Back from Thanksgiving

Ah, the awkwardness of being home with the family... There were ups and downs as always, and I'll spare the internet the gory personal details. Instead, let's look at the fun stuff!

First off, multiplayer Mario gets even more insane with more people! Most times we had three people, and the head jumping was deadly until we learned the secret. You can voluntarily bubble without dying! A simple push of the A button saves your life. Of course, if everyone does so it still ends the level. We made it through all eight regular worlds and even started on the secret bonus levels thanks to this. I was happy to see that world 8 is genuinely difficult. I wonder if it will be harder with only one death between me and the map screen, or easier with fewer people to land on me.

Next up, five player Battle Load Runner! It's hard to believe that a TurboGrafx-16 game has held up over all these years, but it has. The massive digging melee just gets silly, especially when some players dedicate themselves to saving as many lives as possible rather than winning. Get the gold, get out, and get all three 8-bit songs stuck in your head. We were playing this on my brother's Wii, so I'll be needing to add it to my Virtual Console library soon.

Finally, the day after I got back was the usual Sunday anime night. This week's selection was Coyote Ragtime Show, a scifi adventure which doesn't take itself too seriously. If you liked Outlaw Star, then you'll probably enjoy this one as well. We follow the Robin Hood-esque "Mister" and his crew as they search for the lost treasure of Pirate King Bruce (he made up for the name in sheer awesomeness). Meanwhile, they've got both the cops and the Guild (essentially the space mob) on their tale. You may have already guessed, but wackiness ensues. Don't go looking for deep meaning here. It's just a fun little 12-episode ride.

Return of the 2D

Mario's getting back to his roots in this new 2D platformer, and I'm glad to say the game delivers. Aside from a few new power ups, this game is an excellent blend of Mario 3 and Mario World. Of course, if you've played it's DS predecessor you already know all that. The helicopter helmet has to be my favorite addition since it gives so much vertical freedom. It's more limited in distance than previous flight modes like the cape, but the use-anywhere convenience can't be beat.

As entertaining as the single player is, the most intriguing bit is the coop mode. I've only gotten to try a few levels of this so far, but it really makes the game completely different. First off, so long as at least one player lives the level continues. After a bit, the dead float back onscreen in a bubble. This is both good and bad. Mario had a nasty tendency of dropping his newly resurrected friends down pits that night. Speaking of pits, the platforming becomes even trickier since you can get in each other's way! Be kind, and don't use your partner as a stepping stool.

This was only with two people. I can only imagine the chaos of a full four players!

Movie Night

Tonight I got caught up on two big releases which I'd missed last May, Star Trek and Up. Both movies pretty much met my expectations, but that means two totally different things.

Let's start with the bad. The highest praise I can give the Star Trek reset is that it managed to avoid embarrassing itself as much as Nemesis did. The new cast did quite well at fitting into the established roles with slight twists on the formula. Sadly, that does not save the movie from a forgettable villain and plot holes wide enough to drive an aircraft carrier through.

First, let's look at Nero or more accurately we wish we could look at Nero. He gets so little screen time and so few lines throughout the movie, you scarcely have time to care. His menace is further harmed by being one of many tattooed Romulan's aboard a dimly lit, ill-constructed ship. I know it sounds racist (even for a made up race) to say "they all look the same to me," but given the makeup and lighting it's absolutely true. I honestly thought he died in the fight right after Kirk beamed aboard. Kirk even got a pithy one-liner for his finisher. Sadly, it was just some random, nameless minion. It certainly turned out to be a more dramatic struggle than Nero's actual end.

Now let's turn to the actual plot. The statute of limitations on spoilers is well over, but I'm warning you here anyway. I'm not generally one to nitpick macguffins. If you tell me that red matter can be used to create a black hole, fine. I'll go with it. What I won't accept is people, especially Spock, being stupid about it. Here's a quick list:

1. Roughly a teaspoon is required to create a black hole. Naturally, this means Spock brings a sphere of the stuff 1 meter in diameter. Why would anyone need that much short of triggering a Big Crunch?
2. A raving lunatic blames you for destroying his planet and swears revenge. He attacks you on sight. When confronted by this same maniac when exiting the time vortex carrying, Spock decides to surrender this sphere which clearly has enough power to destroy the known universe.
3. Spocks ship requires both facial recognition and voice print checking to allow access to all functions save one. That one? THE BLOODY SPHERE OF DEATH!

