Game Developer’s Blog

FFRPG – Allinav.

I have written previously about the game system that I was developing.  It continues to develop.  However, here I am going to talk about an off shoot of that development.  About mid 2014 a friends mentioned how long it had been since they had played an RPG.  Probably because I was relating my ‘old days’ of my RPG group that did so on a weekly basis [sometimes all weekend] and with a campaign that lasted over 18 months.  So I sprang an idea.  Part of the game system was going to be ported to RPG at some point in development anyway, so now would be a good time.  It would be fantasy, so I had to do a little tweaking with rules, but several months later I had a significant portion of the rules written and basically character generation and racial basics.

All of this then needed to be play tested.  I invited a group, and in January 2015 began a fortnightly gaming session to play test the game.  Starting at level 1 with a party of six players, I began testing the mechanics and simplicity of the world that I had created.

So over the next few blogs I am going to describe the steps along the way of developing

Pres first session.  The game mechanics started with a conversion of the Table Top stats across to being percentile stats fir the RPG.  This was very quickly thrown out and a second set of attributes were added to represent the variables between individual characters.  The stats were retained to represent the basic values of the different races. 

This brings us to the races that I chose for the Allinav world view.  I had to have Dwarves.  And wanted them to be the focused race.  However I wanted some of the other races to play off.  I also wanted to try to curb the more bizarre racial availability [at least to begin with] and this brought the player races to 6 playable developed races that were further developed.  Dwarves, Halflings, Pixies, Elves, Faeries and Humans.  Next was development of weapons, in classes, and skills.

The first game play session, 

First part of the first session was character generation, the main part of the problem encountered here - and this continued until well into the April sessions - was how the bonus and skills added up to achieve a target value.  Also skills which seemed to work a little to begin with, but required refining at a later point.  At this point despite the descript ion of they work being in place, morality was not applied and still has not really entered game play.  I would suggest that at this point the game play is not advanced enough to take special notice of morality.  For those who are curious to know, Morality is how this game handles ‘Alignment’.  Instead of applying a good vs evil approach to the game, the Morality expects that each player will consider how the act and interact with other people of the same race and others.

The first game session went reasonably well, all considered there was about 3 hours of play after an initial character generation period.  The party consists of six players; a Dwarf, a Halfling, a Faerie, an Elf and 2 Pixies.  This puts half of the PCs as flying characters.  Elements that are requiring work are those relating to skills and the summoning function.  Over the next few weeks the three people on the development team work out some kinks, the most important of which is the skills and how they function.  It took a second playing session where the skills are further tweaked and then an eventual upheaval on how the summoning will work also essentially turning summoning into a type of skill set.  Thus it can increment for points values much the same way that other skills can.

Skills are now split into five categories, 

Offence, defence, survival, social and summoning.  With the addition of a spread sheet that allows the player to just cross off the skills they want to increment, it allows for reference as opposed to multiple transference of skill data.  Summoning was the most contentious subject during this period.  In the Allinav world, there is not ‘magic’ as usual fantasy worlds.  In Allinav there are summoners – people that are able to focus their affinity with one or more of the five elements and the elemental plane.  This took a while to tweak so that it was not too powerful, but was also not so difficult that it could not make and effective change to the game play.  In latter sessions it would take a little further tweaking.

Game Designing Blog.

So, way back in the depths of antiquity [2009] I began a small project of writing a table top war game.  The original premise was a war game based in the near galaxy in about the year 3000 [from the human perspective].  It underwent  a few changes initially and a bit of history was written, and few races added to the universe.  Then I was getting a little bogged down in the detail, so I tamed it a little back to the basic mechanic, then wrote a partial game based on the same - developing - mechanic that was a campaign developing crew on ships, pirate ships, etc. 

A little while passed and the pirate game had introduced so many little tweaks and quirks to what was meant to be a generic system, that I tied it back to the basic mechanic again.  That was in 2012.

Life has a way of taking over from dreams that you play with from time to time, and this was no different.  I wrote the basic mechanic, and added a bit to the universe and that was about all that happened for over 12 months.  Then, in the middle of 2013, a friend of mine prompted me to continue.  Not encouraged, mind you, just nudged a little.  So the mechanic got its 2013 rewrite that was generic, and then that generic mechanic has now - slowly - been ported over to the science fantasy universe again.  I have done a fair bit of work since then, mostly on the universe, and lot of it is still a messy jumble in my head.  Mostly a time line for the galactic sector and the other races have been established, and reasons for why 'X' doesn’t get along with 'Y'.  In this setting, the human race is still the newcomer to this long standing - and occasional brush fire - that is the portion of space we find our self in.

