I'm actually looking for a user interface developer for my free software MORPG (multi-player online roleplaying game) www.wograld.org We have a user interface, but it was written in C and is really bad. Everyone who tries to play the game says they don't want to play because the UI is really bad. I was hoping for a Java developer so we can avoid the dependency hunt and potential cross platform issues. Yes, it compiles and runs, but no current project member would actually like to fix the UI code (even though we love doing the game logic and the artwork) so I've been wanting someone for a long time, but I don't know, what should I do to find that developer who really loves writing user interfaces because they love making user interfaces. I've actually already designed it, but the implementing it has not gone so well.

Recently I found out the capabilities of Java. They could just do it all in Java, because it is cross-platform. Writing games for one platform that is already cross-platform means the developers only have to write the game once, and it runs on all systems that the platform supports.

Yeah, some of the articles on my favorite topics have been deleted as being "not notable"

I would keep it around. I have a 486 era machine I am not using right now, but probably will at some point. I don't think that Ultima 8 pagan is quite emulated, although I know there was a project to do it. Also, as nice as Exult is, it still isn't quite the same as playing the original Ultima 7 and 7.5. I'm not sure if you could emulate windows 3.1 either, and I do have fond memories of it, particularly that early paint program, even though I am using GIMP now. A lot of the nostelgia with me, isn't just playing games and stuff that I did back in the day, but going back to parts of the era I missed. For instance, I recently found out the history of some of the code in a project that I am working on today, I found some of the original coders from 1992 talking about it on old defunct email addresses. Sometimes I wish I could go back to 1992, and instead of wasting my time trying to beat Drakkhen (that I never did beat btw), spend time learning X11 and the Athena Widget set back what it was actually cool and I could find other people willing to talk about it. www.wograld.org

I've often commented that the Drupal community is a piranha pool. Many Drupal developers come off as arrogant, and do little to help newbies, instead nibbling away at their desire to learn Drupal. This whole idea of Misery seems to be conceived by the ideals of the Drupal community. Instead of just being straight out and banning someone, they are going to make their websites a real pain to use. I get the bad feeling some of them won't just be using it on trolls, but ordinary users as well.

Maybe they could merge and finally fix the dependency hunt problem with all those libraries and out-dated packages for each distro. Applications could actually come with the version of the library you need rather than relying on distributions to get it right.

I actually like April Fools.

Many typical RPGs and like games, such as Crossfire, have a level system. This system frequently has levels that can go as high as in the 100's or as low as ten (but frequently this number is scaled up and up in order for the developers to create more content without doing any real work). When a character gains a level, she also gains stats. She might gain in strength, dexterity, intellect, or whatever other attributes are put into the game. The problem is she has 100 levels, so say she starts with 20 strength, and then gains a point in strength every level, now at level 100 she has 120 strength. The newbie character logs in with his 20 strength newbie. The problem is she is going to really be 6 times more powerful, so then, what happens if she decides now that she has maxed out her character, her new mission in life is to grief newbies. The newbies don't really have much of a chance against her.

But the real issue is that instead of 100 levels, there might be thousands of levels. By the time you get a maxed leveled character, that is several years of work. No lifers play day in and day out to get max level, and some games don't even really have a cap on levels, so the no lifer has this character that is several times more powerful than that of the casual player. The no lifer then dominates everyone, and everyone else realizes they will never get that powerful, so they quit. This is bad for the game, because eventually the no-lifer realizes that he is the only one left playing it, and he would rather rank up on a chart where he has some real competition, not just who had no life for so many years.

Ultima Online did it well. Swing a sword, gain points in dexterity and strength, cast a spell, gain a point in intellect, up to a reasonable cap for your total stats. I think it was something like 255 total, with a max of 150 in any given stat, and up to 25 more points with stat scrolls. But this way there were no uber l33t character with thousands more hit points than the newbie. Sure, maxed our characters were more powerful than the newbies, but anyone could easily get a maxed out character with just a little bit of time and effort, so most people had maxed out characters. The games focus was not on character development, beyond tweaking your template for a given game play change. The focus was on actually playing the game, going to dungeons, finding loot, crafting, and finding resources, socializing, and trading. People did not think of it as a grind game where the primary focus was character development. How you played your character mattered far more, as did customizing your template and equipment for your play style.

I've also reposted this in my blog http://wogralddev.blogspot.com/ , along with a lot of other game development and design posts.

A couple things I found that help. 1) start a blog with your project and update how you are working on it and what you are working on frequently. It helps, even if you didn't get any code written. I know after I started mine, my motivation increased dramatically. 2) really learn the language you are programming in well. The problem is, you may be able to think in logic, but if you can't translate that into code that compiles and runs, you are just hitting a brick wall. Learning programming is one of those things that can be easier said than done. Once you know the syntax the logic of what you are working on follows naturally into the syntax. Things that don't help 1) giving up - you may think you are depressed now, but wait till you try to taken away your sole motivation for existence - yikes! 2)Drugs - like you can really afford that now anyway what with the bad economy anyway. Plus, meds won't give you motivation, it will just make it more possible to do something you hate. So all you end up doing is more and more things you don't really like.

My spouse had a work schedule like that. It was great, him actually being home and eating right instead of keeping weird hours, coming home at 3 am and eating junk food at work. I remember having Friday off as being a great day for him to run errands and go to doctors appointments. The down side is the company he had that work schedule at had a very mainstream sort of culture and didn't appreciate his unique ways of thinking. They eventually got rid of him when they got rid of a whole bunch of people due to not getting a contract.

Don't do pascal. It is a useless language that is missing fun features like the goto statement. Also, the biggest gift you can give your students is enthusiasm. Encourage them to play around with the code rather than just doing the assignments. Better yet, have them create their own small project assignments that use the language features you are trying to teach (rather than say, making a student who has no interest in buying a house write a program to calculate mortgage payments.) I remember the most fun I had programing in school was getting the computer to print "I hate algebra" 100 times in basic. Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is so many instructors teach programming poorly and/or don't really know it themselves. Insist that the programs actually compile and run. This way you know the students know the concepts rather than writing a bunch of garbage. Also, don't forget to teach important things like the compiler or interpreter (use a good free-software one like gcc, don't make students buy expensive toolkits they don't need. It should work on Linux, Windows and Mac so that students can do it at home. ) If you somehow fail to teach programming and/or you students are unhappy with you, don't be surprised. It means you are just a normal person rather than an extraordinary teacher.