon.Today I'll be sharing the adventures of Deadjiya, the undead warrior.

Deadjiya embraces her new
life as one of the Forsaken.

Total /played at level 5: 22min
Deathknell (1-5): 22min

5.5 min/lvl

Previous Chapters:

Project Overview
1-5: Valley of Trials | Echo Isles | Red Cloud Mesa | Kezan

I love what they've done with Deathknell and the rest of the undead starting area in Cataclysm. I had the privilege of recording this area's guide the night before the Cataclysm release, and despite the rush, I really enjoyed it, and that definitely hasn't changed. I was also pleasantly surprised by the speed at which I went through the zone. It was the second fastest time so far, losing out to Red Cloud Mesa by only 2 minutes.

Ah, the cheery Tirisfal Glades...

The guide for this zone didn't seem to have any issues that I could see - but as I recorded it, it's unlikely I'll find anything I dislike. Testing your own work is always a bit dangerous, as you don't always see the bugs that may be obvious to others. That said, I mindlessly followed the arrows and did what the guide said, and completed everything with ease.

I do have to say that one of the quests was extremely difficult, and could probably use some tips in the guide. The final quest in which you are sent to kill Marshall Redpath nearly did me in, and I seem to recall dying to it during my first run through of the zone. Not only is Marshall himself pretty tough, but the other mobs are also quite deadly. I could easily see a newbie having trouble with the quest. So, my only change to the guide file was to add a cautionary note for this quest.

Bye for now!

I've updated the guide page for this section on WoW-Pro.com, and the changes will be included in the next addon update. I wouldn't recommend trying to update the file on your own unless you are experienced working with addons. If you do decide to update early:

Go to the Deathknell page and copy the contents of the guide.
Open up your WoW folder and go to Interface > Addons > WoWPro_Leveling > Horde
Open up 01_12_Jiyambi_Tirisfal_Glades.lua
Copy the guide contents there.

Next Up: Sunstrider Isle!

Revenge of the Jiyas: Kezan

2011-08-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

After a long wait, chapter four of the Revenge of the Jiyas series is here! In case you've forgotten, this is a series of articles in which I speed test the WoW-Pro Leveling addon. This time, I was testing the goblin starting area, the island of Kezan. I forgot to take screenies this time through, so you're sadly left without that entertainment.

Note: The 1-5 starter zones are very quick, with levels flying by so quickly it's hard to get an accurate measurement. Additionally, the pacing of some starting zones is vastly different than others. It will be nice to have a comparison of how long each takes, but not too much should be read into these tests. The higher level tests will be much more accurate and indicative of zone and guide quality.

Total /played at level 5: 35min
Kezan (1-5): 35min

8.75 min/lvl

Previous Chapters:

Project Overview
1-5: Valley of Trials | Echo Isles | Red Cloud Mesa

Sadly, this was the longest run so far. While a small part of this is because I was out of practice, I feel it's mostly due to the zone design. Kezan is a lot of fun, but it's very spread out and not particularly fast.

The guide played through wonderfully, aside from one coordinate issue, but there were definitely some stylistic problems that I'll be fixing for the next release. Level benchmarks were also unrealistic for a character with no heirlooms, and that will be fixed in the next release.

I've run through Kezan several times before, as I wrote the original paper guide for the zone, but I still love it. Despite it's slightly longer play time, it's one of my favorite starting zones!

I've updated the guide page for this section on WoW-Pro.com, and the changes will be included in the next addon update. I wouldn't recommend trying to update the file on your own unless you are experienced working with addons. If you do decide to update early:

Go to the Kezan page and copy the contents of the guide.
Open up your WoW folder and go to Interface > Addons > WoWPro_Leveling > Horde
Open up 01_05_Malorajan_Kezan.lua
Copy the guide contents there.

Next Up: Deathknell!

Pollinator Update - Time for Top Down!

2011-08-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

With all the drama and business going on in my life the past month, I haven’t devoted much time to my game development work. I’m determined to change that this month, no matter how busy I get. My main objective this month is to re-write pollinator’s code so that it is top-down and radial-based, rather than side view and rectangle-based. My good friend and fellow game developer from V Squared productions shared some ideas with me for accomplishing this, as well as his radial collision detection code, so I should be able to get the re-write done with minimal headache.

After that, I plan on working diligently on the C++ version of the game, then porting it to a Java Applet, Android, and possibly HTML5 or even Flash. I plan to begin working with my artistic teammates this weekend to discuss ideas for graphics, sound, music, and voice acting. I’m quite excited and hope to be posting updates more regularly!

Once I get the basic top-down game ready, I plan to record a short video of the gameplay and post it here. Look forward to it!

LoL What? An Introduction to League of Legends

2011-08-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

Since my WoW account was offline the last month, my friends and I revisited a game called League of Legends, also known affectionately as LoL. LoL is a free game - and when I say free, I mean FREE. Not pay to win, as so many free games are these days. LoL is legitimately, 100% free. You can pay for special cosmetic skins for your champions, or to unlock features more quickly, but there is no significant disadvantage in NOT paying.

So what is LoL? In short, it’s a team based PvP e-sport in which you combine macro and micro game elements to destroy your opponent’s base before they destroy yours. But there’s a LOT more to the game than this simple summary. If you've played DotA (a mod for Warcraft III), then you've played LoL. LoL is made by the same folks who created DotA. You control a single character (a champion), and team up with two to four other people in a team contest to destroy the opponent's base. Your character begins each game at level 1 and can advance up to level 18 by gaining experience through killing minions, creeps, and other champions.

The most popular map, for five
player teams, called Summoner's Rift

In the early game, players stay in one of three lanes - this time is often known as laning, though some champions are designed to jungle instead. The idea is to farm minions, which mindlessly walk from your opponent’s base towards yours down the lane. When minions die near you, you gain experience. Even better, if you get the last hit on a minion, you gain money which can be spent on gear. Unlike laners, junglers farm by running through the jungle in between lanes, killing the neutral creeps located there. They have to be much more durable than laners, since they must essentially tank these creeps from level 1. Farming well in the early game can give you a big advantage later on.

The shop, where you can purchase items

This introduces what is known as the macro game - how to build your character, in gear and in the order of the abilities you unlock. There are a wide range of items available, and there are many guides on exactly what items to get for each character. Often the best choices will change based on your team and the opponent’s team.

Ashe sets her sights on Teemo

Of course, even though the early game is more about farming than killing the opposing champions, it’s important to always look for opportunities to harass and possibly even gank your opponent. Keeping your opponent from farming effectively can also really help out late game. Killing the opponent keeps them out of the game for a short time, gives you an experience and money boost, and generally improves your team’s morale. Junglers, in particular, are designed to help where needed and assassinate unsuspecting opponents early game.

Tower pushing can be dangerous!

During the farming phase, it’s also possible to push the opponent’s lanes and take down towers, though this more often happens later in the team fight phase of the game. There are some champions that are much better at tower pushing than others, but most can succeed in tower pushing with enough skill. The idea is to kill the opposing team’s minions faster than they kill yours. Your minions will slowly move down the lane, and eventually reach one of the towers which guard the opponent’s side of the map. The towers are extremely deadly, but will attack minions preferentially over champions, as long as you don’t attack the opposing team’s champions while in range of the tower. With enough minions surrounding you to take hits from the tower, you can destroy it and move closer to the opponent’s base. Pushing towers is one of the most important facets of the game, and the number of surviving towers is a good way to measure how well a lane (or team as a whole) is doing.

Nunu's ult makes for an
interesting team fight.

Finally, once champions start getting a significant number of levels, teams will start grouping up and pushing a specific lane. This begins what is known as the team fight phase of the game. These massive brawls usually involve all members of each team, though clever teams will find ways to pick off members of the opposition or set up ambushes in order to gank some or all of the opposing team. Synergy of champion abilities and communication between players is essential during this phase. Even if all players are highly skilled by themselves, they won’t be able to succeed in the late game without supporting eachother in team fights.

Nexus destroyed!

The game ends when a team destroys the opposition’s nexus, at the heart of their home base. However, it is possible to surrender early if most team members agree that it’s a lost cause. Experience points (used to level up as a player) and influence points (used to purchase new champions or runes) are awarded both for winning or losing, though you gain the most from winning. Surrendering awards the fewest points, but it allows the team to more quickly move on to a new game.

Outside of games, your player (known as a summoner) has a level as well. This level ranges from 1 to 30, and increases the more games that you play. This level determines how many mastery points (think talent points from WoW) that you have to spend, and what rune slots (think glyphs in WoW) you have available. It also determines what summoner spells you can use - you have two spells which you chose at the beginning of each game, which act as extra utility and customizability for your character. This level-based mechanic gives high level summoners a mechanical advantage, in addition to their experience advantage. In general, when using the matchmaking service, you’ll be placed with summoners of similar levels.

As a whole, LoL is very enjoyable to play even without knowing your teammates. However, it really shines when the entire team is coordinating in a voice program such as Skype or Ventrilo, and has arranged their champions and skills to compliment eachother. There are a huge number of champions, builds, items, and spells available, and more being added constantly. Additionally, Riot (the makers of LoL) just announced a brand new game mode which will be playable at PAX Prime later this month. I’m extremely excited about this, and will report my reactions to this game mode here on the blog when I play it at PAX.

I can’t recommend LoL enough. If you want to jump in and get your feet wet, I suggest trying a game against bots (computer opponents) first before going up against other players. Riot has really improved the AI on the bots, but they are still much easier than real opponents, even newbies. Just pick a champion that seems interesting to you out of the free champions, look up a build on Leaguecraft (or use the recommended items that Riot provides for you in game!), and get started! The free champions change every week, but if you find one you like, you can use the points you earn playing each game to purchase them (that’s right, you do NOT need to use real money, though you can if you want to get champions more quickly).

Hopefully you’ll try it out! I’m still quite a League of Legends newbie, but I’m enjoying it quite a lot and may write some character specific guides later on if the fancy strikes me. If you play, be sure to look me up and request a game! I go by Jiyambi, as always.

WoW Insider Recommends the WoW-Pro Addon

2011-08-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

WoW Insider just threw another recommendation our way in their most recent Addon Spotlight column. A user wrote in seeking a questing replacement for the over-bloated Carbonite, and the addon columnist Matthew McCurley gave us a solid referral. Thanks WoW Insider, we really appreciate the shout out!

How to Host a Successful Guild Meetup

2011-08-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

So you’ve decided to finally take the step forward and get your guild together for a meetup. This is a huge undertaking, and you should expect to put in a lot of work if you want it to be a success. That said, it’s one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. So read on if you’d like some tips on making your guild meetup the best it can be!

