Mana…
If you played any kind of RPG over the past let’s say 20 years or so … you know this word. Mana, represent’s the RPG’s world of resource management.
Resource management is a part of almost every RPG game that I’ve played … and it’s part of what makes them fun, at least in my mind. As there’s a tactical choice … do you use an item now, or save it for later.
Table Top
Table top games typically use simple systems for resource management, as player’s have to keep track of them usually by hand (although, there are electronic aids now available)
Spells per day: The system used by D&D 3.5/D20. Basically, you get X spells per day. Use them how you will. Ultimately the system isn’t very forgiving, and tends to cause a lot of ‘pain’ early in the game, since you start with very little spells per day.
Power Suite: The power suite system used by SW: Saga Edition, is nice means to have plenty of abilities to fight with. However, it seems like things are almost available too often. Even more so when you start to add in ways to ‘reclaim’ used powers.
Daily, Encounter, and At Will: The power system used by D&D 4.0, is a nice mix between the two above. It allows the ability to be scaled to it’s usage. Daily powers are very strong, while at will powers are fairly weak… but usable all the time, as many times as you want. A nice departure from the past; given that all classes function off this system.
Mana / Spell points: There’s a few systems out there that function on a numeric pool, each spell you cast draws from this pool. The more powerful the spell, the more it consumes. The pool is almost always refreshed daily.
Enhancement points: Sort of like the above, but it still allows you to use your abilities when the pool is depleted. Instead of using the pool to use the power, you use the pool to augment the power. (and in turn increase the effectiveness of an ability)
MMORPGs
Mana: Pretty much the gold standard. Mana is a large pool that regenerates very slowly when on it’s own. (In some cases, not at all in the default state).
Energy (Wow) / Action Points (WAR) : These two function similarly, they are both pretty small pools that start at full and refill quickly. Since the refill rate for the most part is constant, it allows for a smooth continual ability usage.
Rage (Wow): A small pool that starts empty and fills quickly, it’s basically the inverse of mana. While, it starts out empty it fills quickly and is used just as quickly.
‘Dual’ Resources: Recently, a trend of managing two resources has come about in a few games. Mostly WoW and WAR, you use one resource for one set of abilities, while using a second resource for a second set. It’s common for one resource to add the other.
Anyways, getting back to my point … each system has it’s up sides and it’s downsides. I see a lot of ’advantages’ to MMOs employing a dual resource system (one ‘energy’ based, one ‘rage’ based), specifically for hybrids… However, I’m not sure the min/max would would take that too well.
As far as Table top gaming goes, I’m not too sure which i really prefer; I only know I hate the whole ‘daily’ refresh of abilities with the whole spells per day thing.
Posted in: Games, Programming, World of Warcraft
Now that you’re mind’s in the gutter allow me to clarify, I mean sex as in gender.
I’ve been playing roleplaying, both in MMORPGs, and Table top. Trend’s that started off in one (MMO) eventually made their way to the other.
In WoW I’ve started making female characters around 4 years. My first character a human male warrior … looked like, well a guy with downs syndrome.
So my second character, a female mage named Alexiia turned into my prominent character. Since that point there’s been a slew of female character’s across my MMO accounts. As I tend to recycle characters that I enjoy … there’s been 3 Alexiias, 3 Elivels, and 2 Macaias, in MMORPGs.
Now recently, the character’s I enjoy in MMO RPGs have traversed into my Table Top gaming.
Elivel made an appearance in our D&D game, as a Bisexual Paladin getting stalked by a former fiancé. My girlfriend playing her lesbian lover made for many a memorable look from our fellow gamers. Defiantly one of my more memorable characters, one encounter where her partner in adventently forced her into confronting the ex-fiancé… ending with her bribing him not to kill either of them.
Macaia, made a slightly less memorable appearance in our short lived rifts game. Where she was … in short, a genetically engineered angel.
Finally, we have Alex who’s now appearing in our star wars campaign as a jedi.
Upon unveiling the character, one of our player’s actually asked me when the last time I played a male character. I of course noted that Caylil, my former star wars character (for our KotOR campaign) was male.
I can’t help but think MMORPGs have ‘tainted’ my table top game. Maybe tainted is a strong word, but it seems like the personalities that I tend to play in our table top games come from the personalities I develop in MMO games. Take for example, a DnD character from over a year ago … Aravel (who was a male elf), which is largely based on Elivel. In the end the personalities that I created in the MMO world, were … or actually are now becoming my Table top characters.
