Once there was a game called UFO: Enemy Unknown. A turnbased game that saw you take a small squad of soldiers to battle a host of nasty aliens. It was so good I played just the demo over and over again until finally I could buy the full game.

Brilliant... well up to a point. For all its tactical brilliance, too many battles ended in you having to hunt down a final missing alien all over the place. It also suffered from that typical turnbased syndrome that many real world tactics just don't happen in a turn-based world.

Enemy of the Deep put the action below sea level, and while good was just more of the same.

Then came X-Com: Apocalypse. (It changed the name to appease the unwashed masses in the colonies) and it was good... kinda.

It added a realtime element, rather then each soldier on the field being given their own turn, you would pause the game, give orders to your squad and then resume watching your soldiers carry out your orders, or at least attempt to do so.

It gave turn-based gaming what it never had before, real firefights. For the first time your heavy machine gunner really was laying down a blanket of fire to cover your advancing troops, for the first time your soldiers really dived out of the way of incoming fire rather then just stand there and take it because it wasn't their turn.

The game also added multiple factions, and many other goodies but sadly it was also a game from those days when graphics just did not scale and today the game looks truly horrible.

Cue a void of many years before we got our next change to go kick alien but tactically.

Lots has been tried and it all failed, we had turn-based that seemed to increase the endless waiting of the orignal and real-time that failed to do what Apocalypse did.

To be clear, both turn-based AND realtime have their problems.

• Turn-based suffers from a lack of realism, machine gunners provide covering fire, they do NOT wait their turn to squeeze of a quick burst. Soldiers react to being shot at and don't just stand there. It quickly becomes micro-management if you have to drag your squad through endless turns just to travel across the map.
• Realtime needs player AI, your soldiers need to do more then just execute the last command. This means they should be able to engage the enemy on their own, take cover if under fire, switch equipment as needed, switch targets as needed etc etc. Without this it can become even more a case of micro management then the turnbased game.

  Apocalypse did it nearly all right. A soldier on their own would attack any enemy, switch to the most dangerous one, take cover behind anything close if needed. This made for some of the most intresting battles I ever seen in a computer game.

  So what is needed to make a true semi-realtime UFO/X-Com sequel.

  You are the commander, selected from thousands of other ordinary human beings by the X-com project (the original games were just a training program) you have been chosen to be the tactical brain behind a program setup to deal with the increasing numbers of alien sightings.

  The first part of the game functions as the tutorial and sees you being asked to deal with several early missions involving events that may be related to the increased number of sightings, including investigating several human organisations.

  The X-com organisation has you making the tactical decisions with overall strategic orders coming from the various real world organisations, your task is to keep your real agenda (keeping the world out of alien control) with appeasing those who fund your program. Not all of them share the same goal, or even your goal.

  Early on their is also demand that you keep your actions as secretive as possible for risk of finding to many opposed to you.

  In the beginning you find yourselve equipped with real world weapons for your combat missions. Resources are limited but realistic, you are outfitted as a small special forces team could be expected to be. You got high quality equipment, basics in ready supply (No special forces unit in the real world needs to hustle for bullets) but limited in scope. Your currency for improving this is NOT just money but also goodwill with various real world organisations, if the US likes you, expect a carrier force to be assigned to your unit, if the USSR likes you, you may get advanced air transport capabilities, the Israeli's like you, you get advanced intelligence, the arabs supply more money then you could hope to spend, etc etc.

  Offcourse their are counters to this as well, not everyone will like you to be friendly with their enemy, especially if they perceive your actions to harm them.

  Before a mission becomes available your job is to insruct your scientists to research what tech you find most desirable, instruct engineers to use this research to augment your gear and to train your soldiers in prepration for the next mission.

  Your soldiers are an entire segment of management on their own, soldiers who are injured need to heal BUT can also spend time studying during that (slows the healing somewhat but wastes less time) Soldiers on intensive training are not available for combat until finished while on-site study might see them ready in a couple of hours. Ready teams can be instantly deployed, but the constant pressure wears them out.

  Then there is the question of deployment, your main base has the best facilities but makes it hard to respond quickly to events in remote corners of the world.

