Le carnet à Michel / Mike's Blog / ミシェルのブログ

It is finally working! Yay! Nice integration and stuff! I can easily add entrys with my iPhone and it's really cool.

Since I cannot purchase anything on the PS3 thanks to the incompatibility between the Playstation Store and the Banque Nationale du Canada, I decided I would support the new WiiWare channels. So I purchased by first big WiiWare game, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as King. The game costs a little bit short of USD$40 with all options included. Not too shabby for a FF game, and you sincerely can get away with much less.

Many reviewers declared this game a lemon, others were more friendly. I give it a relatively good note personally. How does it precisely fare? I will give you my score immediately: 6/10. 8/10 for the idea, 9/10 for the general quality, and 2/10 for the game design, balancing and A.I. Why? Devil's in the details baby.

Square Enix is going in a different direction with this game, exacerbating the Tactics idea by making us sending out adventurers not seeing or participating in any combat whatsover, anyways we are having our hands full with building and managing the city, and sending out these lucky adventurers to the butcher stall.

There's some storyline you follow, you are first taken by the hand and you need to build things as required. First a house in the only available shiny spot, then a few more, and finally the first bakery. During these first levels, you have to tightly manage your budget, and have a lot of hard choices to do. Fun times, really. Then the details start to hit the fan (or the brick wall, depending.)

You start by getting a weapon shop. That's cool. Then, there's an armor shop. That's great… But then you see the adventurers going to both shop nearly everyday. Finally, there's the item shop… and at that point, it becomes painfully clear all characters are going to the Weapon, then the Armor, then the Items, no matter where they are located in the city.

Throughout that time, you are starting to get people asking for a holiday. They say I need to order people to have a holiday, but at that point, I could not do it to save my life. They also started to become annoying since one in eight are mentioning this.

Eventually you get a gambling hall, that's so sweet, I can order people to become thieves (if they want to). I am being recommended to create this near houses so that adventurers living nearby can get extra points. The problem with that is you have problems determining who is a thief and not, also you cannot order adventurers to become thieves, only the ones wanting to do it gets that thief mention. Finally, the gambling hall cannot be close to everything, and you painfully discover adventurers want to go there everyday before going to the armor shop. Whoopie-doo.

You also get another billboard, making it possible to order two events instead of one. Why oh why are they going there randomly? I start having more adventurers so I create a level 3 event and a level 10 event for the higher-leveled people. Of course I get a mix of low and high levels wanting to participate to both events.

Then, you get a white mage church. Yay! Now folks will be able to cure themselves, probably leading to less deaths… But… All your white mages are dieing! What the?! This is where you understand even if you order 5 people to do a job, they will do it individually! And can you tell me something more useless than some alone white mage? They will cure themselves, but will not be able to attack a level 1 foe!

It will hit you that you need a tavern and you get the tavern only after you get the possibility to make black mages (good luck if half your folks are now white mages!), and only after you (reluctantly) create at least one, to attack the big magic attack only foe. Oh that's so intuitive. And of course, adventurers will usually do most of these in approximate order:

• Go to the park
• Go to one of the posts to accept a quest
• Go to their hall/church
• Go to the weapon shop
• Go to the armor shop
• Go to the items shop
• Go to the tavern

At that point, my whole city was in a standstill, most adventurers going away when most of the day is done, not having time to do whatever they needed to do. All white mages are mostly coming together in the tavern, making them go in mission together, same for black mages, same for thieves, same for warriors. And you can finally do that stupid holiday! The joys.

You need experience to know adventurers need to reliably go to their training centre, while they do not need to go to the guild hall (that you cannot obtain anytime near, even if you are told you need to upgrade your hall as soon as you get more than 5 adventurers near the start of the game). You need to know they will do things in a precise order. You need to know you can only have as many adventurers as the game allows you, making many finer details totally moot. You need to know the Inn is not useful near the posts.