Until today, it was all on paper, or electronic document, or still tucked away in my head.  Today, I actually play-tested the mechanic.  Did it work?  So far, so good.  Does it have anything overpowered?  Well, I only tested basic armour, basic cover, basic rifles, and then tested a machine gun.  By my rules, the machine gun is a little overpowered.  But that isn’t really wrong, because, machine guns ARE overpowered.  I am going to do some more tests, to see if initial theories are correct.  But I was surprised how well it ran for a very small play testing session.

It is also very satisfying to have finally got to that stage.  Is it a full functioning game?  Hell no!  It's a long way from that, but so far my initial mechanic designs are working.  And this is amazing in its own right. 

More to be posted here soon as I continue to finesse the process and develop the universe.  At this point 'Next Frontier' has gone from theory to practice, even if I'm the only one that gets to play it.

You may have noticed by now that I like Vocaloid.  In fact many different vocal-synth products exist, the two most prominent in sub-culture at the moment are Vocaloid and UTAU.  Many would likely know about Vocaloid, and particular the poplar explosion of Vocaloid activity and Fandom in relation to Crypton Future Media's product Vocaloid 2: Hatsune Miku.  I'm not going to explain everything there is to explain about Vocaloid here, nor am  going to go into all the other Vocaloid characters, here I just want to discuss Miku, clearly one of the most popular and what that means for her songs.

Hatsune Miku is the character behind the Vocaloid voice bank of the same name.  You can read just about anywhere about what she is/represents/etc, but in brief: Hatsune Miku is an android[sic, note 1] that can sing in a near future where there are no songs.  Thus the 'user' must write the songs for her.  This has led to some particularly interesting interpretations of what that all means, and seems to be specifically applied to here character.  So to expound, it means that Miku's songs fall in 3 distinct categories.

1. First category is the simplest   Songs sung by Miku could be sung by anyone, largely objective not subjective, these are common and not really of significance to my argument, but they are out there.  These are songs that could have been sung by anyone, and there is really not even any relevant subject matter.  There has been a recording of Miku singing Amazing Grace.  No relevance to singers in the subject matter here, and an example of this first category.

2.  The second category are a little more specifically drawn from the Hatsune Mike character.  Songs sung by Miku where Miku represents a 16 yo girl.  These are rare but do exist.  Ryo and his group Supercell are quite adept at this.  Examples such as Melt, Love is War and World is mine are just three songs from Supercell's album that are a good place to start.  Each represents Miku as a girl in love, from that particularly unique Japanese point of view.  Melt in particular is so well written and composed that you forget that subjectively we are talking about software and suddenly really see her as a 16 yo trying to take the oppurtunity to confess to her crush.  And here we see the on flow of questions on how much we should develop the Hatsune Miku character.  Crypton have taken the very brave step of NOT expanding on the character profile, as such, so that users can slot the Miku character into what ever place, location situation it seems to fit.  As a result we see Miku in Melt as the innocent girl that is to shy to confess, then on the flip side we see here in World is Mine, as the typical demanding spoiled princess type that we see so much more commonly in today's society [This really is a flip side, two songs from Miku on the one album from the one group where she is almost Jekyll/Hyde - the cute, innocent, shy Miku in 'Melt' / the demanding, greedy, spoilt Princess in 'World is mine'].   Miku can therefore sing in a punk bank, or heavy metal, or saccharine pop.  No effect to her character image occurs, its up to the user.

3. The third type of song is unique to this fandom, and only effective because of it.  These songs are sung by Miku as the software gynoid.  This has opened a Pandora's box of questions about the Software, and how it feels to be the 'slave' to the 'user'.  Many of these songs are starting to really show something that we as a technological community have long chosen to ignore about AI - what would the AI think of the user.  These songs range from a mere identification of doing the task for the user, through to the sadness that Miku feels about being uninstalled.