Get Help!

Hosting a guild meetup is a LOT of work. As the host, you’ll be setting up and organizing events at the meetup locale. Unless you are lucky enough to have guild mates in your area, you’ll have to do a lot of that yourself. So anything else that you can get help with, do so! Examples include planning meals, organizing carpooling or airport pick up / drop off, non-location-based activities, etc. Often officers in the guild are good choices for this, but they also have their in-game duties, so if any enterprising and reliable guild members offer to help, be sure to give them a chance!

How Long is Too Long?

Most likely, you’ll have people traveling long distances to attend your meetup. You want to make sure they’ll be staying long enough to make it worth their while. However, too long and your guildies can end up sick of eachother. You want to find the right balance. The meetup I attended lasted four full days and nights. This was the perfect amount of time for our situation, but as everyone has difference circumstances, this might not work for your guild.

Plan Activities!

It’s much better to have too much to do and end up not doing some of the planned things, than to be bored. Some things we did at our meetup:

WoW
Minecraft (guild server)
XBox (rockband)
Movies
Cooking
Board Games
Card Games
Tabletop RPGs
Shopping
Swimming

If your location has some awesome tourist attractions, you might want to plan some outings involving those. Just keep in mind various athletic abilities of your guild mates, as well as different spending budgets. It would be a good idea to have alternatives if people didn’t want to or were unable to attend some of these.

One thing to remember if you decide to have computer gaming as one of your activities: Not everyone plays on laptops, or has portable desktops. Not everyone will be able to play at once. We solved this by being generous with sharing computers, and having other activities going at the same time.

Eat In

You’ll definitely want to plan meals ahead of time. Avoid racking up a huge dining bill by eating in. Cooking together can be an awesome bonding activity for guild mates. Just make sure one person isn’t doing ALL the cooking! Have a menu planned out and the week before the meetup go to a bulk store such as Costco or Winco to get all the ingredients. Keep in mind that some of your guildmates may have special dietary needs, and not everyone likes the same foods - try to have a variety of things available.

At our meetup, we served a main dish as well as a fairly substantial side dish with each dinner. That way, even if someone didn’t like one, they might like the other. Lunches were simply leftovers, sandwich stuff, or hotdogs/sausage dogs. Breakfast was served each day but leftovers were also an option.

Space Planning

The only thing I could fault our meetup with was lack of space. Our host lived in an apartment, which made things interesting for us. With a gaming meetup, you need lots of table space and chairs. We were okay on that account, with a dining room table as well as a large coffee table available. However, we were all in one room and after four days it started to feel pretty crowded. Having a separate room for people to spread out into, especially if different groups are doing different activities, would be an improvement.

During the meetup, people sometimes got tired mid-day. Everyone has different schedules normally, and jet lag can hit hard. Having a place for exhausted folks to crash mid-day was very nice. Our hosts graciously let tired guests use their bed, but a futon or air mattress set up in a quiet place would work just as well.

Our group would not have all been able to sleep in our host’s apartment. Additionally, some of our guildmates could not afford a hotel. We worked it out so that some stayed on our host’s floor while others got a hotel room a block away. This worked well for our location, but it might not work if there are no nearby hotels. Keep this in mind when choosing a location.

Stay Chill and Have Fun!

Having a large group all in one place can be difficult. The most important thing to remember is that you're all there to have fun, so stay relaxed and enjoy yourselves!

Triumphant Return

2011-08-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

Hello internet, it’s been a while!

I just returned home from my guild’s first RL meetup! It was a weekend of awesomeness, hosted by my wonderful guild leaders. I’ve been hanging out in virtual space with these people for years, and it was lovely getting to meet them face to face. If you are close to your guild mates, and it’s feasible for you to meet eachother, I highly recommend it. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.

Aren't they awesome? (I'm taking the picture)

I have been scarce around here as I’ve been adjusting to my new job and dealing with a lot of drama at home. I will be moving this month, so I may not be able to blog every day, but I plan to try none the less. Not only did I take a break from blogging, but I also deactivated my WoW account for the last month. I’ve reactivated it and will be resuming my speed testing plan for the WoW-Pro addon.

In the following month, I’ll be writing some articles about:

More details on my guild’s meetup and ideas for YOUR meetups!
Speed testing the WoW-Pro Addon
League of Legends - what is it and how to get started with it
The progress of my game, Pollinator
The progress of my second game, under the working title “Creature Caretaker”
How to make a game development portfolio
Book Review: The Kingkiller Chronicle (why you should all go out and buy it right now)
Dark Heresy - grim dark awesome
Ideas and dev progress for a Minecraft addon under the working title “Clanks”.
Thoughts on leveling and gearing up an assassination rogue in WoW
Reactions to PAX Prime
Discussion of D&D delves and my campaign
And more!

I also plan to create some videos, particularly to document my game’s progress, but possibly also some WoW related videos. My computer sadly doesn’t play very nice with FRAPS, as my video card and RAM leave something to be desired - but I’ll see what I can do.

It should be a very exciting month, and I’m really looking forward to writing these articles!

Canterbury Renaissance Faire

2011-07-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the Canterbury Renaissance Faire!

Sadly there was no jousting today...

It was my first ever ren faire, and my costume was built from goodwill finds, but I still had a ton of fun. I went with my boyfriend and three house-mates. It was awesome! The boyfriend didn't originally have a costume, but we bought him a tunic and belt while we were there. I think he looks pretty awesome in it!

I'm the bard and he's my bodyguard, I guess.

Sadly it was really rainy and muddy today, so they couldn't do jousting since the horses could be injured. We also got our car stuck in the mud twice, it was an adventure! But we had lots of fun exploring the faire, listening to music, and seeing really cool hand crafted stuff. We might go back next week to see the jousting, they gave us a coupon for cheaper tickets since there was no jousting today.

We did get to see two of the knights training their squires in swordplay. It was interesting to see the difference in skill level!

Tomorrow I'm trying out a new game system called Engine Heart. I'm very excited, as I haven't played many non-D&D tabletop RPGs. I'll report back on my experiences with it tomorrow. I also just picked up Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader from the used book store - I'll post a more detailed article about those another day. Finally, Wednesday I'm meeting with a friend from my last college to discuss game ideas. I'm really excited! I've got a busy week coming up!

Game Design Document

2011-07-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned previously, I'm currently developing a game called Pollinator. Now, while I definitely have hopes of making this game something worth playing (and worth paying for), my main aim is to practice coding and learn about the game design process. Because of this, and because I've actually had several people offer to contribute art, music, and voice acting to the game, I've decided to create a design document.

From Wikipedia:

A game design document (often abbreviated GDD) is a highly descriptive living design document of the game design for a video game.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] A GDD is created and edited by the developer team and it is primarily used in the video game industry to organize efforts within a developer team. The document is created by the developer team as result of collaboration between their designers, artists and programmers as a guiding vision which is used throughout the game development process. When a game is commissioned by a game publisher to the developer team, the document must be created by the developer team and it is often attached to the agreement between publisher and developer; the developer has to adhere to the GDD during game development process.

Now, exactly how to go about creating this document was something of a mystery, so I decided to exercise my google-fu and round up some resources on the subject. Rather than rewrite what these resources already say, I'll link them here for you!

Brenda Brathwaite on her blog Applied Game Design has an excellent post discussing in detail the first section of the game design document. Since this is really the only section that's universal to all game types, it was very useful to see an in depth discussion of it.
Mark Baldwin has created a template that covers most types of games. Obviously your game may not need some sections, and may need sections that aren't listed. Your mileage may vary.
Intelligent Artifice has an old blog entry listing several game design documents for real games.
The Gamasutra site has a pretty good article covering game design documents, though they are focusing more on people pitching their idea to a company rather than on independent developers who plan to self-publish.

If anyone else has good resources for game design documents, or for the game development process as a whole, let me know! I might even post my own document up once it's done - I almost certainly will once the game is released.

Steam Sale Ends

2011-07-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sadly, the steam sale has come to a close. Last week, I shared the purchases I had made so far with you, and discussed the ones I had played. Since then, I've also bought:

I also played two of the games from my previous purchase list.

The first was Torchlight. Yes, it's very strange that I haven't played this yet. For anyone else who hasn't tried it out, Torchlight is basically a Diablo II clone. It's a GOOD Diablo II clone, with very simple yet pleasing graphics and interesting heroes, but it's basically the same kind of game - if you like Diablo II, you'll like Torchlight. I haven't played very far into it but I'm definitely enjoying it so far!

The second game I've had time to try out is the Tiny Bang Story. This is a charming point and click adventure and puzzler. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a game in that genre. My only complaint so far is that it definitely tries dirty tricks sometimes to make things harder. For example in one section you are tasked with putting together a train based on a schematic. At first I thought this was a pleasant twist to the typical jigsaw puzzle, but then I couldn't find the last part, a wheel. I looked everywhere. I looked outside the puzzle room, which resets the puzzle. I spent close to half an hour looking for this one part. Finally I had to look it up online, and found to my chagrin that the part was actually ON the schematic. Did it look like it was taped there? No. It looked like it was part of the schematic. I felt like this was a cheap trick rather than a clever hiding place - making the item actually look drawn on to the schematic, then having it change when you pick it up, with no warning, hint, or explanation (even through the in-game hint system) just seems rude. Hiding it there would be fine if it still looked like a physical part. But other than that, I've enjoyed the game. It's got a calm and relaxing atmosphere even when I've been frustrated with it.

I will continue to post little updates as I try out my different purchases.

Dungeon Delve - Level 1

2011-07-10T12:00:00.001-07:00

Woops, I managed to get my posts out of order. Oh well.

Friday night I ran a DnD Delve for my WoW guild mates. We use an online tool called Maptool which allows us to share a map and tokens and move them around in a manner similar to a physical tabletop setup. The tool is somewhat buggy and resource intensive, but it's free and it can be used by both PC and Mac users, which is important for my group. Overall it's a decent tool which fits our current needs.

The delve we ran is from the Dungeon Delve book produced by Wizards of the Coast. The book has 30 delves, one for each level from 1-30. The main purpose of the delves for our group is filler between the main campaign. I had my players create separate characters for the filler delves, and they will be leveling them up between each delve session.

The first delve was fairly simple - the PCs were sent to clear out a small mine, which was inhabited by kobolds lead by a small white dragon. I previously ran a group of 3 level 3 adventurers through the dungeon and they had a lot of trouble in the last room, so I was worried this group might as well. The Friday group consisted of 5 level 1 characters with a good balance of roles. They absolutely slaughtered all three encounters, so difficulty was definitely NOT a problem.

