hexgrid

It's funny, the dice vs. pseudorandom number generator thing is something that always comes to mind whenever I hear unequivocal praise for a video game being designed as a board game first. It's fine if the board game has no randomness, but as the podcast points out it's *very* different once you're trusting the computer rather than rolling physical dice. Especially since many PRNGs have quirks; I remember running into one (I think it was stock rand() on the ps2?) that was mostly random, but every result that came out of it alternated between even and odd. So it seemed mostly random, but if you (as it were) flipped a series of coins you got heads, tails, heads, tails, heads, tails... I think most PRNGs (especially the ones used in video games) have quirks. More complex than the odd/even thing, but noticeable to the longer term player. Things like "it seems like if I miss twice, I'll often miss at least three more times before I hit again". A game can make this better or worse with how it is designed. There was an early ps2 game (a launch title, I think?) called Ring of Red. It was a decent game, of the "tactical rpg" variety. They made one major design mistake, however. When two units were fighting, the game went into a "real-time" bit where the two units were marching towards each other shooting. You had the trigger for your unit's guns. As you approached the enemy, you had a gun sight view that sinewaved back and forth across the enemy unit, along with a %Hit counter counting up. It *looked* like if you pulled the trigger at just the right time when the sight was passing across the enemy unit, you'd hit. Instead, whenever you pulled the trigger, it (hidden from you) rolled the dice against the hit chance and then told you you'd hit or missed. So, it presented itself as a twitch game when it was actually a game of gambling with the odds. Inevitably that meant you'd fire too early and too often (since it looked like you had the enemy dead in your sights), and miss a lot with what looked like sure hits. By the time you realize how it actually works, you're used to the die roll screwing you so much that the baseline assumption is that the game cheats. (Related aside: I still can't believe anyone trusts online poker...)

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me design analysis and strategic discussions are timeless. I enjoy the "what's new?" episodes too, but I'd also be perfectly content if 3MA went a year without touching anything that came out after 2005. Speaking as someone in the game industry, one of the biggest problems we've always had is historical myopia. I suppose it's because we were riding the exponential curve of software/hardware improvement for so long, but so much of our past is lost and barely remembered. A lot of metaphorical babies went out with the bathwater. I'm really glad someone is going back to some of these older games and assessing them without nostalgia. Some things (user interface design, as you noted) have just gotten better, partly with practice and partly with supporting libraries. Some things (AI, notably, and scenario design) arguably haven't much, and some things have regressed. It's hard to go play all these things; in some cases it's hard to even find them, or determine they existed at all. For example, somewhere I've got a copy of Bunten's 1991 game "Command HQ", a multiplayer play-by-modem RTS that has all sorts of interesting ideas in it, (remember when people said it was innovative that in Civ V, units turn into ships when they hit the coast? CHQ did that in 1991...) and I've never heard anyone else even discuss it. And I could happily listen to it. Do, by all means! Do an episode on ASL as well!

I'd actually be really interested to hear Troy go into more depth about how the systems are broken. I've only read an english translation of Bello Gallico. I had my latin class shot out from under me in high school (three students in the class, they spiked it and the school never offered latin again), and never really had time to learn in university. I did have the book as a text in one fascinating history course (History of Warfare, taught by a prof. Goering, no less...). That was a really good course, by the way. The source material was, (from memory): - the book of Judges from the Old Testament - The Iliad - Commentaries on the Gallic War - The Song of Roland - The Prince The prof had several axes to grind, but one of them was looking for things the authors glossed over. In Caesar's work, one of the things he pointed to was a bit where Caesar and his people had obviously fallen afoul of a guerrilla campaign and clearly didn't know what to do about it. The book mutters a bit about cowardly dishonorable foes attacking foraging parties and then quickly glosses over it and leaps forward in time. I do remember it being a really great read, even in English, though. I have half a memory that Garret Mattingly's "Defeat of the Spanish Armada" was in there as well, and it's another excellent book. Every time I read it I want to turn it into a game.

A friend of mine worked at Square (he was on the team that did FF7 PC), and he told me it was in the original. I don't remember which one, though; I'm not sure they all made it over here. You mean like the Super Robot Taisen series?

Did FME still have the thing where all the weapons were english names for sex toys transliterated to Japanese? I have memories of "dirudo missile", but maybe that was FM1 or 2.

I found them through Space Game Junkie: http://www.spacegamejunkie.com

Most esports seem to tend to focus on APM ("actions per minute"). Depending on how well regulated it is, it'll either be due to loss of speed from age, or decreasing effectiveness of amphetamines due to overexposure. I'd really like to see the development of more intellectual esports. What we have now is (metaphorically) speed chess; the games hinge on a few quick decisions and a bunch of fast execution, mostly of pre-planned standard gambits. I'd far rather watch something like a high-speed version of Neptune's Pride, where speed and execution are important but strategy and cunning factor heavily as well. It's a problem I have with regular sports as well; I'm not into them enough to pay attention to the metagame, but that's where all the real strategy and thought happens. The actual match is just a glorified JRPG battle of personified stats mashing into each other. "Quarterback uses Long Pass: It's Ineffective."

