I’ve just started watching the Deadly Premonitions Let’s Play and was surprised that I was instantly reminded of Alan Wake, another Let’s Play I’ve watched quite some time ago. This impression was probably caused by the fact that they both base characters and other things on Twin Peaks, which I’ve unfortunately not seen yet (but I’ve made a mental note).

One of those things that heavily remind me of Alan Wake is the countless and almost annoying references to coffee. They are everywhere. In Alan Wake they mostly took a backseat, which was more subtle and in my opinion preferable. Deadly Premonition, however the hero is quite picky about his coffee. It’s even explicitly mentioned in some of the intro dialogue. And it’s a dedicated game mechanic / gimmick mixture used to “tell your fortune”. Which, according to the LPer, has no practical use at all. Don’t you love it when that happens?

Based on what I’ve seen until now the rest of this post will be a mixture of notes (mind you I’m just at the beginning of the LP, having only watched the first two of 36 parts).

• The moment the LPer introduced the watcher to the hotel room, I was instantly intrigued by the mirror, since I know that there’s not a lot of games with this attention to detail which also go to a certain length to implement a proper mirror image. On the other hand though, I was disappointed later when it was shown that the mirror image is there for a reason: You are able to shave in this game, determining the looks of the hero. Don’t get me wrong here. I think the whole shaving idea is a bit strange, but well intended. I was just sad that the mirror wasn’t there just for its own sake.
• What the hell is wrong with the typography? Who decided that those strange symbols I didn’t even recognize at first were exclamation marks? The exclamation marks are diagonal. That is distracting as I mistook them for slashes earlier, which led to some confusion on my part. A bit of a clearer font would have helped too. I think this is probably just sloppy, but how did this kind of typographical design flaw make it through QA?
• A scene I find to be particularly funny is York (the hero) checking out the victim’s diary. “You can learn quite a lot from a diary”, he says. Still, the content of said diary is quite cryptic, which is probably the point. I guess.

• The deciphering of micro-expressions and reading of signs as well as the whole “puzzling together the case” mentality reminds me of Criminal Minds. That is good, because I like Criminal Minds. A lot.

• I chuckled a little at the crazy scene with the insanely huge dining room with the enormous table though there were only two people in the room. (I’m talking about the breakfast in the formerly great hotel.) The hero and his hostess almost had to shout in order to understand each other since they sat so far apart.

• It’s a nice attention to detail to give every possible failure option (“Game Over”) its own little death animation. That is the level of detail that I find intriguing. I feel similar for games who try to implement unique icons for every single item they use instead of just class based ones. A bad example would be: “This is a potion. All potions look the same way although they have different effects. All potions come in suspiciously small bottles with green labels and are blue liquid.”

The strangest thing for me was York’s manner of talking to Zach though. Who was Zach? Why was York always explaining things to him or asking him questions? And moreover: Why didn’t the LPer acknowledge that this was weird? It was not until a while later when York was asking Zach for a decision that I realized that Zach was basically the game’s way of communicating with the player. It’s not quite a way of breaking the fourth wall but nevertheless the game tries to integrate the player into the action. Fascinating.

Now on to the next session.

PS: Thanks to the LPer for showing “What If” scenarios.

---

Deadly Premonition pt.1 is part 1 of Deadly Premonition (Let's Play):

1. Deadly Premonition pt.1
2. Deadly Premonition pt.2
3. Deadly Premonition pt.3
4. Deadly Premonition pt.4
5. Deadly Premonition pt.5
6. Deadly Premonition pt.6 (Conclusion)

I read quite some books over the days I was with my family during the holidays.

• Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (Oliver Bowden)
• Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (Oliver Bowden)
• First Frost (Jennifer Estep)
• Touch of Frost (Jennifer Estep)
• Kiss of Frost (Jennifer Estep)
• Jumper (Steven Gould)
• Born at Midnight (C.C. Hunter)
• Awake at Dawn (C.C. Hunter)
• The UNIX-HATERS Handbook (see previous post)

Of those there’s my usual assassins, daggers, cloaks and murder stuff as well as something more special (Jumper) and the geeky UHH. Still, the other two series are different. Way different, to be precise. I’m not their target audience. As far as I can tell that’d be girls from 15-19 (judging from the way the descriptions of male figures are written). But even considering this I found some parts to be genuinly funny, though I’m sure J. Estep could’ve made way more from the setting than she has. C.C. Hunter though is a genius. The characters in this book are so vivid. They don’t feel real because they are mythical creatures, but they are very lifelike. You are able to relate to them, to see them in your mind very clearly.
Also they have wit and a tiny bit of that sarcastic and sometimes sassy attitude, that makes me smile while reading. I’m already considering preordering the next book.

I also finally got managed to watch Ben Kuchera’s talk on how to market an indie game which was interesting.

Over the last few days I’ve been reading the excellent UNIX-HATERS Handbook. In case you haven’t had the pleasure to read it yet or worse, haven’t heard of it before, it is a collection of stories, rants, design flaw analysis and newsgroup posts about UNIX. It is also writing in a highly cynical and amusing way that will definitely bring you hours of amusement if this geeky type of humor is your thing. It certainly did for me. Don’t take it too lightly though as it has been one of the few books I’ve had to put down for some time in between my reading sessions and not rushed through. Of course that might be caused by the fact that beneath its cynical site it is nonetheless very technical reading material.

Now before you can run away screaming that you can’t be bothered to read or moreover buy such a nerdy book let me tell you that it is distributed for free as a .PDF file. After we have established that you can obtain this work legally without payment I’ll transition over to it’s content. During this post I’ll quote several times from the book. This will be accompanied by footnotes. ¹

At least after one last historical bit. You see, the book was released during the nineties, which makes it ancient in terms of relatedness concerning computer science. Now while I’ll be the first to admit that I probably didn’t understand everything I can tell for certain that I am able to relate to some of the mentioned issues having come across them myself during either my time spent with Ubuntu Linux or during some… let’s call them “terminal experiments” on my Mac.

Why would they ever want to do that?

One of the favorite things to worry about of application developers, be it the designers or the coders, seems to be the users reason to create special use cases. Let’s start this section with a nice historic example which sounds pretty ridiculous in our modern days.

Why would you ever need to point to something that you’ve drawn in 3D? ²

In my opinion there is a lesson to be learned from that. You cannot try to anticipate every possible usage scenario that the users can and will come up with. To minimalize the damage however one can try to do extensive user testing during development and not fret to listen to the users, or community as they are mostly called nowadays after your product has been deployed. Look at yourself. How often have you had to bend a misbehaving piece of software to your will in order to get your desired output?
The answer is probably quite often. However, you being a person with reasonable computer skills will be able to do that. Average users won’t be able to do that and moreover they are not willing to do that. Either your software can achieve the user’s goal or it cannot. If not it will be replaced.

Having fun with sed

Some people, when confronted with a Unix problem, think ‘I know, I’ll use sed.’ Now they have two problems. ⁴

sed is a difficult topic, I’ll give you that. All the while being pretty helpful when trimming, changing, extending and otherwise transforming text it is a useful command. Of course it’s not the engineer’s fault it can also be overly complicated, especially if you need to perform multiple commands so that you better outsource them to a file or else… Or when you either have to change the symbol which is used to signal the separator between its command sequences. Or when when trying to hack around limitations which are system dependent like sed not understanding /n on OS X.

Y2K38

The ultimate example of careless Unix programming will probably occur at 10:14:07 p.m. on January 18, 2038, when Unix’s 32-bit timeeval field overflows… ⁵

Wikipedia tells me that the problem of using a 32bit integer to store system time and date is nowadays mitigated by using 64bit integers. Maybe the person who first thought of the old implementation was convinced that mankind would never see the year 2038. Well, to be fair he was pretty darn right that he’d never see that year given our life expectancy. Wikipedia also tells me that the newer implementation limits the year to 2,147,485,547. I wonder if - theoretically speaking - there might be people around cursing that stuff no longer works at 2,147,485,548. I think I’d consider this design flaw repeating itself quite funny.

