While going through my directory of screencaps from Read or Die, this caught my attention:
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This is from the opening. Check out the sign behind Agent Paper:
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Hmmmm….
What I like is that I didn’t notice this at all during the show. My eye just accepted this, even though it isn’t even close. There are no gaps in the words and there are an awful lot of less common letters stacked together. I’m surprised it never caught my eye.
I was reading the about Technorati page and I started to wonder: Just how many blogs are there? According to the site, they index 39.7 million sites, but they also cite this Pew Internet study which suggests that there are 50 million blog readers. So, I’m not sure what to make of this. Are we to believe that 78% of all blog readers also have their own blog? That seems a bit high. It could also be that not all sites indexed are blogs. Perhaps they index not only blogs, but the sites to which blogs link. Or perhaps the 39 million includes many long-dead and dormant blogs. Perhaps spam blogs are inflating the numbers.
Most importantly: I wonder how many active blogs there are?
When I first signed up for Technorati, my “rank” was around 1.5 million. This suggests that maybe there are about that many active blogs, since you would expect me to start at the very bottom of the pile.
But it might be possible that I started in the middle of the pile, or higher. If your ranking is based on the rate at which people link you, then perhaps someone with no links in six months (links older than 6 months do not contribute to your link count) would be ranked lower than someone with no links but who was brand new. If this is the case, then 1.5 million is the “starting point”, but it doesn’t tell us how low you can go. Certainly there are blogs out there which have gone unlinked for ages, but how many are there? How many blogs out there are people just talking to themselves?
If you’re reading this, then the DNS has updated and you’re seeing the new site. Most sites say this takes around 48 hours. For me it took about 45mins. I’m curious how long this takes for other people. If you’re so inclined, drop a comment below.
And let me know if you spot anything not working right, broken links, missing images, etc.
Thanks.
UPDATE: You know who got the changes the FASTEST? The spammers. By the time the changes propigated to me, I already had some spam comments waiting for me.
Which reminds me of another cost to moving: I lost my list of banned IP’s. Sigh.
I should add that this site is now hosted on Hosting Matters, which has a good reputation among bloggers. My old one – ANHosting, or Advanced Network Hosting – was focused on e-commerce sites. Their help system and “newsletter” updates were loaded with stuff about merchant accounts and affiliate programs. The idea that someone was using ther service for their hobby and not trying to make money wasn’t even something that entered their minds.
This show looked really interesting in the preview, but failed to deliver once I sat down and watched it. I like bond-esque spy stories, and I even like send-ups of those sorts of stories, and the preview made this seem that way. It wasn’t. On the upside, the series is only four episodes and fits on a single disk, so at least it was over quickly.
 Read Or… something else. Don’t be fooled by the opening. This is not a fan service vehicle. |
There were just too many ill-fitting elements in here. The main character is a secret agent (agent Paper) who is obsessed with books. She has a gift for manipulating paper in combat. For example, she can take a piece of looseleaf and use it like an edged weapon. She can even throw it and stick it into solid wood. This was an interesting ability, but they took it too far.
 Just imagine what she could do if someone introduced her to corrugated cardboard. |
She goes on to make paper weapons that can cut metal in half, stop bullets, shield against explosions, and do any number of implausible things. I was even willing to accept that for the sake of the story, but they didn’t stop there. At one point she runs around in a swirl of paper and crafts a gigantic paper airplane. Another agent throws it off the roof to get it going, and from there it is able to keep up with a jet and even engage in a bit of dogfighting.
 I’m sorry but I am not buying this. |
Whatever.
The enemies are strange as well. They are clones of inventors or leaders from hundreds or thousands of years ago, and they have been “given super powers”. They are called the I-Jin. This seems like a lot of trouble for the villian. His plan seems to be:
It seems like you could skip the first four steps by just using some of your henchmen instead of cloning famous people. What’s the point?
For the most part the I-Jin ride around in ridiculous ways. They have tons of technology, but still they choose to travel using giant insects and other absurd things
 Note to evil masterminds: When acquiring rare books, the lunatic-on-a-giant-friggin-grasshopper method isn’t as effective as you’d think. |
The bad guy sends his army of goofy clones to collect books which should be more or less easily available. The most important one is actually for sale in an old bookstore. He could have just bought it, but instead he sends some goofball riding a giant grasshopper to steal it. The resulting battle tips his hand to the good guys. He didin’t even need that army of warriors – all he really needed was a library card and a photocopier.
In the opening moments of the show, an I-Jin gets on top of the white house, blows the crap out of it and sets it on fire, and then asks the President of hte United States, “You there! Is this the library?”