The stupidity isn't all wrapped up in red matter, though. There's plenty more where that came from. Off the top of my head, here are a few examples:

1. Anyone who trusts Kirk with anything more dangerous than string during the first half or so of the movie. Up until they arrive at Vulcan, the man's a certifiable menace.
2. The Vulcans, a species far more technologically advanced than the humans they call on for help, think there's a geological problem with their world. No one notices the giant mining laser from space or the massive ship firing it.
3. Rather than simply shoot the giant orbital drilling laser to stop it immediately, they decide to parachute down to the tiny platform just above the drill bit. As a result, they're too late and Vulcan goes boom. What's worse, on earth they do just shoot it so my initial plan wasn't even wrong.
4. As the planet implodes, Spock must beam down to save the Vulcan council since the room they're in prevents transporters from working. No one on the ship thinks that maybe calling and asking them to leave might be faster. None of the councilors standing in the little druidic circle think it wise to leave a collapsing cavern until Spock arrives to tell them to. Either of these could have easily prevented Amanda's death. Also, no one questions what Spock's human mother is doing as part of this Vulcan council despite the fantastic racism shown by all Vulcans save Sarek.
5. Nimoy's elder Spock convinces Kirk not to reveal him to his younger self to help their friendship start. Touching, but this also risks numerous inhabited worlds.
6. Ramming speed with Spock's future ship. It contains a) technology 120 years more advanced than this timeline and b) a magical black hole creator which we've seen launched in torpedo form. Couldn't we just shoot some at the bad guys, then go home and enjoy the super science? It's not like you were concerned about creating a black hole since you ended up detonating all of it with along with the ship! (Strangely, the resulting black hole seemed no bigger than one created by a teaspoon of the stuff.)
7. And of course the biggest, never in the 25 years Nero spends in the past does he think to actually warn Romulus of the eventual supernova which will consume their world if left unchecked.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Despite the excellent casting, the script really could have used more than a single draft.

Now on to better news! Pixar delights yet again with Up. It's got all the wit and charm you've come to expect from them. It's also very much in the spirit of an elderly Indiana Jones film.

The characters are extremely well developed, but if I had to pick a favorite it would be Doug. If you haven't seen the movie, Doug is a dog with a translating collar so he can talk. What makes him brilliant is that he still thinks exactly like a dog. Whether it's begging a giant bird to "please be my prisoner" while being dragged along or getting utterly distracted by "Squirrel!", he's just so honest, lovable, and above all dog! If you've ever owned one, you're going to enjoy him.

FInal thought, my brain makes some random connections. While watching, I couldn't quite make up my mind who Mr. Fredrickson sounded like more, J. Jonah Jameson of Spiderman: the Animated Series or Sgt. Mike Cosgrove of Freakzoid!. Certain mannerisms of both of them came out from time to time. Turns out, I was actually right on both counts! Go Ed Asner! He really does have a great voice.

Skepticism and Denial

There's an important distinction between the two, but people conflate them all too often on this great big internet of ours. Skepticism and doubt are healthy, even necessary to our understand of the world. When honestly pursued, these questions push us towards a better concept of ourselves and our environment.

On the other hand, flat out denial is worse than useless. It prevents the discussion from even occurring. Let's look at something relatively non-controversial like ghost stories. Eye witness accounts are generally assumed false and left at that. This may be fairly safe assumption, but it doesn't actually tell us anything. If there were strange lights or displaced objects or even full on apparitions, then I want to know WHY! I don't expect the souls of the dead are messing with us, but there must be a root cause. Who knows? We might find something wholly unexpected. Even if the cause is something truly mundane, the effect on our perception and interpretation is fascinating. People who simply say an a priori "No" and move on have no sense of scientific wonder.

Occam's Razor is a good guiding principle, but it is not the be all and end all of investigation. If even a single datum is without appropriate representation, the simplest solution is incomplete.

Even if you have done the research yourself, simply yelling "No" on the internet isn't going to convince anyone. Leaving out the evidence just makes people dig in their heels. Treating your opponent as a rational human being doesn't guarantee you a reasonable discussion partner, of course, but it comes off much better to the outside observer.

Marble Hornets

Here's a webseries that's caught my attention recently. The introduction video sums up the premise fairly well, so I'll just link it directly.



Since June, J has been finding some weird stuff on the tapes and recently has been doing some more direct investigation. You can keep up with the latest developments via his Twitter account and the related videos. As you catch up on the story to date, you'll also find responses from the cryptic ToTheArk.

