Flogging Molly kicks quite a bit of behind.

Bad Religion kicks even more backside.

NOFX kicks immense amounts of ass. Here’s the illustrious El Hefe…

…And Fat Mike as well. As you can see from the pictures, with each band I got progressively closer to the stage. For NOFX there was no question about it: of course I’d be thrashing up front.

There was a bit of a crowd. Nothing spectacular, but apparently 10800 people attended the show according to WCR’s homepage. Not bad!

One of the coolest aspects of the festival was that I received an e-mail from an old high school friend a few weeks ago. We hadn’t spoken to each other for five years, and all of the sudden I get this e-mail saying “Hey, I read on your blog that you’re going to West Coast Riot! Me too; let’s meet up!”

Sweet mother of fuck - this bloggin’ thing is actually doing some good. Thanks for an excellent time, Rangou!

Edit: On popular demand I’m adding a pic of myself as well. I know, I know - my eyes are all puffy and tired. Told you I’m getting old!

Oh, and just so you know: these were taken with my awful cell phone cam since my proper digital camera was supposed to be used at another occasion. (But of course it never did get used, so I had to make do with a crappy camera while the nice little Exilim thingie was lying unused and unloved at home! Boo-hoo!)

The proper way to start every trip… Beer at Arlanda airport.

I absolutely hate seafood, so I had a hard time keeping things in my stomach while a couple of colleagues ate things like this in Taiwan. This is where the “fear and loathing” part comes in.

Here’s where I’d place some nice images of Taipei 101, the totally sweet and amazingly high skyscraper located in Taipei. But - of course - I got no good images at all. I’ll just tell you that it was an amazing experience to look out over the city from the ~90th floor. I got the strongest urge to go “I crush your head, tiny humans! I crush your whole car! Crush crush! I crush your building, puny ground-dweller!”

Let’s go on to Singapore instead, since I’ve already reported on a trip to Taiwan last year.

No trip to Singapore is complete without a visit to the Long Bar, home of the Singapore Sling. I hadn’t heard the stories about the peanuts on the floor, so my initial reaction upon sitting down was “oh man! we got a really dirty table!” …Don’t know what I mean about the peanuts? Use the almighty Google!

After a meeting with a company I won’t name (but oh dang, there’s most of the logo present in the pic), we got to try their F1 simulator. Apparently they’re sponsoring a Grand Prix that will be held in Singapore in September. Let me tell you, I am not a good race car driver. This was way harder than Gran Turismo 3!

We got some nice sightseeing done a couple of the days. Singapore really has some amazing sights. To the left you have the parliament, and to the right you have a spacey building close to Sim Lim Square - the place where you can literally drown in electronics.

Speaking of drowning, I wouldn’t want to swim in this… Such a clean city, but that water…

I just had to have a picture of the “no durians” sign. Awesome. I still haven’t seen one of those fruits, but I smelled it now and then. Pretty potent stench, that!

What? That word you keep using, I don’t think it means what you think it means. Or did they really have the guts to shut down a street in order to have some kids with laptops hack a bank or something? Or am I only biased about the use of the word “hacking”?

Spontaneous comments about the trip:

• I wish I had gone when there wasn’t a rainy season.
• Frog tastes like tiny tiny chicken.
• Taiwan is a wonderous mix of high tech and down-to-earth Chinese.
• Taipei 101 is a must-see for all visitors.
• Night market means lots of food stands and even more stands filled with cheap copies of known brands.
• I have never seen such a clean city as Singapore.
• Clarke Quay is awesome, but it’s nigh on impossible to find a table at that microbrewery place on a Friday night.
• I will never ever break the law in Singapore. Oh, darn - I already did! I smuggled chewing gum into the country.
• Alcohol is ridiculously expensive in Singapore.
• And speaking of alcohol: when you order a White Russian in Singapore, it will be layered with the Kahlua at the bottom. Barbarians!

Lovely picture that’s definitely not mine.