Overall the session went really well, despite it being somewhat easy. Since I had some new players and people who haven't played in a long time, it was probably good to start out easy. The only other problem I had was not having enough time to create programmed macros for all of my monsters, which really helps speed up play on my side.

It's really nice that, though I'm not playing WoW consistently, I can still do fun things with my guild mates!

Oregon Country Fair - Part 1

2011-07-09T22:08:00.000-07:00

I promised juicy details on my trip to the Oregon Country Fair, and I shall deliver! Unfortunately I won't be getting pics of today's visit until later on, since I didn't have a camera with me and the one in my phone is terrible, so my mom was the photographer for the day. I went to the fair with my wonderful mother and my good friend Brit.

Let me explain what the OCF is and what it is NOT. Often when I tell people about the fair, I get one of several responses: "Oh, country? I hate country music", "Will there be rodeo there?", and "Oh, I love Ferris wheels!"

... No. Just no. The OCF is NOT about country music or rodeos and there are definitely no Ferris wheels. It is not a county fair. In fact, I think maybe if they spelled it "faire" it might be a bit more obvious of what kind of event it is. The OCF is a meeting of everything that is quintessentially Oregon. There's excellent folk music of every possible type; all sorts of entertainers from dancers to jugglers to pupeteers and more; amazing food; and wonderful hand made crafts. But more than anything, I attend the fair for the people watching. You've never people watched until you've people watched at the OCF.

While I can't provide pics of today's visit, I can give you some examples of what I mean from the fair's website. Enjoy, and I'll post my own pics soon!

Gaming Portland!

2011-07-08T16:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I attended a wonderful gaming event here in Portland, Oregon, my current home. I found the event via the Portland Gamers Meetup Group. I've used Meetup in the past and it can be really hit or miss depending on the people in charge of the group, but this one is really great.

The event was awesome! It was a simple casual board game night. Apparently I know quite a few geeks in the community, as about half the people at the meetup were actually invited by me! Good thing I've decided to join the group's organizing/publicity team :) Also, there was free pizza, a nice touch.

The event was held at my local game store, Other World Games. It's a fun little store, with lots of tables for playing games. They don't have very many board games in house but they are happy to order for you. I have to be up front in that I did order a game there and it took a very long time to arrive, apparently they forgot to call me when it finally DID get there... but I eventually got my game. Other than that issue, I've really enjoyed the store. The owner seemed genuinely happy to be hosting the event and meeting new people. I got to meet several new gamers and may even have an in for a Warhammer campaign, something I've been wanting to play for a long time.

I brought one of my favorite games, Thunderstone. It's a deck building card game in which you create an adventuring team to kill monsters. It's nice for events like this because it can accommodate up to 5 people. I also brought Bang!, but we didn't end up having time to play.

So hooray for meeting new people and having a blast!

I'll be cooling it on the speed testing updates until next week. Tomorrow expect an update about my DnD delve I'm running tonight, and Sunday I'll be posting about my trip to the Oregon Country Fair (which does NOT involve country music, nor ferris wheels. I'll have pics, you'll see what I mean!)

Revenge of the Jiyas: Red Cloud Mesa

2011-07-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

Chapter three has arrived for the Revenge of the Jiyas series of articles, in which I speed test the WoW-Pro Leveling addon! Today we begin our journey in the tauren starting zone, Red Cloud Mesa, located in Mulgore. We follow Jiyacow, the mighty tauren warrior, as she sets out to make a name for herself.

Is that supposed to be a salute?

Total /played at level 5: 20min
Red Cloud Mesa (1-5): 20min

4.8 min/lvl

Previous Chapters:

Project Overview
1-5: Valley of Trials | Echo Isles

The run time for this zone was definitely shorter than the last two starters. Whether I'm just getting faster at setting up my UI or this zone is simply better designed, I'm not certain. It did seem pretty efficient, especially compared to the drugery of Valley of Trials. The quests weren't as fun as those in the Echo Isles, but they weren't awful, and setting pigs on fire was kinda cool. The flow was very nice, sending you in a circular pattern around the mesa rather than having you return to the central hub every time.

They added a very stylin' and fast way to get to the next town, too!

For the most part, the guide was very well done for this zone. However I did find a couple issues. First, one of the quests didn't show the quest tracking due to a spelling error. Second, the step where you hearth to Camp Narache and get your skills was both incorrectly coded so it did not auto-complete, and also should have been moved one step later to minimize running around. These issues are now fixed and will appear in the next update for the addon.

Overall I really enjoyed this starter. They kept a lot of the flavor of the original zone, but revamped it to improve flow and make quests more interesting. If only they had done the same for the Valley of Trials!

Bye now, brown cow!

Go to the Red Cloud Mesa page and copy the contents of the guide.
Open up your WoW folder and go to Interface > Addons > WoWPro_Leveling > Horde
Open up 01_12_Gylin_Mulgore.lua.
Copy the guide contents there.

Next Up: Kezan!

Revenge of the Jiyas: Echo Isles

2011-07-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Chapter two is here for my new series of articles in which I speed test the WoW-Pro Leveling addon! Today we're testing the troll starting zone, the Echo Isles. Jiyatroll, the wise and powerful warrior, is just starting her days as an adventurer.

She doesn't look too excited...

Total /played at level 5.5: 28min
Echo Isles (1-5): 28min

6 min/lvl

Previous Chapters:

Project Overview
1-5: Valley of Trials

I love trolls. And the new starting area is just awesome. But I need to disclose something - it actually took me almost 45 minutes to do this. FORTY FIVE MINUTES. You know why? Because there is a nasty bugged quest. Sometimes, during the quest Young and Vicious, the raptor Swiftclaw will simply not spawn. I spent almost 20 minutes sitting around, assuming other people were just getting to him before I did, waiting for him to appear. Finally I went and looked it up - apparently he just doesn't show up sometimes, and you have to abandon and re-acquire the quest. Soooo.... that's something I'm adding as a note, so no one else has to waste 20 minutes on it! Because of this, I didn't include those 20 minutes in the guide time.

Chillin with my homie Vol'jin.

Aside from that little hiccup, I felt like this zone breezed by. It has so many fun and endearing quests, it simply destroys Valley of Trials in the fun factor. I felt like it went a lot faster than Valley of Trials, too, but the /played seems to think otherwise - they came out the same. Well, at least time will seem to go faster!

Stepping onto the mainland, and to more adventures!

Go to the Echo Isles page and copy the contents of the guide.
Open up your WoW folder and go to Interface > Addons > WoWPro_Leveling > Horde
Open up 01_05_Bitsem_Echo_Isles.lua.
Copy the guide contents there.

Next Up: Red Cloud Mesa!

Revenge of the Jiyas: Valley of Trials

2011-07-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

Here it is: The first installment of my new series of articles in which I speed test the WoW-Pro Leveling addon! Today we take a look at the orc starting zone, the Valley of Trials. Our intrepid orc warrior, Jiya, is ready to begin her journey!

She sure thinks she's special.

Total /played at level 5.5: 28min
Valley of Trials (1-5): 28min

6 min/lvl

Previous Chapters:

Project Overview

The time for this might be a little deceiving, because I spent roughly 5 minutes setting up my UI at the beginning of the test. However, I'll need to do that for every new character I start, so I decided not to try to correct for that time - it would simply make the /played calculations more complicated. Additionally, the starter zones measurements and calculations are extremely rough at best, since the levels go by so quickly, that I doubt it's worth it.

I wouldn't recommend much changed in this guide. This makes sense considering I created it in the first place - I should hope I would be satisfied with it! However, I would recommend having the user use their hearthstone to get back to The Den quickly at the end of the cave quest circuit. That cooldown is not being utilized and it can definitely save some time. It's nice that I have timing information now so I can tell easily exactly how often the hearthstone can be used in a guide!

Now let's talk about the zone. Bleh. With all the awesome work Blizz did to improve other starting zones, it's really disappointing that they didn't bother improving this one. It's sad that this will be the first thing some players see of the game, because the game play is extremely dated (as in, not changed since the beginning of WoW). Oh well, at least they kept the peon-smacking quest in there!

I've updated the guide page for this section on WoW-Pro.com, and the changes will be included in the next addon update. I wouldn't recommend trying to update the file on your own unless you are experienced working with addons. If you do decide to update early:

Go to the Valley of Trials page and copy the contents of the guide.
Open up your WoW folder and go to Interface > Addons > WoWPro_Leveling > Horde
Open up 01_05_Jiyambi_Valley_of_Trials.lua.
Copy the guide contents there.

Next Up: The Echo Isles!

Revenge of the Jiyas: WoW-Pro Speed Testing

2011-07-04T13:55:00.000-07:00

I was reading through some of my old posts and I cam across my Adventures of Mokrana series from back in 2009. In case you weren't reading the blog back then, this was a series of articles where I documented speed and efficiency testing runs for the WoW-Pro Leveling addon. I remembered how fun that was, and how interesting it was to see how the different chapters of the guide matched up.

So I've decided to start a new series: The Revenge of the Jiyas. In this series I'll be running a small army of alts (all with various versions of "Jiya" as their names) through every guide in the WoW-Pro addon. I've decided to do this test using all warriors, since it will be the best way to compare between guides - every race can be a warrior, after all! Warriors aren't ridiculously good at soloing, like hunters are, but they aren't too shabby at it either, having a lot of health, good defenses, and the ability to move quickly via charging. Overall I think it will be a good average experience.

The Rules

NO rested XP! I'll be logging out OUTSIDE of inns and major cities.
NO heirlooms! I'll only wear what gear I find, get from questing, or can legitimately afford on the auction house.
NO help from high level characters, in money or runs! I'm starting on a brand new server where I don't know anyone, and since I'm speed leveling, I won't be socializing. So I'm on my own!
NO dungeons, PvP, etc. This is a test of the questing guides, specifically.

Caveats

NO professions. I'm already handicapping myself enough, and I'm also documenting my progress via notes and screenshots as I go, which will slow me a small amount. I won't be taking extra time out for professions, even gathering ones.
YES - I have an auctioneer. I'll be mailing all my marketable items to her, and she'll sell them. I won't be playing the auction house in any other way, though.

The Process

I will be recording how long each quest circuit takes and measuring that in hr/lvl. That means, how many hours it would take to gain one level at that experience rate. I think measuring this way will make more sense than levels/hr, as most people want to know how long it takes to get to the next level, NOT how much of a level an hour's play will get them.