Security

Beware of the sysadmin claiming to be improving security when editing these files; he is referring to his job, not your system. ⁶

I can remember only four times when I had to modify these files without a GUI. Two times during installs of Archlinux while heavily relying on their great wiki. The other two times I wrecked my system.

Design principles

One of my favorite quotes, being a Mac convert since December 2010 is the following one about what the target audience of various operating systems looks like:

The fundamental difference between UNIX and the Macintosh operating system is that UNIX was designed to please programmers, whereas the Mac was designed to please users. (Windows, on the other hand, was designed to please accountants, but that’s another story.) ³

For additional laughs do not skip the chapter The rise of worse-is-better which is in the epilogue and itself an excerpt from another article.

A study done by Vertical Slice and published on Gamasutra about horror games and their effects on players lists the following amongst its findings:

The closer a game resembles film, the more casual players are scared. Conversely, the less scripted a game is, the more the core players are scared. Third-person, tightly scripted events are scarier to casual players than to core gamers, while first-person, generative events are scarier to experienced players.

I think what happens here is the following:

• Casual gamers are expecting the game to drive the story and therefor the scares with them. They expect to be delivered little pieces of fear and the game to focus its whole attention on them. In short: I accuse them of wanting to be spoonfed with terror.

• Core gamers are likely to explore more on their own without being given incentives. They explore for the sake of discovering the things the developers want them to see. As can be seen in the rising excitement of the core gamers amongst the study’s test subjects the tension doesn’t sink when exploring.

My impression is that a gaming experience which relies heavily and nearly exclusively on scripted sequences (you might call it a on-rails-experience) don’t excite core gaming audiences as much as more freely explorable parts tend to do. This is caused by a motivation to see what might lurk in the shadows (pun intended) instead of heaving something jump at you from the vents.

That being said one might argue that all gamers found Dead Space 2 the scariest game tested. Considering that I personally wouldn’t count Alan Wake as horror game and there’ve been many voices exclaiming that Resident Evil 5 was way more of an action game than a scary horror game… no, wait, I’m rambling. What I wanted to point out is that Dead Space 2 used techniques that the some of the other games seemed to lack or not use effectively, like strange noises to suggest impeding danger. To conclude this little article I’ll just quote another short paragraph of their findings:

Actual combat is not as scary as the implied threat of combat. The biggest cares result from moments devoid of any physical combat; instances in which players anticipate or fear they are about to fight, but do not actually end up doing so.

Recently I’ve been writing a lot of markdown. Now “What the hell is markdown” you might ask. Markdown is a markup language that serves to simplify the task of writing HTML, which is both cumbersome and annoying at times, since It requires you to write all those HTML elements you you need for your website or your fancy blog post. You know the ones you need but don’t actually want to have to type every time, like lists, paragraphs or even headers.

If you’re tired of writing everything down in clean HTML too you should definitely try writing in markup. Tumblr can easily accept input in markdown and there are plugins available door several other blogging platforms, even referenced on the project page on daring fireball. I have not checked if there are plugins available for WordPress but I’d argue that there’s usually a plugin for everything on that platform.

That is if you intend to use such a platform’s editor. Gruber provides Markdown as a Python script on his website which can convert his Markdown text into valid HTML and/or XHTML. If you’re using Linux or OS X your OS probably came with Python installed. I don’t know how to use Python on Windows and there’s a chance I’ll never know unless someone tells me.

In order to use the script as an easy command in your terminal emulator of choice you have to copy it into a folder which you specify in your terminal’s PATH and remove the file ending should you wish to do that (as the script is prepared to work even without its file ending).