The song "Dissapearance of Hatsune Miku' [note 2], is the unique perspective of how the software feels on being uninstalled.  The story behind the song goes that a virus has corrupted the Vocaloid software and Hatsune Miku is being uninstalled, despite all the songs that she has created for the user.  Portions fo teh song change from hyper-speed singing [that it was thought only the Vocaloid software could do] to static, glitching and error messages.  It ends with the sound of 'System Failure' in the Vocaloid software.  Several other songs look at the similar occurrence where Hatsune Miku has her 'memory' reset and thus forgets all the enjoyment of creating those songs.

Another song - Unfragment - portrays how the Vocaloid software in general and Hatsune Miku in particular are frequently under fire for being 'fake'.  The back story to this is taken directly from real life where, as prototypical of Hatsune Miku grows, the opposition to her also grows. Many are missing the point that it is a synthesizer like any other instrument, not a replacement for a real vocal artist, however there are many arguing that Hatsune Miku has an advantage over other real life pop-stars   She will never grow up/old, end up in the tabloid pages, or go on a drunk/drug bender.  A perfect example of this is 31/8/2013 will be Hatsune Miku's 6th anniversary of her 16th birthday [this is how fan-dom celebrates it].  In August she will celebrate 6 years in the industry and she is still the fresh 16 yo pop idol.  Unfragment describes Miku's attempt to connect despite resistance by the general public, that she will keep trying until her bonds are broken to be accepted as a legitimate singer.

And here lies one of the biggest sources of angst in the Vocaloid fan-dom.  Miku isn't real, how can you be a fan of a non-existent [and many would say disparate] entity?  Many outside of the fan dom hear of the 'live' concerts and argue that it is pointless, why would anyone go to a concert to listen to a pre-recorded track?  Many fans argue back that there is a live band and only Miku is the prerecorded created.  Further others would turn around and point to many examples of modern pop-stars lip syncing to their own songs.  Just this year one prominent pop-star defended this by saying it was to ensure the quality of the performance.

But again the point I was trying to make is, we now have songs where Producers are writing lyrics for Hatsune Miku to sing from the Software's perspective.  It is interesting from a IT perspective, that content is being written that can actually carry the emotions of Software to the user.



* 1: Technically Miku is a gynoid, but the negative impact that this term has somehow attracted  as well as the more commonly [mis]understood term 'android' means that she has been identified as an Android.

* 2: The Dissapearance of Hatsune Miku is not related to the search engine failure that stopped people from being able to find Hatsune Miku content in Japan, and the ensuing panic of the fandom thinking that some legal problems had removed all her content.  Nor does it relate to the rumor that many high viewed You Tube Hatsune Miku songs were removed for alleged copyright infringement   However, the song has been used to promote awareness of these events, more commonly the latter.

Hi all [1].  I'm starting a new blog set today.  Gardening.

First off, 'WTF? Gardening?', 'What is he thinking?'.  Good questions.  I have no gardening expertise.  For the majority of my life my gardening experience has been, mow it, chop it down, or dig it up.  Things haven't changed a great deal.  However, I was trying to do some research the other day and there isn't a lot of info that seems to be about people who have actually chucked a plant in the ground and expected it to grow.

A bit of background: my wife an I own about 2 acres.  It is separated into 3 roughly equal yards - front yard, back yard and bush.  The front and back yard are separated by the house and some small fence portions, and are the most developed, they were already reasonably established when we first moved in.  The bush is a slopping lightly wooded area that was overrun with giant-rat-tail-grass when we moved it.  It has been a little over 3 years and we are at last starting to see some actual changes in the way that the garden may eventually look - partially because I have recently been successful in growing things.  We will come back to that.

First lets talk about the property.  Overall the lot is approx 50 meters wide at front and rear, and approx 150 meters long on either side.  The lot is separated depth wise into the front, back and bush yards, and is within 500 meters of a major river.  Soil is consistently sandy river sediment for approx 1 foot down to a layer of grey clay for about 4 inches, followed by a denser red river sand with other mixed elements.  Areas around the house and drive way have differing levels of building refuse mixed into the topsoil, and this sometimes complicates propagation.

