Thoughts on Okami

People who know me well know that Okami is my favorite game of all time. Recently, when playing through the HD release, I found myself at a particular moment in the game just before I had to stop playing to go get dinner with Nick. I was turning in a side quest, and was mentally time managing what I was going to do next – “I think before doing the next story quest I’m going to train up at the dojo on my way back to Shinshu Field and get the clover that I couldn’t get before, but I need to go to a shop and get more seed because I missed some birds back there. I wonder if I should farm up demon fangs and get that mirror teleport now or wait until after I do the next dungeon…”

It struck me how excited I was about doing ALL THE THINGS in that game. This is unusual for me, because in most games of this nature I tend to be a primary-path sort of girl. Even in Zelda games, which I enjoy very much, I’m never too concerned about finding all the heart containers or whatever. So I got to thinking, what is it about Okami specifically that makes me so excited about doing all the collections and side quests and essentially 100%ing the game?

Theory 1:

In many games, the story artificially drives my sense of urgency. I’m talking about when the story is like “oh no we must rush to the castle before it is too late!” My logic brain knows that I could go out and farm for experience, complete the secret side quest in the first area, AND finish the entire chocobo minigame series or whatever before going to the castle (and when I got there I’d still arrive just in the nick of time).

However, emotional brain doesn’t quite understand this. Emotional brain feels I need to book it to the castle as fast as I can, because something very serious is at stake. I think my tendency is to let myself get engaged in the experience to the point where emotional brain is sort of guiding things, so I readily go from story point to story point.

In Okami, the story has a lot of exciting moments, but when you get to a new place it tends to frame things as not being in too much of a rush. Your companion, Issun, will be like “you’re gonna love exploring the city, there’s so much to do! I guess we should investigate the weird thing about the queen at some point…but the city is so happenin!”

It is an ever so slight encouragement to do whatever the hell you please, framing the next story point as “yeah, we’ll get around to it.” Possibly this setup sets emotional brain at ease, and makes me much more enthusiastic about feeding all the bunnies along the coastline before actually going into the city.

Theory 2:

It’s possible that the only thing compelling me to do so much of the extra stuff in Okami is that I’m so starved for a game experience that speaks to me. I know in the back of my mind that it’ll probably be over 10 years before someone else makes a game of this scope with this amount of whimsy and personal Lisa Brown appeal, so I become desperate to squeeze every last drop out of the experience before leaving it.

What about you, internet? What games compel you to do all their extra things when comparable games do not?

Khan Academy Experiment–Intro to Algebra

So awhile ago on Facebook, I mentioned wanting to do a thing where I came up with a practical game development example for Khan Academy playlists.  This post is the first one!

I started with the Intro to Algebra playlist, and actually had kind of a tricky time coming up with an example.  I just wanted to do something simple with comparing two linear equations, but lots of things in games don’t end up being linear (the first idea that popped into my head was comparing acceleration and top speed between Bowser and Yoshi and seeing when Yoshi would overtake Bowser, but those aren’t linear rates).

After cycling through some more too-complex ideas, I settled on Gold Drip in MOBA games.  It’s a start, but even still it’s oversimplified for a few reasons

• It doesn’t take into account other means of gold income or spending, only passive gold drip. 
• It doesn’t address that you can’t actually buy the Philosopher’s Stone at the beginning of the game – that you can’t have negative gold
• The per-10-seconds language would have tripped me up as a beginning algebra student, I think.

Anyway, it’s a start.  Please let me know if I blew the math anywhere.

The Scenario

In League of Legends, players earn money at a rate of 16 gold every 10 seconds and every player starts out with 475 gold.  A player can buy an item (Philosopher’s stone) for 700 gold that increases her income by 5 gold per 10 seconds.

So, normal rate (where s is seconds)

Total Gold = (16/10)s + 475

Philosopher’s Stone rate

((16+5)/10)s + 475 – 700

If a player buys the Philosopher’s Stone, at what time does she break even, after which her gold will overtake an opponent who did not buy the Philosopher’s Stone?  This is assuming neither player buys anything else or gains gold in another way.