In the end, I play what I enjoy. I spend a good portion of my idle time in MMORPGs, thinking of background and stories for my characters… so the character’s are already well developed (and loved). It makes sense to use part or all of what I come up with in MMOs.
As far as playing female characters goes… when I GM, I’ve got to step in the shoes of all kinds of NPCs. SO I guess I don’t really ’see’ the stigma of playing a female character. In fairness, it also helps that our normal GM was the first to step over that threshold.
Anyways, I’m really excited to see how my Jedi Alex turns out.
I doubt she’ll turn into the assassin-mage that my WoW character turned into … I also doubt people will attempt to seduce her, as often … if ever. (Oh you E-RPers … go find yourself a real girlfriend.)
Posted in: Creative Writing, Roleplaying
Tags: Alex(iia), Eli(vel), Macaia
Internet Explorer version 6, has had a good long life. However, it’s more often then not a thorn in your average web developer’s side. Well, to be more precise it’s actually Microsoft, and their ‘I do what I want’ attitude. However, I’ll avoid having that rant at this time.
Back in it’s day, IE6 was a wonderful thing. However, in it’s day … it was competing with the likes of Netscape. Google was still the little search engine that could, cloud computing was a pipe dream, the word AJAX didn’t exist… and flash was even more poorly used then it is today. To make a long story short, it was the age of server side scripting… Javascript was a mere ‘toy’ language that allowed you to do things that inspired you’re date… but didn’t have any real usefulness.
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit … I’m prone to hyperbole to make a point; my point in this case is that IE6 lived in a different age.
Today’s age is really a hybrid age. Today’s web applications (thanks to HTML5) will be tommorrow’s desktop applications. Combing the power of server side scripting, with client side scripting.
Anyways, back to IE6. It’s been a thorn in a lot of people’s sides for a long time… Thankfully one that will hopefully soon be dieing off. Unfortunately the death of IE6, will have some collateral damage … in the form of windows XP.
What started with DirectX 10, is now slowly becoming a standard… as Internet Explorer 9, will not support Windows XP.
Of course, if you wish to run XP and have yourself a nice browsing experience … there’s still Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.
In order to use hardware acceleration, Microsoft had to tap into DirectX’s 2D libraries (that got added with DirectX 10). Windows 7 (and subsequently Windows Vista) are at least on paper the future of desktop PCs.
So, if killing IE6 also requires killing windows XP… I bid the farewell friend.
We had a good run, but well … your grand daughter’s seduced me with 64 bit and shinny interfaces.
Posted in: Programming, There's No Box
Tags: HTML5, IE6
I was reading coding horror, and this article jumped out at me. Partially, because it was on the first page … but partially because it confused me.
I didn’t really understand how people could apply for a job as a programmer, and not know enough about programming to answer simple questions.
I can’t argue with what these people say, as I’ve never really been on the other side of that interview table. I honestly prefer it that way… but it certainly would explain some of the people that I’ve got running around in my ‘technology’ isle at work. Of the 15 or so of us with ‘programmer’ in our title, only 3 to 4 of us have the skill set to support it.
I’ve been thinking over the past 24 hours or so … about what I’ve often refered to as the ‘art’ part of programming. The part of programming that you can’t seem to pick up from a weekend course, or a book.
What I’ve boiled it down to is Software Engineering, the ‘art’ of programming is the engineering part the brain that most ‘good’ programmers have. A good engineer needs to understand everything about what he does; to him there is no ‘black box’ concept.
The same is true with programmers, in a sense. Some people are content to plug code into an IDE, check the results and be done.
Others, strive to understand all the little bits that make the thing work. Those of us who understand all the little wheels working on the inside have the gift of vision, a gift that our less motived counterparts don’t have.
Want to know why your web server is running slow on that cloud based cluser server you’re paying $100 a month for. I can tell you, but unless you know how web servers, memory management, and the scripting language of your choice function … your eyes may glaze over.
I often find myself in work; correcting mistakes and fixing errors. For the longest time, I just assumed that I was that much smarter then everyone else… because they simply didn’t get ‘it’. Instead, it seems I’ve got that natural engineer mindset.
In the end, I’m happy with this. To the point, I’m thinking I’ll use the title ‘Software Engineer’ for my There’s No Box buisness cards… whenever we get around to making them.