I'll be covering one zone at a time, starting with ALL of the starter zones. Doing it in this way will allow us to get a clear idea of how similar zones compare in speed.

Along the way I'll be making notes of things that worked well and things that didn't, both in terms of the actual quests from Blizzard, as well as the guide. In my write up, I'll include these notes, as well as an updated version of the guide with these issues fixed. These updates will be available in the next version of the WoW-Pro addon, but you can get them early from my blog!

My final write up will have a spreadsheet showing the quest circuits, start and end times and levels, and the hr/lvl rate for each. I'll have a write up in prose accompanying this, as well as screenshots. I'll compare the guide and zone to the others in that bracket which I've completed so far. Finally, I'll include a download link for the updated guide.

When I complete a "bracket" of zones (all zones of a particular level range), I'll write up a summary comparing all the zones and recommending the best for leveling.

I've already completed the Durotar guide, and you should expect to see it posted here sometime tomorrow!

DnD Campaign: A Teaser

2011-07-04T01:32:00.000-07:00

I'm setting up a new DnD 4e campaign for some of my WoW guildmates, and tonight I wrote a little teaser to introduce what the campaign will be about. I thought it was an interesting read, so I'm sharing it with all of you!

Your homeworld is dying.

It's been scarcely a century since the great Blight began. The terrible rot started off in a few isolated places, and the priests tried to contain it. They said a great necromancer damaged the barrier between our world and the world of Death, and hoped to repair the damage. But it spread too fast, and any who tried to stop it soon sickened and died. Now the forests lie silent, skeleton trees reaching up to the sky. Farms lie fallow, or burned, or rotting. Rivers flow with dust or blood, plague runs rampant, and dangerous earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and fierce storms wrack the land.

But there is hope. Though the great workers of magic have been unable to halt the spread of the Blight through your world, they have discovered the power to visit others. Not all can support life. Some are as used up and burned out as your own. Others are hellish, nightmare landscapes, or barren, desolate and freezing wastelands which could never hope to house your people. But there is one at last that has been found, a world of lush green growing things, a place where your dwindling people might make a home.

You are part of the expedition that has been chosen to begin settling the new land. Transporting people between worlds takes a great toll on the magic users of your homeland, as well as many precious materials that must be used as components for the spell. While they are seeking ways to send more people more quickly, for now only a mere fifty people may be sent each month. You will be in the second group sent to this new place, and one of the lucky few who will be able to escape the disease and death of your home.

"Welcome to Kalbar," a swarthy man in a military uniform grunts. His smirk peeks out from beneath a bushy mustache. "Just what we need, some fresh meat."

You step out of the great ether-ship, blinking in the unfamiliar light. The journey took three weeks, and in that time you've had only lamplight to see by. But it's more than that. The light on this world is different than your homeland's. The sun glints with a sharp, white light, harsher and brighter than any you have seen. The air is muggy, warm and humid, and your clothes immediately begin to stick to your limbs and body.

As overwhelming as these things seem, they are nothing compared to the trees. The trees! You've never seen so much color in all your life. Not just green, though of course there is green. Oceans of green, a green so deep and oppressive you feel as if it might swallow you up. But mixed in are plants with bark and foliage of deep purple, of blue, and bright and angry red and yellow. More than the sun, more than the heavy, fetid air, the saturated colors of this place tell you, you are not at home.

The man, who appears to be an officer of small authority but large ego, sighs. "Come on then, stop gawking. You'll have plenty of time to get used to this hell hole." He wanders off, clearly expecting you to follow.

You take in the scene before you. A city of tents covers most of a cleared hilltop. There are several hastily constructed buildings. The officer appears to be heading toward one of these. However, you can't help but notice a number of unfinished buildings. This in itself is not odd - what seems strange is that, despite it being mid morning and a prime time for it, no one is working on these buildings. Instead, workers swarm around the perimeter of the hill, furiously working on a half built wall of sharpened poles.

Halfway through the camp, the officer veers off in the direction of a small disturbance at the half-finished wall. Some men are carrying the body of a soldier. His body is mauled past recognition, great gouges rent in his flesh by some massive claw. Some distant part of your mind begins calculating exactly how large a creature might have made such wounds, and stops, unable to deal with the result. The thing must have been massive, the size of a wagon, or a small building.

The officer's face turns red, and he grabs hold of the nearest soldier. "I told you men to stay in pairs. I told you, dammit! How many is it this week? How many?!"

"Three, Marcus. And don't go yelling at the men, now. They haven't found this one's partner, either."

A tall, thin man in a shabby blue robe places a comforting hand on the officer's shoulder. His fingers are long and bony, and he folds each joint in a measured, deliberate manner. His face is long, with deeply set eyes like dark caves, and wide, bushy gray eyebrows. "Come on, my friend. Introduce me to the new recruits."

Marcus, the swarthy officer, gruffly shrugs off the tall man's hand. "New Meat, Istul. Istul, New Meat."

Unable to hold it in any longer, you blurt out, "What in all seven hells is going on here? Three what? What happened to this man?"

Marcus turns away. Istul looks at you with an expression full of sadness and pity. "Kalbar happened. This world hates us. Hates us. It wants nothing more than to kill and eat every single one of us." His voice is completely flat, devoid of all emotion, and all hope.

You stare at him incredulously. "What are you talking about? You mean this was done by natural creatures? Don't we have any druids here?"

A chorus of laughter erupts around you, a grim, desperate laughter. Marcus painfully jabs a sausage-like finger into your chest. "You think we're idiots, New Meat? You think we haven't tried that? Drav Kalidson himself came with us on this mission. Yeah, the Lifespeaker himself! And you know what happened to him? THAT happened to him!" Marcus finally removes his finger and gestures fiercely in the direction of the mauled corpse. "First day here. He went out to 'Commune with the spirits of the land.' I guess they made their point in a way no one was expecting!"

"But couldn't you just..."

Istul cuts you off. "No. No no no, I'm afraid not my friends. You see, Drav was killed, oh yes, but he didn't die right away. No. And we had other druids with us. You see, you see..." Istul's voice becomes more and more distracted as he goes on. Suddenly his eyes lose focus, and he turns away, cocking his head as if listening.

Marcus shakes his head. "He's gettin a call from home, don't mind him. What Istul's trying to say is that druids are powerless here. We didn't realize it going in, but something's different between this world and ours. And while the lifepeakers may be friends with OUR natural world, they sure as hell aren't friends here. Kalbar doesn't have friends. It doesn't understand friends. All it understands is that we are prey."

He claps you on the back, steering you back towards the large building at the center of camp. "And I'm here to try and turn us into the predators."

Steam Sale!

2011-07-03T16:29:00.000-07:00

The Steam summer sale started two days ago, and already I've spent close to fifty dollars. But each game hasn't been more than $5.00.

Here's what I bought so far:

So far I've only played two of them.

BIT.TRIP Runner is a rhythm platformer. In some ways it's similar to platformers like Super Meat Boy - it's got simple yet appealing graphics, very smooth gameplay, and unforgiving challenges - one mistake means restarting the level. But I found Super Meat Boy frustrating and kind of gross, I find BIT.TRIP Runner relaxing and very pleasing visually. The "rails" style platforming is interesting to me, and the music really helps me get into the game.

However, it's really frustrating to have to sit through boring or easy parts of the level in order to get back to the hard part where you keep dying. Also, it's embarrassing to die to stairs... and that's what I usually die to. Still, it's contained far more than enough enjoyment so far to pay for the measly $2.50 I spent on it, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes this sort of game.

SpaceChem is a puzzle game. In which you are a chemical engineer designing first a single reactor, then entire plants full of reactors. Anyone who knows me well knows I have a degree in chemical engineering, and quit to pursue computer science because I didn't find the work interesting and enjoyable enough. Oddly, this game has me thoroughly addicted. The fact that, while it acknowledges what it's doing is NOT real reactions (chocking that up to futuristic technologies), it doesn't break chemistry. It makes things simpler for non-chemists to understand, but it won't allow you to add more than four bonds to an atom - and correctly limits specific atoms to their actual, lower number of possible bonds (for example, hydrogen can only have one bond).

The gameplay progresses well in terms of difficulty and complexity. The levels do get a bit huge later on, and making a mistake in planning your plant can sometimes not be found until the last reactor, and you have to redo everything. Aside from this I found it extremely rewarding. The story that goes along with the game is told via short, page-long bits of text between levels. While this isn't the most engaging form of telling a story, I actually find myself very interested in what's happening even though it really doesn't much effect gameplay. Overall, I definitely recommend this to chemistry buffs and anyone who likes a good puzzle game.

I'll keep you posted as I try out my other purchases!

Dev Update: Pollinator

2011-06-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

Pollinator is my current game programming project. I haven't abandoned Creature Caretaker, but I decided I wanted to do something a bit simpler first. Pollinator is a reskinned version of Pickin Sticks, which I talked about before. In it, you are a bee who flies around collecting pollen, rather than a person collecting sticks.

The lovely thing about Pollinator is that while it is very simple, it has the potential to become a real game. Eventually the pollen will come from flowers. It will drift, randomly or perhaps due to changing winds. There will be obstacles, enemies, time limits, different kinds of flowers and pollen, competing bees, multiplayer - there are so many possibilities for even an extremely simple game like this.

But for now, I'm following the very simplest of Pickin Sticks models. At the moment, my engine works decently well. I have a green background on which a bee flies around. There is no pollen yet, but I did get both the bee's animation and a silly little tune I wrote working. Here's a (very boring) screenshot:

I'll keep you posted on my progress. Eventually, I'd like to try creating Pollinator in different languages, or even on different platforms. I think as a mobile game it might actually do decently well!

The Life of Jiya: Intel Here I Come!

2011-06-25T18:02:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

It's certainly been a while, with school, internship applications, my brother's wedding, and all sorts of things going on in my life, I haven't been making time to blog. I'd like that to change, but we shall see how things go. I've also recently returned to WoW after a 6 month hiatus, so I may have some WoW-related things to start blogging about soon!

I thought I'd give anyone who cared a little update into what I've been up to. Mostly, I wanted to share my excitement at starting a new job on Monday. I'll be doing software validation for Intel. I'm pretty excited, even though as internships go it's closer to the bottom of the barrel. The pay isn't great compared to other internships, and I won't be in the creative part of the software development process, which is where I'd like to end up. But working in validation will help me understand an important part of the overall process, and get me some real work experience to use as a stepping stone to go where I want to go. Plus, the internship is full time in the summer but continues into the school year for the full year, part time, which is great.