The last straw for this game is the second tavern. Of course, you conveniently put the first tavern at the end of the line near the most useful city door, and once you get the second tavern, you conveniently put it near the second door, wishfully thinking people will go to the closest tavern for their job. Oh you couldn't be so lucky, can you? Nope, adventurers like their tavern, no matter where they need to go later, so you only end up segregating your people in multiple nonfunctional groups, instead of larger nonfunctional groups.

Yes I know, you can create one balanced group per tavern by yourself, but why would this not be automatic and do the "good thing" eludes me.

Add up a Pavlov that you simply end up clicking randomly while chasing these stupid adventurers to give them a vitality boost (and get the morale points out of them), enough money and crystals to do whatever you may ever wish to do, getting more suggestions of events you can order but don't know how (like the white mages wanting some materials), a few other annoyances, and you get the picture: a very good game that's really poorly balanced, with a random generator instead of an A.I., and a requirement to read the manual to get a chance of understanding how things work. Oh, and purchase all 3 supplemental characters first if you want to have a chance to get at least one in your adventurers, as once you get adventurers, it's for life. Oh, and Chime is cool, but every time she appears, I am getting near 2FPS now! Sad. Very sad.

I'm still playing the game, am at day 80, had to start the game back again after a white mage debacle at start, am getting less and less happy with these details, but I'm still playing the game. It's as fun this game would've been with a better balance.

You want my opinion? As a game developer myself, I think the WiiWare launch deadline meant the game was rushed and no one really took the time to balance it properly. Focus groups, anyone? Hence the 6/10.

Somehow, people think they need to patronize you.

I have a 10MB file. I use a compression algorithm, since it sees less than 10% gain, it reverts to uncompressed version. that software was meant to compress files less than 1MB in size but we are pushing the envelope with it. Answer of the vendor: it is bad taste to have a file that big, why is it so big? … now … I am not asking whether it is of good or bad taste, I am asking why the befuzzle does it reverts the file. 800K less, I would've lived with it. Even 80K less I would've lived with it.

I have a hard drive containing lots of data, nearing capacity. In fact it got a disk full. I was wondering if it was possible to defrag the drive, and consolidate free space, to make everything go snappier. The answer was EXT2/3 doesn't need defrag under most circumstances, with a lo-ooo-ooong thread on why it's useless under most circumstances. … now … I am not asking whether it is useful or not under most circumstances, I am asking how would I do that, not why Average Joe doesn't need to do that.

Only 2 examples, got more in my arsenal, I might share them with you eventually.

The opposite. I had a piece of software meant to work with 2 or 3 elements at a time. I made it work with hundreds of them. The vendor was more than happy to create specialized tools to make it work for me, in record time, and with a proud stance to know their software was working with so many elements without a hitch. That's commercial software for you.

There is a nice cute web site giving you free full version software, totally legally. There are no Photoshop (yet), mind you, but they are still nice software.

If you have a PC, it's worth looking up these daily, you might find the gem you wish to have.

www.giveawayoftheday.com

It's funny how people are jumping on the bandwidth throttling bandwagon with Bell. And I would be one of them if I was one of their clients. I'm not, however, blaming them in the sense that everyone seems to do.

If every user were using their system sporadically, sometimes heavily, sometimes casually, there would never be any problem. The problem arises when some clients are constantly using their connections 24/7.

If a provider was advertising 10 megabits per second bandwidth for all their clients, and if they were purchasing upstream bandwidth for 10 megabits per second per client, their costs would be prohibitive for a mostly unused upstream pipe. I know I am using maybe 5% of the potential of my connection everyday. I know most users are at that level, but I also know some users are constantly uploading and downloading stuff, using 100% of their potential connection.

This is the same problem with plumbing. If every home were using 100% of their drainage system at the same time, there would be a giant problem for sanitation services and there would be overflows everywhere. What you do is make an estimated guess and you buy what's required, adding some more leeway.

Looking at it this way, one can only say to Bell "you saw too large, and don't have enough upstream to keep all users happy". Too bad for them, and customers shouldn't be penalized.