So I suggest giving markdown a spin and see if it speeds up your workflow or just find it to be convenient like I do.

I recently discovered via Borderlands’ facebook feed that there’s going to to be a novel which uses the same setting as the game. Of course I, having enjoyed the game quite much, was curious about that. Add to that the fact that I previously read a lot of books that were telling stories in the worlds of games I’ve played before I was looking forward to reading it.

That said the announcement contained an example how the book was going to be. I was genuinely surprised by that considering that the part of the book they were willing to share was not only a .pdf of 39 pages (make that 37 with text) but also finding that the book captured the flair of borderlands really well. The style, the atmosphere was right there when I flicked through the passage provided, I could nearly feel the dusty surrounding. I could say that I had to cough from imagining the sand and heat near me, but you’d probably suggest cleaning up my room, so I won’t do that.

The cover features (what was his name again? I’ll have to check…) Roland, who seems to be the main character judging from what I’ve read yet. Though I would’ve preferred Mordekai or Lilith. Most interestingly for fans perhaps is that I’ve seen mentions of enemies which until yet have only been seen in previews to Borderlands 2 and were not starring in Borderlands 1.

I don’t think I’ll be getting this anytime soon though, since the style the book is written in does not really fit what I favor when reading. It’s a bit like the game though: Fast-paced, a lot of action, shootin’ and not too little profanity. No offense here, but that’s somehow not what I want when I shell out my coin for a new book. Virtual coin that is, that buys me virtual books. We live in a strange, but interesting world.

In case you’re interested, check out the novel on amazon.com.

Today I want to talk about some musings and minor issues I’ve recently had while writing that novel project of mine: Project:Rosetta (yes, I am sincere - no, I started before NaNoWriMo. Also I’m not American, in case you didn’t know.)

Since my novel contains a lot of fantasy themes and is heavily influenced by video games (and of course many other things) it will include magic and in extension of that (mostly young) people learning how to work this magic. Now, helped by the fact that a certain number of young people are quite careless and therefor accident-prone there will be semi-regular training accidents. Some of those will leave quite obvious markings, like burn scars on fire magic trainees, right? But - and this is the interesting part - what about magic that is more subtle? I am talking about mental tricks, illusions and other schools of magic where you can’t just calculate the damage on a person by applying enough of its element with a huge amount of force to a human body.

Which damage is there to apply? Which consequences of reckless usage are there to be avoided?

I pondered a lot on these two questions and the answer I came up with was still not quite satisfying. My thoughts were about not being able to control those illusions any more. Around the mage they’d sometimes manifest themselves for no obvious reason and create turmoil on their own, without the mage’s awareness. I’ve thought about voices in the minds of people nearby, to give on particular example.

Still there was a problem to those effects: In contrast to what I wanted, these affected other people and not the trainee himself. Thankfully though a colleague of mine whom I respect a lot suggested them gradually not being able to tell the difference between illusions and reality anymore.

I like this idea a lot and will probably have a mix of all the described effects to give that sense of danger and unease to careless students of mind-focused schools of magic.

---

Update: Sorry, I wasn’t aware that NaNoWriMo isn’t US only.

I just wanted to point out the site QuickLook Plugins List for anyone wanting to improve the already great QuickLook functionality in OS X. I already grabbed some plugins there and although not everything works on OS X Lion (I’ve commented wether I’ve checked or not).

Currently I’m using these:

• IPA Quicklook (iOS Applications)
• NDSQuickLook (.nds files)
• QuickNFO (.nfo files)
• Suspicious Package (.pkg files)

I also used to use QLStephen (READMEs, makefiles, etc.) until yesterday or so, since I’ve realized it’s starting an unneeded 32bit process that I didn’t want. In the mean time I’ve filed an issue on github to which the dev has quickly responded that this is for Legacy compatibility (cite: “Leopard”).

Also he mentioned that patches are welcome… but I don’t think my coding experience is yet enough to participate…

---

Update: Added the missing link for QLStephen.