Stop reading now if you care about catching up prior to hearing my theories.

I don't have much real insight into the supernatural goings on, but I'm fairly convinced that ToTheArk, the masked man in the most recent, and Alex are all the same person. The first connection is pretty easily made since both seem to have disappeared and TTA had invited/taunted J back to the house in the first place. J even comments upon this in his twitter feed, "totheark usually responds by now." It's been six days since the tweet and ten since the actual fight.

The second connection is more tenuous, but seems logical to me. TTA seems to have had access to the tapes at one point, and as far as we know only J and Alex have ever had possession. This is especially apparent with Entry 13/Exit. The gap in 13 could easily match up with the Exit footage. There are no camera mentioned in 2006 save the Alex's two, so unless someone else has been secretly taping for years this is the most likely source. Theoretically, another of the cast/crew could have had access, but I don't see the motive. Alex seems to be the only one directly affected during filming.

The real question in my mind is why he would be doing this? Is it some sort of mad warning, or has he become some sort of thrall? Only time and more videos will tell.

On MMORPGs

Truth be told, I have never found a truly great MMORPGs. I've seen terrible games and decent games, but never one that's truly shone. Those who I've raided with will probably kill me for saying this, but the best fights I've experienced were the final tier 5 bosses in World of Warcraft. Most fight mechanics can be summed up as gear check, don't stand in the ____, or a single easily mastered gimmick (at least, it should have been easily mastered). Both Vashj and Kael were different. More than anything else, they were coordination fights. All twenty-five raid members had tasks vital to the raid. Even the most recent raid destroyer, Algalon, doesn't measure up.

With Vashj, the dance came in the second phase with various types of minions and a unique shield mechanic with the entire battlefield in use. Teams of three would each cover a quadrant for elementals. These would climb the stairs heading for Vashj in the center. Each that reached her increased her damage, and more than a few made the fight unhealable. They were also in charge of ending the phase by bringing down the shield. A regular intervals, a poisonous elemental would spawn in place of a regular which was killed for its core. This core needed to be passed up the stairs to one of the active shield generators at the top. I say passed because the person caring the core could not move, only throw it. Think of it as ultimate frisbee with the other team trying to kill you. The rest of the raid couldn't relax either. They had to deal with the striders which feared anyone in melee range away and the Elites which would quickly chew through any non-tank. These also spawned on set timers, so the goal was to have one die just as the next of that type was spawning. This fight was so tightly tuned that everyone was key to our success. Victory here truly felt like an accomplishment.

None of Kael'thas's phases were nearly as complex in and of themselves. The trick that there were FIVE of them, and each built upon the previous. They needed to be completed properly, in time, and with the corpses in the right places. Again, this wasn't a fight where simply making numbers go up would necessarily save you.

Those days are pretty much gone now. I don't blame Blizzard for wanting to reach a larger audience with it's endgame, but the raid-wide execution challenge just doesn't seem to be there. Algalon tries to recapture this flame a bit, but the fight really centers on two peoples judgment. One opens black holes at times that won't kill the raid, while the other chooses the right black holes to closes. Everyone else just does what they always do. That's not to diminish the contributions of anyone to this fight. There needs to be a lot of damage and heal throughput. One death will be the end of an attempt. I just mean that the intricate dance is missing. I've seriously heard the melee apologize on this fight for just having to stand and stab with the exception of the don't stand in the crash/big bang mechanics.

I've also taken up City of Heroes in the last year. The variety of powers and character creation options are fun, but the game itself is quite bland. Missions aren't particularly varied, and the maps are mad of quickly recognizable generic building blocks. I recently got my first level 50 (the level cap), and my reaction is "Now what?" These flaws were readily apparent even back when I was on my first free trial month, so why did I purchase a subscription? It's simple. I know three other people who play the game. This one fact means that this otherwise forgettable title suddenly becomes a fun place just to hang out. It's worth the $15 a month for just the Skype chatter (and yes, I know the Skype part is free and completely separate).

Faux Physics

Following up yesterdays topic is super science! If there's one thing Star Trek has taught me, it's that the easiest solution is just to sound as sciency as possible (and also that the main deflector dish cures 90% of all woes). However, let's say you're looking for something a little more... plausible. That takes some research. Sadly, however much you study, you're not going to make a working alternate universe portal or freeze ray (or if you are, why don't you just build it and make a mint?). The key is to look to the true cutting edge which can give you a basic framework and lots of room to play around. You can actually see the popular power source progression throughout the ages of comics. Radiation sure isn't the catch-all it used to be, that's for certain.

