This Week In Books

John Winkelman

Well, I finished everything on my stack. The Milagro Beanfield War was remarkable, and Twisty Little Passages offered up many interesting insights into the development of all kinds of interactive experiences.

Next up: Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs (chiefly known as the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities):

We in North America and Western Europe, enjoying the many benefits of the culture conventionally known as the West, customarily think of a Dark Age as happening once, long ago, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. But in North America we live in a graveyard of lost aboriginal cultures, many of which were decisively finished off by mass amnesia in which even the memory of what was lost was also lost. Throughout the world Dark Ages have scrawled finis to successions of cultures receding far into the past.

36! or, A More Perfect Square Than Usual

John Winkelman

Yesterday was my 36th birthday. I was going to post something about the goings-on of previous June 5ths in the history of the world, but due to apocalyptic thunderstorms I was without power until after 11:00pm.

My weekend had two high points: The first was on Saturday, when Master Lee’s school performed downtown at Festival. The amazing Anisa did her usual brilliant job as our official/unofficial class photographer. The photos will be posted to Master Lee’s site later this week.

For me, the best part of the demonstration was when Master Lee’s nine-year-old grandson, Ethan, performed a solo version of Gung Li Chuan, one of our basic forms. In the photos Master Lee is standing behind Ethan, face absolutely glowing with pride.

Then yesterday my girlfriend Paula, and the afore-mentioned Anisa, and Anisa’s boyfriend Geoffrey cooked an amazing dinner (fish, asparagus, couscous, tiramisu) to help me celebrate while the thunder and lightning and wind and rain and hail raged outside. Bock bought me a bottle of rum, and my parents called to say Hi Happy Birthday

Good food, good friends, a loving family, and a numerically interesting birthday. Could life possibly get any better?

Playing With(in) the Rules

John Winkelman

In Twisty Little Passages, Montfort distinguishes between three types of story or narrative: Diegetic, Hypodiegetic, and Extradiegetic (from diegesis). The 1001 Arabian Nights is useful for describing the differences: The framework story is diegetic, each of the individual stories is hypodiegetic, and the physical book itself, the paper and ink, is extradiegetic.

In the world of Interactive Fiction, Diegetic commands are those which control the “player character”. Extradiegetic (e.g. meta-) commands are those which control the game itself. Hypodiegetic commands are those which are made through the player character, and which influence other characters in the game.

Moving from Interactive Fiction out to User Interaction, we find some parallels. Using the navigation links in a website is diegetic. Using the web browser controls is extradiegetic. Perhaps using in-system tools (e.g. a price calculator or a store locator) could be considered hypodiegetic.

Someone pointed out a few years ago that web developers and usability experts, nominally working in a “new” field, could take many lessons from the video game industry, which has been working on many of these same problems for more than 30 years.

You Never Have Enough and You Never Run Out

John Winkelman

I just regretfully informed Team n3kk1d that I will not be joining them in the MS-150 this year. Too much to do, and not enough time in which to do it.

This Saturday I and many of my classmates will journey to Midland to compete in the Midland Open Martial Arts Tournament. This will be our fifth(?) year competing, I think.

Next Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 PM our school will perform at the 2005 Grand Rapids Arts Festival. We have been doing this for about as long as I have been a student.

It comes down to this: If I have time to train for a bike rally, then I have time to train for a kung fu performance.

The design for es.o is slowly coming together. At this rate, I should be ready for the 2006 May 1st Re-Boot.

Spore

John Winkelman

A couple of days ago I came across the teaser site for Spore, the next game by Will Wright, the fella who brought us Sim City.

In Spore, you are responsible for evolving the life on your planet, from the level of denizen-of-the-primordial-soup all the way up to galactic overlord.

Gamespy has a long article about/interview with Wright about Spore, among other things. One paragraph struck me as particularly intertesting:

Clicking on the egg brought up a creature editor, and allowed the player to “evolve” with a new generation of critters. The editor was amazingly flexible. Wright could give his creature extra vertebrae, he could give it fins or tails to move faster, he could add claws or extra mouths, whatever he wanted. More importantly, all the creature animations weren’t hard-coded; they were dynamic. If he put six tails on his creature, the game would figure out how a six-tailed creature would move. The critter was completely his.

I immediately thought of two artificial life-ish experiments: Sodaplay and Framsticks, both of which involve creating (and with Framsticks evolving) creatures to test for survivability and fitness.

Supposedly the game will be out in 2006.