Does anyone have hints about what to do while abroad? I’ll have at least a couple of days to spare in both places; I’ve received a few suggestions concerning shopping and party areas in Singapore, but I have no idea what I can do in Taiwan. My last (and only) visit to Taipei was filled with work and more work, so I didn’t have time to look for anything fun. If you have any suggestions for either Taiwan or Singapore - leave a comment!

And speaking of shopping… What should I buy aside from the obvious things like a cheap MP3 player or two? Does anyone know of cool and/or weird things available in either place? Things that one simply cannot miss?

For a long time at work I’ve been moaning about getting to travel more. Apparently it paid off - I get to go on a two-week trip to Asia now, and my new assignment after a re-organization is going to be Field Applications Engineer. I have high hopes for adding more countries to my “been-there-done-that” list during the next year.

Our brave hero tries to break the ice with a couple of inept adventurers in town.

Wildhollow Status Report

Art

• Characters - progressing very well, thank you. No worries there. 
• Backgrounds - as seen above, things are moving along. I’ll get the town background soon, and more shortly after that.
• Animals - they’ll be next after the characters.
• Other - so far, just my own GUI elements. We’ll see what happens there; this will be taken care of relatively late.

Design

• Story - the major storyline is complete, but all the quests aren’t specified.
• Puzzles - yeah, well, there’ll be more adventuring than puzzling, that’s for sure.
• Management - the animal management parts are pretty defined, but only on paper…
• Dialogue - coming along nicely! Most of the first location is complete. I’ll have some inspirational fluid (read: beer) one of these days, call upon my muses (read: listen to Tom Lehrer and Stephen Lynch), and get some more writing done.

Programming

• Adventure - the adventuring framework with locations and dialogue is pretty solid.
• GUI/Inventory/Management - rudimentary but shouldn’t be too much work to fix.
• Effects - no sparkles at all yet!

Audio

• Music - I have some music that seems suitable; I’m waiting with it though.
• FX - no worries. I have a good library of sound effects to dive into.

This sure sounds depressing… But not to worry. Most of the progress will take a major leap forward Soon(TM), and then things will start accelerating a whole lot. In March I was scheduling a summer release, but - not surprisingly - it will probably be a release just after summer instead. A playable demo should be available in June, a working version in July, and if people don’t find the game too crap it should be available in August.

But I really have to start working on Spandex Force 2 in parallel with Wildhollow in order to get both games done this year…

Just look at the bands…

• NOFX
• Bad Religion
• Flogging Molly
• Lagwagon
• Moderat likvidation
• De lyckliga kompisarna
• No Fun At All
• Randy
• And so on…

I am aware that you might be culturally handicapped and unaware of the greatness of the latter four Swedish bands, but I trust that everyone has heard of NOFX, Bad Religion and Flogging Molly at least. Those three are enough to make me feel hot and bothered; the rest is a great bonus.

Feel like tagging along? The problem right now is that it’s been half a decade since I last knew people I could convince to come with me on events like this. I don’t fancy the idea of being the old bastard in a crowd of pretentious little 16-year-old punks, but trust me: even if I have to go alone, I am definitely attending this festival!

I think…

One problem is that this is yet another attempt at creating an open standard that can be used by anyone and everyone. I’m sure that DataPortability thinks that it’s special and unique and brings something new into the disarrayed online world…but I’m also sure that OpenSocial feels the same way, just as FriendFeed and who knows how many others. Looking at DataPortability’s FAQ page it seems that they are aware of the problem of constantly re-inventing new standards; they want to use existing standards effectively instead. …But in a controlled manner. According to their recommendations. …Which sounds like they are trying to impose a standard, after all. One good thing about DataPortability is the fact that they won’t try to make a centralized storage point for all data - unlike FriendFeed, which sounds like utter bollocks.

Anyway, good luck to all of them, and I’m not stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth: if DataPortability (or some other standard) becomes a wide-spread way of sharing data I’ll definitely look into how I could use it in upcoming projects. For example…Spandex Force 2. I could imagine some cool uses such as importing personal information into the game, accessing photos that can be converted into an in-game avatar pic, or sharing pictures of impressive victories. Amongst other things.