One particular subject that I find fun to play with is quantum physics. From entanglement to collapsing probability wave forms, there's a huge amount of territory in which to muck about. One fun little thought experiment I've been toying with is breaking the collective observation. What would happen if vital status of Schrödinger's cat varied by observer? If this were true for day to day goings on, then reality would as we know it would cease to function. However, what if this were only the case for a single major event causing people to be shunted to the reality matching their perception of it? This is all scientifically silly, but to the untrained ear it might be plausible enough. It certainly leaves the world in an interesting state to write from.

Again, I must stress that consistency is key. Scientific rigor is not required, but you have to play by your own rules. As a warning, I refer you to the anime series Noein. There's quite a lot of quantum universe technobabble throughout the series which is essentially meaningless. Worse than this nonsense overdose, though, was when they started using observation as a plot point. The alternate future version of the world is being kept alive by a massive supercomputer with two main duties. First, it constantly observes everyone in existence to prevent prevents spontaneous quantum existence failure. Apparently, consciousness does not grant enough self observation for continued existence. The second purpose is confused. Half the time it's supposedly simulating virtual realities while at others it only serves as a teleport between them. Real or simulated, present day earth with our protagonists is one such reality.

In that reality, the rules really start to break down. The visitors from the future require a cable connection to their home dimension at all times or the computer will stop observing them. By their logic, this means that they will cease to be which is demonstrated early on. Later, though, characters we're supposed to care about* decide to stay in the present by severing this connection. Suddenly, simply being observed by people in the present keeps the future folks existing. Except when it doesn't. Perhaps love was all you need? That seemed to be protection for a while. Oh, but then one character even winked out of existence in full view of multiple people including one who cared for him.

The true crowning moment of confusion came from the final episodes. Stop now if you truly care about spoilers for this one. The villain turns out to be yet another future alternate of the protagonist's boyfriend, which really comes as no surprise if you've got half a brain. He's been locked away in a dimension where everyone is in suspended animation but him. Turns out his entire motive was that she died in his reality, so he plans to wipe out all possible existences. She gets captured, friends come to the rescue, blah blah blah. Ultimately, they escape back to present day world leaving the suspended world to disappear due to lack of people observing it. The point is, the actual point is, absolutely nothing has changed in that reality since the beginning of the show! If that was going to cause the bad guy's universe to disappear, he should have vanished before his evil plan even began! The entirety of the series hinges on utter nonsense!

The moral is, bad writing is bad writing. Just because you can use science words doesn't protect against that.

The other moral here, sometimes the RightStuf bargain bin has winners. Sometimes even $20 is too much for a full series. Figure out which is which before ordering.

* That was the other truly gaping flaw in the series. The protagonist, her boyfriend, the boyfriend's future alternate, and the boyfriend's villainous other future alternate hogged most of the screen time and managed to be far less interesting than the supporting cast.

Rule Magic

Magic's a tricky thing. As much as I enjoy the concept, it is in essence a do anything device. In the hands of the protagonist, unbridled magic makes him invincible and thus boring. With the villain, such power almost requires a deus ex machina to confront. Some sort of limiter is required to make such stories interesting. There needs to be a price.

Games generally end up going with the fixed cost and spell list option. This is by far the simplest but is also the least flexible. There are exact limits to damage, range, number of target, and often lack of secondary effects (e.g. the fireball somehow hurts all targets without lighting the room on fire). This is understandable, of course. It's truly impossible to program all the nuances of, say, a pyrokineticist and still be playable. However, this often leads to segregation of how gameplay and storyline spells work. In cutscenes, the very spells which targeted only enemies are blowing through castle walls. It's all very dramatic, but leaves something to be desired when your characters find themselves blocked by a three-foot picket fence.

Consistency is key to good storytelling. Strangely, inconsistency can be a consistency of it's own. I recently watched all of Darker than Black on Funimation.com (and if you didn't realize they're putting most of their anime for free online, you should go check it out). Each Coordinator in this series is given both a power and a price which must be fulfilled after its usage. The prices very wildly, and are not guaranteed to even be proportional to the power. You could be required to smoke a cigarette or break your own fingers. The cost is always there, with one exception. The protagonist, Hei, is able to use his electricity without cost. Now, exceptions to magical rules can be effective narrative devices. The philosopher's stone of Fullmetal Alchemist is a great example of that. Here, however, it's simply frustrating. No one seems to notice or comment upon the fact that Hei gets a pass. The "why" of this is finally explained near the end of the series, and I won't spoil it here. How this came about is still mostly a mystery. The second season is currently airing in Japan, so I'm hoping they go into more detail. For now, it remains the one nagging flaw in an otherwise entertaining series.