The front yard is approx 40 meters deep and has a driveway that is partially grassed/gravel, it widens out to the car ports and has a narrow right hand portion with some palm trees, and a wider right hand portion about half the yard that has a range of other shrubs and an occasional tree also.  The whole front yard in general slopes north away front the house, but only fractionally, visually it appears to be flat.  When we moved in, both sides were wildly over grown, and it was difficult to see how much yard actually was available.  It also was very wet.  At some point a berm had been built up around the border of the left hand side, thus creating an area about half the size of the front yard that could not run off in heavy rain.  Instead it sits and eventually evaporates.  In periods of heavy rain, it will sit and almost stay as a swamp for weeks until dry weather returns.  The east and northern fence line were overrun with tall grass weeds and a few other hedge like plants.  The very centre was dominated by several thorny bushes that took up a space roughly 10 meters x 5 meters.  There were several lilli-pilli shrubs and also many palm trees in a corner area near the house.  There are also a few smaller native trees standing about 3 meters, a 10-15 meter Ghost-Gum is the prominent feature.  A few other trees also existed.  On the right hand side there were a lot of palm trees and a few other overgrown shrubs and several weeping natives that were massively overgrown as well.

The back yard is also approx 40 meters deep.  It has the majority of the house itself on its 'side' of the fence and also has the shed, sandpit, cubby house, water tanks and clothes line.  The whole yard slopes generally  south west away from the house, although visually it looks flat.  The last 5 meters of so towards the rear fence begins a gentle slope that steepens in the bush yard.  On purchase the back lawn had not been mowed for several months, the septic lines had over grown to several feet, the sand pit was not able to be seen for the weeds growing in it and the rear fence was preceded by many piles of refuse.  The west side had a small lilli-pilli garden with a few palm trees and then a range of rambling hedge like plants and again a considerable growth of weed grasses.  A ground level sand pit was almost impossible to identify due to the quantity of weeds growing from it.  There was really only 3 trees in this yard.  A leopard tree towards the west of the house and some gum trees of about 5 meters towards the south east corner.  There were two shrubs over the septic line and a lot of grass and refuse towards the rear fence.  On the east side of the house was a creeper that was taking over a portion of the house, it was quickly removed before it damaged the house further.

The bush yard was [is] the most overgrown.  It is approx 70 meters deep and starts with a gentle slope, then has a steep section, before becoming more gentle to almost flat at the bottom of the yard.  It is approx 5 meters lower at the bottom than the top of the yard.  On purchase the entire bush yard was overgrown with giant-rat-tail-grass.  There were also piles of refuse - garden, building and other - in this yard.  It is only fenced on 3 sides, with a 4th fence line with an adjoining  un-developed property in semi completion.  This is also the most heavily wooded yard.  the majority of the yard has most likely never been cleared.  There are some very large ghost gum trees including a very tall specimen of at least 20 meters.  However the majority of the yard is populated with iron bark trees.  There are a few open spaces such as the top north west corner and the bottom of the yard, these may have been cleared in the previous role as agricultural land or during developments of fence lines during the development of the residential estate.

Well that gives you a run down of the property as we found it.  Next I will talk about some of the changes that we have made and plan to make in the future.

LEGO - Friends...and the Gender debate

LEGO is bringing out a new range of sets next year [2012] targeted at the young female market. The Friends line re-tools the classic LEGO minifigure into a cute young fashionable girl. This coupled with a new range of colours and sets themed towards girls has generated masses of debate in both geek culture and in the toy market itself. I'm not going to review the sets here - I'll do that in another post - here I want to raise two points of contention:

1. Has LEGO stepped over the line by making 'Girls LEGO'?, and

2. Is it really their fault?

First I want to make it clear that I am keen to pick up the LEGO Friends product, from my point of view, it looks cool, and very collectable. Part of this is because LEGO has tried 'Girls LEGO' before, and usually it dies a slow horrible death. The Friends line might be worth a mint within 18 months.

So have the stepped over the line? In short, no. However there is the obvious gender characterisation that is inherent with what the Friends line means, but lets look at LEGO briefly in there history. Going on to 3/4 of a century now, LEGO has been producing generic play toys for a long time. However things started to change significantly in that late 70s and early 80s with the Legoland line of sets that were less of generic groups of blocks with open play, and more restrictive towards building of certain models certain ways. The generic blocks were still available, but the majority of market push was for the Town, Space and Castle sets. Inadvertently they pigeonholed themselves into gender-specific play. It has since then expanded to include each of their ranges as they become more and more targeted towards a male play gender role. And I'm sure as licensing began in the late 90s starting with Star Wars, then the process continues to narrow towards a male target market. Bear in mind that I'm talking about generalisations here - I'm well aware that boys play with girls toys and vice versa, but they are exceptions not mass rules. Marking relies on mass rules, and very little on exceptions. As such to target that other gender of society, they had to do something that was more inline with generally accepted gender roles of play for the fairer sex.