I suspect that this could even be used for cross-game character data. It’s the old utopian dream that fanboys have yearned about for years and years: imagine that you’re playing an RPG and that you’re pretty fond of Mr. Fagball (as your character might be called). Then you want to play another RPG - or even a game of a completely different genre - and you could now have the option of using Mr. Fagball in that game as well! Yayness! Of course, it would probably work like utter crap if it was implemented badly, but I could imagine that static character traits could be shared even though game-specific data isn’t.

For example, if Mr. Fagball is a character in an RPG his STR stat might be at 16. Even if this would be possible to translate into strength in a strategy game, it might be completely ludicrous - the strategy game could become totally broken. However, if the RPG game stored information about Mr. Fagball’s pot-bellied appearance, that could (possibly) be of use in the strategy game as well. Like a cross-platform Mii. Except that this sharing wouldn’t have to stop at mere appearance; if data was gathered through social sites as well, personal information could be utilized by the game in order to make an uncannily scary experience.

“Give it up, Moop-Gleez! Your evil plans are brought to an end!”
“So, Mr. Fagball… You have come to destroy me? I think not - I know your weakness! You made out with Patrick’s sister last weekend, and if you don’t throw down your sword right now I’ll e-mail him and tell!”
“NOOOOO!”

Tiny, tiny samples of the characters in Wildhollow. Tiiiiny tiny tiny!

It’s going to be a whole lot of characters, and a whole lot of fun! I’d really like to write a bit about the story and the characters, but I’ll do my best to not spoil anything. And either way, things might always change before the end, so I’d better not say too much just yet.

One thing I can say though is that I’ve re-thought the beginning a bit. Originally I thought of giving the player loads and loads of things to do from the beginning, but that’s just…a bit overwhelming. Instead I’ll focus om the adventuring aspects first, and maybe some puzzles, before I bring in the management bits. Essentially, you’ll have to progress a little into the game before it really opens up. Not to worry, though - it won’t be like a dull tutorial. Just… Focusing on other aspects of the game, in the beginning.

When you start the game you have to solve a few easy quests and gather enough money for your first ranch upgrade before you can start buying animals. That’s when the game will begin properly; when you’re able to breed animals and create new species. But I have a suspicion that there’ll be quite some adventuring and puzzling even after that.

Enough ranting for now. I’ll just briefly mention that it’s a female dog to find background art that fits…and is affordable. I might have something going now - I’ll just have to wait and see. Stay tuned for Wildhollow news!

This morning I blushed almost as much, as I got another mail from the same source, suggesting that The Crossdresser (one of the villains in Spandex Force) bears quite some similarity to me. I leave it up to you to decide:

The Crossdresser to the left. No, right.

Arguments for:

• Both have long hair and a beard.
• I have been known to wear a dress in order to disguise myself.
• The Crossdresser is completely insane; I think most people would say that we share that trait.

Arguments against:

• The Crossdresser’s wearing a wig in that picture.
• Uh…
• It’s not me, I promise!

Man! Outwitted by my own lists!

And wait a second… This study was funded by PopCap? Hm… If I were a bit more cynical I would almost suspect that the study is intended to point out the obvious, and that they’re doing this purely for PR reasons. Especially since the games mentioned are - wait for it - Bejeweled 2, Peggle and Bookworm Adventures. But that couldn’t be the case, could it?

Also, I really don’t think there’s enough data present in the press release or in the slides accompanying it. It’s little things, like the following snippet:

In all cases, the changes in stress levels and mood were measured in comparison to a control group that experienced a Web-based activity similar in physical and mental nature to the game-playing groups.

Exactly what Web-based activity was this? And how can they assert that it’s similar in physical and mental nature? A similar mental nature would be something intended to stimulate positively, like…um…a game. Which would mean that they played a web game instead of a downloadable game? And how exactly are they confirming that the physical natures are the same? Playing a game is a much more involved experience for me than just, for example, browsing the net; even if they per definition both involve moving the mouse and sitting on my ass, the physical experiences are subtly different.

