It’s time for a change of blog title. The other day I made a really awesome Lord of Change using the spore creature creator. Well in the Waaaagh! Blog’s News Blogs and Sites updates, they described me as quoted above. I don’t blame them, but it did make me want to spring into action. I’ve been thinking pretty hard for over a week now and came up with a somewhat witty title and encompases my blog pretty well. “Thoughts of an MMO Gamer” with the subtitle “By Victor F. Laurence: Programmer, Analyst, Learner, Leader, Gamer”. Basically I removed CyberVic out of the title all togehter and put my name in the subtitle.
So I put my mind to it and got myself a Wii Fit in less than a week. I have to admit I’m pleasantly surprised with the device so far. Here is my review thus far about the features of the Wii Fit product.
Goals setting and tracking - It prevents you from setting too large of goals. For example it didn’t let me put in “I want to lose 80 lbs in the next year”. So I set a goal of 21 lbs in the next 3 months. It also “measures” your goal progress in 2 week increments. In other words, instead of focusing on 1 week long increments it’s broken into 2 week increments.
BMI, weight, and balance measurements - One could say the BMI is not accurate due to muscle/fat/bone density ratios, but it’s as accurate as it can be. Plus this is about getting fit, not becoming the next Mr. Universe. Ideally it should account for a certain amount of muscle gain based on where you are on the BMI scale and activity with the system. Balance is huge and it’s a good motivator for me. Even though I’m overweight, I carry myself well.
Motivation - The game is constantly motivating you. The animated Wii board talks to you and congratulates you in a very cute way on your progress. The personal trainers motivate you when you’re doing well or improving on your exercises. Most of all the game rewards you by unlocking more items based on your commitment to becoming fit and how well you are doing. Some exercises will unlock based on total fitness time, some exercises will unlock the more you do that one exercise, and some will unlock as you do BETTER consistently at a particular exercise. This really rewards the person who has a completionist attitude and taps into the “gamer” side of you that wants to unlock stuff. Best of all the features that are unlocked are “mii” specific. Which means I can unlock things differently than Kerrie will for example.
Yoga is very relaxing and helps you stretch at the beginning of your workout. It is very tough and works core muscle groups well, but at the same time it is VERY low impact which again is the equivalent to stretching. I like the focus on breathing in the Yoga exercises and how they present breathing to you. Right now I’m still really out of shape and can’t do a lot of the Yoga poses I have unlocked. For now I’m focusing on the 2 that I can do well and those poses are helping strengthen my knees, abs, and core.
Strengthening exercises are pretty hard for me right now. I know I’m out of shape and like Yoga I can only do two of these exercises without seriously hurting myself. I’m looking forward to the day that I can do more of these. I know some of these I can do once my knees get stronger. One in particular “combos” with yoga. Oh yeah as you unlock and master different techniques, you can unlock exercise “combos” which is really cool. For example I think one is the strengthening exercise “The Lunge” comboing into the Yoga pose “The Warrior”. They call it the Lunging Warrior (or something like that).
Aerobic exercises are really fun. Of all the exercises these are the most enjoyable to me. HoolaHoop has to be the best of all the exercises because it is not only REALLY aerobic, but it REALLY works your abs hard. Forget those days of doing sit ups! The step aerobics is really fun which is surprising because I was shying away from the Wii Fit because I thought it was a glorified step aerobics machine. The “running” I’m not too sure about… I’ll write more about that once I get the feel of it. The soccer headbutting also is a bit weird. It feels more like a balance game than an Aerobic game.
Balance is the key to a healthy lifestyle, or so they say. If the Yoga exercises are the low impact warm up, the balance games are the low impact. These games focus on pushing your tired self to the limit, testing how well you are balanced and how well you can control shifts in you balance. The only balance game I can say for sure I don’t like is the tightrope. The marbles, skiing games (yes there’s two that I’ve unlocked so far), and the “bubble in the stream” are all excellent games.
Overall the Wii Fit is fun to play and an excellent exercise. I think I’m going to set a rule that before I can sit down to play video games on my PC or console, I first have to do my 30 minute Wii Fit workout. I think it’s MORE than reasonable and VERY fun and rewarding.
