I used to like wall-jumping

until I started playing the Super Metroid Redesign rom hack.

On the one hand, I admire people who make rom hacks. Different maps, different items, different controls and interface, and increased challenge all sound like a really great idea.

However, I must say that the people who come up with these have taking the challenge bit so far to the extreme that it is no longer fun. Harder bosses = yes. Spending the first half-hour of the first dungeon without a sword = crap.

I figured I'd at least give the Super Metroid rom hack the same amount of time I gave to the Zelda: A Link to the Past one, given that I quit last time because I didn't know where to go.

This time, I actually stumbled across the fake wall that was necessary to go through to progress. The one fake wall I remember from Super Metroid (the original) at least had an enemy on the other side so that you would notice it...

So I fight the boss, fall down the pit and finally get the wall-jump boots that will allow to me to climb back to the surface. Then, after 10 minutes of trying to wall-jump, I decided to quit. If wall-jumping is such a critical component of the game, it should not have to be this hard. (unless you don't want people to play your hack)

I am, however, amused that other people have wasted similar copious amounts of time on wall jumping in this game.

The quest for resolution independence

I sent this in an e-mail to a friend who was complaining about the lack of high DPI (dots per inch) consumer-grade LCD desktop displays. (Some models do exist, but are intended for the medical community and are pricey.)

A comparison of DPI for previous/current Apple computers and display products

Laptops:
13.3" (1280 x 800) = 113.49 DPI
15.4" (1440 x 900) = 110.27 DPI
17" (1920 x 1200) = 133.19 DPI

Cinema displays and old iMacs:
23" (1920 x 1200) = 98.44 DPI
24" (1920 x 1200) = 94.34 DPI
30" (2560 x 1600) = 100.63 DPI

New iMacs: (note that these are now 16x9, suitable for watching "widescreen" video without black bars instead of the 16x10, which is much more common for widescreen computer displays)

21.5" (1920 x 1080) = 102.46 DPI
27" (2560 x 1440) = 108.79 DPI

And while Apple has touted a push for resolution independence (along with 64-bit) for a while now, some things still appear to be broken (at least in the first Snow Leopard release. I haven't installed Snow Leopard yet, so I can't say if it's been fixed since then.):

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/21
(scroll down to the Resolution Independence section)

On a further note, I do have minor gripes about the 16x10 computer displays, since my current HP display scales up widescreen input (via component) to the full size, so video games are stretched vertically ever so much (+11.1%). I believe this is simply because component is analog, and is being decoded by an onboard chip that then gets sent into the analog to digital converter (probably the same one that would decode a VGA signal). Not sure if this is still an issue on the newer LCD displays from HP and Dell that take consumer digital inputs like HDMI. (not that I have a PS3 or 360 to test anyway) I imagine it's still an issue with component video in. On the other hand having 16x10 IS useful for watching 16x9 video, because the black bars allow for UI popup that does not obscure the video at all.

Now I know what to name my colonies...

About a year ago, I first became enamored with Galactic Civilizations II, a sequel to a game I'd never heard of, Galactic Civilizations (I). Turns out, this game is made by Stardock, who are much better known for their desktop enhancement software. Of course, this interest was spurred by reading PC Gamer's wonderful blog entries on the two expansions to Galciv II, found here and here. Regardless, my itch to conquer space in a turn-based game that looked to be detailed enough to satisfy my OCD-ness, yet simple enough to satisfy my impatience went unattended for over a year. (Partly because I realized how much of a time suck Galciv II was going to be.)

Fast-forward, and suddenly I was in Gamestop, trading in a bunch of games I wasn't going to play again so that I could replace a broken PS2 controller (to finish God of War 2 and feed that Katamari craving) when I saw Galciv II on the shelf. Unfortunately, it was merely the older expansion, but the guy behind the counter was glad to go into the back room and retrieve ... the Ultimate Edition, which includes both expansions and the original for forty bucks! (I guess there's a soundtrack cd too, but the soundtrack is not really designed for standalone listening.)

As of now, I've only completed a few of the missions and two games against the AI, one on a medium-sized map (5x5), and one on a large-sized map (8x8). FYI, there are three more size classes above large, which are Huge (12x12), Gigantic (18x18), and Immense (21x21). Needless to say, maps of that size would require a couple weeks blocked off to play, given that the large-sized map took me about 16 hours to complete...

So far, though, my experience has been excellent. I've only tried AI up to the normal difficulty, which hasn't been too much of a challenge so far. My only complaints are that there are some bugs (1 or 2 crashes to Windows and weird disappearance of the next turn button), but the autosave function resolves the former and save and loading the game resolves the latter. The lack of documentation is a more serious issue, however, particularly in the lack of clarity in game mechanics. For instance, when you research certain technologies, sometimes your stats get a boost, except that it's expressed as a raw integer (e.g. diplomacy +10), yet many of your stats are displayed as percentages. When you build certain social projects on your planets, some of them also yield boosts (e.g. diplomacy +25%), yet it's unclear whether that is an actual +25% to your diplomacy (including previous upgrades), or along the same lines as the +10 from a researched technology. Finally, sometimes, the difference between whether a social project's effects apply just to the planet or to the civilization are unclear, especially for things that boost morale.

