Record of Motion

Vocoders are amazing. I cannot say that any more clearly.

I’ve been playing with synths for almost two years now and just recently decided to play around with the Vocoder found in Reason. (Yes, I know! It’s not FLOSS! But it is easily the best tool for audio production I have ever used.) My initial attempts at getting it to work failed. After a bit of reading, that changed.

I’ve uploaded a couple of sample loops to show you what a bit of what a Vocoder can do. Vocoders are used most frequently to produce those ‘electronic’ voices that are heard in most techno and pop. A lot of people seem to think that that is all they are good for. Those people are wrong. Below I have two loops: One pad synth and one arpeggiated lead synth. While each sounds good on it’s own, and they both sound good played at the same time, the vocoder mixes them together for a completely new sound.

Lead Synth

Pad Synth

Vocoded Synths

I’m not going to go into details about how Vocoders work. A quick google will explain it better than I can.

Oh, and by the way, emallson is back!

I would be willing to wager that at some point in his/her life, everyone who reads this has pirated digital media of one form or another. Piracy is a big deal. It has a big conflict surrounding it. Some say it’s fine, others say it’s theft, and still others say at times it is theft and at other times it isn’t. So what is it? I’m ignoring that question

This post is about the Profit and Loss of Profit related to piracy.

In Utopia, Piracy would drive profit through the roof. In reality, however, it causes a decline in profit. That is the cold hard truth. However, not 100% of piracy causes profit loss. The amount of money lost through piracy is probably closer to 56%. Yes, I pulled that number out of rand()%100. Why is it closer to one-half than one whole? Simply put, only about half of the things that most people pirate they would have even been interested in buying in the first place.

To draw from personal experience: When Fallout 3 came out, I was pumped. But instead of going and buying it, I pirated it to ‘test it out’. I have since purchased it, for the record. But other games, Icewind Dale, for instance, I would never purchase. I obtained Icewind Dale from a .torrent approx. 3 months ago. I’ve played through it once since then. Even if I had bought it, I would have gotten it used, so for the developers it was still not a profit loss.

Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War is another example. Great, fun RTS, that one. But I wouldn’t have walked into GameStop and picked it up and bought it. It probably wouldn’t have even occured to me. In this case, it is a profit gain for THQ and Relic, since I bought it when I otherwise wouldn’t have. However, the number of games like this (for me, at least) is nowhere near enough to make up for the profit lost. To say otherwise is to delude yourself.

The whole reason for this post is really that I’m tired of people on both sides of the fence ranting, and needed to vent. Not all piracy is profit loss, but by the same token not all piracy is not profit loss. There is a middle ground somewhere around 50-60% profit loss where the real value lies. In my case, I have one pirated, then bought, that I would’ve bought anyway. One pirated, that there is no way I would have bought, and still haven’t. One pirated, that I never would have bought, but have since done so because I enjoyed it. That is just from my example. Total profit loss for me overall is approx. 50% lost profit (aka 2:1 ratio of pirated to pirated-then-bought games and media).

/rant

Too many people, it seems, view MMOs as a long path to the actual game. “What is the End Game like?” posts plague beta forums. Some of you know I play Anarchy Online. My main on there, Emallson, is only level 78 (out of 220). I have spent two years getting him there. When I tell people that, they ask why. “Is it hard to level? Is it slow? Why don’t you quit?” The point of an MMO is not the End Game, but the journey.

This idea struck home to me as I was looking through WoW private servers. The I80 (Instant 80, you login, and create a new level 80) servers have the highest turnover rate. On those servers there is no journey! On hi-rate servers, the turnover rate is not nearly as high, but still far higher than lo-rate servers. Why? Because there is less of a journey.

I have a problem grinding. I really hate it. So when I play MMOs, I generally don’t grind, I explore. I travel around, seeing the sights and slaying anything that tries to prevent me. In this way, I end up leveling (albeit more slowly) and gain an appreciation for the fantastic world which the developers of whatever MMO I happen to be playing have created.

I was reading this ArsTechnica article, and came across this statement at the end:

“Having our [movies] rented at $1 in the rental window is grossly undervaluing our products,” News Corp COO Chase Carey said on a conference call yesterday. “We are actively determining how to deal with it.”