I think the traditional RTS will be back, probably at the hands of indies; we've now reached the point where the tools are good enough and the machines are fast enough that a small team can reasonably tackle an RTS. Have a look at Enemy Starfighter http://enemystarfighter.com/ or Deep Space Settlement http://dss.stephanierct.com for examples. I suspect the Free To Play tsunami is just about at its peak; I think we're getting close to the point where the available pool of unwary rubes is just about tapped out. It'll stick around; some games will be good enough to keep enough players to survive, but I think we're just about past the day when not being F2P gets you disapproving stares at the green light meeting.

My interest in esports is more intellectual rather than as a potential fan. The level of coverage in this week's podcast was enough to hold my interest; I suspect if it were to dip a little further into the minutia I'd be wavering. For myself, as long as the coverage stays in a place where I can pick up the missing bits from context rather than having to really understand who Piefold or MoofMoof are, it's interesting enough that I can kind of view it as an anthropological expedition. I come to 3MA largely for what it says on the tin, and the esports discussed have a definite strategy element to them, so as long as they don't take over the show, I'm good with regular esports episodes. What I would definitely be interested in hearing some time is a deep dive on the evolution of the game or metagame strategy on an esport (any of them, whichever is most interesting). I know the subject gets a little weird because it winds up driven at least in part by the developer, but perhaps that's part of the interest as well; is the evolution of strategy in the game just following the tracks laid down by the developer's schedule? Does Valve know what the metagame for DOTA will look like in two years because they've got a pipeline of changes planned out, or are they just kicking new stuff out the door and waiting to see what happens?

Winter of Wargaming sounds promising. I'm looking forward to it. Best wishes to Mr. Hermes. Eat lots of *********; supposedly it's got enzymes that help with tissue repair (or possibly it's laden with the healing placebo force of urban legend...), and it tastes good. Hope the recovery is quick.

I'm definitely getting Black Turn, though I think I'll be waiting until after the sale so I can give the devs the extra dollar. I'm fascinated to see how they are going to deal with the western front, though I think what I'd really like (now we've got Unity of Command) is to see is something set in an alternate universe where they can explore the implications of their engine without forcing it to conform to historical scenarios. Also, the Korean war might make a fascinating venue for their engine. Or the 30 years war, with all its attendant logistical madness.

That's a classic speculative fiction problem. Your "elves" or "dwarves" or "vulcans" or "klingons" are just humans with makeup and a single personality trait dialed up to 11. It's a hard problem to overcome; I remember an episode of Prisoners of Gravity that was dealing with it, and they had Robert Sawyer on talking about how nobody does real aliens and he was going to show us all how it was done in his new book "Far Seer". Which totally failed to do so; the characters were a planet of sentient dinosaurs, but they were just allegorical humans with a more aggressive territorial instinct. IIRC in the second book of the trilogy the dinosaurs discovered Freudian psychology, which in retrospect makes me wonder if Sawyer was just trolling everyone. The problem with proper aliens is that it's hard to make them actually alien, because you tend to think of them in the framework of your own needs and politics. Besides, if there's little or no overlap in needs or desires, where's the conflict? 4x games are ultimately about resource clashes, so there has to be some overlap of needs or you have no game. If the plasma race is only interested in colonizing the surface of neutron stars, why would they ever come into conflict with the gas giant dwellers? Unless the gas giant folks were sending out those damned slylandro probes... I don't say that to absolve the authors of responsibility, just to point out that repeated failure is unsurprising. Star Trek would be the classic example here, but it's but one of many. Mechanically, I think the problem is that game designers are approaching it backwards. Someone says "we need seven non-human races" and the art folks go off for a bit and come back and say "Cigar Chomping Scottish Bears!", "Slime Wearing Power Armor!", "Psychotic Samurai Lizards!", "Cute Big Eyed Puppy Things With Chainswords And Anger Management Issues!", "Some Sort Of Ethereal Vapor With Eyes!", "Greys!" and "An Entire Race Of Barbarella Cheesecake Amazon Fanservice!" along with concept sketches, and everyone cheers and work starts. When it comes time to figure out what each race does, they're kind of stuck. I think the proper approach is to come at it from a list of interesting interlocking needs and abilities, make a game around that, and then try to make factions that fit the mechanics. You might sill get some of the same aliens out of it, more or less, but they'll fit the mechanics of an interesting game rather than constraining it or breaking the metaphor. The game I keep coming back to for this is the Dune boardgame. All the factions in that are human (arguably; the spacing guild is one of the factions, so ymmv...), but the faction abilities are very asymmetric. Everyone is at the mercy of the coriolis storm, but only the Fremen player knows how far it's going to move this turn. Landing troops on Arrakis costs everyone money, but that money is payed to the Guild. And the Bene Geserit can slip someone onto Arrakis free any time anyone else lands someone. When treachery cards are being auctioned, only the Harkonnen player knows what card is being bid on, and the Emperor player gets the money. At the beginning of the game, the Bene Geserit player secretly writes down a turn and a faction, and if the faction noted wins on the turn noted, the Bene Geserit player wins instead. If the game goes 12 turns with no winner, the Guild wins. It's an excellent asymmetric game, and though it's science fiction, there isn't an alien in sight. I think where CK2 wins here is that it doesn't try particularly hard for cosmetic differences between powers; it's much more about playing the hand you're dealt.