However, when that limit is reached, how do you survive. You can either take drastic measures to make certain this limit is not reached ever (like they are doing, by capping users at their peak hours)… or you can add prioritization for services and users.

The former (throttling) has the advantage of being easy to implement, it's fairly inexpensive and reduces the quantity of bandwidth required with their upstream providers, making certain they are not obligated to pay premium for the excess of bandwidth. This can be graphically represented as a bottleneck with a small filter before, making the big bits passing through at very low speed, while keeping the smaller bits churning along all the time. The bottleneck itself is not the problem anymore, it's the filter in the bottle. All good reasons.

The latter (shaping) is harder to implement, only occurs in crisis management, and every people will see some kind of slowdown instead of a few people. A fair system is harder to get with this kind of bottleneck. This can be represented as a bottleneck shaped to make things go through at different speeds when it's full. It's harder to make the filter right, but then, no one is left in the cold.

I do believe all such systems should implement proper bandwidth shaping anyways, and what's remaining is to see how much utilization they are reaching at peak hours. A 100% utilization is perfect, if it reaches 120%, a proper shaping algorithm is adequate. If it reaches 200%, then they seriously have to up their ante a little bit, and I would see why they would use throttling algorithms, as a shaping system is clearly not good enough anymore.

The future will bring more and more bandwidth-hungry usages, and such throttling will only angry the customers, it's merely a temporary solution. In the meantime, they should try to find a way to make things happen correctly, even if it means bringing twelve more OC-768 from the backbone, because not only is it temporary, but it has very negative impact on their image.

I just created a new Quicktime stream for the experimental movie Elephants Dream, that you can play if you got a good Internet connection, of course. You NEED a 8Mbps dedicated Internet connection, which is too fast for most North American users, but a breeze for all European users.

Play it here

Stream info:
- 1920×1080 (1080p)
- 24fps
- H.264
- 6Mbps average (7Mbps peak)
- AAC 5.1 audio, 320Kbps average

Why? Because I can, and to have fun compressing a movie, practicing the latest technologies, to see how Quicktime cope with all that data, how my computer plays these, how hinted movies work, and so on. Also because this option was lacking from the official web site, they "only" gave a 1024px version of the movie in stereo for Quicktime, when everyone knows it can do much better.

Update (2008-02-07) I created a new version, without hinting, suitable for downloading, for all of you that don't have the proper "Internets" to access my streaming goods. Same stuff, same compression, same file, meant for downloading or "casually playing", without stressing your connection. Play it here.

To start this year in a good way, I refer to you to the superb texts in The Edge's last question: What have you changed your mind about? Why?, where specialists, scholars and known enthusiasts are telling what they are now seeing differently. Very interesting reading, I am at the 3rd page now.

A few texts are eye openers and very interesting reading to anyone who think no one changes their minds. It also led me to ask myself the question. As a computer programmer, I am not a real expert in many of the things I am about to say, but I don't really care, frankly, like Douglas Adams showed it, anyone can find the question to the answer in this world. And I certainly wouldn't be as pretentious as to say I am as good as some British girl sipping tea, but my opinions have at least the weight of 1 against 6 or so billion. It has merit.

The universe in a computer… Not! I used to believe one could create some 3D array and put all the particles there, in line and in shape. It has a few good points, gives a nice insight to some problems, but it wouldn't explain speed of our planet as compared to the galaxy. If it did, light wouldn't travel at the same speed in all directions. Hence, if a computer was to simulate our environment, it would do so by simulating all the individual particules. Then the interaction of these particles would lead to interesting problems, as the more particles there are, the more interaction they give to their surroundings, making the problem quite interesting to solve on a computer. The only approximation we can live with are with these interaction, as we cannot percieve the particles themselves in all their facets at the same time, so a computer could generalize these. It would mean all of our universe particles would be described in fuzzy logic. It's interesting, but thresholds are bound to err where we don't want. All in all, I find it very reductionnist to say our environment would be approximated in a computer. I used to think we could simulate the universe in a computer. Now I think we can represent a subsection of the universe in a computer, but we cannot get all the elements in there.

