Okay so after figuring out some basic stuff, next comes the really important stuff.

First: “look” of the game. After a lot of wrangling and debate, I’ve decided on 2d top-down view. This requires some simplification of some of the combat mechanics. Instead of damage per “part”, there will be damage per facing, then core health. I’m debating hex-tiles or square-tiles at the moment.

Other things I’m considering, are energy mechanics, and physical action mechanics. My current ideas are pretty specious at the moment. I’m considering energy flow to individual items, and some items when used or triggered increase their draw on the circuit(like a load current from a motor). You could also redirect some energy from one part to another as needed, but this takes time(affected by skills and items).

Then for physical action, I’m considering maybe a system similar to Champions Online. That would be a morale meter, where you do actions, then, depending on stuff, the morale meter increases, allowing you to do more complex and expensive stuff.

Another possibility is to adapt the D&D 4e system of at-wills, encounter, daily abilities. I actually kind of like that system.

Yet another possibility is a stamina meter, which acts kind of like a capacitor, that gets drained by actions, then charges up over time.

What do you think?

I’ve decided to expand my professional portfolio before I graduate.

So I’m designing and making a game. The design is the important part I feel. Can I take an idea from conception, figure out all the important details, write up a proper design document, and then, follow it?

So here are the basics of the game design so far.

It will likely be a 2d Mecha game, fantasy-environment. Each mecha will have an energy budget, to supply items, armor, and weapons. In addition, mecha frames will have base stats like mobility, etc, modified by the pilot’s skills. The energy budget is provided by power-cores. There are four “kinds” of energy, white, black, red, and blue. There is no “rock-paper-scissors” advantage provided by any one kind of energy, simply that different effects belong to each kind.

I’m still working this out, for the moment. But basically it goes like so: white: slowly increasing damage strength, effects from only matched sets, and repel effects; black: defensive powers, draining, bonuses for only using black stuff; red: deflecting attacks, random disabling of enemy items, and various miscellanous effects; blue: pulses, knockback effects, manipulate power flow.

I decided to keep to within the remit of that stuff, both to limit what I have to decide on, and because this is fairly easy to balance. Each type has some sort of unique schtick, some way of reducing damage, and something that can make good combos with other kinds of energy.

Mechas will have “slots” to put parts of armor on, weapons, and items, which are stuff that would be like amulets or something that provides an additional unique benefit or effect.

The gameplay will be tactical and positional. You have to try to target the damaged parts of the enemy mecha, while defending your own from attack. If your core gets damaged enough, your whole mecha shuts down.

I am currently considering the skill and stat system. I’m thinking of doing a “cap-and-trade-off” system. There will be a max number of skill points you can spend(the cap), while opposite skills(say speed training vs strength training) will have negative effects on each other(and the trade-off). Ie, if you start to bulk up, that affects your mobility. The more you bulk up, the slower you become.

In addition, there will be the normal range of fantasy-type weapons for the mechas to wield, from long swords to long bows, all appropriately giant-sized. You can train in using these as well, and switch between weapons during combat.

So what do you think so far?

Okay so I’ve been busy lately, with classes, the newspaper, and managing hordes of jabbering monkeys. I’ve been recently promoted to an op on the #sto and #stoqa irc channels(hence the jabbering monkeys).

I’ve observed something interesting though. Cryptic has been really stepping up their communication, thanks to people like Rehpic, Falkoren, and Jaguars. This has served to really benefit the game without much of a cost to the company.

Here’s a hypothetical. Say someone asks some questions about personal shields. Falkoren then asks the powers designers how they work, and he tells us in #stoqa. This gives us the knowledge to properly test them, while some of us add this info to places like sto-intel.org

This then serves to enhance the game. Players have more knowledge, players can properly test complex things to ensure they’re working right. For a minimal cost, of a few minutes of discussion between employees and customers, you have tremendously added to the perceived value of the game.

Encouraging communities are an excellent investment for game companies. Supporting them with actual employee interaction and communication is just pure gold.

However, Cryptic isn’t perfect in their communication. For example, the other moderators have a set of new rules they want to add and enforce for the IRC channels, however, its been difficult reaching Rekhan or Phoxe to get approval. In addition, they don’t rarely come in to the IRC channels for us to communicate community issues there are. I am thankful for Wishstone, she has been a good communication pipeline to Cryptic, but she’s the OCR for the German community, not the english community! This needs to change.

Ed: This was published in the Okanagan Phoenix on Oct 7th, 2009
Last week, I interviewed a UBC-O Engineering professor, Dr. Kenneth Chau, about his recent research. Dr. Chau joined the school of Engineering in January, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the USA. His particular specialty is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is a field dealing with technology and objects that are at the nanometer(nm)-scale size. To put it in perspective, a nanometer, which is 1 billionth(1000 million) of a meter, is 1/1000th the width of a human hair and the wavelength of visible light goes from 400-700 nm.

Dr. Chau recently made a significant advancement in the field of nanotechnology, where he demonstrated that light could actually pull a nano-scale object, rather than just push. The implications are very important, both for the field, and eventually for the production of military, scientific, and consumer products.

The kind of materials that Dr. Chau and others in his field work with, named ‘metamaterials’, offer many benefits to military, scientific, and consumer fields. For the military, such materials and devices can create new metal alloys, with potential unique properties, like extreme heat resistance or superior strength. On top of that, metamaterials offer the possibilities of perfect lenses, or perfectly reflective mirrors. In the more futuristic list of possibilities, it is believed that this field of nanotechnology will eventually allow us to build an invisibility cloak, or even optical computers, but both such inventions are far from being created.

All objects can be characterized by a refractive index, or an index of refraction as it is also called. This is the degree to which light is slowed down within the medium. As well, when light crosses the boundary between two mediums with different refractive indexes, light bends. Microscopes and lenses work by bending light in useful ways. All natural mediums have a positive refractive index, meaning that light is slowed down within the medium. However, some metamaterials have a property known as a negative refractive index, where light is bent in the opposite direction than in materials with a positive refractive index.

This is where the radiation pressure of light comes into play. Light has momentum, like any object that is in motion. However, light has a very small momentum, and can only affect small particles. The radiation pressure effect of light is why comets’ tails are always pointed away from the sun; the charged particles are pushed away by the radiation pressure of light. Picture a fire hose being pointed at you. The pressure of the hose pushes you away.

When the radiation pressure of light is combined with a negative index of refraction, Dr. Chau, proved, via experiment, that light can actually exert a pull force, in addition to pushing around particles. It is like some method of making the fire hose pull you, instead of pushing you away. If researchers can construct objects with arbitrary optical properties, then they can manipulate light in arbitrary ways, leading to all of the innovations listed previously, and many more not imagined yet. We have things, previously thought to be only in the realm of science fiction, happening in labs every day, around the world, and even on our campus.

Currently, the Chau Research group Dr. Chau is working on several exciting projects, and require talented and capable students with diverse backgrounds. One project Dr. Chau is involved in is the construction of a computer cluster, also known as a supercomputer, for simulating complex physical phenomenon. Another is a project to build a sensor, capable of detecting contaminants in water, by using spectroscopic analysis of light that comes out of properly formed droplets of water. One possible use for this optical sensor is to detect vanishingly small amounts of impurities in water.