  When an mission occurs your first decision will be to decide to respond or not. Make an attack to stop an alien take over of the vatican and you might just give youreselve a load of bad press, while a similar assault on the pentagon (if the US is friendly to you) might be far more acceptable. (Hush it up as a terrorist strike)

  Then comes the question of what units will respond and how long you will wait before the attack will commence. Do you take the small elite team and drop them by parachute, use local agents, take the time to get a proper force ready. An option is also to attack with the first squad to arrive, then as combat takes place reinforcements could arrive.

  Further tactical decisions are what back up forces to deploy, Evac choppers, gun-ships, civilian rescue teams.

  The combat area itself is fairly large to accomadate real world tactics and the use of light support vehicles, they should also be random like the original X-com games. Combat starts with you having to insert your forces, this changes by the mode of transportation. Parachute drop, helicopter insertion or just driving in from a corner of the map.

  The insertion is for the first time a real part of the battle, as the parachute drop will see your forces scattered over the map and a helicopter drop gives you the firepower of the chopper to clear the landing area.

  Once your troops are on the ground they form themselves into small squads as dictated by their role, machine gunner team, mortar team, sniper duo etc etc.

  Typically a mission will see you first move your combat units (not individual soldiers) to secure the drop zone, then proceed with the mission objective. Units are given directions of were to go, and how to get there, typically you want to move as fast as possible until combat starts. The units however will use their OWN AI to execute their orders and change them as needed. A soldier being told to run down a corridor will STOP and open fire if an enemy appears. Soldiers receiving fire will not slowly walk to their destination, they will either speed up returning fire on the move if possible, or crouch down and return fire or try to get to their destination under cover.

  Not all units are combat units and for larger missions you mind find medical forces and other support units who need to be escorted and protected.

So today I wondered what it is about Apple, that they generate buzz when others dont. For a while, I was modded up, and had my karma back and was engaged in a little discussion about it. For a moment, it was like the old days - back when /. was a tech discussion site.

Then someone decided I wasn't toeing the line - I guess they felt I was criticizing Apple (I wasnt, but who cares, right?). Suddenly, not only the original post, but everything in my recent posting history is -1.

So, who can do that but the editors? I don't know, I don't care.

I know this is a paid Apple astroturfing site.

It just used to be better.

Not a complaint - I much prefer trolling bucketcunt jackasses than I do discussing technology with geeks.

Oh well, even with terrible karma I can piss you off twice a day.

And all it takes is a simple "apple sucks". And it enrages and infuriates you right to your brittle little bones, doesn't it? Your skin isn't thick enough to allow criticizm of your favorite company, is it? I can point out features Zune has that iPod doesnt, you will foam at the mouth. If I point out features my Treo has that the iPhone doesnt, you will shake with rage.

Well, live in fantasy land. Yeah, iPhone will revolutionize life what with its ability to make you buy more of Steve Jobs DRM bullshit. Maybe one day they'll even be a mainstream player! Hooray.

You keep dreaming, I'll keep wasting your mod points and pissing you off.

Jade Empire for the PC has once again caused me to question the way RPG's handle alignment. In the game you have two path's. Open palm and closed fist, with the ingame explenation being that neither are by themselves good or evil. That is all very nice but during the game itself that is never realized. Open palm is the nice hero, defender of the weak. The closed fist follower is little more then a pathetic jerk.

It is all the sadder because the main antagonist is such a true work of pure evil while he appears to be an open palm character for the main part of the game.

Master li, the grand strategists at first seems to be the one who opposes his evil brothers path, saving your own live and given you a home as well as countless other students, as well as siding with you against the bully Gao the Lesser.

When his true intentions are revealed this show that all his kindness was no more then acts to serve his own goals. True evil, BUT structured, sensible evil. Not the complete and utter madman/jerk/psycho your own closed fist options make you out to be. Follow the closed fist and not once do you even come close to his kind of grand evil. You will just be petty and small minded. Bah.

It ain't much better if you play a good character. You have to be polite! Who says politeness == good?

Actions count, not words.

