What do the years 1996 and 2010 have in common?

I didn't buy much from them. I'll explain in a bit, but first, news about myself:

I graduated from Full Sail. I was also the Advanced Achiever for my class, which is a combination of honor roll and class president (neither of which the school officially has). So now I am, quite literally, a Master of Game Design - I'll even get a shiny piece of paper that says so in six-to-eight weeks.

So, with my newfound post-school free time and official mastery, I've begun gearing up for my NAWTS project over the past few days - organizing my games and doublechecking the spreadsheet for missed entries (of which there were a few). Since I was mucking about in the spreadsheet anyhow, I decided to do a little more statistics with it.



The video games I own, grouped by year of release, with a best-fit second-polynomial line overlayed.

 In general, this graph's best-fit curve - and thus, its general trend - follows the curve I expected it to: it goes up every year, and begins to approach a steady asymptote (which appears to be about 17-18 games per year). I start out not buying many games, and as I grow up (remember, I was born in 1986), I acquire more and more resources that I put towards video games - but at some point, I'll hit satiation, which is why the best-fit curve levels off instead of flying straight up into infinity.

For the record, the best-fit line is a second-polynomial curve - I just wanted to observe the most general trend; I can see the ups and downs from here, thanks.

Speaking of those ups and downs, it's pretty clear to see that the graph doesn't actually 'fit' this best-fit line very well. The most important thing to remember in dealing with those lines is that this data regards the release dates of the games I own, not the date I purchased them: if I buy a used video game in the year 2006, but the game itself was first released in 2003, then it goes in the 2003 column. Another thing to note is that the whole of the data comes from my own memory, and as such may well be incomplete, especially when it comes to earlier games for less popular systems.

Still, that's probably not enough to account for everything in the chart. Perhap the biggest, most glaring issue is the year 1996. Seriously, what happened there? Even if I was just buying used games throughout that year - which I'm pretty sure I wasn't, since at the time I would have been a Electronics Boutique shopper and not a Gamestop or Funcoland shopper - that doesn't explain why I didn't go on in later years to buy used games that were released in 1996. In fact, the only video game I own that was released in 1996 is Super Mario 64! I'll grant that it's an impressive, sprawling game, and that it could well have occupied me completely, but it only came out in the fall of that year alongside the Nintendo 64 itself.

As with all questions in life, my first step is to turn to Wikipedia. Sure enough, they've got a lot of info ready for me already on video games in 1996. Apparently, that year was a big one for new consoles - the Playstation and Sega Saturn had just launched, and the N64 was about to drop. It's not that notable games weren't released - Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Diablo - but they just weren't games I was interested in at the time. I remember a number of games from that year, too, like Super Mario RPG and Mega Man X3, but these were games that I rented multiple times instead of purchasing.

The next biggest dip is, surprisingly, this year - 2010. This also probably has similar explanations, mainly being that I was deeply involved with school for the vast majority of the year. Even though I did buy a few games upon graduation, they were all older titles, either used or on Steam. Also, because games released this year haven't had much of a chance to be turned in used or find their way to the clearance bin, I haven't had the extra oomph of a really low price to push me to buy more of them. Additionally, I didn't have many of the consoles of this era: I only just picked up an XBox 360 on Black Friday (really Saturday), I still don't own a PS3, and my Wii is back at my parent's home. Obviously, without the consoles to play freshly-released games on, I'm not going to buy many games.

Finally, what's up with 2003? It's a huge spike, especially over the best-fit line. It's likely explained by the fact that a number of systems hit that I picked up very quickly: the Game Boy Advance, the GameCube, and the Playstation 2. Between buying titles at launch and buying used titles later on, for three prolific systems, it's easy to see why I got so many games from that year.

Still, it's cool to see some reflection of my game-buying habits in graph form - and remember, this is a reflection, not a direct measurement, because it looks at a game's release date instead of the date of my purchase.

All the Games I've Ever Owned (I Think)

http://bit.ly/nawts_spreadsheet

That up there is a spreadsheet I made last week, with all the games I've ever owned, sorted in order of their release dates, with as good a critical review score for each as I could find. I think it's complete, but I wouldn't be surprised if I missed a few games that I just don't remember - even so, it's got about 250 or so games in it.

I made this spreadsheet for two reasons:
1. Someday, I want to go back to the beginning and play through each game, in order, and blog about it. If each game took 20 hours to play, I'm looking at 5,000 hours of playtime ahead of me!
2. I wanted to see how 'good' my opinion was when it came to purchasing games (thus the critical review for each). On average, my score was about 83%, which isn't bad - of course, for some systems, I had a more discerning opinion, and for some, less.

I hope to do more statistical analysis of my gaming habits in the future using this sheet, too - how many games for what systems I bought in what years, how good the games I bought in a given year were, etcetera. But for now, it's enough to see the general run of my gaming history, and to know that it was pretty good.

Tsel do Bahn, Part 2

My Final Project has been kicking into high gear - we have Alpha turn-in on Tuesday, and as the QA Producer, I've been busy helping the programmers and artists hammer out bugs left and right - but I've still had some time to work on my own personal project, Tsel do Bahn. I've basically made two big pushes: Improving the player's ability to impact himself (and his awareness of it), and the player's ability to impact the environment.



Above: The improved HUD, with status indicators and the Sheathed Weapon.

The first thing I'll mention are potions, and their statuses. You can see those statuses indicated in the HUD on the image above; from left to right, they are Armor Up, Attack Up, Speed Up, and Invincibility (star sprite courtesy of Super Mario All-Stars). Each of those statuses are currently granted by a potion, used from the hero's inventory in the Pause screen as a (stackable) one-shot item. Drinking multiple potions of the same type will combine the durations of the potions, but will only use the value (effectiveness, or strength of the status granted) of the weakest potion.

