Old Man’s War

John Scalzi’s debut sci-fi adventure is amazing.

It tells the story of old people from Earth that are recruited for an intergalactic military organization. There, their bodies are reconstructed to their younger form and enhanced.

From there, they have to fight against alien races to protect humanity. Humans on Earth do not have a clue about this galactic war BTW.

I must recommend the reading.

Note: I also read the sequel, The Ghost Brigade. And also love it. But much of the original wow was, of course, gone.

My Rating: 8★★★★★★★★

Goodreads: 4.23

2016.05.28

Real-time blogging during a trip

#personal

During my trip to both Dubai and Egypt, my second big international ride alone, I tried to do experiment: convert my daily writing routine into a travel journal.

For the last 5 years or so, I have habit the write almost every day into a personal journal. It is my way of putting drafting ideas, tell my day and the interesting things that I have in my mind and complain about the bad things that happens to me. In other words, a free way to do some therapy.

But I tried this time to focus my energy trying to create a dialogue with friends and family that were curious about this particular destination. So I decided to dedicate about 1 hour every single day to choose some photographs, enhance them and post with a cohesive background story. Many have some humor but there was some with pure aesthetics in mind.

Every day, I published the stories both in Facebook and Google+.

The feedback was – simply put – amazing! Hundreds of likes and dozens of comments, much more that I’m used to. I tried to respond them as soon as possible and the dialog evolved.

For me it was also a good thing by itself, because reviewing all the photos and trying to organized them into a story, it remind me about the great experience that I was having. It made me happier, despite the exhaustion of the long days.

Also It forced me to take a different and more careful look into the landscapes and people that I was meeting everyday. I was paying attention to the opportunities, the colors and mood of places I was knowing.

The professional camera that I used was… my phone! I have to admit that the Galaxy S6 camera is really great. Just a couple of moments that I had the desire to have a professional dedicated camera. The portability and versatility of a phone camera is, however, much more valuable for me than the ultimate picture quality.

For almost every photo I had also to do some minor editing, enhancing the brightness and forcing a bit the overall saturation for more vivid colors. While it affects the truthiness of the image, I’m totally in for the dramatic effect it causes.

Facebook mobile app was not super smooth on commenting each of the uploaded photos. Google+ unfortunately don’t allow this. It affected the storytelling part and led to a more visual-only experience.

The world is an amazing place and it was a pleasure to be in the places I visited. By doing this journal, I learned that people are hungry of positive messages and beautiful images. After hundreds of photographs, I am very happy to have feed them for a while.

Facebook posts (in Portuguese):

Google+:

EDIT 2023-03-23: Google+ is long defunct. Links do not work and were removed

2016.05.20

Dubai and Egypt

#personal #photos

What an experience! Originally I wanted to go to the east, Malaysia, Singapore, Bali and Vietnam, but I thought it would be too romantic for a lone hitchhiker.

But during the initial planning, I found that almost all planes go from Brazil to Dubai, then to the eastern region. And suddenly it caught my attention: what about going to Dubai instead? It is not a primary destination, but there is a great deal of crazy news about this place that I believed that it would be a nice destination.

But Dubai, despite being pleasant, is a small place, and it would not take much time. A 2-week trip would fatally become boring. So I decided to go somewhere else nearby. And then it comes Egypt!

What a trip! Dubai was organized, beautifully artificial, man made effort. Egypt was the total opposite, being beautifully natural, man made chaos.

The Islamism was really different from my reality, and I could see how deep it affects their cultures. It is now in their roots.

While in Dubai I had basically no reservations, Egypt, I must say, is not a trip for everyone. Afflicted by an ever political crisis, the poor country is now in a profound economic crisis. The people are getting desperate. They accept any deal for a penny. Even trying to mislead tourists. I had SEVERAL discussions with natives because I felt being cheated.

