In anticipation of next week’s Guild Wars 2 Public Beta

I’ve had high hopes for GW2 even before it was announced, and finally I’ll get a chance to try it out personally! Needless to say, I’m getting fairly exited here.

Or that would be the case had I not seen videos of previous closed beta. I’m having serious doubts on the fact they removed Energy from the game. That means that for most of the classes there is only a single resource to manage(recharge). Without firsthand playing experience I am having huge difficulties believing that recharge and timing alone give as much of a challenge and joy as they did in Guild Wars 1 which also had Energy.

And what I have gathered from videos and other sources, I feel that Guild Wars 2 has been dumbed down in other areas, too. Take the Mesmers, for example. They’ve been hugely shown in the media, but I haven’t seen them doing much shutdowning. Ok, Izzy mentioned that interrupts for example were given a much smaller role than in GW1 due to latency issues, but.. They worked just fine in GW1, don’t change that. They add depth to the game and encourage varying casting order and positioning away from the interrupter. On the other hand they allow skilled players to really dominate their enemies if they know what they are doing, rewarding expertise.

But that gets us to another key aspect: positioning. The dev team has been pretty exited about it’s importance and told that it would have a huge impact on battles. I’m not sure if they have been making it an even bigger mechanic as time has passed, but earlier they were very careful not to introduce [cheap] skills that affect position or movement, but recently I’ve seen more skills doing just that. It will be interesting to see what is the reality here.

Moving on to bigger stuff: the first M in MMO. Guild Wars 1 can be said to be only a MO, but now that Guild Wars 2 is here it gets Massive. The devs have faced an enormous challenge in transforming GW1 to a massively playable state. I have played some tiny amounts of WoW, and was quite pleased with the massive aspect in it, world felt like a much more lively place when another player could be seen doing the same things as you were etc etc. The massive aspect is one of the biggest things I am looking forward to experiencing, but GW1 mechanics might have difficulty directly translating  to a scale like this. There lies the danger of dumbing everything down to a point where old players start to feel uncomfortable about the core mechanics. Widest possible audience is sometimes not what you want.

But will Guild Wars 2 be Guild Wars 2, or just a MMO set in Guild Wars universe? If you ask me, the game mechanics are almost as important as story and setting. Next week will answer so many questions.

Still waiting for Raspberry Pi

This wait is killing me. All I want is a nice little computer running quietly on my desk/ceiling/wall/whatever with all kinds of specialized sw/hw.

• I want my very own shell.
• I want a portable thin client.
• I want remote controlled lighting.
• I want Nginx and Stackless Python.
• I want a battery backup using 18650s or capacitors.
• I want to use those temperature sensors I have in my drawer!

But as far as I know my luck, there'll be some kind of obstacle preventing me from acquiring this wonderful piece of equipment, or at least greatly hinder my plans. Still missing a video adapter, a quality power source and a memory card. Oh, and my network infrastructure is bit lacking, too.. but on that some other post.

Of the importance of simplified web page system

The last few months I've been more or less actively doing site&stuff for lumicraft.fi, I've realized that the way the site can be edited has a huge impact on the amount of edits one does. (sürprise..)

Back in dea.fi and lannukka.fi for example, LCS is being used, and they are quite 'repulsive' to edit. First logging in and then using that anemic, but still syntax hilighted text area to do the edit embedded HTML(not the whole page, only the content area) and then publish the edit and have the revision show up in the changelog. But what if you made a typo? New edit, new changelog entry :(

But on lumicraft I went back to a simpler system, there's just a directory containing normal text files with WikiCreole inside. Beautiful and fast-to-type syntax. Nothing fancy required. Just edit the file and voilà!

Of course I could have continued to just use HTML, then it would have been only a matter of include(), but seems I can't get around experimenting :p

Ok, I must admit. There is no way to keep track of changes to see how the site has evolved. No way to notify people that an edit has been made. Of course a cronjob could be made to diff the files etc, but it's just kludgy. Although a daemon came to my mind, listening to file change events and acting appropriately. Might actually work, but still bit of a kludge.

But the point: as transparency increases in editing, so does productivity.

Global/Finnish game jam aftermath, Sommerkopter

Well, that was interesting. As you might know, the event was about writing a game in 48 hours. I must say that it is not too much.

I was in a team consisting of me and five older students. Felt bit out of my league, considering we had decided to use C++, a language I had only a little experience in.

But everything exploded better than exceptions! This Game Jam was first real coding project for me involving other developers, and I learned much about working as a team. First of all, it was incredible to be able to work with like-minded people. People who actually also knew how to code, and with this particular language even better than me. When coding my part of the game(terrain generation), there was few particular challenges with memory management and syntax, but now I could verbally ask for help! I might not have been very productive, but at least learned a lot.

And what was wildly different from coding by myself, I could actually concentrate on only part of the project. No need to code everything by myself. Not even the graphics, those were made by the two 'highly skilled' artists in our team.

But actually, in the end there was only two other people in our team coding. Other two were on the graphics dept and one had to fight with our version control system for the whole weekend. But those two other coders, they made the bulk of the code needed to make this happen, I thank thee.

But I thank the whole team also, we all made this weekend amazing. I had great fun brainstorming and socializing with you (me socializing, o.o). And we actually created something very nice, didn't we? Something that actually might appear again in the future. (winkwink)

So I present you Sommerkopter: Global Game Jam project page and a gameplay video! A game where your objective will be flying logs from hills to a collection area, with a helicopter. Heli-logging at it's best.