I have finally managed to absorb all story-relevant content of the Night Circus browser game, which is incidentially quite well timed given that there has been talk on twitter about closing the game down around the time of Halloween. Now, I admit last time I checked the circus was still up and running, but for a short period of time last week I panicked.

I really enjoyed the game up to the point that I knew that I’d buy the book even before it was released. I’d like to say before it was properly announced, but that is probably a bit too overstated, so I’ll just stick to my point: I knew I’d enjoy the book before buying it since I was able to visit its world, its setting through the browser game. The intense monochrome world which is filled with its generous display of magic disguised as tricks and feats of machinery drew me in. I wanted to see more of it, knowing that Morgenstern said that there’d definitely not be a sequel to the book. (Also I see no reason to do a sequel aside from reusing the great location of the magical black and white circus)

Interestingly though, The Night Circus was one of the few books which I put down from time to time instead of blazing through all pages in one half-a-day session. Parts of it made me smile. Parts of it made me sad. Some parts made me think. Knowing that there’d be just a little more content after I’ve finished the book I returned to the game. In the game, you’re given multiple goals. Some are definite goals, which you recognize as such. Others are more mysterious, like aspirations which draw you into the circus. Are you there looking for a forbidden love story? Are you there to experience its adventures through a treasure hunt? Would you rather take apart the clockwork which seems to power a lot of its more mechanical wonders like the carousel or are you looking forward to peek behind the scenes of the illusionist’s performance? It doesn’t really matter which. The circus has things to enjoy for everyone.

Personally I completed the introduction to the circus via finding all circus secrets and afterwards strived to persue my interest in magic for a short term until realizing that I’m more drawn in by my interest in love which saw me looking into a tender romance, hidden beneath secrets and disguises. As the circus reached its final performance, I was able to take part in a treasure hunt and politely declined at first when the lovely lady wanted me to hand over my carefully collected souvenirs. After pursuing my interest in love until its conclusion I felt the urge to return to the lady and claim my reward nevertheless. I was given a beautiful red gem which I hold very dearly next to my scarlet scarf, earned as a reward for helping two troubled lovers. After a little while I was again approached by a strange gentleman which seemed inclined to learn more about the wizardry going in the circus’s tents. I did some research for him but soon came to the same realization as Herr Thiessen, the first rêveur [1] and legendary maker of the circus’s famous black and white clock: Sometimes it is better and more enjoyable if you don’t know the magic behind the scenes and can open all your senses without a preoccupied mind. That is basically the same answer I gave the nice gentleman when he inquired about the status of the investigation. Afterwards I was approached by the fortuneteller which exchanged a photograph of the contortionist left by the gentleman for a deck of finely crafted tarot cards.

As everything was open to me now, I began seeing the beautiful things in mechanical things and therefore giving in to my newfound interest in clockwork and was soon invited to have a chat with Herr Thiessen. This was one of several occasions he told me lots of little details about the circus which I’ve previously been missing and found that I had a fair share of details to report myself. On a particular nice evening he showed me a great mechanical creature: a tiny bird entirely made of metal, chirping and flying like a real bird. I remember this night fondly as it was the same I gained the Friendship of the Circus, an honor only few rêveurs have ever achieved. Of course I do look forward to attending the circus more often, but I’m not sure how much more there is to report since I’ve chosen not to follow the opportunity for romance that has presented itself to me.