I've also got a very part time gig this summer helping a grad student at my university to create a mobile app. The app will tell a user where their energy use for the area they are in is coming from (hydro electric, coal, gas, wind, that sort of thing). I'll be working on the Android version of the app. I'm really excited about this, since mobile apps are something I'm very interested in as a possible career path.

I've been trying to find time to also work on my game, Pollinator. I'll make a post about my progress in the game tomorrow.

On a more personal note, my little brother got married last weekend. It was an AMAZING wedding, very simple yet elegant. The whole wedding party were wearing Chuck Taylor's, which is awesome. Even the bride had little white ones. The ceremony and reception took place at a river house. The day was too hot but by the river in the shade of trees, it was perfect. I loved it, and I'm so happy for them!

Well, that's my life so far in a nutshell. I've scrapped my update schedule as I wasn't keeping to it anyway. I want to create a new one, I'll think on what kind of categories I'd like to have.

Pickin Sticks

2011-04-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

In my current programming course, I'm finally learning about inheritance and other object oriented programming techniques. I've decided to put aside my Creature Caretaker project for now and work on a simpler game - a version of "Pickin Sticks", as suggested by Moosader. Pickin Sticks is often used as the "Hello, world" of game development, allowing the programmer to try out a new language (or a very first game) and try a little bit of most basic game elements.

In Pickin Sticks, you control a character who walks around the screen - you guessed it - picking up sticks. Optionally, scoring can be added, as well as different objects, power ups, mines, and who knows what else. A menu, title screen, and options could be added. But these are all best saved for later - to start out, pickin sticks is one of the most basic games you could make.

Currently, I've created a basic class diagram to plan out the structure of my program, and I've begun coding the set-up for the game. I will probably be using Moosader's graphics to start with, just to get things working, but I might practice some animation and make my own graphics later on.

Want to make your own version of Pickin Sticks? Check out Moosader's tutorial!

Inundated with Internships

2011-04-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for a personal update in the life of Jiya! I'll keep it brief, since my life honestly isn't all that exciting at the moment. I've been keeping quite on top of my studies this term and am doing well in all of my courses. I've managed to still fit some game time in, mostly with some casual Steam games and mucking about on Minecraft with my friends from around the globe.

The only "unusual" thing I've had going the past few weeks is a pile of internship applications to finish. I'm trying to apply for one per day, as I *really* need a source of income this summer since I won't be receiving financial aid. (Note to anyone seeking a post-bacc degree - for some reason they think you have more money the second time around and won't give you as much in loans...). While I loved working for Mad Science last summer and playing the crazy scientist and teaching little kids about the wonders of the world, I only made about $500 dollars all summer. In order to comfortably pay bills, rent, and loan payments, I need to make $2,000 this summer. And I will probably kill myself if I have to work fast food ever again, so an internship is needed!

Not that financial reasons are my only motivation. I really learned a lot during my chemical engineering internships back during my previous degree. I want to get out there and experience what the software development industry is actually like, and get a feel for what kinds of things I want to focus on. I was very blessed to be able to see just a glimpse of that with the WoW-Pro addon, but I'd love to see how "real" businesses do it. I'm still astonished when I look back and think about how the addon project began and grew - we really invented our own software development process as we went, from the ground up. That's something to be really proud of, especially considering how amazingly well it turned out and what a broad audience we were able to reach with our accomplishments.

I realize I've meandered a bit away from the main point of this post, so I'll cut myself off for now. Thanks for reading!

I'm a dragon! Grrr!

2011-04-12T19:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't done much art lately, so here's one of the sprites for my somewhat delayed game project:

But don't call him cute - he's tough!

These sprites are constructed at run time by the game, which combines different images for the tail, body, head, and wings, as well as primary and secondary color. An example of some dismembered sprites can be found on my last game project update. All of these images are done using the free photo editing software GIMP. I have a very basic guide to some GIMP techniques useful for guide writers over at WoW-Pro, if you are interested in learning a few tricks! I may create some sort of GIMP spriting tutorial in the future (yeah, like I need more projects).

Where Have I Been?

2011-03-28T20:45:00.000-07:00

Hi all! Yet another long gap between posts. I'm going to do my best to stay on schedule in the future.

Some updates in the life of Jiya. I just finished my second term of study in Computer Science and am having a blast. The last two weeks were more stressful than any since high school, but it was worth it. I pulled a nice fat 3.5 GPA this term, and I'm going for a 4.0 next term. Considering last term was 17 credits and this term will only be 14, I think it's definitely do-able!

Over the break I played a lot of Minecraft. I purchased the game in September and played a lot at that time, then took a long break from it. Now my wonderful house-mates are playing again on a server my roommate is running. It's wonderful because we've also got some of my friends from Seattle on the server now, which is a wonderful way to keep in touch. The world we're in has huge pillar-like mountains, which we have each claimed one of, and have an increasingly intricate network of bridges connecting them. It's wonderful!

Other games I've played over the break include Civ V, which I probably played for almost 24 hours straight after downloading it. Lots of fun, but I've already gotten a bit bored with it. I am on a big sandbox game kick, so I tried out both Wurm Online and Dwarf Fortress. Wurm's interface and graphics are so clunky I don't think I can keep with it, though the ideas and the sheer detail of the system are intriguing! Dwarf Fortress has a dauntingly steep learning curve, but my roommate is helping me learn the ropes. Lots of fun, but I'm such a stickler for polished graphics and UIs that I probably won't be able to handle it.

This sandbox game kick has got me thinking about making a sandbox game of my own, but I'm not sure if I'll follow through. I've jotted down all the ideas I've had so far, though - just in case!

I may or may not have downloaded the first season of the Pokemon TV show... Re-watching the cartoons of my youth is excellent fun!

I've also gotten to pursue my love of cooking over spring break. I've been able to cook a nice meal for myself and my house-mates almost every day this week, and it's been awesome. Spending more time with my house-mates makes me so incredibly grateful for the wonderful home we've been able to make together. When I came up with the idea for the Geek House, I never knew it would be such a success! For those who don't know, when I moved to a new city in September for school I used craigslist to find a group of nerdy people to live with. We managed to find a huge, wonderful, quirky 5 bedroom house 10 minutes from downtown in a lovely and very safe neighborhood, and crammed 8-9 people into it (one doesn't technically live here but is around probably about half the time). It's awesome always having people to play board/card/video games with.

Finally, I've been working on a D&D campaign for my house-mates all break, and we'll be starting it up this week. Should be all sorts of fun. It's great having so many creative outlets!

Well, that's an update on what I've been up to while I've NOT been blogging. Back to the normal schedule tomorrow!

NOTE: I'm changing my Thursday post to be a personal update post, rather than gaming news - it just felt like a chore to search for something to blog about there, and this isn't a news blog, so I feel the news post is unnecessary.

Photobooth Portrait Project

2011-03-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Remember last week when I said I'd been painting all weekend and promised a post about the results? Well, it's a week late but I finally have that post for you!

Since I haven't done one of these type of posts before, I'll explain my intention. I don't want to simply post a picture of my artwork and wait for replies of "ooh aahhh". Instead, I want to share what I did and what worked, and what didn't. Sort of a documentation of the process behind it.

The project was one assigned for my art class. The idea was to become familiar with paints and to experiment with different color palettes. I found this project especially interesting because the shading is reminiscent of sprite shading - you'll see what I mean in a minute.

The first step of the project was to go to one of those old style black and white photo booths and get a photo taken. There's a website which lists all the photo booths in the area, photobooth.net. Unfortunately some of the booths listed on the site are either no longer at the location or are broken. Even calling ahead for each site, I had to visit three places before I found one that worked.

The photo booths have some sort of black magic ju ju inside them that makes you look WAY better than you normally do in photos. Something about the flash-bang lights that literally blind you (I came out of the booth in tears from the things flashing in my eyes), the washed-out old style printing, and the nature of black and white in general smears away your flaws and imperfections. It's somewhat of an archaic art to get your head actually centered correctly in the things, since all you have to work with is some vaguely reflective glass and a set of instructions that are confusing at best, downright incorrect at worst. Finally, after over an hour of driving around and 8 dollars fed into various (sometimes broken) machines, I returned triumphantly with the following:

The next step in the process is to blow up the photo of your choice to 8.5 x 11, and to heighten the contrast. Since my scanner believes firmly that it should only work when it feels like it, I headed over to the local Fed Ex place to get the scanning and editing done. Initially the guy working there planned to charge me five dollars for the scan, edit, and print... but he relented after how easy it turned out to be and just charged me for the custom scan (1 dollar). Not too bad, and I made a friend for when I had to return later for another part of the project. So finally I had what I needed to get started:

The next step in the project was to create stencils, since we would be painting the same thing four times and the idea was to have consistency. The method to create these stencils was to place tracing paper over the large high contrast print and trace out shapes of high, medium, or low value. We then taped the tracing paper to a manella folder and used an exacto knife to cut the shapes out. These stencils would be used strictly as guides, NOT as paint resists - you'll see what I mean in a moment.

Once I had my stencils, it was time to test them. First I used the stencils to create a shape drawing - valueless interconnected shapes which make up the portrait, created by running a pencil along the inside edge of stencils. I don't have a version of that to show, unfortunately. As a test to make sure everything had come through in the stencils (it's easy to miss something since you are using multiple stencils), I shaded the values in with pencil. This would basically be what the final project would look like, but with pencil instead of paint:

Since it looked correct, I could start painting. Again, I didn't use the stencils as paint resists, but just to draw the initial "sketch" on the paper with pencil. I then set aside the stencils and painted.

We were instructed to do four paintings, all using acrylic paint. I'll talk about mine in the order that I like them, from worst to best. The first one was a master palette - this means we looked around at master level paintings and chose one whose colors appealed to us, then chose three colors from that painting to use in our own. I've always been drawn to the 36 views of Mount Fuji (best known for the Great Wave off Kanagawa), and chose #8, Inumi Pass, Koshu as the painting I would choose a palette from. The 36 views of Mount Fuji are interesting because they are actually woodblock prints, a style of painting traditional to the Japanese in which the image is cut out of a piece of wood, then the wood is painted and the image is transferred to paper from the paint-laden wood block. The resulting images were extremely complex, but the method is actually analogous to stencil artwork.