And for the future: if you, the reader, have a chance to participate next year, please help yourself and do so. It will be fun.

Imported texts from an Old blog

Stumbled upon some blog texts I had written during 2006-2007 to a custom blogging-software. Decided to import them here. Mostly Finnish texts, sorry. Just couldn't let them lie forgotten. Decided not to import comments, if that is even possible. Although there was more of them than here..

But it was bit of a fight, had to figure out the format used by blogger(it is atom extended with some custom fields) and generate that kind of file from my flatfile-db. Had to copy-paste attributes to feed, add generator-tag and the category kind#post -element to entries. That did it, and blogger imported my XML without a hitch.

Message from the distant land of real life

While we're on it, let's publish another one, shall we.

I moved to Lappeenranta about a month ago to begin my studies of Computer Science in Lappeenranta University of Technology, lut. A beautiful and lively city this is, at least at summer. Pity it's either 7km of walking or 3.40€ by bus per side to get to the city center.

The University is near, about 1.5km, only five minutes by bike. It's a nice, big building complex that has expanded as years have gone by. Everything can be accessed without going outside, including a nice library, couple of restaurants/lunchplaces, a cafeteria, guild hall(cluser.fi) and of course all auditoriums and labs(for example, room full of remotely accessible i7-2600, 8GB desktops).

And the building is just amazing, especially the newer areas sculpted with concrete, iron and glass. Just stunning, you standing there, inside in your warm hi-tech fortress and wild nature is just few inches away on the other side of the glass(fyi, I've lived surrounded by nature my whole life). It must be experienced, but still I really should snap some photos someday.

An apartment was also required, so one was acquired. Well ok, it's in an apartment building, and shared with another person, but still quite ok. Moving also meant gathering a s***load of more or less useful stuff. Tried to document it all, but had to stop halfway through, just couldn't keep up with every single item. This move all also meant I had to learn how to live by myself; having to cook, clean and do laundry, all while studying. As hard as it is to confess, conscription really made it all easier(but it itself was far from easy.. just a reminder). Nevertheless, I assure that time available to hobbies has not diminished, or at least not yet.

Studying is quite ok, although bit hard at first getting used to again, having had break of about 1.5 years. Especially homework is a thing that keeps bugging me. Oh, and of course the math course has resulted in fair bit of cursing. One third of course done, and already we've gone through three years worth of extended gymnasium mathematics..

And this all reminded me how bad my English actually is..

Quick look at Windows 8

Installed Windows 8 Developer Preview to a VM few hours ago, what follows is a cluttered list of visual observations. Sorry, did my best. Read it if you still want.

• Integrates your user account to Windows live account by default.
• Task manager has undergone some major changes. Sure it's more sleek, but I kind of miss the old one..
• Same applies to most default applications. Everything has been stripped down in search of cleaner UI. Like metro, too clean.
• Sending files to trash doesn't need a confirmation. Some other things have also been streamlined, can't remember now.
• Components like .NET framework are installed by a wizard.
• Much like Windows 7, at least more than 7 was like Vista.

And another list just for you, metro. Because you are so special..

• UI suddenly lost all roundings with the new metro look.
• Everything is so rectangular, clean, but maybe too clean.
• Gadgets are by default not enabled in favor of metro.
• Metro applications can't be illegitimately closed! They end up cluttering alt-tab list.
• Things like control panel are really hard to find at first.
• Many things really are touch-centric. Mouse support on some of them is broken.
• Usability is, well.. either good or bad.
• Main screen looks great, nice thing to peek and see all little bits of information.
• Individual apps(or whatever) are 'too fullscreen' and lack small features that could be found on all mouse/keyboard driven apps.

Simoista asiaa

Vappu lähestyy, mutta asepalveluksen painaessa päälle toukokuun pituista kinkkua, on siman nauttimista aikaistettava. Kotisimaa ei ole vielä soveliasta tehdä, joten seuraa kaupallisen siman maistelua:

"Aito juhlasima", Hyvä väri, voisi olla tosin vieläkin sakeampi. Maku, mutta etenkin haju keinotekoinen. Alkumaku simaisa, tosin tuo mieleen luumun, pitkä jälkimaku turhan imelä. Maku menee helposti tukkoon juoman vaahdotessa, suosittelen pieniä siemauksia ja ei liian harvaa annostelua. Kyseessä voisi olla keskinkertainen juoma, mutta ikävä kyllä vaadittu annostelutiheys ei kuulu siman juomiseen. Näillä ominaisuuksilla arvosanaksi tulee vain välttävä.

Marli "suomen suosituin sima", Siiderimäisen vaalea, hapokas. Rusinainen maku, kuten simassa kuuluu olla. Jälkimaku lyhyt ja mieto, hieman makea, sopiva. Perusasiat ovat kunnossa, joten arvosana voisi olla jopa hyvä. Kyllä tätä juo ihan mielellään, mutta kuitenkin jotain jää puuttumaan. En oikein osaa sanoa mitä, mutta ei kotisiman voittanutta?

Conscription

There's no avoiding, is there? Might be more silent here than usual(as hard as it is to be more silent), or not. I'm sure we'll all be surprised in the end.

Date format

Seems that I had forgotten to change the display language of this blog from Finnish to English. Fixed.

I also changed the date format to not include month name, but my preferred format(dd.mm.yyyy) can not be used if the language is English, so had to edit layout's code to pass the date to a javascript function for processing... Thanks blogger!