Taxi drivers, guides, shopkeepers. Almost all that I had contacted tried to get a bit of extra money from me. Something around 500%! :O Making a local friend was my salvation.

That was my very first trip that I did not know the local language. Arabic was simply too complicated to learn in a short period. But in Dubai was not a problem, because it is a very internationalized city and everyone speaks English. Egypt, on the other hand, even being one of the most famous places on this planet, is not prepared for the global community, just like here in Rio de Janeiro. Those people that are involved directly with tourists do speak enough English, but if you do not follow the path of the masses, you will end up dealing with mimicking and gestures with the locals.

To my surprise, food was not a memorable thing in either place. Dubai does have any type of food you might want, but none was particularly remarkable. Egypt does have some local and famous dishes, but none of them did enchant me. I was expecting some simple but tasty food. Exotic stuff from the desert. Ancient recipes. But nay. Nothing.

And did I mention that being in Islamic countries, alcohol is really hard to get? There are only small local stores that have beers, and they are expensive. After a full day walking under an unforgiving hot sun in the desert, I just wanted some ice-cold beer to close the day relaxed. I had to console myself with juice instead.

Egypt recently had some terrorist attacks and most of the tourism has vanished. One told me there were approximately 5% of tourist from the once a popular Russian winter destination. Europeans also are just too afraid to visit it.

It has some advantages for those that actually go there. The only still remaining of the ancient wonders of the world, the Pyramids, had nobody. I could bargain a good price for a camel ride, entering the tombs and even hiking the Great Pyramid of Giza. I hired a personal taxi driver for the whole day and paid just a penny for it. Slept in the middle of the Sahara, ate local Bedouin dinner, visited temples, rode a hot-air balloon, did a cruise through the Nile river and hired guides for a fraction of the normal price.

All these attractions did a very nice mark in my heart. It was the unique trip I ever did. I felt I was on another planet, from another time, in a totally different culture. I was special. I can totally recommend it, but you have to have an adventurous heart.

Amazing!

2016.02.23

A Study in Transparency: How Board Games Matter

#game #programming

I just watched a GDC presentation by the same name by the developer Soren Johnson, from Mohawk Games. I’ve agreed almost entirely with him. The basic premise of his presentation is that video games should pay more attention to physical board games, learning that techniques they use in order to create engagement. The motif is: board games have transparent set of rules and transparent implementation of luck. Video games should have such transparency too to engage players.

At the end, when he opened for audience questions, he was nervous to answer and he somewhat backed a bit from this point of view. There were a couple of questions that I want to discuss:

What if the game system is so complex that you deliberately want to hide it from the player? (watch the original answer)

In Civilization, as pointed in the presentation, the designers opted for displaying each variable or modifier as a series of bullet points in the UI. That is because the list of modifiers is long and complex. When engaging in a diplomatic mission, the player must understand what are affecting the relationship. But hey, it is only one way to solve the problem.

In Shadow of Mordor, the orc leaders challenge themselves for power and status. Each orc also have a list of strengths and weaknesses. All this information is presented to the player is a very elegant way. It exemplifies the Soren’s argument.

But if game is so complex that is really difficult/impossible to present the players all information? Well, it is probably a flaw in the game. If there is too much going on, most likely that the player action only impact slightly in the result. The player will feel that is pure luck. He is just a passenger. It is the game designer’s job to balance it back; otherwise, it will suffer from bad reputation and bad sales. Too shallow or too complex have to be considered equally problems to deal.

Notice that another possible consequence is when the game becomes a cult hit and the players that endured the gameplay formed a community to share information and demystify the obscure rules. A good example is Dwarven Fortress, a super weird and complex game that is loved by many for being weird and complex. My suggestion: do not try this path.

If you expose the whole set of rules and internal numbers, it will become a matter of optimization instead experimentation. (watch the original answer)

It can be a problem, yes. Tic-Tac-Toe suffers exactly from this problem: you can anticipate the full match to a point that you CAN guarantee that you will never lose (you cannot guarantee that you will tough).