Yours truly,
Alex, a rêveur

Footnotes:

• [1] - We, people who try to visit the circus at every chance and are more familiar with it than its typical visitors, dress in black with a touch of red, like a scarf or a ribbon, to show we are part of the circus, yet not part of it. We are called the rêveurs.
• I’d like to mention that I’m not perfectly sure if all things that are mentioned are correct or in correct order since I’ve played from mid September until the end of October 2011 and since I haven’t kept a log about my pleasurable circus activities I have to rely on my memory (which, incidentially, is not a good idea)

I wanted to do some food related commentary for a while now, but what better chance to introduce it than with the opening of Rox in Graz to which I’ve been invited by a friend from university. I didn’t know what to expect other than it being a restaurant/bar type thing with its menu having a focus on grilled meat (notice the URL having “grill” in it? I see what you did there.) If you read this and were at the opening you might have seen me. I was the guy dressed completely in black from head to toe with the exception of a little touch of red like a true rêveur.¹

Initially I was somewhat reluctant since I’ve not been to many bar openings until now (read: none) but although several friends of mine didn’t show up it was a nice evening. But on to the important part:

Rox itself is near the Jakominiplatz in Graz, a fact that gives it a pretty convenient, central location. Due to its green sign it’s immediately visible from the street. You enter through a pair of glass doors and are greeted by a greenish Decoration which consists of a lot of “Heineken” signs (at least I think they are - sorry I’m not great with alcohol) and an amazing amount of guitars of all flavors. There are guitars everywhere: above the doors, on the hanging decoration which also contains the lights, in glass showcases along the walls. The guitar/rock theme is consistent. After entering you make your way to the bar past some single tables. And then you reach the bar. The reason I’m placing so much emphasis on the bar is its sheer size. It’s the longest bar I’ve ever seen. Not that I’ve seen that many, I admit but it is indeed impressive. There’s a more open room in the front of the building where many tables are placed and there’s also an area which looked a bit more separated from the dining area along the part of the bar located in the back of the building. Oh and while we’re talking about colors: The team is also dressed in green.

For the part that’s important to beer fans: As far as I got it they offer about 6 different flavors/brands. There’s also other liquor as well as non-alcoholic beverages and non-alcoholic cocktails. Unfortunately I forgot to try one of those. The menu offers a variety of food (I’ll refer you to the menu for that.).

Initially some of my colleagues there had the idea to order food but that somewhat changed after several drinks so that there were three grill plates (I do hope I’m translating that right) ordered and I had salad with turkey. We waited a long time for our food. Considering, me and Herr K. (which I will use as long as necessary until this nickname is established properly) were nagging for a while until we even convinced the rest of the guys to order something. And even before that we had to get a table, since the table we booked was given to some semi-famous sportsmen (can you see me being pissed here? No? Look harder!). So, I tried to have salad with turkey, but they somehow forgot the turkey. After even more waiting I finally got my perfect salad. On the other hand I acknowledge that there was a lot going on during the opening night and accidents happen. I plan to pay Rox a second visit for a culinary excursion at a quieter time anyway so there might be a second post a while from now. (and yes, the food was good but nothing out of the ordinary)

So, you may ask: “Alex, what about the vibe? What was it like?” Fret not, I’m getting there. There was a feeling of perpetual busyness during the whole evening though it got better (read: a little less crowded) at about 10 p.m.. The music was okay and the music volume too. I was able to communicate without screaming which is always a plus when talking about bars with their focus on evening entertainment. Now that I think about it there were people a little younger than me (which would be younger than 22 in case you’re asking.) to something I’d guess around 55? My point is: it’s not a location which has its target group set to a particular age. Drag your dad there, take your friends there. They probably won’t feel uncomfortable or out of place. Although it’s been described as some sort of rock-bar I didn’t feel like it was very focused on that. A friend even told me there was some famous trainer of some sport there. Of course I didn’t know that. Also I didn’t know who he was talking about even after he told me his name, so I was just enjoying the moment at that time.

In conclusion the opening was fun, the location is worth a recommendation and a definite verdict considering some more sophisticated food is going to follow the second visit.

---

Update: link corrected, footnote removed.
Update: I’ve been there for a second time and been able to draw my conclusion.

---

Rox (opening) is part 1 of Cuisine Notes:

1. Rox (opening)
2. Rondo
3. Torona
4. Rox (follow-up)
5. Propeller
6. Tribeka: Graz's young coffee culture