As my vacation coincided with Father's Day this year, I split my "official" Father's Day into two parts... on the Day proper, we were mostly doing family things, recovering from our San Antonio trip, and so on.  But today was "Father's Day Observed", wherein I got to spend time doing some things that the usual interruptions of family life don't always allow... playing a ton of WoW, Magic Online, and the like. 

Of course, my Magic Online record for the day is fairly disappointing... 3 drafts, and only 1 did I make it past the first round.  I also played numerous casual games with a deck I'll generously call "experimental".  Sadly, it went 1-8 before I gave up on it.

It's funny how I always have grandiose plans of all the stuff I'm going to do on vacation, but WoW and Magic wind up eating huge chunks of time...

About the lack of updates... just got back from a family trip to Seaworld!  Much fun, sunburn, relative visiting, etc. occurred, and it was all good.

Being on the road and all, it was a great time for the DS Lite to come out.  I picked one up earlier in the week and got to take it for a spin while we were out and about.  My first impression is "wow, that's bright".  The new screens really are quite fabulous.  I'm told the new brighter screen in the current-model SP is similar, but it makes a huge difference in games.  Zelda: Minish Cap on my "old" GBA SP looks horrible in comparison now. 

My son Xavier had our copy of the New Super Mario Bros in use most of the available gaming time on the trip, so I spent some time with the DS classics... Advance Wars DS and Ossu! Tatakae! Ouendan!.  Fantastic games, both of them.  I also checked out Riviera, an older GBA game, and it's an RPG that is quite worth checking out.  It has a strangely structured vibe to it that was quite intriguing compared to the usual dungeon crawls.

Anyways, it's good to be back again... I'm looking forward to logging some quality gaming time during the remainder of my vacation next week!

I managed to get a city in City Life all the way up to the gold level (this unlocks all the maps in the game).  It's really satisfying to see your city evolve from dirty industry to glittering high end elite districts.  But now that I've done it once, I'm finding my interest in firing up another map is lower than I expected.

I think this is largely due to the structure of the game.  There is no set progression of map difficulty, no real content added on a per-map basis, and no real restrictions in the level of city you can achieve on your first try out.  I think it's one thing to do that in "sandbox" mode, but I'm a very strong advocate of a more structured, scenario oriented play mechanism. 

Introduce the basic mechanics, then layer in new elements of complexity that have combinatorial interactions with what I've learned before.  Have each scenario give me some new little reward, whether it is unlocking a new tier of content or having some interesting specific gameplay element.  I've heard some people complain about this approach, claiming that you have to "work" to play the game you paid for.  But I fundamentally disagree; I think that structure enhances the gameplay by encouraging a deeper exploration of it.

This thread about game completion on QT3 reminded me that I'm still slowly chipping away at my 100% completion game on the PC version of San Andreas.  While the PS2 Liberty City Stories is taking over my GTA-ing for a bit, and I'm sure the same will be true about Vice City Stories in the fall, there is something just wonderfully absorbing about San Andreas.  Sometimes I will just fire it up and drive around for a while, enjoying just being immersed in the huge game world.  It's really quite an accomplishment. 

GTA IV will have some mighty big shoes to fill.  Each time I've been worried about the quality of the next GTA though, and I've yet to be disappointed.

Oh, and my playthrough?  Upper 80%, if I recall correctly.  I'm almost done with all the graffiti tags, and have only the quarry, trucking, and taxicab minigames left.  I'm maybe 75% of the way through the race missions.  The long term appeal of the GTA games is really only second to MMOs like WoW in my book.  With the promised Xbox Live support for GTA IV I could be in for a very long ride...

Today I spent some time looking at performance problems in one section of our game.  It was a very useful tool to be able to visualize some of the problem areas.  Increasingly I'm finding that my job is less about writing code and more about managing data; data about performance, or about tool workflow, or about code architecture.  Visualization is an essential tool for solving all sorts of problems, and one I never really thought about too much back when I was still new to the industry.  It is a very natural metaphor for all sorts of data analysis tasks, both for programmers and designers alike.  Whether it is AI target locations or abstract database relationships, we have all sorts of hardware in our heads for process complex visual relationships and assigning spatial mappings to them. 

It's nice to be able to take advantage of that.

Magic Online suffers from server crashes.  Often.  During tournaments.  This is quite frustrating, but it has gotten me well acquainted with their technical support for what to do in that circumstance -- write them a letter using their online form and they give you back a code for their online store for an amount equal to the lost product.  It still sucks but at least they clearly understand what is going on and that it's their problem.

I suppose when you have a product with that level of outage it's a necessary adaptation, but most other forms of technical support could learn a thing or two from them.  I still regularly hear horror stories from friends attempting to get help in WoW, whether it is the name change police or refusing to provide technical support on any issue if you have a mod installed. 

Recently I had a first hand run in with support from xbox.com.  Basically I was having some trouble with the backwards compatibility support, and the error message it was giving me was quite misleading (claiming it couldn't connect to Xbox Live when in fact I can connect perfectly fine to Xbox Live and do so regularly).  This was my first run in with support from my home company, so I naively took the time to write up a detailed explanation of what went wrong, what diagnostic steps I'd taken, and so forth.

Well, I shouldn't have bothered.  Apparently their email support just uses a keyword search algorithm to spew forth canned messages.  My first response was generic Live connection pablum, and the second, when I attempted to clarify the problem, was met with a generic info list on how to find what titles are backwards compatible.  It was quite clear that no human had ever taken the time to actually read my email. 