To celebrate the release of the new Spore Creature creator, EA Mythic started a contest for Warhammer fans to make their best squigs, record a video, and post that video to YouTube. Being well versed in Spore already and having a great time with it, I figured I’d give it a try.
Most people think of squigs as red, pink, and purple balls of death. Squigs come in all shapes, sizes, and colors so I wanted my squig to be as unique as possible. While the “ball of death” requirement was still important, I wanted my squig to be yellow, female, and to kill you with cuteness before charging at you and biting your head off. I also wanted to make sure to give my squig the tiny little barely usable arms that most people seem to forget. Well I’m pretty pleased with her. Hope you enjoy her!
A while ago I was rather depressed because what we thought was the Lord of Change looked really bad, simplistic, and didn’t look anything like the concept art for the Lord of Change. Well recently in Paul Barnett’s latest video blog, he had an entry called Animation. Let’s do a comparison between the Lord of Change minuature, concept art, and this video (screenshot to the right).
It seems like they have done a great job with this model keeping true to the concept art and capturing the greater deamon of Tzeentch’s style. I believe the head still needs work and he isn’t wearing the headdress that’s in the concept art. The scale of the model I think is appropriate and to about the same scale of the Bloodthirster. The robes still are lacking detail, but then again they could encorporate the details like the golden cord-like belt into the skin of the robe. The wings aren’t modeled, but that could be that they replaced them with dummy wings for performance while doing animation testing. With how well Tchar’zanek looks (also from this month’s newsletter), I’m sure they will get the texture detail on TLoC down well.
Overall I give Steve and whoever else is working on this model two thumbs up. I can’t wait to see him in game.
Details from the concept art we can see in the blown up screenshot:
Leg / foot structure
Clawlike, slender hands
Feather details on his elbows
Two bracelets on each arm
Staff in his left hand
*Note: Opposite of the concept art, but true to the miniature
Uses non-staff hand for casting as seen in video
Long slender neck with bird like head
Flowing robes that hang down like in concept/miniature
“Crest” like structure on the base of neck/shoulders
Today I was asked to move (or at least start the transition) onto the development team for our newest flagship product which is going to unify all of our existing products into one suite. I was intially asked to fulfill a simple Flex developer role and one 30 minute conversation later, I had pitched a completely different role. Here is the pitch I gave the manager of the team after our conversation.
Victor’s position on the <FLASHSHIP-PRODUCT> team would leverage his well rounded knowledge to fill a very specific and needed role. Working as part of the <FLASHSHIP-PRODUCT> software development team, his duties would include the following.
He will contribute to the development of the product as a front-end Flex designer/developer, but he will also have a major focus on documenting the development processes. He will do so by working with <FLASHSHIP-PRODUCT-MANAGER> and other stakeholders to better establish project goals, specifications, budget and timelines. This would involve collaboration with various business units, then using that understanding of business operations to help build solutions to meet the department’s internal information needs as well as the customer needs. He will analyze business processes, identifying causes of problems and making recommendations for process and design improvements. He will use his knowledge across a spectrum of technologies to determine the best solutions to design problems. He will also work to establish testing procedures to ensure the application is thoroughly tested during development and prior to release.
EDIT: This was the response.
Thanks Victor. I appreciate the effort and enthusiasm for writing that up. I should be able to make it pretty much a done deal. I’ll send <VP-OF-THE-DIVISION> a quick email to get confirmation.
June 14th was the deadline to enter the BOOM Studios Promo Code for entry into the closed Warhammer Beta. Being a loyal fan of Warhammer and Dan Abnett, I ordered the comic and had the code entered some time last month. It’s bad enough they delayed the deadline for the entries to June 14th from May 31st, but now all of us are sitting back waiting in anxious anticipation to see if we are one of the lucky 20% who are getting admitted into the beta. Thankfully, I’ve been entertaining myself with Spore, but I still can’t wait to hear news of whether I even got in or NOT.
To make productive use of my time in Spore while waiting on Warhammer, I present to you: The Lord of Change. Yes the Greater Deamon of Tzeentch himself made by yours truly.
I really can’t describe what using the spore creature creator is like in words. I don’t think anyone can properly while giving it the credit it is due. I played with it for a few hours last night and can genuinely say that the experience with that of the first day of launch of an MMO that I’ve been waiting to see for years.