But as a designer, you can implement counter measures to fight it. Luck and complex decision tree for example.

Luck is the classic solution. By implementing a series of unknown events, it makes very difficult to predict the future. Random numbers, random events, scramble cards. Notice that luck is merely an element that the one cannot control or predict, like weather or a die roll, or a hidden enemy in a fog of war.

Complex decision tree refers to both make several factors relevant for each decision and a game with several rounds. Think of Chess or Go. There are so many possible movements per round that, while theoretically possible, it is practically impossible to compute all moves in order to make a single best decision.

In general, I am with Soren. I might discourse about it in the future, because most people think that creating games is just an intuition and art. But there a lot of reasoning and logical decisions that should guide the construction of such products.

2016.02.21

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

#game #review

Shadow of Mordor is one of that type of game that sucks me in a way that I cannot stop desiring to play. My last love was The Witcher 3, which I slowed played for more than 125 hours during months. But the scope is so much smaller that TW3 that I was determined to finish the game as soon as possible. It took me about half a week, but I did it. SoM is officially over. Credits, like in all modern game or movie, are endless. Satisfaction. Because I am a completionist, I still have it installed to allow me to go back to it and at least finish the 100% mark (I would love to do all the Steam achievements too, but some are too obscure).

The mechanics presented here is nothing new. The main character, Talion, is an Assassin’s Creed wanderer. He climbs castles, towers and hills just like any AC character always do. The advantage here is that the enemies, the orcs, are very stupid and lose track of you almost instantaneously. Each to run away from messy situations. The combat is also very derivative of this new generation of third person action games, just as Assassin’s Creed, Batman and God of War. It is very generous on targeting your enemies. The counter attack time window is very broad.

Shadow of Mordor, therefore, is an easy game once you get the general flow. However, it is very fun.

One of the main features of this game is the nemesis system (it is how the developer calls it). In the game, orcs have a hierarchical military structure and they interact withing the chain quite often. The challenge rivals, assume the vacant position, are promoted. Killing the high command leaders triggers a series of promotions. Player can also induce rebellions, plot assassinations and other situations that actively shapes a new order. It is fascinating mechanics. You will get furious to see an orc getting more powerful and promoted because he killed you. In their culture, it is a demonstration of mighty.

Another cool concept is that any of these orc leaders have strengths and weaknesses that you can, and should, explore. They can be immune to ranged or melee attacks, forcing you master all the combat techniques. They can also have a critical fear of bees, caragors (a thematic tiger) or traitors infiltrated in their outpost. Exploiting such flaw will make them act erratic and try to run away. It will open a great opportunity window for finishing them off. Every time you need to kill one of them, it is imperative to study these character aspects to plan the strategy.

Graphically the game is stunning. I could run it in full HD in High preset and several times I had to stop just to take a mental photo of the moment. Nothing to comment further: great.

The story, however, is just ok. There are some problems that annoyed me:

It is too fragmented: there are some secondary characters that come and go in matter of two missions. Some are genuinely cool, but vanish from the story too soon.
The bosses are mini-games: there are basically 3 bosses in the game. Without spoiling the story any further, they are merely a mini-game. Almost no interaction. And they are not present throughout the game, so I was never engaged to kill them.
The main story is essentially a tutorial: the game have a core mechanics that is supposed to be an infinite loop. The main story presents new combat or gameplay features until almost the last mission! And like any tutorial-mission in games, they are always easy on the player.

There is one aspect of the game story that I liked and I feel worth to mention: the lore of the game. While the game is not about the main events of Lord of the Rings (it happens long before the LotR), it crosses with some cool characters and events that made me feel it was part of the famous story.

I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor very much. I recommend you to play it. I was curious when all major game reviewers were telling very good things about the game (they also were surprised). Due to the Brazilian current ratio, I had to wait for a better price; and it was worthy!