The problem is with the limited amount of reactions you can show. One quest involves a mother and daughter you first meet leaving a town fallen upon hard times. You can warn them about slavers in the woods but they leave regardless. Later you find them captured, the daughter in the process of being broken for he new master.

What options could there be?

• NOT MY PROBLEM. Simple, what do I care about these people. Or is it? After all I warned them, told them to stay in town, a town I saved by the way so the problems they were fleeing went away. They not only did not listen to me, but also put no faith in me. So we have two decisions. One is, that I look out for number one and do not involve myself in things that don't affect me. (problem with this path is that it would make an amazingly short game "villain threathens the kindom", "not my problem" THE END). The other is that I did my part, if they will not listen they deserve what they get.
• The path of greater profit. What decission will gain me the most money. The slaver? The mother and daughter pair? Killing them all?
• The open palm/good path. Free the slaves, sure they remain weak because of it, because every wich way they turned, someone is willing to get them out of the effects of their own bad choices but hey, that is what being a good guy is all about. NWN2 has this to an extreme were you keep rescuing the same couple. BUT should I just free the slaves OR kill the slaver as well?
• The closed fist path. Have the slave girl kill her slaver. Freedom comes to those who are willing to fight for it. BUT again this can be deeper, do I step in if the fights goes the wrong way? After all there is a difference between being willing to fight for your freedom and actually being capable to do so. God helps those who help themselves BUT that doesn't mean you can't give a hand. Would letting the fight be fair, in wich case a large adult male slaver would probably win over a small young girl be fair?

Ah decissions. And what of the after effects. Would helping them out now, just lead them to get into yet more trouble later on? What effect has killing her slaver have on a young girl? It could make her strong, tell her that you can affect your own destiny and make into a person who will fight for justice and freedom. It could also tell her that everything can be yours at the point of a sword.

No wonder CRPG's take the easy path of just giving the player two simple choices.

A common complaint about current MMORPG's is that they reward time spent in game and not skill. There is an essential truth in this but the question has to be asked what can be done about this.

An often heard suggestion, especially from the online FPS crowd is to raise the amount of twitch so that their FPS skills can finally be used in these types of games.

It sounds sensible but their is a fundemental flaw with this reasoning. Basic online FPS games already have a hell of time of handling a small group of players. Just how are you going to provide a lag free enviroment for thousands of players? Current games already have enoug difficulty with lag and warping, would you really want to play a game like this if twitch type skills were essential?

The problems of twitch gaming are already self evident in current games. The "they are in the walls" bugs from everquest 2 and the "cannot see enemy" bugs from WoW. These are simply the result of trying to create a massive free form 3D world.

What I mean by this is that you and the AI can essentially move anywhere you want except were the collesion detection comes into effect to simulate walls. So, the game frequently gets it wrong because movement code and the collesion code are not always in sync.

So what would happen to a MMORPG that does away with this free form 3D and instead attempts a different approach.

Say a game world that is presented similar to games like Jagged Alliance and X-Com: Apocalypse.

I name the last one especially because it is semi-realtime. Imagine these games but with you in control of a single character.

Rather then directly controling the movement of your avatar you select her destination and the AI then attempts to move there. Just for movement alone this gets rid of a shitload of problems.

First there is lag affecting rendering. Your computer can easily compute the path and then execute it, it would only have to send the requested destination to the server. The server offcourse performs the same calculations and updates it world data accordingly. ONLY if an error is detected, because the client has made an error in its calculations for whatever reason, does the server need to send the proper path calculation to the client. In theory, this would save a shitload of data transmission and in high lag situation still allow the player to move smoothly as long as nothing is in his path.

There is another advantage, with no need to hold down the walk key AND steer with the mouse at the same time, the player is free to do other things, like type in the chatbox.

But an even simpler result is this. All of sudden Jagged Alliance style interactions with the enviroment become possible. Players leap or climb over fences, pull themselves up ledges or swing down from lampposts.

In combat this too has an advantege. Gone would be the days of two 3D characters standing meters apart going through their unconncected animations. Instead you would finally be able to line the avatars up and have proper interaction going on. No more standing in the middle of that huge dragon, no more swinging widely over the head of a dwarf yet still doing damage.