In theory it would be nice to have a switch to shut off the supernatural stuff, though I suppose if one really cared one could dig into the event files. In practice, though, since it's all fiction I don't find myself getting exercised about it either. So to speak. I think it just appeals to the little part of me that's left from when I was twelve.

Somehow this has me giggling like a child.

Yeah, I have to admit "Lords Management" makes me think of Paradox stuff, not multiplayer competitive ARPG.

I don't know that we can count Lords Managements out until the term appears on the cover of Wired. Once that happens, its time is definitely done.

Interesting! How is it distinct from Lords Managements?

They did strike a pretty good balance between "gamey" and "realistic". Nobody would mistake the maps for real places; the world isn't that full of half-height cover. They're close enough for suspension of belief, and they're also close enough that there aren't many "uh... what's this place supposed to be?" moments. At the same time, they're tactically interesting; far more so than they would have been if they were set in "realistic" locations.

I think the fix for this is to change the scope of the game as it progresses: - in the beginning you're small and weak, but the aliens don't know you're there; your job is to build up an organization with some expertise and people, without tipping your hand and getting stomped -- you have to pick your intercepts and interventions carefully so as not to expose yourself, maybe by turning the tables on terror missions and abducting aliens -- your funding is secure; only a few people in the world know you're operating, so you're getting "black" funding through back channels - gradually work up to the point where you can do interceptions, but you need to do so without revealing the location of your base; maybe you have a mobile interceptor launch site you can reposition, and if you intercept from the same position enough for the aliens to triangulate its location you're going to be defending it against repeated assaults until you manage to hide it from them again somehow - at this point, the aliens know they're facing someone, but they don't know much about you yet, and the governments of the world are starting to be aware of your existence -- the aliens start probing and trap attacks to try to gain information about you, and your funding gradually goes from secure to political football as word of your organization's existence (and funding!) begins to leak out of the top secret briefings and into the wider halls of governments, and as your financial needs increase - you stabilize the political situation, research advances, and you start to be able to actually lock down territories so the aliens can't do as they please, but the aliens now know they're up against a serious foe and start going directly for you -- expect your satellites to need regular replacing, and you're going to have to disperse forces to defend satellite base stations, interceptor bases, and so forth -- whenever they can crack a path through to your base (say, by exhausting your interceptor coverage and then sending in a couple of dropships) expect an invasion - if they can't get you, they can get the people funding you, and the countdown begins -- you've got to find their command base and wipe them out before they can cut your financial legs out from under you Of course, anywhere along the above path the aliens could get a step ahead; if they figure out where your base is when you're still starting out, for example, well.... boom.

I dunno, the description book from Wasteland was pretty good. Especially the fake descriptions that were there to throw you off if you went reading for spoilers. Honestly, though, at that point we're getting rather close to interactive fiction, and then I just point to Suspended and some of the other mad stuff Infocom did in their heyday.