But, it needs to be mentioned that the happiest time I had when playing was on one of the earlier missions, when I noticed the planets named Celes, Locke, and Sabin. Ahh, nostalgia. Luckily, there are 14 different FF6 characters, which will give me plenty of colony names for my first push among the stars.

11-year old genius, my ass

From the 11-year old graduating from East LA Community College:
"I feel it's a waste of time playing video games because it's not helping humanity in any way"

Yes, but so too is martial arts. (unless perhaps, you go into special forces. Let's not even mention his goal of being a movie actor...) For mental well-being, people do all sorts of activities to relax. Sure, some of them help humanity (volunteering at a homeless shelter, for instance), and some of them don't (yoga, television, video games). To take a stance on video games when you yourself are engaged in activities that don't help humanity is simply hypocritical.

Of course, calling an 11-year old a hypocrite is just plain silly, but when you're being put on a pedestal for graduating from college early, I feel justified in attacking your narrow view of the world.

And just to be clear, graduating from a community college when you are 11 is NOT a big achievement. I have no doubts that this kid is gifted, but to claim that he has thoroughly mastered any academic subject is a bit of a joke. The 14 year-olds making groundbreaking achievements in mathematics are geniuses; all this kid has shown is that he can read and recite from textbooks. His description of wormholes clearly demonstrates a lack of deep understanding of the topic.

this is NOT fiscal responsibility

Apparently, the governator intends to take the unconstitutional law on selling violent video games to minors all the way to SCOTUS after having been rejected by the 9th Circuit court of appeals. (via ars technica)

Still, I guess it's chump change compared to the massive amount of bond-based borrowing that was authorized by last year's Prop. 1 to build a high speed rail.

the SACD side of the equation, and why Sony sucks

After investing in a decent audio setup, I then discovered the world of SACD, where thousands of classical albums were available with better audio and multi-channel output. That's great, I thought, how do I get started?

Well, besides the hardware requirements, one should be aware that SACD discs usually have multiple audio formats on them, a regular layer that plays fine on a normal cd player, and a new layer that contains HD content that can only be played back on an SACD player. Oh, but the fun doesn't stop there, the SACD layer is encoded in DSD, which outputs only through HDMI (or some obscure thing predating HDMI). (I'm not clear yet whether this is because of bandwidth limitations, DRM, or both). Regardless, this means that you can't use optical (either due to bandwidth limitations, or processing power to convert a DSD signal into DTS). However, most SACD players will output in analog, but this requires conversion into linear PCM format, which is not quite as nice as DSD.

Oh, and then you need the hardware to playback DSD. If you're just using analog, then any standard hardware will do, but as of now, it seems as though most A/V receivers that play DSD are rather expensive. Although, the Yamaha RX-V661 is pretty inexpensive at < $400, but it doesn't seem to have HDMI 1.3 spec, so it may not do SACD over digital (HDMI). (I'm still a little confused about this issue.)

So where does Sony fit in with this picture? Besides the fact that Sony dropped backwards compatibility on the newer PS3's (even after moving from hardware to software emulation), they dropped a bunch of other features as well: flash card readers, and SACD support. "Fine Hao, so buy an older PS3, or trade a newer one for an older one." First, the only real advantage to a newer PS3 is that it is produced on 65nm instead of 90nm, reducing power usage and probably fan noise. (Well, I guess you could also have an aversion to chrome trim.) Another issue is the fact that the PS3 has never supported DSD playback for SACD, but converted to PCM. There were hopes that Sony would release a firmware update to enable DSD for SACD over HDMI, but that seems unlikely now that the new PS3's no longer play SACD's at all.

That being said, I am optimistic about future prospects. Right now, if I had to buy an SACD player, I would go with the Oppo 980. Yes, the 981 and 983 do a slightly better job of upconverting video, but the 980 does a much better job of SACD. (There are issues with enabling DSD over HDMI in the 983.) Plus, it converts to analog for my current needs, but also supports DSD over HDMI for any future receiver purchase.

Red Alert 3

may be worth getting. I think RA2 did a good job with the story with some strange quirks (dolphins? psychics?), even under the hands of EA (we miss you Westwood!).

Still, one wonders about the necessity of a third rotor on the Soviet Twinblade unit: http://www.ea.com/redalert/factions-soviets.jsp?id=Twinblade

In a standard helicopter, the tail rotor provides the necessary balance to the rotational counter-force generated by a single main rotor. Without a tail rotor (or an unbalanced one), when the rotor spins one way, the helicopter body should spin the other way. This is countered by the tail rotor which adds the necessary torque to counter this spinning. However, with 2 main rotors spinning in opposite directions, no tail rotor is necessary, since the rotational counter-force is canceled completely. Just look at the V-22 Osprey.

*sigh* I guess this is another instance of how when developers do research to make their games realistic, no one notices (because it's realistic), but when something goes wrong, people pick up on it.