So his plan was to blow up a building and then find out if it was the library? Doesn’t that seem to go against the stated goal of acquiring books from said library? Are we to believe the bad guy took the time to clone and train this I-Jin but never bothered to give him a map of Washington DC? If your supersoldiers are wandering around asking for directions to famous locations, you are doing something wrong.
Of course, no evil plan is complete without a gigantic and heretofore secret floating fortress, and this isn’t the sort of villian to forget a detail like that. His base is many times larger than the largest aircraft carrier ever built. It has massive moving platforms and endless catwalks which are perfect for all the final showdowns that need to take place. We learn that the base is really just a launchpad for an orbital rocket. Apparently he’s also completed his own space program in secret, and plans to launch a rocket that will…
Oh, who cares? It’s gibberish.
 How could he afford such a thing? Must have used non-union labor. I’ll bet it doesn’t follow OSHA standards, either. |
This show had a lot of style, the characters were interesting, and the artwork was great. But all of that wasn’t enough to carry a story full of holes and contrivances, and filled with implausibe things. There is only so much stuff you can put into one story. A movie about vampires is cool. A movie about space aliens is cool. But a movie where the Predator and the Cylons team up to fight Vampire Superman, a clone of Hercules, and Mecha Abe Lincoln is just goofy, and that’s the sort of mess we have here. Too much unrelated and ridiculous stuff to swallow.
Another note is that the writers are not fans of America, or of George Bush in particular. The Americans march into combat time and again only to be slaughered en masse. (As far as I can tell, they are the only ones who die at the hands of the bad guy. A lot of them die. Thousands. Sometimes this seems to be almost played for laughs.) The U.S. president in the show is an obvious parody of Bush. He has a Texan accent and even mispronounces “nuclear”. He’s also a bumbling fool who pisses his pants not once, but three different times during the show. The series is only four episodes, so they devoted a lot of time to presidential pants-wetting. Nobody is going to accuse this show of being overly subtle.
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In the end, the whole thing is a waste of time. It’s worse than a waste of time. It’s contrived and clumsy, preposterous and ill-conceived. The climax is predictable and the ending is lame. This show makes me think that an anime-themed MST3k would be a good idea.
One further note is that this show is different from the 7-disc TV series. Steven watched that and his review suggests that the TV version has many of the same issues.
For this session, let’s look at the proceedings from the DM’s point of view.
Each week I try to throw some challenge their way and see how they handle it. Ideally, the challenge should arise from the ongoing campaign. It should offer a chance to impact the country or local town in a small way, and reveal the effects of the larger conflict on the local population. I also try to force them into various ethical challenges, just because I’m that kind of guy.
For example, in our first campaign, the land was failing to produce crops due to a curse. One week they were guarding a shipment of food headed north into the blighted area. They were warned ahead of time the robbers were along the road, and might try to steal the food. However, when they encountered these “robbers” they saw that they were simple farmers who were more or less starving to death. These men had lived the furthest north (and thus their farms were the first to fail) and had taken to the hills to try and steal from the food shipments. They were clearly terrified of what they were doing, but they were also malnourished and desperate. Combat-wise they were only a minimal threat, although the correct course of action was not obvious. The robbers really were stealing food headed for the town. It didn’t seem right to kill them, it didn’t seem right to let the men go to free to rob again, and it didn’t seem right to give away the food the party had been hired to protect. This wasn’t a clear-cut good / evil decision. A good-aligned character could make the case for or against any of these options.
But that was two campaigns ago. This week, I had a different challenge.
The party is headed for the town of Della Minera, a mining village along the road to their destination. I’m pretty sure they will stop there, and I have an NPC that will gently steer them in that direction. They might skip the town and stick to the main campaign, but probably not. So, I have a little sidequest waiting for them…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Session 10, Part 1”
Otaku has a post on the layout of the town of Glie in Haibane Renmei. It seems some people are suggesting the wall that goes all the way around the city is not a circle. This is hard to imagine. We never see any corners. When Rakka works inside the wall, we see it is a steady curve into the distance. I agree that the wall must be a circle, or else there are corners that we are never shown, despite our many views of the wall. In defense of the non-circle advocates, the views from inside the wall shows a much stonger curve than what the outside view suggests we should. Make of that what you will.
 As far as part-time jobs go, cleaning the sides of a massive supernatural wall isn’t that bad. Beats flipping burgers, anyway. |
Otaku then suggests that the city must be at the center of the circle. I agree this does make things nice and balanced. Certainly if the wall is as dangerous as it seems you’d want people to live as far from it as possible. I’m confident the city isn’t so off-center that one edge of town would be close to the wall. That just wouldn’t make sense and wouldn’t match what we see in the show.