'But the minifigures are not minifigures, and the sets are all ponies and pink n stuff???'. I hear you, part of me dislikes the idea that the Friends minifigs will not sit well in with the rest of my LEGO collection and all of my female minifigs to this point will suddenly look like rather butch ugly dwarves. However we also need to understand that the minifigure is 23 years old, with next to no change in design except for hair and facial expressions and few new accessories. The new Friends minifigs are targeted to the market, and the market as a whole is looking for something...prettier. I believe that we need to recognise that the new line is not meant to be integrated into your LEGO City scape, but an equivalent LEGO capability that is more female targeted.

In short the Friends range is aimed at providing gender role play targeted at girls with equivalent exploration and modification that is provided in the sets that are more gender role orientated to boys. As the ads are saying, its LEGO [models in increasing complexity sets] for girls. If you want to get the generic building blocks, then they are still available.

Is it really all LEGOs fault? It would be so easy to say that LEGO have fallen trap to their own marketing, and are now trying to convince us that its still LEGO, its just designed towards a female market...etc, etc, etc. Easy, but not true. LEGO have finally figured out what humanity has known for millennia, but has tried to stifle in the last century. Boys and girls are not the same.

Now that I have recovered from all the sharp objects thrown in my direction, I'll say something even more thought [and pain] provoking. The sexes are not equal [ducks for cover]. Now I will clarify that. While I believe that the sexes are not equal, I am not saying that they shouldn't have equal opportunity. Biologically, male is different from female, otherwise why have a difference at all in the first place. This means that even from an early age girls and boys approach things differently. This is what LEGO has been researching in the last 4 years and spending reportedly close to $1billion on. We may have enjoyed the equalization of the sexes over the last century, but that densest meant that they both develop the same way or play in the same manner.

Marketing and toy companies have picked up on this in the last 2 decades. Just walk in to any department store and you will find an aisle of pure pink set aside for just the girls [targeted] toys. There will definetly be a generic aisle and then usually a fairly general boys aisle as well. But for me the real indication that the 'generic toy' push had died was when McDonalds started asking you if you wanted a boy toy or a girl toy with the happy meal.

In this type of newly boy / girl marketing environment, could LEGO really keep hoping that they were capturing those girls that like LEGO for LEGO? I think not. In fact the evidence speaks for itself, they have tried before...many times. What they have not tried to do quite as well before is present a wide range of sets that are as difficult and as explorable as the rest of their current range.

In short I think LEGO finally realised that girls like LEGO. But they wanted their own version, not a watered down version, nor a complete digression from what LEGO is [the LEGO Jewelry range for eg.]. So now we all wait and see if all their research means that they got it right. Will LEGO Friends be LEGO...for girls.

Check out the LEGO Friends range when it goes live on 26 Dec 2011 here

LEGO, Sharonberg - the early days

Remember LEGO. I do. I had small collection of LEGO from when I was young, and this has been kept in near immaculate [but dusty] condition. Now i have set it up again, and with the additon of my son's LEGO sets that he has accumulated, and the sets that I have squired recenlty, were building Sharonberg...in the shed.

Photos to follow,

RAInf with LSW - 40mm

Australian Army Infantry Soldier from the East Timor UNTAET campaign armed with F89 Minimi LSW.

This is a photo of one of the models I painted a few years ago. The model is an OzMade miniature in 40mm. The model itself is not bad quality considering the size of the OzMade environment.

Paints were all Citadel from teh time, and you can see clearly my heavy use of drybrusing and inking.



Why now?

I bought a new camera, and it has a funky telephoto detail auto setting which makes miniature happy snaps really easy...and this is the first miniature that I could find [without digging through boxes in the shed]

Looking at the mini up close is not so good now, because I can see where I could have done a much better job. Hallen's faithful will remember this one sitting in the display cabinet for quite some time.