(16/10)s +475 = ((16+5)/10)s + 475 – 700

(16/10)s +700= ((16+5)/10)s

(16/10)s+700 = (21/10)s

700 = (5/10)s

700=(1/2)s

1400 = s (so 23 minutes and 20 seconds)

However, this would assume that you could buy the item from the very start and have negative gold.  How long would it take before a player could afford to buy a Philosopher’s stone?

s = (700 - 475) * 10 / 16

Let’s assume that you the designer want the Philosopher’s Stone to be OP  and pay itself off 5 minutes earlier than it does right now (s=1100 instead of s=1400).  How could you change the item’s cost to achieve this?  How could you change its gold gain rate to achieve this?

Changing initial item cost

(16/10)(1100) +475 = ((16+5)/10)(1100) + 475 – c

(16/10)(1100) =  ((21)/10)(1100) – c

1760 = 2310 – c

c = 550

Changing item’s gold gain rate

(16/10)(1100) +475 = ((16/10)+r)(1100) + 475 – 700

1760= 1760+1100r – 700

700 = 1100r

7/11 = r (this is 7 gold per 11 seconds)

The Pitch Neutralizer

I’m not normally a dream-recounter, but this one I had a bit ago keeps popping back in my head, so I’ll go ahead and share.

In the dream, at work, there was a large device called the “Pitch Neutralizer.”  If you had an idea for a feature for the game or a solution to a design problem, you would speak it into the pitch neutralizer through a telephone-tube device like you see at the playground.  Everyone would have a turn proposing their ideas.

Then, the Pitch Neutralizer would present those ideas to the whole room, the trick being that each idea was now coming from one voice and source, so you wouldn’t be biased against a particular person’s idea based on how good/bad he was at presenting it.  Thus, neutralizing the pitches (awake brain thinks that “Pitch Normalizer” would have been a better name, but asleep brain says “I DO WHAT I WANT,” so there you go).

The quirkiest bit about this whole thing was the voice and personality the device would use to re-present all of the ideas.  It was none other than Oprah Winfrey.

I have no idea.

Indiecade 2012

I was starting to think that I had been cursed to never again attend Indiecade, as 2 years ago I came down with the flu this time of year*, and last year it was Nick who was let's-go-to-the-hospital sick right over Indiecade.  But this year we were both in good health, and ventured down to Culver City to check out all the games.  There was lots of cool stuff, but here are some of my favorites:

Unfinished Swan
I'd seen this ages ago and forgotten about it completely, and was delighted to find it again.  The basic idea is the world is completely flat white, so it looks like a blank screen.  You throw blobs of black paint to splatter and reveal the geometry so you can find your way around.  But be careful not to over splatter paint, otherwise you'll end up with the same problem as no paint at all!


Guacamelee
This game has an amazing, delightful, and whimsical art style that reeled me in right away.  The combat is kind of quirky and unusual, but fun, though the transitions can be a little awkward, especially in co-op.  But you get to play as a luchador (or luchadora) AND can turn into a chicken!  What's not to love??


Super Space
In this 4-player asteroid-shooter, every player is attached to one ship.  The only way you can move the ship is how you propel it by your shooting.  Also you're competing to steal asteroid shots, but still have to be careful and keep the ship from crashing into the sides.  Competitive cooperative game that will instantly reveal the true nature of your friends.


Against the Wall
You pull blocks out of a wall to make platforms to get to a place.  I would have played this all day if Nick hadn't dragged me away.


Hundreds
A simple yet surprisingly intense ipad game.  Circles with numbers, press and hold the circles to make the numbers go up and the circles grow bigger.  Try and get the total from all the circles to 100.  Obstacles bounce around and will run into the circles and reduce them to 0.  The bigger the circle, the more vulnerable it is to hazards, so you have to get your timing just-so.  If I had an ipad I'd get this game in a heartbeat.  I couldn't find any video footage, but there's an old browser version of the game running around.

We also bumped into Jake Sones, who showed us his iOS prototype of a sort of match-3/defense game mashup.  It was quite fun and looked promising!