The expanding-contracting universe is black or white…. Not! The universe is in the big bang phase, or is in the big crunch phase. The universe is exo or endo. All the theories I hear are all as precise as black or white. My belief is we're in the middle of this all. If Big Bang there was, some of the ejected particles were ejected quickly at escape velocity speeds. Most of it were ejected slowly at crunchable speeds. There is a relatively new theory of ourselves getting slower and slower, and our universe running out of time. Let's suppose all of our references points are slowing, crawling to a halt. Let's suppose we are in this. If the universe doesn't do rounding errors, it will slow down indefinitely, and for some external observer, we would simply halt. However, we would as insiders never stop moving and what took 5 minutes before would take 5 hours, then 5 days, and so on, for the external entity. But it would never stop compltely, and it would be totally oblivious to us since the reference frame is changing. Why would this change? Because the universe as we know it is currently freezing. Why would the universe continue expanding and at a faster rate while we are freezing? Because there is a ring of very quick matter that is still relatively hotter that englobes our universe since the big bang (analogy to a bomb exploding, where the initial shock wave is times worse than what's inside), and these are in a faster time frame comparatively to us. Would time abruptly stop? No. In a frozen universe, we would have infinitely more time to move, making the point moot. In a crunched environment, we would be infinitely faster, meaning we would to infinitely more in infinitely less time. For someone outside, we would either stop moving or simply end up in some infinitely dense point. For us, it would be life as usual. A black hole is a perfect example of a big crunch, and someone inside would simply accelerate, but nothing would tear apart. I used to believe we were in a big bang or big crunch, I used to believe our time was expanding or contracting. I used to believe black holes would see a meltdown of matter. Now I believe since the reference is changing, we are also changing to adapt, which means we don't see a thing, I believe we might be in a black hole that is in the centre of the universe, and even if we weren't, it wouldn't change a thing for us. I now believe inside a black hole, we wouldn't be able to tell if the black hole would be collapsing or expanding, since our reference would change, making a black hole, a big bang and a big crunch look and feel exactly the same.

And as a statement to all the writers of the original Edge article, since the reading, my ideas have at least changed on one thing. I used to believe most scientists were so obtuse about their points, refining their original idea and polishing it to the delusional state, that eventually, although respected, their bubble would break when someone else would point out their fallacy, and repeat the process. I believe the original authors have shown they have the ability to do this questioning themselves. At least 20 pages worth of great people have this ability.

Happy new year to all, and if you want to answer the question yourself, I give this as a starting point of a writing chain. If you don't answer, some particle will decay strangely in the universe. I decided to write on the universe, but it can be on anything, really.

part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCJjPymi79s
part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKfx3Qfl3Es

It's interesting to have someone compare the different slangs and words. This could be made in a list, but it's funnier to have someone comment them out.

It's also interesting to be in the middle of it all, since "our" Canadian English is technically closer to British English, and our Quebec French adds a valid knowledge of many of these words. Of course, we splat before paleolithic era, so the most recent of slang is mostly American-oriented.

Cheers!

http://gamepolitics.com/2007/11/21/silicon-knights-dyack-bemoans-ontario-brain-drain/

We are the ones draining brains for a friggin once. Well, yes, and it's NOT only a monetary reason. We are having thriving small gaming companies (like ours), we have very good medium-level gaming companies, and we've had for many many years big companies implementing themselves in here. Simply look at the heavily subsidized groups, like Cité du Multimédia. It didn't fare well for most big groups who tried to capitalize on the incentives. Also frankly, there are many empty places there, for a reason. So it's really not only for the "monies".

Are people pissed off to have both Nintendo and Microsoft in Redmond, near Seattle? What about Silicon Valley? Well it's hard work that made them where they are right now. And I'm real happy to be here.

Want a job in gaming, you have the choice between the big guns, Ubi, A2M, EA (both Casual and Hardcore). You also have Beenox with something like 200 available spaces. You have Eidos, who started to massively hire. And of course, you have what I do, Ludia, for a proper human approach.