News from Great Castle Wilson

  • Imagine an MMO game…

    … where every character got their own story. Where the server would create an individual “path to glory” built around choices you make during character creation. You could factor in race and class (assuming the game had these notions), as well as other data you would provide, such as:

    • Is your character good, evil or simply opportunistic?
    • Is success for your character defined by money, fame, leadership,…?
    • What is your character’s sexual preference?
    • …?

    Of course, the game would still be built from pre-canned collections of story arcs, but the designers would make sure that they could be mixed and matched in many ways, and the details could be subtly altered, so that it would really not be possible to build a hint site that showed the one true path through the game.

    The amazing thing about this game would be that other players, as in real life, would be driven by motivations that didn’t exactly align with yours. Nor would they necessarilly be fighting over the same loot drops. Very cool.

    Of course, in practice, I suspect that detecting all the possible ways that the variant quests could interact, and preventing bad interactions (or even deadlocks) would be NP-hard, but I can dream, can’t I?

  • Deb is travelling.

    She’s off on her yearly pilgrimage to Meg Swanson’s Knitting Camp (“RETREAT 2.75”) in Wisconsin. As usual, she and her friend Mable are driving down in Big Red (our mini-van). The trip takes two days, and Deb called last night to say that they had stopped at their traditional half-way point in Sault Ste. Marie.

    Deb brought her laptop with her, so she may do some blogging while she’s gone, but if not, I’m sure she’ll give a full report when she gets back. In the meantime, Dennis and I are in bachelor-mode. Booya!

  • I bought an LCD

    It’s a ViewSonic VX922. It’s only 1280×1024, but it’s (theoretically) extremely fast; they claim a 2ms response time. I currently have it connected to my laptop at work, but the real test will be with my gaming PC at home. Sounds like a reason to play WoW tonight!

    In any case, it’s bright, it has no stuck pixels, and even at 19″ it’s a *lot* bigger than my old 17″ CRT. I paid $329 at Best Buy. There are probably cheaper prices.

  • Eclipse 3.2

    It’s out. Get it while it’s hot at the Callisto home page.

    As always, I am totally amazed at how much dedication and effort the teams all put into getting this to come together. Way to go, all! Congrats! WOOT!

  • Separated at birth?

    Anyone else noticed the resemblance between:

    Tom Hanks versur R. J. Lorimer

  • DS Lite

    It’s amazing what changing the packaging on a device will do for its perceived quality. I picked up a Ninto DS Lite a couple of days ago…

    Somehow, playing with the case design and materials took it from being a “grey plastic kid’s toy” to a “dual screen micro-iBook”. They also changed the surface of the touch screen to give it a more paper-like feel. All in all, I like it.

    Of course, my only real reason for getting it was because it’s new tech, but I also picked up Electroplankton. If you haven’t seen it, I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s not really a game, but more like a musical toy. I expect to waste hours playing with it.

  • CSS Rules! (LOL)

    Ok, so I have finally figured out how CSS works.

    As a test, I bashed the main Great Castle Wilson site to use CSS for all structure and formatting instead of the old code, which was a bunch of nested tables and embedded text attributes. The new version of the site is quite similar to the old one, with a small number of “upgrades” to the appearance, such as rollovers in the nav bar.

    What they say about how using CSS reduces the size of the files is true, even for small pages. The old index.html file was 4,068 bytes. The new index.html+style.css files together are only 3,121 bytes.

    Anyway, for reference, the old index.html file can be found here.

  • System Shock 3?

    Kotaku, with all the talent for hyperbole that they are known for, are reporting that there is a rumour that a third-installment of the System Shock franchise is in the works at EA. It will be interesting to see what they’re going to make of it, but I do have my doubts. Game design, like all software fields, has gods and wannabes. Good games are made by good people.

    Personally, I’m currently looking forward to BioShock. (warning: link contains spoilers.)

  • Excitement in Kanata (updated)

    So the family tried to go to the AMC in Kanata to watch X-Men 3. We did actually get to start to watch it, but about half an hour in the lights went up, and a theatre employee told us we had to evacuate the building.

    We were asked to leave by one of the rear exits. When we got around to the side of the building we saw this:

    The entire front of the building was cordoned off with crime tape and police were directing us away from the area.

    (Apologies for the image quality — I just snapped a picture as I was walking by, in the hopes that I would not attract the attention of the constabulary.)

    What I heard from someone in front of me (i.e. this is an unsubstantiated rumour) was that a suspicious package — a brief case(?) — had been found.

    Update: According to The Citizen, it was a black briefcase with a black wire sticking out of it. The bomb squad “detonated” it around 23h00, but the article doesn’t indicate whether it was actually a bomb or not.

  • How to install a new hard drive in a PowerMac

    1. Power down; remove power cord
    2. Lift case open lever on back panel; remove side panel and plastic insert
    3. Insert drive in bay; flip lever to hold in place
    4. Attach the SATA cables that are already conveniently placed next to where they should mount on drive
    5. Replace insert and side panel (and push down case open lever)
    6. Replace power cord; power up
    7. When mac asks you if you want to initialize the drive, say yes
    8. When Disk Utility opens, select drive; click on partition tab; click on partition button

    That’s it.

    On a separate note, the current sweet spot for HDs is 250Gig, 16Meg ram cache, 7200rpm for $100.00. Unbelievable.