One thing they need to do a better job of is advertising the mousewheel though. It’s the only part of the interface that is not naturally intuitive. I was able to scupt my creations a lot more effectively after I learned about the mousewheel.
3 second big heal was 530 for 40% of his AP.
2 second heal / 5 tick HoT was 293 with a hot of 89 for 25-30% of his AP.
Instant long HoT was also 89 for 10% of his AP.
In other words 6 seconds to fully heal a clothie who apparently at this level has around 1000 HP. Who knows what kind of hitpoints a tank would have at this level… 1500- 2000 maybe?
Yes sir, that’s interesting. I’d love to know more about how that Zealot was speced. It seemed like his big heals were very mana inefficient, using 1/3 of his AP. Considering the recharge rate of AP and how it works in the game… that means HoTs are CRUCIAL to the overal healing experience. Overall it seems like they want you to focus more on HoTs and then be doing damage between Heal/Hot’ing and HoTing. This is just an observation, again completely unknowledgeable about his spec. Who knows he could have been speced for HoTs more so than direct heals. He beat that swordmaster down pretty well just using HoTs on himself and DoTs on the swordmaster.
Another interesting thing to observe here is that even given the normal recharge of AP, if you just sat back and spamed big heals, you’d run out of AP pretty damn quickly. Yes, AP recharge rate is decently fast in WAR, but if you just spammed big heals you’d run out of AP and have to wait for recharge or swap to more efficient Heal/HoT healing and HoT healing. A good healer would be doing this anyhow if he/she cared about “mana efficiency” for lack of a better term.
Overall, I’d say that this kind of Zealot with his spec, compared to WoW works a lot like a high spirit build priest who’s speced mostly in Discipline with some good choices in Holy or Shadow for damage dealing capabilities. I do like how the Zealot was actually taking the time when noone was hurt to instead of just standing there actually using the duel targeting system and doing some damage taking advantage of the fact that everyone’s life totals were ok and his AP was full so he was doing damage.
I love the pace of combat and the feeling. It reminds me of Arathi Basin battle healing with a good organized group of folks. Two thumbs up for the Zealot experience depicted in this video.
I like this video more than most Zealot videos because for once the zealot is doing his job well and the team wins. The other team which seems less coordinated and less efficient heals is being dominated by a team that’s obviously communicating well and sticking together. You can tell because toward the end, they line up in a V formation, preparing for the next wave of the attack. They did a good job of keeping each other alive during the fighting as well.
So apparently I am an epic fail at advertising. Aside from a few select places on the net, my attempts at advertising so far have not… gone well. :-( Call me a little overly ambitious, but I advertised my new side project on 27 different places across the net. Most people said things like “good luck with your gold sales” and other such comments. MMORPG.Com didn’t shun me though which is promising. My hopes are that the few places which haven’t shunned my advertising will start to spread the word. Hopefully my story gets Dugg as well and more and more people start to get exposure to the site.
Once I have a ton of people signed up for the newsletter then I will announce the beta launch of the site. You know after dealing with this advertising crap, I think back to my days of owning my own business. I loved doing the work, but hated the advertising.
I am a very honest person. I like speaking my mind. I especially enjoy spreading good news. This is why I am HORRIBLE at keeping secrets. I really… really… want to leak information about the top secret project I’ve been working on. Every time I go to the site to customize something new, do data entry, putting up articles I’ve written over the years (to help jump start the site) and otherwise do things to make the site more and more awesome, the more I want to tell people about it.
I’ve told my guild and I’ve told people I know and trust, but I want to tell everyone else out there who is going to be SUPER excited about this project. My site has a very focused user group that I’m targeting, but that user group will be very interested in this site. Right now Kerrie is working on the branding design for the site including logo design and other things which will give us a professional look. Also I know a friend who is an Internet journalist who is working on pointers and will get back to me soon. I also have a friend who’s mom is an Internet marketing consultant who has been doing it for so long she works via word of mouth through contracts for big customers and not under some big agency. I don’t have any upfront capital for any of these people, but they are willing to help out which is great.
I can assure you this, the subject matter is… related to the MMO industry. I’ll leave the rest of the clues up to your imagination to figure out.