Anyway, Indiecade is lots of fun and I'm looking forward to next year.

*As a metric of how sick I was at the time: I was laying on the couch right under the A/C hoping to bring my fever down.  On the coffee table were some fries from In-n-out brought by Nick (I was in the "demand comfort food" stage of the flu).  Mr. Davis had been sitting with me, but jumped down and started to pull fries out of the bag, one by one, and eat them.  I was too weak to move.  I couldn't even raise my voice to shoo him away.  So I watched in a fevered stupor as my cat ate each and every one of my fries.

10 years!

Holy crap, it is the 10th anniversary of my blog!  I started writing 10 years ago today in my Livejournal, chronicling random thoughts and college adventures.

And here I am today, continuing to chronicle random thoughts and adventures.  And also recipes.  Lots and lots of recipes.

What will this blog hold 10 years from now??

Lost Blanket

This morning when I got out of my car, I saw a crumpled up little pink blanket in the road.  I picked it up and shook out the dirt and debris it had collected, noting the torn satin edges and little embroidered bear on the front.  Now, it could have been nothing.  It could have been something someone snagged from Goodwill to pad some furniture they moved.  Or maybe it did belong to a baby and fell from a car while he was being buckled in, and the baby was too young to care or even notice.

But in my mind, all I could think about when I was little and forced my Dad to drive 2 hours back to the lake after our vacation because I had discovered, to my horror, that I had left Doggy behind.  And I’m pretty sure I cried desperately non-stop until I had Doggy back in my arms (thank you, Dad!)

So, this blanket…I was unsure of the best course of action, so I just folded it up and left it on the back of my car, so that it would be in easy view and out of the road.  When I left work, the blanket was gone.  Sure, anyone could have just strolled up and taken it, but in my mind I like to believe I saved a panicky parent from facing a child with the possibility that Blankie was perma-lost.

I hope it found its way home!

Wilderness Survival Class

For yesterday’s adventure, I went to a wilderness survival class with Josue and his wife.  It was essentially a 5 hour hike through a canyon throughout which we were taught a variety of survival skills – edible plants, fire making, etc.

Here is what I learned:

Nightshade berries are delicious – they taste like little cherry tomatoes, but don’t eat the unripe ones or they will make you sick.

Scavenged and ate a salad of watercress, lambs quarter, speedwell and mustard flowers.  Watercress was the most abundant but it’s really spicy, so you need some milder edibles to eat with it.

Identified poison oak.  Red berries and coffee berries are a laxative and will make you throw up if you eat too many.  Cherry holly leaves have cyanide, don’t eat them.  Was shown a few other poisonous plants which I remember by sight but I don’t recall their names

(one is this decorative flowered plant that they use on freeways a lot. They have straight stems that are tempting as marshmallow roasters, but the stems are poisonous too)

The stems and branches of the mule fat plant are really great for making bows and drills and other tools because they are so straight.  Willows look kind of like mule fat, but have medicinal bark.

Ragweed tastes terrible, but if you are starving, you can boil it and eat it.

Learned how to make a twine rope out of yucca leaf fibers.  It ended up coming in handy, too, because my ponytail rubberband broke at one point.  I used my yucca twine to tie up my hair.

Made soap from yucca leaves.  There’s really nothing to it, you just tear up the leaf into fibers and agitate them in water.

Roasted yucca fruit over a fire I helped start.  Yucca fruit are good to eat if you cut one open and it’s still white inside.  They taste too soapy when raw, but when you cook them they taste rather like summer squash or corn.

(If you haven’t gathered by now, yucca are extremely handy plants.)

Ate a prickly pear cactus pad.  It was yummy!

Learned to start a fire with flint/tinder and with a bow drill.  Though I got the coal started with the bow drill, I needed Josue to help me stabilize the bow.  Co-op for the win!

All in all, it was a really fun day and I learned a ton!  The worst part, of course, was the hike back up out of the canyon.  I got a bit too much sun and spent most of the rest of the day asleep.  For all my LA friends, if you’re interested in this sort of stuff, check out this guy’s classes.  They are affordable and good learnins.