(copied directly from the article)

My bone of contention is with the first part:

Having our [movies] rented at $1 in the rental window is grossly undervaluing our products

Is not the basis of Capitalism that I pay for an item or service what I think said item or service is worth? And then you determine whether or not you wish to accept my offer? If I think a one-night rental of your film is worth $1, and you (or, in this case, Coinstar, the owner of RedBox) accept that offer, why should anyone stand in the way?

On a less propagandist note, RedBox would actually help sell movies, if the movies are actually any good. What they help prevent is dropping $20 on the latest film that turns out to be utter crap. However, multiple films I can think of (which I have seen originally through RedBox) and now own, I paid full retail for because I enjoyed them so much. Valkyrie is one example. Granted, not everyone will go out and buy them. But those who do make up for the loss. I don’t buy movies. Ever. I watch them in theatres or rent them. Only on the occasion of a truly spectacular film will I buy it.

Ah well, once corporate dicks get a lawsuit in their thick skulls there is no getting it out.

Yesterday, doing some browsing concerning the ShadowRun PnP RPG, I came across Deckeon. Deckeon is a MUD based on the ShadowRun ruleset. I started zMUD and logged into Deckeon. It’s actually a very well done MUD, but the help files are a bit lacking. The GMs are nice and helpful, which is always a plus, but I figured I would put up some of the things I learned about Deckeon that will help other players later on.

• Choosing an Archetype not only sets your skills and attributes, but also your race. This took me by surprise, and I had to reroll to be a Night One (dark elf)
• the PURCHASE command is used to spend skill points. the amount of skill points you have is chosen at character creation. you can check the current amount that you have by using RAISE without any arguments. in order to raise your skills at creation, you must use PURCHASE on them multiple times.
• FIRE is specifically for vehicle weapons. SHOOT fires pistols, rifles, etc. You can also SHOOT <dir> <target> to shoot a target in a room next to your current room.
• SWING attacks with a melee weapon. A whip is handy to start with because it keeps your target at a distance, but it is less effective than, say, a katana.
• The SHADOWCLUB is DOWN from the taxi dropoff location.
• Never raise SEARCH above 1. It is pointless.
• Katana in left hand and Ares Pistol II in right hand is a very potent combination.
• To reload a pistol in your right hand, you use RELOAD RIGHT, not RELOAD R, as the docs indicate. To reload a pistol in your left hand, just use RELOAD.
• The IMPROVE-STRENGTH/QUICKNESS/BODY skills will actually permanently improve your attributes.

It is a very good MUD. As I get more into it, expect to hear more. The website for Deckeon is deckeon.net

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Well, not really. If this were Ubuntu I would be prepping to beta test, but Arch has this wonderfull rolling release system.

I used to keep Shaman open 24/7 set to check for updates once every 4 hours. Once a day I would have it update. About two months ago I stopped doing that for whatever reason. I think shaman had a crashing bug concerning plasma. Today I attempted to install twisted from pacman, only to have it give me 404s. Turns out I hadn’t run -Syu since I stopped using shaman. So, dutifully I ran pacman -Syu; pacman -S twisted. Here are the results of the first command: Continue reading ‘Ridiculous Updates on Arch Linux’ »

Last fall my laptop died of mobo failure. Now, thanks to my job, I can afford another one. I was hoping to spend 500$ or less. My old laptop was:


1.8Ghz P4
120GB HDD
15.4" Screen (thankfully matte, not glossy)
CD-RW Drive
768MB RAM (512MB + 256MB) DDR
Integrated ATi Card (i had a hellish time getting drivers for it in both linux AND windows)


I would love some recommendations. As long as it’s not over 1k$ and has at least the specs of my old laptop it’s a possibility. Right now I’m looking at the possibility of a Dell XPS m1530 refurbed. The Dell Outlet website had about 15 on there yesterday for around 600$. One catch: Flamingo Pink. Not my color. Who knows, maybe I’ll get an amazing deal on eBay for something.

Years ago I read a PC World article on a new Chinese RTS that had “a whole whopping 7 resources” to manage. Their comment on this was that while everyone else was moving steadily towards 1 or 2 resources, this developer had wholly embraced micromanagement of not only units, but resources.

What if in an RPG, you had only one resource? Instead of having XP, Gold/Creds/Coins, Level, Skill Points, and whatever else developers have up their sleeves, you had only one? Imagine this: you kill an opponent, you get 100 bits (this 1 resource for all thing makes hte most sense within the reality of software, so bits were logical). You can use the bits to buy equipment, improve skills, improve attributes, or really anything else. And on top of it, if you needed more bits to buy that +200 Viral Blade of the Nerd Rampage, you would be able to take bits out of your skills/attributes and use them to buy the blade. I have a whole framework worked out in my head, and I’ll attempt to make it work here, on (digital) paper.