Of course, I wanted a physical copy of the painting to work with, so I set off to the Fed Ex again to get it printed. This time I had a whole slew of troubles - the image was a jpeg, and apparently their self-serve (read:cheap) printers only deal with pdfs. I asked the lady at the counter if she could just print it off for me. She opened it up right in front of me but said, no, she couldn't, I would have to pay for time at the computer to convert it to a pdf, then use the self-serve printer. Irked, I nevertheless headed over to the computers only to find a wide array of possible "plans" with different software available and no idea what I would need to select to convert the file. Luckily my printing-happy friend (who was Japanese and ended up striking up a whole conversation about Mount Fuji and wood block printing) from my last visit ended up rescuing me and printing the image off for a mere fifty cents. I guess being friendly to people does occasionally pay off!

Print in hand, I finally settled down to paint. The colors I chose were mostly in order to not duplicate any of my previous palettes. I actually painted this one last, and by then I was quite tired and in no mood to wait to get things exactly right. So the colors aren't exactly spot on (they are far too dark), and the mid tone's value is indistinguishable from the dark value. Regardless, here it is:

My next painting's prompt was to choose two complementary colors - colors that are across from eachother on the color wheel. I chose blue and orange. For my third color, I chose a lighter orange. So my dark tone was dark blue, my midtone was normal orange, and my light tone was pale orange.

I was excited about this paintings because I'm very fond of bright, warm colors like orange, and because the blue I had was so pretty. Unfortunately, these two paints were TERRIBLE to work with. The gorgeous blue was extremely thin and transluscent, and even with four layers you can still see the page below (or the orange where I had to paint over it, since I'm worse than a five year old at coloring inside the lines). The orange, on the other hand, was chunky beyond bearing - the face looks like I was terribly burned or something, with a nasty pockmarked texture from me struggling with the detail work. I'm sure if I was more experienced in my paint handling, it wouldn't be so bad... but as it is, I feel pretty unhappy with it. Again, regardless, here it is:

The third assignment was to do analogous colors, colors next to eachother on the color wheel. I chose green and yellow. This was the first painting I did, and if I'd had a bit more experience at the time I think it would be my favorite - but I had never painted with acrylic before (and had barely painted at all, with anything), so I was still learning the very basics about how to deal with the paint. So the face is a bit chunky and the borders where colors meet are messy.

Note: I totally didn't realize when I was doing this one that it's U of O colors. Bleh. Anyway, here it is:

My favorite ended up being the monochrome painting, where we chose multiple shades of the same color. I chose brown, and the paint was a delight to work with - thin enough to use easily but not translucent like the blue. I definitely had the best technique for this painting. While the colors may not be as interesting, I feel like the values worked well. Here it is:

Well, that's the project! Hope it was interesting to see the process behind it. I'll probably be covering a few more of my art class projects in the next few weeks.

Novel Review: A Song of Ice and Fire

2011-02-28T02:54:00.000-08:00

Hey all! Yes it's been a week with not a peep from me! School, visits from parents, blah blah blah. I will try to do better, even if it means shorter entries!

To get back into things, I wanted something easy to write about. It's easiest for me to write about things I like, so today I'm going to talk about a book (and series) that any serious fantasy lover should read...

A Song of Ice and Fire
by George R. R. Martin

I would probably rate A Song of Ice and Fire as the best fantasy series of all time. It is NOT, however, in any way shape or form, light reading. It is DENSE, meaty, and full of juicy, delicious, raw realism. These characters are a far cry from the ideal white knight and evil sorceress. They behave much like real people might when thrown into extraordinary situations... and while nothing in the books could be described as "ordinary", George Martin also avoids the disgustingly over the top cliches that litter most fantasy novels. Magic, dragons, monsters, gods - these things existed (there are dragon bones in the capital city to prove it!) but they were things of the past, for the most part. Fantasy elements are much more subtle, weaving in and out of the main story in ways that are unobtrusive, natural, and truly enchanting.

Plot

The plot of A Song of Ice and Fire is a slippery, wild snake that winds through the smaller, sordid tales of the various view point characters (of which there are many). The overarching idea of the series is that of a kingdom thrown into chaos as many different factions fight over the crown. Meanwhile, in a far off land, the true heir to the throne is growing up and making her own place in the world, but one could only imagine she will return soon. And, over all this, the dread words of the Stark family, "Winter is coming" beat ominously. In the north, the dreaded undead creatures of the frozen wasteland are stirring for the first time in known history, and the ragged defenders of the mighty Wall must somehow convince the bickering factions of the kingdom to the south to join forces and deal with the greater threat.

Characters

As mentioned in the introduction, the characters are one of the many strengths of this series. Each has extreme depth, and acts in ways more real than any other novel I have read. From despicable to noble and anywhere in between, they represent all the shades of gray of humanity. George Martin effortlessly juggles dozens of viewpoint characters, keeping your interest and attention across many storylines at once, and keeping you turning the pages to see how these lines might cross.

The linchpins in this highly varied tale are the Stark family, of the northern-most part of the kingdom, and the princess-in-exile, Daenerys Targaryen. Unexpectedly, several of the enemies of the Starks become very interesting viewpoint characters as well - Tyrion Lannister is intriguing right from the beginning, but while his brother Jaime at first seems a shallow and unlikeable character, he proves to have quite a bit more depth as time goes on, and also eventually has some time in the viewpoint spotlight.

As might be expected from the gritty, realistic nature of the writing, several characters don't make it past the first book. In a land this torn by war, you never know who is going to die... or who might survive but be horribly maimed, which is not an uncommon occurrence in the series.

Recommendation

I'm not sure I need to say more than I did in the first paragraph - these are, in my opinion, the best fantasy novels of all time. Martin has earned his place on the shelf next to Tolkien and Lewis, and then some. As long as you are willing to set aside some time to seriously dig in and digest the dense material, you can't go wrong with A Song of Ice and Fire. Pick up a copy of the first book, A Game of Thrones, today!

For a more detailed overview of the series, check out this fine article!

Busy Weekend!

2011-02-20T12:40:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts this weekend! I've been painting nonstop and have some other homework as well. I'll post pics of my paintings as well as a game progress update tomorrow.

Gaming News: Drop in game sales?

2011-02-17T18:04:00.000-08:00

I read an article in the Hollywood Reporter (not something I typically read but it came up under a search for "gaming news" so what can ya do) today that there was a 5% drop in video game sales last month compared to January 2010. The article was somewhat ambiguous about what exactly this meant - it mentions "physical sales" at one point but it's unclear whether total number is referring to physical sales of software, software+hardware, or if it includes non-physical sales (such as those made through Steam, the Wii store, App store, XBox live, etc).

It's also unclear if the statistic is referring to US sales alone or world-wide.

Given the state of the US economy, it's not surprising that US sales have fallen. Non-physical methods of purchasing games are becoming more and more attractive to many gamers, in particular computer gamers, and this could also account for the change.

Regardless, as a game developer, it's an important statistic to keep an eye on. We can only hope that with the economy stabilizing, people will have money to spare for games once again!

Game Review: Evil Genius

2011-02-16T20:43:00.000-08:00

Posting every day is hard! I'll continue to attempt to post daily, but don't be surprised if I miss a day here and there.

Evil Genius
Sierra Entertainment, 2004

I've played this game in the past, but my interest in it was recently rekindled due to TotalBiscuit's coverage of the facebook game Dungeon Overlord. In Dungeon Overlord, you build up your dungeon over time, and the idea is that you check in one or two times a day to collect your accumulated resources and give new orders. It's a bit like if Farmville was actually fun. And had silly goblins. Anyway, I've been enjoying that game quite a bit but wanted something that I could play for a longer period at a time. Dungeon Overlord is often likened to Dungeon Keeper, but having downloaded the latter game and tried it out, they are very much not the same. In Dungeon Keeper you scrap your dungeon and start over at each level. One of the things I love about Dungeon Overlord is the persistence of the dungeon - you get to continually improve it over time. I suppose it speaks to my inner 10 year old, who always loved building forts.

This is about the time I remembered Evil Genius. In Evil Genius, you are a criminal mastermind and the goal of the game is to design and maintain your secret lair, while carrying out acts of infamy around the world to become the most notorious villain around. Unlike most strategy games, the emphasis is on base design rather than micro-management of troops, since you can't give direct orders to your minions. Despite being over six years old, the simple graphics are still quite pleasing, and the animations and sound show tons of polish and attention to detail. The characters are quirky and hilarious, as are the various pieces of equipment available for use in your base.

Being an older game, Evil Genius is available for purchase for a mere 10 dollars from Amazon.com. If you'd like a persistent base-design game with tons of character, I'd highly recommend you check it out!

Novel Review: The Night Angel Trilogy

2011-02-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

The Night Angel Trilogy
by Brent Weeks

I just finished the last of these books, and I have to say they are now one of my favorite series of all time. While meaty enough to be thoroughly satisfying, they aren't nearly as dense as some of the other fiction I enjoy (I'm looking at YOU, George Martin). They are light enough to re-read easily, and in fact I've already read the first one three times.

Plot

The Night Angel trilogy follows the adventures of a boy who was born an orphan in the lowest of low places - the Warrens, the disgusting, flith-covered, gang-filled and crime infested half of one of the worst cities in the world. Young Azoth wants out, and he gets his chance when the famed assassin (or, in this world's nomenclature, wetboy, since assassins don't possess magic and are considered very much inferior) Durzo Blint takes an interest in him. But Azoth gets more than he bargained for with an apprenticeship with Durzo. Can he master his considerable powers, protect the people he loves, and still manage to hold on to his humanity?

Powerful Characters

The main reason I love these books are the vibrant, stunningly realistic characters. Durzo Blint, while extremely powerful, still makes very human mistakes. He's also sort of an asshole with occasional moments of great kindness. He's not a perfect, romanticized character. Neither is Azoth, who frequently does things that just have you groaning, "no, stupid!" - but not so much that you become frustrated. Each of the characters has their own strengths and weaknesses and are put in positions where both matter. And none of them are sacrosanct - while he doesn't do so arbitrarily, Brent Weeks is not afraid to kill off his characters.

As the books progress, they manage to convey a feeling of increased epicness. Part of this is due to a tie in with characters of legend who become a greater part of the story as it goes along (but never steal the stage from the main characters). Part of this is due to the slow grow in the character cast, seeing the main characters from different angles and more of the battlefield at once. And part is due to the deft handling of prophecy, which can sometimes cause real issues in fantasy novels.

Feminism Issues

A potential feminist issue in the Night Angel books is the number of women who could be seen as mere sex objects. Momma K, while not normally a viewpoint character, is an important part of the story and is a courtesan. Vi, a rival wetboy and later an important character, accomplishes her goals through seduction and manipulation. Even Elene, described in the book as a "saint", has a perfect body under her scars. What redeemed these issues, for me, is that these women are constantly working to live above and beyond these problems. Momma K is a powerful female character and becomes a strong leader, and is unashamed of her profession. She works to better the lives of the women in the city through her power. Vi learns, through the love and support of others, to treat herself as more than just a body. And the character which sets these stereotypes on their ears is Ariel, a powerful mage with a dizzying intellect who is not pretty or even charismatic, yet still an important and strong character.