Now, I'm quite sure this isn't a problem exclusive to Microsoft.  Certainly it is a daunting task to undertake support on that level.  But the contrast between the incoherent and unapologetic robo-mail I got back from Microsoft vs. the helpful and practical robo-mail I got from Wizards of the Coast was striking. 

Then again, I guess it could be worse... today in the office someone was telling horror stories of their ISP refusing to provide tech support because "you downloaded music online, therefore there is a virus on your machine".

Two modern city-themed games have fallen into my lap this week... City Life from Monte Cristo and the PS2 port of GTA: Liberty City Stories from Rockstar Leeds.  Of course the two couldn't be much more different... the former being a Sim-City esque city builder and the other being crazy urban mafia adventure.  But I find both compelling for a deep rooted similar reason; I love cities.  Something about them really evokes a connection for me, a bridge between the game world and the real world that draws me in.  I can look at mere screenshots of city scenes from San Andreas and it affects me in a way very, very few other games do -- as if that game world were a real place that I have memories of. 

I'm in the process of installing City Life now, and after an hour or two of playing around with GTA:LCS, I'm not quite sure if I'll stick with it on the PS2 or the PSP.  The PS2 port just doesn't seem all that high quality; I wasn't expecting next gen graphics but it is a lot muddier and harder to see than the classic GTA3 was, much less San Andreas.  I feel like I'm squinting all the time; strangely enough like I often felt playing on the PSP, only this time clearly the screen size and controls are not to blame.  Maybe I'll fire it up on the PSP again and do some comparison shopping.  At $20 I'd buy it just for GTA completionism, so it's hard to complain.

While I swore off my weekly comic book habit a few years ago (cold turkey), I still pick up some trade paperbacks from time to time.  I'm currently re-reading some of the big DC epics including the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths.  It's really quite amazing to me how many cameos they manage to fit in; some panels have like 50+ characters alone in them in crowd shots and it's just fun to see who you can recognize.

Games as a whole seem to use license crossovers very infrequently.  The fighting game genre seems to do it fairly regularly, with games like Marvel vs Capcom or Smash Brothers.  Kingdom Hearts is a big IP crossover-fest but generally between game and non-game IPs.  All the Mario games share an extended cast of characters but they are basically one big IP. 

The dominance of a small number of IP holders in the comic industry certainly makes it easier, but I even recall seeing a few Marvel / DC crossovers.  Big publishers like EA and Activision seem like they have a lot of IP rights, though those are certainly limited by how much of their IP is external.  IPs that are not strongly character based (like The Sims) doesn't help either.  Still, I'd certainly pay to see Solid Snake and Sam Fischer square off...

Even crossovers between characters associated with a single developer seem ripe for possibility.  When we were first starting Irrational we briefly considered doing a Quake vs DOOM RTS, of all things ... it didn't get off the drawing board but I'd still play that game in a heartbeat.  The GTA series does lots of intra-game cameos, but that's not really the same thing.

If I could wave my magic wand I'd absolutely love to work on a hypothetical Age of Empires vs Starcraft vs Command & Conquer game, but I'm not holding my breath for the opportunity. 

Hm, it hasn't been a good 24 hours for gaming for me...

-- I finally set aside a chunk of time for HL2: Ep 1, only to have it complain about my drivers, then have driver installation fail leaving my machine in a bad state.

-- My attempts to play more Hitman: Blood Money were foiled by constant lockups on the Xbox 360 (first time I've had this problem).  Extra bad on Hitman for losing all your save games for a level when that happens.

-- In the next-to-last round of a big "4x" Magic Online tournament my client goes berzerk and by the time I get it sorted out the tournament has auto-dropped me. 

Well, I guess I should count my blessings.  I ultimately did get my driver problems sorted out and while I still haven't played any HL2: Ep1, I at least confirmed that it launches now.  My X360 hasn't yet had the "three red lights of doom" problem and through sheer persistence finally managed to beat the Hitman mission I was on before the machine froze.  Despite my frustration at the way the tournament ended I did have a good time playing in my tournament and really, disatrous MTGO problems are basically par for the course (at least until the next major rev).

Whoo, seems like the mini-rush of games that hits around Memorial Day is in full effect for me this year.  The MTGO Dissension set released this week which means my favorite release event tournaments are this weekend.  Half Life 2: Episode 1 is sitting unlocked on my hard drive waiting for a few clear hours so I can really dive into it.  Most nights this week (and the reason for my lack of a post last night) have been spent in the shoes of "47" in Hitman: Blood Money (easily the best of the series, IMO).

GTA: Liberty City Stories is also out next week and I've been "saving" that experience for my big screen PS2 rather than tiny screen PSP.  Perhaps it's sad that one of the games I'm most looking forward to is a port of a portable game, but hey, I'm a huge GTA geek.  :)  I'm glad the summer itself will be a little deader -- I can work through my backlog a bit before some big (to me) games like CivCity, Civ 4 Warlords, and Godfather 360 come out.  My RPG backlog is particularly rough... I've been looking forward to Steambot Chronicles, Metal Saga, and Grandia III for a long time and all of them are on the shelf, mocking me for not finishing Oblivion or Wild Arms 4 yet.

Actually I had a pretty good week for clearing games off my plate.  I finished Tomb Raider Legend, and Rise of Legends, though I will probably return to both periodically... Tomb Raider to do grab a few more Achievement points and Rise of Legends for the excellent (when it works) multiplayer.