I think (hope...) they'll be back. We're at an in-between period at the moment. The first reason manuals have been disappearing, obviously, is the increasing average complexity of games. Obviously, this is somewhat less true for hardcore strategy, where even in the late 80s it was possible to build extremely complicated games, but for most games complexity has been climbing steadily as computers and development software have supported it. The second reason is the number of chefs in the kitchen. The indie movement can somewhat be seen as a backlash against this (though it's also arguably about work/life balance and many other things), but most modern game development involves at least two of: large teams, focus groups, long betas, distant rights-holders with Ideas, and/or authority figures with whims. All of these tend to pull the design around even late in development, which means that the manual either needs to be vague, or it needs to be written while upper management is looking angrily back and forth between the manual writer and a calendar stuck to the wall by a dagger through the first day of the next financial quarter. Meanwhile, out in the dev area, the day-one patch is in development, and it's going to invalidate 10% of the manual... The third reason is purely that manuals are expensive, and the software industry in general has gradually been discovering that most people don't really read, per se, unless they have to. This (and other forces) have led to decades of UI research and experimentation, which has resulted in games and other software that try to build systems with high affordance (ie: everything looks like it behaves the way it actually will when you interact with it) and contextual information (tool tips, dynamic status bars...) so that the sharp bits are hopefully sanded off the learning curve. The fourth reason, arguably, is that games have been becoming less abstract as time goes on, simply because graphics and processing horsepower have improved so much. If you look at early video games (and if you're a teacher, here's a fun project to try with a class...), you could take pretty much any game and totally change the theme, setting and feel of the game by replacing the box art, back of the box blurb, and manual. Pong was "table tennis", but you could have called it "hockey" or "bomb blocker" or "hackey sack". Each ensuing generation reduced the abstraction, so as time passed you could get theme, character and story from the game itself instead of having to read block text from the manual or the box. So, here we are now. It's expensive to produce a manual, the dynamic nature of current development practices means it's hard to make a manual that's up to date and relevant, and modern GUIs (theoretically, if not always in practice...) and reduced abstraction obviate the need for a lot of what we used to need manuals for. It's looking pretty hopeless for manuals. I think we might see them again, though. Not on paper, except in rare cases or unless we print them ourselves, but still, I think the manual may return in electronic form. The critical thing is development support. What we need is tools to generate documentation from the source code, and then synthesize that with properly written text supplied by an author and stitch it together into a cohesive manual. The manual structure could be designed by the author, who could supply most of the text and specify what gets pulled in from code. I think it's only a matter of time before a system like that gets built; we've had stabs at it in the past with a different focus (eg. Knuth's "Literate Programming"), but the support frameworks are mostly in place, and we could fairly easily build a system where you could have a properly written manual constructed by a human author, but which was populated as needed by dynamic content pulled from the game source. It still won't make sense for most games; most games simply don't need manuals any more. For games with some complexity to them, however, I think once the tools are available we'll see (pdf) manuals return.

I suppose that's true, and it does partly explain the ham-handedness of it all. It was pretty obvious at the time that they blew it on QA as well, IIRC; amongst other things, I seem to recall the units described in the manual having only a passing resemblance to the units in the game. In particular I remember looking for some upgrade for the terran fighter that was in the manual but got cut from the game, and came back as part of another unit in Brood Wars. I suppose the lesson there was "don't write the manual until the beta is done".

Part of the problem I had with that one is that it should have been fixable. Surely the engine was capable of spawning an endless stream of zerg if necessary, or they could simply have made sure that everything in the base had 50x hit points. I *know* their engine could manage that; the editor that came with it let you. I remember on a lark throwing together a terminator marines vs. effectively endless swarm map by jacking the damage and health on some marines through the roof and then dropping 7 allied zerg AI factions on the map and giving each of them maxed-out crystal and gas sources.

I'm going to have to disagree on this one. When I played that mission the first time, I screwed up and accidentally killed some zerg too early and lost the mission (combination of a science vessel's line of sight and a deployed siege tank, IIRC). When I played it the second time, I was pretty sure they were going to pull stupid shit on me; whenever they tell you to protect another faction, you can be reasonably certain it will turn on you late in the mission. So, I built up a huge force, managed to capture almost all of the protoss base, and set up a secondary base where they had been without quite wiping them out. I think they had a drone and a pylon left. Then I built up a *massive* force, since I figured I was going to have to deal with a big zerg rush. So, my deployment: - Kerrigan, whom I figured needed to survive, in the secondary base, with 12 battlecruisers and a shuttle floating over her head, and missile towers and siege tanks everywhere, as well as bunkers full of marines at the top of all of the ramps - the original base had 12 battlecruisers and tons of siege tanks and missile towers surrounding all of the zerg positions, just far enough away to avoid clearing the fog, along with four bunkers full of marines at every ramp I killed the final protoss, the fog came off the zerg and they started rushing. About two seconds later, my battlegroup was in their base, and there was nothing but red goo and my forces. "Huh", I thought. "That was easier than I was expecting." At which point one of my marines started screaming about being overrun, and Kerrigan, who was miles away and surrounded by a dozen space-worthy battlecruisers *and* an empty troop shuttle started complaining she'd been abandoned and was being overrun by zerg. Meanwhile, my troops are milling about with nothing to do except scrape the zerg off their boots, and Kerrigan is doing whatever passed for her "bored" idle animation. But somehow magically she got captured by invisible plot fairies so the story could continue.

All of the above said, though, if Blizzard put out something single-player and properly strategic I'd be on it pretty fast. Say, something on the scale of (and similar in design to, but hopefully less broken than) Star Wars Rebellion (or Supremacy, apparently, depending on where you live). I may find the StarCraft universe spectacularly uncompelling, but when a grand strategy game set in space gives me the "come hither" look, I have no defenses.