Keeping You Guessing

I love that I didn't know what was going to happen. I loved that I was able to actually be afraid for the characters because I knew the author was willing to kill them off. I loved that I still had faith that things would eventually turn out okay, but that I had no idea how that was going to happen because Weeks manages to convey so wonderfully a feeling of "well shit, everything is really going to hell now!".

Recommendation

Do yourself a favor and pick up The Way of Shadows next time you are in a bookstore. Even for people who don't normally read novels, I trust that you will enjoy it. I know it had me up all night some nights, reading just one more chapter.

Game Project Update: Creature Caretaker

2011-02-13T02:59:00.000-08:00

I intended to write yesterday but ended up sleeping almost the entire day, and when I wasn't sleeping, the power was out. Bleh. Anyway, here is my first game project update, enjoy!

Creature Caretaker

This is my first game update, so I'll give an overview of the game.

Overview

In Creature Caretaker, you play as an Elf tasked by Leaf, the Goddess of Nature, with befriending a variety of magical Creatures. You must increase the friendship between Elves and Creatures, as well as the mysterious Sprites, by charming, training, and breeding many different Creatures in order to accomplish different goals throughout the story. Story-based goals will be primarily exploration based. The player will also be able to decorate their ranch, grow food for their creatures, create items both useful and just for fun, and enter their Creatures in competitions such as beauty contests, races, and arena combats. The overall feel should be one of exploration, creation, and relaxation.

Game Type:
    Farm Simulation/Virtual Pet/Point and click adventure

Platforms:
    Windows OS, eventually to be ported to mobile phone

Key Mechanics:

Mix and match all sorts of creature to create your own bizarre monsters
Includes detailed genetic algorithm for creature breeding
Possibility and ways to encourage mutations
Crafting system that allows your creatures to help you build items and structures
Many different types of competitions to enter your creatures in
Detailed world to explore
Interesting combat system where your creature performs depending on how well it was trained

Last Week

During the last week, I got the wild Creature generation algorithm started. It does not yet take Creature species into account when generating stats, but it's a start. At the moment I'm working in a test bed wrapper program while coding the engine, later I'll work on the application itself.

NOTE: I haven't decided whether all these stats will be fully transparent to the player. It's possible they will only be able to see whether a stat is particularly high or low, and it will instead be called a "trait" - so if the creature's attitude is particularly high, it might have the "Cheerful" trait.

Originally I was using combinations of pokemon sprites for the Creatures, but during the last week I've begun working on my own sprites. Since I've never done spriting before, they are a little rough, and I may re-work them in the future.

The Elf sprite is straightforward, and doesn't have any animations yet. If and when I give her animations, I suspect it will be quite difficult due to her flowing hair and dress.

The Creatures themselves are a more complex problem. I've decided to use a modular approach, and create the body parts for the creature separately, then construct them in game. Additionally, I will use a single palette of colors on the sprites I create, then change those colors in game depending on the Creature's genes. Shown above are the components for feline type creatures, and one example of a feline creature. The blue is the primary color and the green is the secondary.

Overall I'm quite excited with the progress of the game, and wish I had more time to work on it.

Next Week

During the next week, I don't have very much time to work on this project. I'm going to set a small goal of simply getting the species-specific stat adjustments added to the wild creature generation algorithm.

Web Comic Review: The Abominable Charles Christopher

2011-02-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

It's time! According to my schedule posted yesterday, I'll be doing a Web Comic Review every Friday! Without further ado, let's dig in!

I discovered this comic very recently, and absolutely fell in love with it. It attracted my attention because it beat out Digger, one of my favorites, in the webcomic awards for best black and white comic. I came in with high expectations and the ACC did not disappoint!

Story

ACC is a meandering, whimsical tale following the misadventures of one Charles Christopher, who we as of yet don't really know much about. He appears to be some sort of yeti, and the story has hinted that he has ties to both the world of animals and that of man. He lives in the forest and seems to have a great love for the forest creatures.

Things get interesting when humans start encroaching on the forest, and CC is given a mission by what appears to be a forest god (or at least some sort of magical being) to stop them.

One of the most unique and wonderful things about this comic is that, while there is clearly a main story involving CC, the author (very) frequently diverges in side stories about different animals in the forest. This extremely non-linear way of storytelling could be frustrating for some, but these side stories and slice-of-life comics are one of the reasons I love this comic so much. The main story is frequently rather heavy and sometimes extremely sad, and the light and funny nature of the side stories helps balance that out.

Art

The art in ACC is all black and white (with graytones as well). The artist is a master of this medium, as the webcomic award suggests, and the stylized imagery is really beautiful. The animals are absolutely excellent, managing to convey strong and detailed expressions without the anthropomorphic cartoony ickyness that would kill the immersion in the story.

Status/Updates

The comic is still running, and I would expect it to continue for quite some time based on the current state of the story. It updates Wednesdays.

Recommendation

If you can handle the non-linear, meandering storytelling, this comic is one of the absolute best I have encountered. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

New Directions

2011-02-10T17:44:00.000-08:00

My goodness, it's been a while!

As anyone who frequents WoW-Pro.com will know, I've recently decided to take a break from World of Warcraft and from the WoW-Pro addon. I'm still hanging around the site and helping out here and there, but I no longer have time, money, and inclination to continue paying for WoW and therefore I am no longer able to work on the addon. University is quite tough this term, and soon I will be looking for an internship.

However, while I won't be working on WoW related projects for a while, I do want to continue this blog. Therefore, I've decided to change the focus of the blog. Instead of being specific to WoW, the blog will cover many different games, my writing and reading, my artwork, and my own game design projects. If and when I return to WoW and WoW-Pro, it will include WoW information/commentary and updates on my WoW-Pro projects.

I would like to try and produce at least a short article every day. Roughly the plan I would like to follow:

Sunday - Game Project Update. An update on my current game project, what I got done last week, and what I plan to do this week.
Monday - Novel Review. Review of one of the books I've read recently (usually in the fantasy genre).
Tuesday - Artwork. I share a piece of artwork I've done and explain in general how it was done.
Wednesday - Game Review. Review of a game I've played recently (not necessarily a new one!)
Thursday - News. Something interesting that happened during the week involving gaming/writing/art.
Friday - Web Comic Review. Review of a webcomic I've read recently.
Saturday - Editorial. Whatever the heck I want to write about in relation to the main focus of the blog.

Note: If something else occurs to me, any of these could be replaced by a different article at any time. This is just a guideline for me to follow.

Because I'm planning to update every day, some of the updates may only be one or two paragraphs long, and that's okay. I want to get myself in the habit of writing every day, to improve my writing skills and build a portfolio of work to sample from, not to mention provide lots of interesting content for you fine folks!

Cataclysm Zone Review: Southern Barrens (Horde)

2010-11-10T03:18:00.000-08:00

I recently decided to take a break from my frantic addon coding to make a video of the questing in the Southern Barrens. If people like this, I'll be making one or two more before Cata comes out, if I have time. I do plan to make more video guides of other types in the future, such as boss guides, and who knows what else!

This is a video review of the zone the Southern Barrens, Horde side. The videos will take you through the entire questing experience of the Southern Barrens, during which I discuss the general quality of the quests and touch on several of the most interesting stories that take place in this zone.

If you enjoyed the videos, help wow-pro gain publicity by rating them and subscribing to my YouTube channel!

Addon Update and Guide Recorder!

2010-10-16T23:27:00.000-07:00

The addon has been updated to v1.6.1! You can download it here, or from the addon site of your choice. Changes this time through include:

New Features

Several guide files have been updated
Tooltip added to the minimap
Sound added when you complete a step (optional, customizable)

Bug Fixes:

General cleanup of quest loop up process
Fix issue

Also: The WoW-Pro Guide Recorder has arrived! You can download it here or from your addon website of choice. It's still a bit buggy and the scroll feature doesn't seem to be fully functional with it yet, but it definitely works!

ANYONE IN THE BETA - it would be a HUGE help if you wanted to run the recorder while you play, pretty much in any zone. If it's a zone which already has a "paper" guide, it would be best if you followed the guide - but even if it doesn't have one or you don't follow it, it's still a really big help to get those guide files started.

When you are ready to quit or reload your UI, make sure you hit the save icon. This will pop up a window with an edit box. Select all, copy, and post the result here on the website. It will then also save the guide in your WTF folder, so you can open it up and work on it again. If copy/pasting the stuff from the edit box doesn't work for you, you can also send the WTF file in.

Thanks in advance, it would be awesome to have an army of WoW-Pro folks recording guides for pretty much every zone in the beta. Looking forward to it!

Coming Soon: I'll be working on a major site organizational update, along with WoW-Pro user Skumball. We're focusing on moving old or outdated guides into work-in-progress mode and getting guides up to date and in places where they will be easy to find. Additionally, I'll be improving addon documentation, the how to contribute page, and the needed guides page.

Look forward to it!

Addon Update - v1.4.0

2010-09-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

It's that time again! I just uploaded another update to the WoW-Pro leveling addon. Click here to download it!

This update is mostly bug fixes, with one nice new feature added by Silvann - coordinate based completion! This means we can have a run step which directs the user to an exact location, rather than just a general area. Thanks for the awesome contribution, Silvann!

Full version notes incoming...

New Features

Coordinate based completion. GUIDE CODERS: Use |CC| to enable coordinate completion, and |CS| for a specific coordinate sequence, both with R type steps.
Several guide files have been updated

Bug Fixes:

Minor bugs with mapping coordinates fixed
Error causing Hellfire Peninsula guide to be unplayable has been fixed
Issues in several guides caused by a lack of a QID have been fixed
Faction neutral guides should now correctly show up in the guide list
Accept steps with |PRE| tags will no longer be incorrectly skipped

Tour Guide Recorder

Pretzl recently discovered that Tekkub is still updating his Tour Guide Recorder over on WoW Interface. The Tour Guide Recorder can be used to create guide files for our addon as well, though some editing will be needed to change the coordinate style from TourGuide's version to our own. Obviously these guides will be very bare bones, with no notes and none of the awesome features we've added (such as sticky steps, ranking, and step skipping). But it can be a great way to start, especially when writing guides from scratch. Until I can put together our own in game recorder and editor, this is a great option. Thanks Pretzl, for finding this!