I just tried upgrading to Ubuntu Linux 7.4 Fiesty Fawn beta 1 last night. I started the update-manager -c to chose to upgrade online. I had one little problem ....

Anne turned off the lightswitch where teh laptop was plugged in during the upgrade. :-( So my laptop is half 6.10 and half 7.4.

Nervously, I turned on the laptop expecting it to not even boot up. Ubuntu booted up and I got a message saying I have 1022 updates available. I clicked on it and I got a message saying my version of Ubuntu linux is downgrading back to 6.10 and is fixing itself! Sweet!

In Windows if you had a partial upgrade the whole system would have blue screened. Ubuntu Linux will heal itself back to the original.

Anyway I think Ubuntu Linux is the best operating system ever made and I think average Joes can already use it. Its so easy to use and Linux should have been this easy years ago.

What current MMORPG's share is that you start the game as a low level player, gain XP, level up and reach the top. Getting there is a long trek, wich some may never complete but when you arrive then that is it. Just sit there, re-do the same grind over and over with only the top level content offering any kind of challenge and wait for an expansion to raise the level limit.

So what could change this, and why should it be changed?

Death could change it and for the same reasons it exists in real life, to kill of the grumpie oldies and make room for a fresh new generation.

People find it odd that I run ubuntu Linux on this laptop but my argument is why run Windows?

Why do I need to use what everyone else uses from a convicted monopolist? I don't want to be different. When I run Windows I feel its Microsofts computer and not mine. Its that simple. I just want to run something that does not suck goatballs and is expensive. Sure Windows is no ok I guess but some of microsofts products such as MS Word I can not stand. For programming Linux suites my need and I dont have to wrestle with restore disks that no longer work.

However I am going to have to switch back to Windows again on my notebook.

The cell phone developer kit software for Java requires windows and its odd that Sun Microsystems would bother with a win32 only port of their mobility toolkit. Sun hates Microsoft with a passion and java supposed to run on many different platforms.

Well I suppose it may not be too bad. I heard postgresql and mysql now have native windows support where Linux is no longer needed.

Oh and I just applied for a new entry level web designer position in a windows only shop where frontpage and IIS skills are admired. Hmmm

Well compaq was cheap and did not give me the restore cd so I will have to see what I can do to order another one in the meantime.

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yes, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

I got reminded of this biblical quote by an X-Files episode. You can view the many translations yourself. Stewardship rather than dominance seems to have been forgotten by many modern American worshipers of the book. If you're sitting there saying "not me", then keep the quote in your conscience and truly ask yourself when the last stewardly act you undertook was. Then think of how often you are stewardly. I bet it's not as often as you would hope.

Lest ye worry that, with the coming of Vista, the Blue Screen of Death hath been vanquished for all time, fear not, for verily I have seen one, not these five minutes past.

I am now using my slashdot journal to mirror my livejournal one here . If anyone wants geek only stuff let me know and I will keep more personal related entried in my livejournal instead.

Last time I am configuring with Linux and operating sytems
I have things I need to get done and probably better things to do then this. For one I still do not have a job and depression about this is beggening to set it. Also I want to do things with my laptop like learning and doing something to better myself and my profession.

I wonder about certain forms of procrastination or is it just I get a high on having hte latest and greatest thing?

Anyway I found a workaround with the bugs I found in Ubuntu Linux 6.10 in my last post and I am giving it one more try. Its a real release as of this morning so that means it will stabilizie as hackers work on it.

I want to learn some html, more java, and perl to do some simple scripting and web based things like letting me know when someone replies to a friends journal via wget. Maybe I can work on my lj space as well.

With more time I plan to use Livejournal more and slashdot less.

Other than that I plan to get a non skilled job starting tomorrow if the geeksquads wont call me back or use a temp agency. I had it! I need money and a purpose and I feel some folks might be making fun of me and judging me on this. But I guess not everyone deserves as much as 12/hr. I just want it too but no one wants to pay me that. Maybe my skills are not all that? I dunno and I will worry about that tomorrow and this weekend

Fedora 6 has come out and Ubuntu Linux 6.10 "Edgy" is coming out within 3 days. I downloaded Ubuntu Linux "Edgy" release candidate. Let me tell you its not ready. Ubuntu has been historically easy for newbies and very stable. So far I found 4 bugs since I installed it last night mentioned here,
here, and here. Last the installation froze when I repartitioned my Windows drive. Scary stuff but miraciously I did not lose data. So or my other unix nerds on here my advice is to not upgrade.