A character is defined as follows (still going with the software stuff):

• Attributes
  • Speed
    • Determines movement speed as well as cast time, attack time, etc.
  • Size
    • Determines visible size (ever seen an Agent in AO with Ruse of Taren, Phase 4? Or an en Enforcer with Essence of the Behemoth? yeah, like that), affects sneak ability, the number of programs (see below) that the character can learn at any one time (maybe), and of course other size-related things that I can’t think of.
  • Power
    • Damage boosts, but also drains energy (see below) faster the higher this gets.
• Skills
  • Functions
    • The building blocks of Programs. Yes, you are thinking correctly. The players can build custom Programs. Think Spellwriting a la Morrowind.
  • … I can’t think of anything else to go here. I feel like I’m missing something….
• Loot!
  • According to John Harris, RPGs are about the phat lewt. Yeah. Something as abstract as just bits wont work. I need loot. We have your standard weapons (maybe), armors (definately), social items (most definately), and function disks (think skill book from EVE Online).

The crowning jewel of this idea is the ability to immediately reallocate any and all bits by reselling loot you no longer need as well as lowering attributes and skills. And being able to quickly switch layouts, or allocations of your bits, weapon loadouts, etc, immediately while you are not in combat. As often as you want. For free. Forever. Period.

Of course this is a very rough sketch. Its primary purpose is to show how a system like this would work. Another option would be to allow a character to learn only a specific number of spells (programs) at a time (like Guild Wars, with its oh so annoyingly small hotbar), but also allowing the player to increase that amount by increasing their size (or maybe having a separate attribute).

Maybe after I finish working on Vault 113 I’ll put together a test MUD.

I’ve had TES3: Morrowind for several years. Got the GOTY edition. I finally figured out why I like it better than my recently-acquired Fallout 3. I’ve always been a fallout fan. Always. I cannot begin to describe the excitement I felt when I read the announcement of it’s developer. But playing through it several times reveals something: I liked Morrowind better. Chock it up to familiarity or memories of playing it on my first computer or whatever else, but I really do like it better. I finally figured out why: it places no emphasis on the main plot. F3 throws you into the main quest, Morrowind throws you into a town in the middle of nowhere and gives you a vague recommendation to head to Balmora (first thought: “Where the heck is that?”). Also, Morrowind changes your character depending on how you play. If you start out using Long swords and decide you like bows better, pick up a bow and start shooting things. Eventually you will be better with a bow than with a long sword. Fallout 3 also lets you do pretty much anything no matter your skills (aside from Terminals and Locked doors), but depends on you to increase the skills when you level, opposite from Morrowind, which depends on you to increase your skills to level.

Just my 2 cents.

It just hit me today. Shadowbane is gone. For good. I can’t go back and play it again. Ever. At least until the SBEmu project gets done. It feels strange, thinking that tomorrow morning, instead of getting up to pwn in PvP at a siege, I’ll be blasting experiments on Anarchy Online or role-playing on Morrowind (which, IMO, is far superior to Oblivion). Even the website for ShadowBane (chronicle.ubi.com) is gone now. It redirects to the Ubisoft home page.

I’ve also discovered what turned me off to AO in the first place. The combat is slow. Seriously, the only ones who deal any major damage until lvl 100 are the Enforcers. Everyone else is stuff with some pretty crappy dps. At about lvl 100, Agents can one-hit-kill most mobs, but only once every 2.5 minutes. In Shadowbane, combat was fast. And for me, the measuring rod for all MMORPGs is ShadowBane.

Today, in my boredom from AOs slow combat, I finished my Fallout 3 mod, Vault 113 (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4569), while waiting on the combat in AO. If the combat is that slow, you have a problem. Even WoWs combat speed in raids is about on par with the standard AO speed. And for those that dont know, raid mobs take between 1 minute and 5 minutes each. Alright, so not that slow, but it feals the same. Not a whole lot is going on to watch during combat.  Even though AO is now officially the most tweak-heavy MMORPG still running, without good combat, it’s doomed. It’s on the way there already

Not all is lost though, I still have Morrowind, and I’ve been having waaaaaaaaaaaaay to much fun on it.