The 'Sheathed' weapon is my interpretation on Zelda's classic "have more than one tool accessible at a time" mechanic; here, you select the Sheathed weapon on the Pause screen using the Talk key (defaulting to Left Alt), and switch between them using the Tab key. This still allows you to have more than one tool at your disposal without going back into the menu, but keeps me from having to worry about that tool's effect happening if you talk to someone, and from having to get away from the number of buttons on a Game Boy - if Weapon is B, and Talk is A, and Tab is Select, with Enter as Start/Pause and the Arrow Keys as the D-Pad, then I'm set on buttons for the game.



Above: The Fosse Grim weapon, about to break a breakable block.

The other push I've made, allowing the player to interact with the environment, has focused on a set of three tools: the Cane of Somaria (idea from Nintendo); the Fragarach, or as I misspell it, the Fargarach; and the Fosse Grim - tools of Earth, Wind, and Sea, respectively.

Tsel do Bahn already had the Sokoban functionality in it; namely, you can push blocks into pits to turn the pit into passable terrain. Using the Cane of Somaria, you can create a block of your own, wherever you like, and push it into a pit. If you use the Cane again, though, the old block will be unsummoned, and the pit will un-fill, becoming untraversable again.

The Fargarach is a sword that, when charged up - ohr, yes, I've implemented hold-the-button-down charge attacks, by the way - creates a gust of wind that pulls enemies towards you, or pulls you towards its endpoint, much like a conveyor belt. There are, of course, other gusts of wind that can exist without being summoned by the Fargarach's help. A stream of wind can be stopped by pushing a block in its path, including a Somaria-summoned block. A stream of wind (including a Fargarach-summoned one) can also turn a windmill, visible in the image above, middle-bottom; this acts much like a switch or a button, causing things to happen when activated by wind, or when deactivated by stopping a wind with a block.

Finally, the Fosse Grim is a violin that acts as a ranged weapon, shown in the image above. When its charged-up attack is used, its musical note will create a temporary waterspout on impact, which can harm enemies further. This waterspout will also destroy breakable objects, including cracked blocks - which, yes, can be pushed around to block wind or fill pits.

The three tools above are going to form the backbone of puzzle-solving elements in Tsel do Bahn - I may implement more tools, but I can now say that there are enough in there to form enough non-boring, non-repetitive puzzles that the game will be alright if I don't add any more tools. Combined with the ability to switch to a second tool without pausing, and the ability to boost one's combat potential for a limited time and at a cost of resources, I can fairly say that Tsel do Bahn is now transitioning from "Tech Demo" to being an actual - dare I say it? - game.

But, it won't be a real, full-fledged game until it has a few other things... Like, say, music and sound effects, or maybe a plot and some dungeons. The latter two will come when I try to make this a Real Game for NaNoWriMo, but the former two... Maybe that'll be what I tackle next. Who knows? I just hope I have the time to, with Final Project kicking into a higher gear for me.

A Year and a Half

...Since I last posted.

Last time I posted, I was one semester away from graduating college. Now, I did that a year ago. Old hat. Didn't attend the ceremony, and got only one piece of paper for my two majors (which were, as far as the school was concerned, completely separate things up to that point).

Last I posted, I had recently put down a few ideas for RPG campaigns, and the like. Since then, I've run one of those ideas - the "no humans" FFRPG idea, in Aetas Procella - and that campaign feels likely to either die or resurge. I need to get inspired for it to continue.

Since then, I've gotten into some other things. I've been programming a lot more, on my own and with my girlfriend's help, and I've learned way more from that than (I feel like) I did in school. I've also gotten into the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons, specifically because it's not nearly so crazy and confusing as the 3rd (or 3.5th) edition was. I play with a bunch of my old High School friends now, every Sunday-night-ish.

What else... Speaking of my girlfriend, she's still the same gal I was with as of last post. We've been together for, what, three and a half years now? Wow.

And the big news: I'm going to grad school, this november. Full Sail, for a master's in Video Game Design. It's only a year-long program, but it's supposed to be intense. It's also the best step I can take towards "what I want to be when I grow up". (Yeah, stil - after 15 years of wanting to make video games, I'm about to be academically certified to do so.)

Lesse, what else...

Oh, I had a job in that missing year-point-five. Worked at a place that does databases for hospitals and doctors. It would have been an okay gig, except they didn't have any work for me to do. So I got laid off about six months in. But I saved oodles of cash, and that's all I needed from them. (I also learned that there is only so much internet a guy can surf in an 8-hour workday and not go crazy. Pretty sure I read the entirety of TVTropes.)

I picked up guitar, and my GF started learning the mandolin. I can't play much but I know a few chords and the melodies to a few songs (Kids on the City Corner, Chocobo Theme). I just tuned my guitar yesterday after about a month of neglect, and it sounds so much better.

Got a PSP, many many new games, and not enough time (!) to play them in. I still want to go through my whole collection, sometime, and finish every single game. I do have a Backloggery now, though, so I can say that I have at least 183 games, of which 66 (or 36.5%) are unfinished. When I look at it that way, it doesn't seem like such a huge project... But not every single one of those games is good. Many, but not all...

Oh, and my family has two new dogs since I last posted. Jack Russel Terrier and a fluffy little white mop. Both purebred, and the little fluffy white one isn't yet pottytrained (and that's after six months of trying very hard). Lovable dogs, both, but I miss the days when the house didn't smell like urine.

So that's a quick overview. Maybe I'll post again? I won't make any promises.