I am getting my old ubuntu 6.4 cd's as I write this and plan to wipe my disk and put last June's version of Ubuntu. The fonts are ugly but I found out how to backport Edgy's fonts to 6.4. I think by Thanksgiving I may upgrade back. What a shame as the new linux is pure eye candy but I want my computer to just work. Ubuntu needs to focus more on quality and that is its strength. I hope they fix more of the 600+ bugs in it.

Windows Vista doesn't suck.

Really. Saying it sucks would be too kind. It's a steaming pile of you-know-what.

I got to install and use Vista RC2 today to test how my company's software works under the new OS.

The install process went as expected: the installer asked a bunch of questions, had me accept a license with a bunch of terms I'd never agree with if I was installing this on my home computer, then announce that since I wasn't running XP SP2, it was going to wipe out my existing XP install. No problem there: I've got XP install disks, so I can put things back when I'm done.

What it doesn't mention is that, in addition to wiping out c:\windows, it will also wipe out c:\program files and c:\documents and settings. Fortunately, there's nothing I can't live without on this computer.

So, an hour and three reboots later, Windows is starting the setup wizard. It asks a few questions like my username and password, and what sort of network I'm connecting to. Windows proper then starts up, and it brings up the "welcome center" -- and asks again what sort of network I'm connecting to, this time bringing up the "User Account Control" dialog.

The first thing I do with any new OS is to adjust the preferences.

Those control panels are a mess. Each control panel tab under XP is a control panel now, with one or more long "descriptive" names. They're categorized into ten groups, and any given tab may be in more than one category. It would take me two or three tries to find what I'm looking for, and I still haven't found how to change the mouse acceleration, or get rid of that "your CRT is going bad" drop-shadown around the pointer.

Oh, and that dreaded "Windows registration" stuff? Where Microsoft will degrade your Vista experience until you prove that you've paid the Microsoft tax? It's only by accident that I discovered that Windows hadn't been registered during the install process, and things would have started breaking in three days.

At this point, I'm ready to install and test our software. I click on "Network" to access the fileserver and download the latest installer. It takes Vista a while to locate the fileserver on the network, but at least there's a progress bar that indicates it's doing something. I double-clicked on the fileserver icon, and get prompted for my name and password. I enter them, click "ok", and get told that login failed, check my username and password. The password's fine, but now the username box shows "Junkbox2000\JoeBloggs": Vista has prepended my computer name to my username. As far as I can tell, there's no way to stop Vista from doing this, so I'm locked out of the network.

Further checking of the computer reveals that the old "Documents and Settings" folder is still there, just hidden. Since I can't remember where I stuck the installers, I bring up the search dialog. It takes me three tries to do a full-disk search filename search. The default search is to only search indexed locations, ie. your home directory, with a full-document-text search for the terms you entered. Selecting "search everywhere" from the "location" dropdown doesn't *really* mean everywhere, just those areas that have been indexed. You need to additionally check the "include non-indexed, hidden, and system files" box.

Searching for files by name not only gives you files with the specified name (setup.exe), but also close matches: setup6.0.2.exe, setup6f3.exe, and TGSETUP7.3B5.EXE-063E8B16.pf

So I've found an old installer copy, and I'm finally ready to install. I double-click on it, and immediately get hit by a scary-looking User Account Control dialog: "An unidentified program wants to access your computer". If this is the typical user experience upon installing software on Vista, people will get used to clicking "allow" in that dialog even faster than they got used to clicking "yes, install that spyware" in IE.

At this point, I'm running the latest version of our software, but I need to test the self-update functionality. The easiest way to do this is to open the "current version" file in Notepad and change the version name to that of an older version. I go to save the file, and get the following error message: "Cannot create the C:\Program Files\MySoftware\version.dat" file. Make sure that the file name and path are correct." No hint that the real problem is that I don't have write-access to the file.