Posted in: Programming, There's No Box
Tags: Software Engineer, The 'Art' of Programming
‘Trust me, I’ve got a plan… when the lights go up, you’ll understand.’ Three Day’s Grace, Pain
It’s been quite a weekend; for those who don’t know … my brain is analytical. Overly so, to the point that it can -easly- get me in trouble.
Just for an example, my DM asked me a simple question … how much damage would a 20 lb object being dropped 50 feet do in the ‘d20 world’.
Well first i figured out, how much force (in newtons) a 20lb bag would generate being dropped 50 ft. I then looked for a record of how many newtons a boxer’s punch averages. Compared the newtons, and gave an answer. (along with all the math)
In the end, it deals 1D8 damage.
Anyway, that’s getting away from my point.
My true point, is the my girlfriend, has a new job. Back at the point of discussion … she was giving me the details … and like my brain usually does, it takes the facts and puts together a picture… and that picture honestly scared the crap out of me, on a couple levels.
Fact 1: ’average’ work week is around 45 hours, 40 hours of work, 5 hours of learning.
Fact 2: The commute forces her to go either though, or around philly. 1 hour, is by far the shortest commute she’ll see.
Fact 3: ’most’ of her coworkers come in around 10.
My Brain: 45 Hours a week, is 9 hours a day (10 if they don’t include a lunch hour); Starting at 10, that’s either 10-8 or 10-7. This will turn our week life into simply eating dinner together. Combine this with the fact she’s also tacking Japanese classes on Saturday. That puts the time I spend with her down to Sunday alone.
Overall, it’s got me stuck between a rock and a hard place… since they would be the conditions for 6 months. (The company said they’d allow remote working after 6 months.)
A part of this was over reaction on my part no doubt; another part of this was … she had a nice 3 hour talk with these people … and she gave me a 5 minute summery complete with the sample numbers. So while, she was comfortable with the job because of the subtle tones of that 3 hour conversation… I was flipping out inside with the details from the 5 minute summery.
In the end the power of communication won. Honestly this is the first time, I’ve ever felt ‘greedy’ in our relationship. I’m usually very supportive in whatever she wants to do, we don’t always agree on everything. Take the Japanese for example; I wanted her to pursue it… but I simple though there might have been a better way then she proposed. In the end, we talked about it and I convinced her that taking trial classes first to see if the class she wanted to join was too far advanced, or too far behind. Everyone was happier for it, and it worked out well.
But this time was different; I felt selfish and greedy … things that I very much despise.
I wanted to simply be happy and supportive; like I felt I should have been… but I couldn’t.
In the end, everything turned out okay.
After all, it’s foolish of me to think that she can’t see though me like glass. After all, I can do the same to her.
Anyways, this is a lesson I hope I don’t have to repeat.
Posted in: Personal Stuff
Tags: Conflict, New Job, Work
Well, I guess a good place to start any blog would be about who I am, and why you should actually listen to me.
Who am I?
I’m Bill. Well really that’s just a name, not who I am.
I’m a computer programmer by profession, but it’s more then a job for me. It’s a passion … has been for nearly as long as I can remember. It’s such a passion that I went ahead and created a web development company with my girlfriend.
She’s the make it pretty type of geek, I’m the make it work type of geek. So it works out really well. And yes, she’s awesome.
In my spare time, I enjoy things such as video games, role-playing (before you get any ideas… the kind of role-playing that involves dice).
But really, that’s just what I do … not who I am.
I drive a VW GTI … just got it… and I love it.
But once again, that’s what I drive, not who I am.
In the end I’m not really a Name, a Job or a Car.
… and no I’m not a philosophy major… although I did room with one in college.
I guess the best way to put it … is I am … me. However, you like to define people … and whatever labels you like to stick on them is fine with me. I’m happy being ‘Bill’, ‘That smart ass programmer’, ‘a geek’, or ‘the guy who drives that GTI’.
So take your pick.
Why you should listen to me.
I know you’ll find this one shocking … but you SHOULDN’T.
I’m not really an expert by any means. Over time, I’ve realized that far too many people take the words written on web sites like this … as the gospel truth. And well, it’s often the case that amateur authors (myself included) have a really hard time separating their opinions from facts.
Information relayed here … is mostly my own thoughts, feelings, and research.
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: Intro