Although you could make the case that the city is a little off-center. The woods seem to be quite big, and are right next to Old Home. You could make the case that Old Home is the center, with town a little off to one side and the woods on the other. It’s also a very real possibility that the fans are putting more thought into this than the writers did…
I loved Doom 3, but the “Ressurection of Evil” expansion was lackluster at best. It had a sloppy, slapdash feel to it that negated whatever tension the thing was trying to build. From the opening cutscene, it introduced a world full of cliche’ nonsense that alienated me right away.
 Stealing a page from Marvin the Android, Elizabeth McNeil’s arm doesn’t seem to fit quite right. Also, what’s up with the normals on her fingers? It looks like she stuck them in a pencil sharpener. This is to say nothing of her breasts, which seem to come from the base of her ribcage. |
The mission is led by Dr. McNeil, who hangs around the control room and points at the screens with her freakishly mishapen arms. She’s watching as the team of marines goes deep into Mars in search of the source of some sort of signal radiating from within the planet. I’m not sure what’s wrong with these people. The previous Mars base was destroyed when the gates to hell broke open and demons flooded out. The installation (which surely cost hundreds of billions to construct) was ruined and hundreds (maybe thousands) of people were killed.
Now they get “some sort of signal” from within the planet – from down in the ruins where the trouble started – and they throw together a mission to check it out. I’m sorry, but nobody’s that curious.
 Is that some sort of form-fitting backback, or is Dr. McNeil a hunchback? |
In the first game you played as a grunt, fresh off the boat. You didn’t know your way around and nobody knew your name, but that was understandable because you were new. In the expansion, you’re the leader of the group of men going into the ruins. Despite the fact that you are a ranking member of the team, nobody has bothered to learn your name, granted you any sort of security access, or even given you any equipment. Everyone just calls you “marine”, which just doesn’t make sense. I mean, who could forget a face like this…
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Since you’re dealing with an archaeological site millions of years old, the obvious way to investigate is to send in a group of marines with plenty of C4. The site may be priceless, but digging is just SO boring.
 Left:Not wanting to waste precious time walking to safety, our demolition expert set the timer for about four seconds and then ran for it. Right: John Woo enters the field of archaeology. |
And inside you find a glowing, pulsing, levitating heart that seems to be made from stone. Power radiates from it. Fantastic. An amazing find.
Showing less self-control and common sense than a child, our hardened marine walks in and – without saying a word to anyone – picks up the supernatural thingy. Even in normal, non-supernatural archeology, you don’t run around grabbing stuff. Nothing will distance the player from their own character than establishing early on that their character is an accomplished idiot.
 “Artifact shmartifact… this sucker will be worth a fortune on EBay!” |
The gates to hell fly open (again!) and evil stuff comes out. Everyone dies but you and Dr. McNeil, which is about the most unfair thing I’ve ever seen. She’s the dunce who led the team back here, and your character is the grabby moron who picked up the thing and brought the demons. If there was any justice, you two would have been the first to die, followed by the people who animated Dr. McNeil’s pipecleaner arms.
 Note to extinct alien races: If you’re having trouble with invasions from hell, rather than build a super-weapon to fight evil, you could always just stop building gates that go there. |
In the first game, you were just a hapless guy who got here as the trouble started. This time around, you play the guy who’s at fault. I found myself in the akward position of needing to apologize to every corpse I found along the way.
The entire experience was not at all frightening. Note that the game looked the same, sounded the same, and played the same as Doom 3, which had a number of really scary moments. I’ve harped on this subject before, but Resurrection of Evil is the perfect example of a game with the right ingredients and the wrong recipe. Both games had the same basic mechanics but Doom was great and RoE sucked.
If you want the player to be upset when everything is destroyed by evil, then take the time to let them explore the place before it gets destroyed. If you want them to be upset about the people who die, then let them get to know a few of the people before they die. Otherwise the ruined buildings and dead bodies are just scenery. And most importantly, if you want the player to be immersed in the game, you have to let them connect with their character first. None of this has anything to do with how spooky the sounds effect and lighting are, or how yucky and spikey the monsters look.
Like with any other medium, you need to start with a good story and go from there. It doesn’t have to be fancy, long, complex, or full of symbolism, it just needs to be a story worth telling. If you don’t have that, then all of your sexy technology is going to waste.
Developers take note.
There are two major schools of thought about how you should write software. Here's what they are and why people argue about it.
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.
An ongoing series where I work on making a 2D action game from scratch.
A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.
Valve still hasn't admitted it, but the Half-Life franchise is dead. So what made these games so popular anyway?
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2016.
Yeah, this game is a classic. But the story is idiotic, incoherent, thematically confused, and patronizing.
Yes, this game is loud, crude, childish, and stupid. But it it knows what it wants to be and nails it. And that's admirable.
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
T w e n t y S i d e d