On the subject of Fullmetal, I particularly enjoy the magic system of equivalent exchange. The energy needed to transmute seems to be in infinite supply, but the chemical makeup of the ingredients must match the finished product. Basically, alchemy is magical science. Most of the rules are already baked into the universe we know. Anything that leads to chemical tricks like extracting oxygen from the air itself then lighting it is okay in my book.

I've actually been working on my own fictional magical system for some time now as well. In a way, it's similar to equivalent exchange in that the magic is a form of energy malleable by humans. However, I'm not currently applying it to transmutation. Physical ingredients make things easier but are not essential. The true limit of this power is the danger of burnout. Channeling magic from the Source uses the casters body as a conduit. Try to take on too much at once, and you risk losing control of it. The actual effect varies on what the caster was attempting, but it is rarely good for him. I've got a lot more details in my head about this, but none of those are truly set in stone yet.

Heartrending Uninstall

Hatsune Miku's original release I'm a bit late to the Vocaloid phenomenon. I'd seen references before, but I didn't really do much digging until yesterday. For those as clueless as I was, the Vocaloids are a series of voice synthesizer programs used for creating songs. That in itself sounds fun to play with, but that's not the truly interesting part. Characters have sprung forth from the names, voices, and box art of each release. After watching far too many songs on youtube, distinct personalities start to emerge from the collective consciousness. There are many outliers as creators take things in different directions, but a core "self" is starting to shine through. This is especially true of Hatsune Miku, the first of the Vocaloid 2 series. This also makes the video linked below all the more tragic.

This is Hatsune Miku's final song, from the heart and rushed to finish before the uninstaller.



This is far more powerful than I thought possible from a virtual idol.

What's in a name?

Far too much, I'm afraid. That which we call a rose would indeed still smell as sweet if we could truly smell the word. On the page, however, names are essential.

I've always found naming to be the most difficult part of character creation, and that goes double for fantasy settings. There are really two interrelated problems here. The first is originality. Anyone who has played an MMO has seen worst offenders here. Servers get populated the utterly generic like Crushgore or the ever-popular slight misspelling of copyrighted heroes. That's fine for shallow online avatars, but entirely unacceptable if you expect your reader/player to have any sort of emotional investment. (Usually. Like any other rule of writing, this can be tossed out with the right reasons and execution.) However, this oftentimes runs afoul of my second goal: meaning. Take as an example my online persona, Astribulus. The name was created to sound mage-like (a vague qualification, I know) and to evoke the stars. The Astr prefix is taken directly from words like astral and astronomy. None of this needs to be explained outright to the reader or player, but I find such meaning helps the name fit.

The problem with defining the character directly in the name, aside from the shear unlikeliness of that actually happening, is that it can easily end up sounding unnamelike. Look up all the etymology you want, grab all the roots you need, and you still need to create something that sounds like a proper name. Sadly, this is a place where I revert to good old-fashioned trial and error until I find something I like. This can even mean just dumping everything for something that simply sounds right, but that's entirely impossible to define as far as I can tell.

Now this only applies to making up names from scratch. In a setting with more normal people, things can be somewhat easier. It still comes down to trying things until one fits, though. In dire straights, one can always hit the randomizer on a baby name website and play "Does he really seem like a David?"

In the end, I really don't have a good solution. Like I said, it's still the hardest part for me.

It has finally come to this

There comes a time in the life of an internet denizen when the blog becomes inevitable, and my time is finally upon me. To those of you that know me, I need no introduction. To those of you who don't, are you just reading blogs at random? I would imagine that way leads to insanity. To each their own, I suppose. In either case, I hope you enjoy

If I could fault a single person for the existence of this blog, it would my friend Cominius. He's been at this for a while now, though the "intermittent" in the title is certainly accurate. I suspect this one will end up much like his, on-and-off ramblings about whatever geekdom crosses my path. Thus, my first posting will also be a bit of a tribute. He posted this Mario set to Haruhi video a good while back, and I've found something that takes the concept even further. Behold, the Mario Music Medley!



Once you're done marveling at the intricacies of the set up itself, ask yourself this: How many anime/video game/random Japanese songs can you recognize in there?