But seriously, the study was interesting and confirmed my intuitive belief that games help me relax. And there’s probably loads more information in the actual paper for those who wish to check up details about the study. That wouldn’t be me, though - I prefer to complain.

Either way, go casual games for making us all relaxed and happy! Now I feel like playing some Magic Farm.

First of all, I need to decide where to apply puzzles. I’m thinking that the player has to capture wild animals in order to get new traits and fresh genetic material to crossbreed with the existing animals, but I haven’t decided on the puzzle mechanic for these captures. Also, I haven’t decided what other puzzles should be present. Puzzles when the player breeds animals? Gambling in towns? Tasks the player can perform for various people in order to earn money? I’m still undecided…

And this leads to the second big issue: how the game economics should work.

In Spandex Force I decided early on to have a number of resources: money, reputation and experience. It made sense to have many resources that have to be gathered, which enable different things in the game. Money allows you to upgrade your base, buy powers and get artifacts. Reputation decides your rank, affects the difficulty level of the minigames, and decides what artifacts you have access to. Experience decides your level and what powers you have access to. There are many other kind of resources and checks in the game (clues, power levels, etc) but these are the most important resources and checks. It wasn’t completely trivial to come up with this structure, though: the biggest task was to try to think of a scheme in which the player always has need for all of the resources.

In my first Spandex Force designs, money essentially became useless after a while. I partly solved that by raising the base upgrade costs in the later game, but even that would have made money completely irrelevant after the last upgrade. So, instead I went for a solution where you can only have a certain number of powers and artifacts at a given time. This has made people annoyed, but it was a carefully selected choice in order to make money useful throughout the entire game - there’s always a new artifact to try, or a new power to try out. (Well. At least for a long while.)

Now I’m facing similar problems with Wildhollow. I’ve cut down on the number of resources to one: money. Yes yes, I’m a capitalistic pig who can’t see beyond monetary power, but it was the only thing that would make sense. Granted, there are lots of other things to keep things interesting: items, animal food, animals themselves, etc. But money is the common thread throughout - every item and animal has a value.

But how can I make money useful throughout the game, except as a score-keeping mechanism? In order to make money relevant, there need to be things that have a cost. “Well duh,” the reader sighs. But this isn’t as easy as it sounds. What can I introduce into the game that the player wants and/or needs? Food for the animals, of course. Items that improve the animals. Upgrades to the ranch. But then what?

And, more of a problem, I’ve almost decided that the player should be able to sell his animals to make room for new and interesting breeds. But this will generate money - and I still have no real solution to the what-to-spend-money-on problem. It’s easy to fall back on the upgrade solution. You need to collect cash to upgrade your ranch. Then you can breed more expensive animals that you can sell in order to get more cash you can use to upgrade your ranch. …But after the last upgrade, this economic setup will crash and burn like a tinder house in hell. (Unless it’s Dante’s version of hell.)

I’ve been trying to think of ways to get around this:

1. The tired old cliché: you’ve borrowed money in order to build your ranch in the first place. When you’ve paid off your debt you’ve finished a vital part of the game! Go you! This is actually surprisingly tempting, and would work very well. But it’s not a solution - it just delays the point of economic failure.
2. Capturing animals costs money. You can capture new animals but this costs something. I don’t know why exactly - it could be bait for the animals, or one-shot items used to capture beasts… This is still vague and undefined.
3. There’s no way to capture wild animals; you have to buy all your animals at the market. I don’t like this solution, but irritatingly enough it would solve a lot of things. This would mean that you could never get an animal for free, so, while you might make a profit on selling it later (after some grooming and taking care of), it wont be as big.

There are probably hundreds of other things I could do. As I’m writing this I’m starting to realize that point number three makes way too much sense for my own liking - I just might be forced to go for a combination of one and three. …With the possible addition of just capturing a couple of magical beasts in the wild…