Gearing up for puzzling

The Google US Puzzle Championship is less than 3 weeks away! After my poor performance in 2007, I'm eager to prove myself this year. Ideally, if I had optimized time, I should have scored ~200 points in the 2007 competition, but failed even to match my score from the year before. If you want to see an analysis of my mistakes in one poorly formatted run-on paragraph, feel free to read the above-linked post.

My plan at this point is probably to capitalize on the fact that finals week will be pretty empty for me, so it will give me a chance to do a couple of things in preparation:

1) Read through Tom's blog to scavenge for tips and strategies. I actually didn't realize that he had devoted an entire post recently to the USPC, and only thought that he had some posts up primarily on Sudoku, but YAY!

2) Work through some old puzzle competitions, trying to remember the key piece of data that unlocks the rest of the puzzle. This should help me get into the mindset of hunting for these rather than trying some blind manipulations of the puzzles.

3) Work through some of the puzzles I've been neglecting in Mensa's blue book. While I'm not a big fan of Mensa's IQ arrogance, the puzzle books they publish are quite nice and both a large variety of puzzles and a range of difficulty for each puzzle type.

4) Stop playing so much DROD. I learned about DROD through www.mathpuzzle.com, which has the occasional post covering a smattering of puzzles, optimization problems, and math research related to games and such. At the moment, I'm on levels 13, 14, 15, and 16 (using the warp in level 12 to make all of those levels available through the restore function) of the Architect's Edition, a free open-source version of the original DROD. While the puzzles are not quite as nicely play-tested as, say, Journey to Rooted Hold, free trumps $20 at the moment.

There is a version of the original DROD using the new engine: King Dugan's Dungeon. However, it does cost money. I will probably buy it at some point for the online tracking system. In addition to the updated graphics, voice acting, and new secrets, it does add a couple features that are very desirable and missing from the Architect's Edition: the ability to undo the last move (even if it resulted in death), and a timer to keep track of Roach Queen, Snake, and Tar Mother behavior. I'm not sure if the engine for KDD is the same as that for The City Beneath, which includes the excellent ability to click on orbs and see which doors will be activated and in which way. Regardless, I did come up with an excellent workaround regardless. Overhead markers work great (being water-soluble) for writing directly on your monitor! This has helped me immensely, by notating switches, as well as marking the location of walls and trapdoors otherwise hidden by Tar.

losing nerd cred by the minute!

The last game I bought was Audiosurf, via Steam, and only because it was 9 bucks. Before that, it was Super Mario Galaxy. Meanwhile the list of AAA-games that have been released in the past few years that I haven't played AT ALL continues to grow:

God of War (complete series)
Halo 3
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Mario Kart Wii
GTA IV

Chalk it up to getting work done, and saving up money for Fallout 3. :)

stolen ideas!

two examples of video games stealing my ideas:

1. When they announce the capabilities of the Wii controller, I immediately told James that there should be a cooking game. A couple months later, Taito announced Cooking Mama: Cook Off. James later rented it; our impressions? the best part was the accent when you did well, and mama says: "better than mama". Yeah, the controls were kinda off.

2. Long ago, I had the idea for software that outsourced mathematical problem solving to India instead of developing an actual algebraic computer system. I even parodied Maple's old slogan of "Harness the brilliance of a thousand mathematicians" by inserting "Indian" into it. At some point, Maple changed their slogan, which forced me to dig around for an old copy for one scene in my lloyd video masterpiece: ACM 95a emergency procedures. And then, someone comes out with a math drill game for the DS that features some Indian guy (I wouldn't have a clue how to convert back the katakana into an Indian name...).

All that is necessary for bogus quotes to proliferate is for lazy writers not to follow-up on sources...

Apparently, Edmund Burke's "famous quote" does not have an original source. It is probably a paraphrasing of some things that he has actually said. Nevertheless, it is reasonably famous, seemingly first appearing in Bartlett's Famous Quotations (14th ed, 1968).

Well, normally, this alone would not qualify it for a blog post. However, in the recent port of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to PSP as a bonus for Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, the "best" ending has an exchange between Alucard and Richter Belmont that includes within it, the following dialogue:

Alucard: "[...] The only thing necessary for evil to triumph..."
Richter: "is for good men to do nothing."

So, I say, why attribute a fine quote like that to Edmund Burke, when you can attribute it to the son of Dracula and a Belmont! Since this version of SotN has a redone translation, I will have to check my PS1 copy to see if it is the same in the original. Also, bear in mind that a literal translation of the Japanese voice-acting does change the word-order so exactly which half of the quote belongs to whom is a translator issue.

Symphony of the Night remains a highly-praised game, having seen release on multiple systems. If you haven't played it yet, either the XBOX 360 Live Arcade version or the Playstation 3 / PSP download from the online Playstation Store should suffice.

Although the port in Dracula X Chronicles has redone voice acting, translation, and some changes to the gameplay, it also costs three times as much, since it is actually a bonus to another game. I have to say, however, that the main game in Dracula X Chronicles is not all that fun, suffering from some major gameplay issues that weren't fixed when they decided to remake the original Rondo of Blood. Besides, it can only be a bad thing when such famously "bad" voice acting lines are replaced:

Dracula: "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! [...]"