The World of Jiya

An update on what's going on with me - I've been even busier than expected. I'm still unpacking in my new home, and school starts at 8am tomorrow morning (ewww). Still, I expect that things will shortly settle down and I will be back to my old active self.

ADDON UPDATE - v1.3.0

2010-09-17T02:20:00.000-07:00

The WoW-Pro addon has been updated! You can download it here.

Target Button

One of the coolest new features in the addon is the addition of a target button. If the guide author includes the new |T| target tag and the name of a mob or NPC, a button will appear next to the step. If you click the button, the game will attempt to target the mob, and if found, will place a skull above their head. This will be great for hard to find quest mobs, especially those who can spawn in one of several places.

Scrolling

Scrolling is now possible in the main guide window! This is awesome for guide authors in particular, since it allows you to see all steps in a guide much more easily. Our typical user will probably never use this feature (indeed I would recommend you not to!) but for authors who need to move around in the guide and see completed steps, it's great!

Step Ranking

This is probably going to be one of the most important features in the addon, but it will need to be coded into guides before it will do anything. The idea is that you now have a sliding scale from 1-5 where you can choose the level of "completeness" you want - 5 being the most complete, 1 being the least. People with tons of heirlooms, recruit a friend bonus, rested XP, or who like to run dungeons can choose a lower rating, since they tend to level faster. People who don't have any bonuses or who are going for questing achievements can choose 5. Guide authors will rank steps based on how important they are and how easy they are to do. Quests with great rewards (XP and/or gear), which aren't too difficult, and which aren't out of the way, will be ranked 1 (most important). Quests which aren't too far out of the way but which only have mediocre awards will be ranked around 3. Quests with little reward and which take you out of your way will be ranked 5 (least important). Any inranked steps will be considered a 1.

As you can see, this will revolutionize our guide and make it much more useful to a wider variety of people. Unfortunately, we won't really be able to see the full awesomeness of this feature until it is implemented throughout a guide. Our goal is to have all of these features fully implemented in our Cataclysm guides, so you should be able to see all of them in action when the expansion is released.

Change Log

Here is a full list of the changes in this version.

New Features

Several new tags added to help make our guides even more clear! See the "guide writers" section below for details
Scrolling in the normal guide frame! You can now enable scrolling in the display options, which will also display ALL quests, including optional and skipped ones.
Target button - if the guide coder provides the name of a target mob or NPC, the guide will now show a target button next to the step which will target that mob or NPC if they are in range and place a skull above their head, so you can easily locate patrolling or otherwise hard to find mobs.
New step ranking system ranks the importance of steps! This allows you to choose how complete you would like your experience of a zone to be. If you just want to level and get out of there, and if you have heirloom gear or recruit a friend bonuses or run instances, you can set the addon to a lower level of completeness to skip unnecessary quests. NOTE: While this has been implemented in the addon, it has not yet been added to guides. This will happen gradually, but should be implemented in Cataclysm guides by the expansion's release.

Guide Writers

Several new tags and steps have been implemented:

LVL - use this tag to denote a step that completes once the user reaches that level. There is also a new step type, L, to denote a step that completes once the user levels up.
LEAD - use for lead in or breadcrumb type quests, followed by the QID for the quest it leads to. This step will be checked off if the user has already completed the quest it leads up to.
T - target tag. Follow by the name of the mob or NPC you want the user to be able to target.
r - Repair/restock step. Behaves exactly like a N step in that it must be checked off, but has a nice repair/restock icon.
P - profession tag. Follow by the name of the profession, and optionally the level of the profession required for the step. The step will only be displayed if the character has that professions at that level.
RANK - this tag should be used as much as possible from now on, and denotes how important a quest is. 1 is the most important and will NEVER be skipped. 5 is the least important. Vital quest chains with great XP and item rewards should be marked 1. Things that are neutral in rewards but which are convenient to do should be around a 3. Things that take you out of your way and aren't particularly rewarding should be marked a 5. Anything unmarked will be considered a 1. In general, a character with heirlooms and RAF should be able to get through the guide on a setting of 1, while a character with none of these bonuses and who doesn't do instances or have rested would need a setting of 5.

Bug Fixes:

Conflict with BlizzBugsSuck resolved
The |NC| noncombat tag will now only apply to C complete steps.
Several bugs due to lack of a check to make sure the QID was provided
Addon should now correctly count skipped quests toward guide completion in the progress count
General restructuring and streamlining of quest skipping and display functions should improve performance and reduce bugs

Moving Time

I will be moving this weekend, so this is it for me until next week. I hope everyone enjoys the update, and I'll be back battling bugs and working on Cataclysm guides after the weekend!

Secret New Project

2010-09-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

I've started work on a new project, inspired by Pretzl of WoW-Pro. I'll be working on it in my off time when I need a break from addon work. It's pretty small, but a fun little guide that I hope people will find amusing and useful, or at least an interesting peak into the beta for those who don't have access.

I won't tell you all exactly what it is yet, though! It will be a surprise!

Beta Buzz

I've been exploring the beta, and I have to say I can amuse myself for hours just flying around looking at the changed scenery. It's gorgeous. I've also peeked into some of the low level dungeons, and I definitely like the changes I see. Beautiful dungeon maps, quest givers at the beginning of the instance - oh to level at such a time!

My biggest disappointment this week was learning that the year's work I put into What a Long Strange Trip It's Been is essentially worthless. The Violet Proto-Drake has been downgraded to a 280% mount, and you have to buy the next level of flying just like everyone else if you want to fly at 310% speed. I think this was a bad call on Blizzard's part, basically taking away a fun toy that people worked hard to earn. I understand not applying that 310% to all our other mounts, but they should have let us keep the fast speed on the ugly purple drake, at least. Oh well.

The World of Jiya

I will be moving this Saturday, and plan to get a new version of the addon up before then. I'm also working hard on the guide recorder, but it's slow going. Hats off to Shakazahn, who found an abandoned project similar to ours which uses a guide recorder - we'll be reverse engineering it to get ideas on how to implement ours.

Future Plans

Once the craze of getting leveling guides ready to go dies down, I'd really like to purchase FRAPS and get some video editing software so I can make some video guides. I'd like to think I'd do a decent job of it. Subjects I could cover include boss fights, achievements, class advice, and who knows what else!

That's all I have for today, just wanted to give you folks an update on the goings-on for WoW-Pro and myself.

ADDON UPDATE - v1.2.0

2010-08-31T01:12:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

I just released the next update for the WoW-Pro addon! You can download it here.

Step Skipping

My favorite feature in this update is the step skipping logic. It's really going to make this addon amazing once it's incorporated into the guide files. Basically, when you skip a step, it's added to your skipped step list. Any step that's dependent on that QID will also be skipped, including complete and turn in steps. Also, any step that lists your skipped step in the |PRE| (prerequisites) tag will ALSO be added to the skip list, and skipped.

It works backwards too - if you un-skip that early quest, it will un-skip your later quests too.

Unfortunately we'll need the guide editing community to do a lot of updating to get this feature to be the best it can be, but I think ultimately it will take our guides one level above where they are now. Eventually you'll also be able to mouse over a step and see all of it's prerequisites. Pretty awesome!

For users - the default (left click) behavior of check boxes is to skip steps. Since that's what people were mostly using the manual check off for anyway, you shouldn't notice any change. If you want to manually complete a step (as opposed to skipping it), just right click instead.

Resetting the guide resets any steps that were skipped in that guide.

Smooth Resize

I want to give a shout out and thanks to silvann over on WoW-Pro.com, who solved our strange resize issue. The guide can now be manually resized smoothly and beautifully. Silvann is also working on a method for auto-completing steps when a coordinate has been reached, as well as the dungeon module for the addon. Thanks silvann, you rock!

Change Log

Here's the full list of changes and fixes in this version of the guide

New Features:

Coordinates now pull from Lightheaded if it’s installed and the coordinates aren’t provided in the guide (for interim use ONLY – all coordinates will be provided in the future)
Manual resizing is now smooth and pretty. Thanks a ton, Silvann!
When a step is completed in combat, it is checked off so that it’s clear it is completed. Update will happen when exiting combat.
Logic is now in place for step skipping and dependencies! Guide coders: Please use |PRE| followed by the prerequisite’s quest ID for any and all quests with prerequisites! Users: you can left click a step’s checkbox to skip it – right clicking marks it complete manually.
New tag for C (complete) type steps – add |NC| on the end for non-combat quests, this turns the icon from the crossed swords into a gear to represent the lack of combat in the step.
Multiple quest objectives can be added to a single step using the |QO| tag, just use a ; semicolon in between them.
Many guides have been updated. You may want to reset the guide you are on to avoid version conflicts.

Bug Fixes:

Guide window will no longer move off the screen when minimized.
Night Elf starter guide will no longer cause weird issues on initial load up
Errors should no longer be thrown when dealing with partial quest completion steps.

Future Posts

I will be gone for most of this week - I'm preparing for a big move, and will be meeting my new house mates and going through my stuff that's in storage, so I'll be unable to play, post, or respond to comments until sometime next weekend.

However, once that's done, I am going to be posting here more often with updates, musings, and cataclysm sneak peaks. Look forward to it!

Addon Release Version

2010-08-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

I'm very pleased to announce the official release of the WoW-Pro addon!

It's still may have a few hidden bugs, but it's been working great and we have over 1000 downloads combined from WoW Interface and Curse, not to mention those who have gotten it directly from WoW-Pro.

It's the hope of Jame and I that hosting this addon on the major addon websites will bring more people to WoW-Pro.We're going to be continuing to improve the addon from here on out, as well, so keep checking back in!

In other news, Jame and I may have gotten some beta keys. Lets hope it works out, we'll be in the beta soon writing some awesome guides for you all to enjoy!

Addon Alpha - Version 0.12.1 - BETA CANDIDATE

2010-07-26T19:46:00.001-07:00

Another round of bug fixes later, and it's that time again folks!

http://wiki.github.com/Jiyambi/WoW-Pro-Guides/

This time through, we had mostly bug fixes. The only new feature added is support for multiple profiles for your display settings, courtesy of Ace3

Our addon alpha files have moved to github. Everything is still available in zip format for the many folks who aren't familiar with git, but we now to have a git repository available for the programmers out there!

Feel free to make an account over on github (it's free) and leave feedback there via the awesome issue tracker. However, I'll still respond to any feedback sent via WoW-Pro, email, blog, or twitter, just as I have been

Thanks for the hard work everyone, we are almost there!