I run the updater, expecting it to fail in spectacular fashion. After all, if I don't have permission to write to the application directory, why should a program I'm running? Much to my surprise, it works flawlessly. I suppose this is a hole in Vista's security model, but *I'm* not going to tell Redmond about it.

I try the PDF export functionality of our program, saving the PDF in the same folder as the original file. The "open file" dialog shows everything, while Windows Explorer and the command prompt only shows the original file. Rebooting does not fix this.

Tomorrow I get to test installing from CD. This promises to provide even more fun. After that, I'll try installing and running as a non-admin user.

Time to update my sig again. This one is a David Bowie/Trent Reznor quote from the song "I'm afraid of Americans". My MP3 player cued it up for me and the lyrics really struck home given today's political world climate and the upcoming US Mid-term Elections. I'm a US native (Californian) and I don't think I know who Americans are anymore - my own people and many of them seem to hold beliefs that are alien to me.

I know I'm not alone in feeling this way and frankly that scares the hell out of me. Somehow my national identity has been usurped by people I have no faith in over the past six years or so. Thanks to those people, the world views me (the American not the individual) in a skewed and suspicious manner - perhaps rightly so. I still feel patriotic, but what the feeling came from is being chiseled away and discarded without my consent. I vote. I converse. I write to my representatives. I try to be a responsible citizen, but after so long futility sets in.

If you're unfamiliar with the song here are the lyrics. They remain as eerily true today as they were in 1997.

Johnny's in America
no tax at the wheel
Nobody needs anyone
They don't even just pretend
Johnny's in America

chorus {
I'm afraid of Americans
I'm afraid of the world
I'm afraid I can't help it
I'm afraid I can't
} (x2)
I'm afraid of Americans
/chorus

Johnny's in America
Johnny wants a brain
Johnny wants to suck on a Coke
Johnny wants a woman
Johnny wants to think of a joke
Johnny's in America

chorus

Johnny's in America
Johnny looks up at the stars
Johnny combs his hair
And Johnny wants pussy and cars

Johnny's in America (x2)

chorus

God is an American (x2)

chorus

Yeah, I'm afraid of Americans
I'm afraid of the words
I'm afraid I can't help it
I'm afraid I can't
I'm afraid of Americans

God is an American (x6)

May the cray-MPIII rest in peace.

I put in the new ram last night and as soon as I turned on the machine I smelled burned silicon and the machine never booted. I swear I inserted the dimm memory module properly. The AGP video card was mostly in the way but both ends of the bank clipped on the ram module. ... or so I thought??

Maybe the ram chip fried since it was underclocked? But underclocking it wont destroy it or my memory controller in my computer.

I put the old ram chip back in and zip... nada. Then since I toggled the video card I decided to swap the video card again. still no luck.

Its dead jim.

My monitor has been going out on occasion due to a damaged video cord. I wonder if the monitor is the culprit? If I had a brain I would not have been lazy and not put a pc speaker in my system. Without the beeps I dont know what the computer is doing at all.

THere is a computer guy I know at work and according to him, he thinks my whole system is fried. Likely the memory controller is out. But that doesn't make sense at all. I will try to recover my system again tomorrow morning with an older monitor to see what the culprit is.

This is really bad since I have critical files like my Itunes music collection on the system and its encrypted and DRMed galore to prevent me from transfering the music to another system. Damn hollywood always loves to accuse its users as pirates. My Ipod still has the music but refuses to play it since it thinks I am a different user. To fix it I need to sync to my now dead computer. What can I do? For one I am thinking of throwing my Ipod away and refusing to ever download music online again. I hate buying crappy waayyy overpriced cd's but I do have consumer rights like uh, backing up my music... WOW what a novel concept! You mean I can listen to my own music without my own equipment denying me fair use? Who would of that of that? When it comes to MP3 players I would have to say stay far away from Ipods. This Ipod is becoming a real nightmare.

I have another memory module for this notebook and I now have a fear of installing it on it. I dont want 2 dead computers.