Jason's Development Blog

No to Internet Censorship. Stop this bullshit.

Quote of the Day
“The current draft of ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy.”
An open letter signed by many organizations, including Consumers International, EDRi (27 European civil rights and privacy NGOs), the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ASIC (French trade association for web 2.0 companies), and the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI)

So having finally gotten most of my coursework handed in via a string of painful all-nighters and more caffeine than should be humanly possible, I’ve just got a few weeks left until my first year at university is officially over. I do have a sneaking suspicion I failed one module (Databases), but I guess I’ll deal with that as it comes.

And what do I have to do in those few weeks? Two more subject’s coursework and a few exams…meep. Anyway, one of those subjects is Human Computer Interaction and for the coursework I either have to make a blog post essay or video essay in which I review two hardware or software designs. One of those designs is one I believe to be good, the other bad. A hall of fame and hall of shame if you will.

Since I have a camcorder and a blog I could do either, even a weird hybrid blog video…a vlog, if you will. I’m leaning towards video at the moment, and have started work on some scripts to see if it works.

In making the video I’m probably going to steal concepts from some of the That Guy With The Glasses crew (big fan of that site), and re-use some from a script I was working on earlier for a movie review I was considering doing, but I’m still not sure exactly what I’m going to Fame and Shame.

Video game controllers seem like an easy hardware choice. I have one or two lying around and controllers for the older consoles aren’t exactly expensive. It’s a bit predictable and was basically the first thing suggested by the lecturer, but I guess your university education isn’t the best thing to be all hipster-esque about xD

When the uni year ends and I’ve recover from the massive hangover after I get absolutely gazebo’d to celebrate, I’ll probably start updating more. Maybe even actually make that movie review…

Quote of the Day
“I’ve never been afraid of the highest heights,
Or afraid of flying now.
I’ve never been afraid of the wildest fights,
Not afraid of dying.
I need a new fun fair ’cause your scaring me and I don’t like where were going,
I guarantee you’ll miss me ’cause you changed the way you kiss me.”
Changed The Way You Kissed Me – Example

I’ve recently played Alpha Protocol and I have to say I was impressed.

I like Obsidian Entertainment, I won’t deny it. Who can’t love the zombie remnants of the creators of the original Fallout games? Sure, they’ve make mistakes…and seem to be rather poor at bug finding and fixing, but they are very skilled at creating entertaining stories which are good enough to forgive the occasional glitch or unresolved plot point. In fact, I sometimes like unresolved plot points, they make the story feel more a part of a larger world.

Why did Alpha Protocol impress me? It was a game with a morality system, and no karma meter. It brought you into the world of espionage and it completely indulged itself in the grey nature of the business. The game never judged your decisions, never told you that you were a monster. No floating messages foretelling karmic retribution. The characters in the game may, but the game itself passed no judgement. Instead, the characters reacted to your actions minor and major.

The game did get accused of poor AI and bugs, but the thing is I never encountered them when playing it! The AI was no worse than I’ve seen in other stealth games, and the game had no more bugs than any other RPG I’ve played. In fact, I only experienced one glitch in my entire…oh, four or five plays from start to finish.

The problem people had with this game, it seems, was they were playing it wrong. They were most likely trying to play it as a standard cover shooter like Mass Effect, which gets you shot to death.

The thing is, Alpha Protocol was a stealth-based RPG, and therefore needed to be approached with both in-game cunning and meta-game stat-building. You had to play thinking as an agent, and you had to play thinking as an RPG.

Alpha Protocol to me seemed a spiritual successor of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, another game I thoroughly enjoyed, and it certainly delivered as such. It provided a complex world of interactions and personalities, where your decisions mattered and the products or costs of those decisions would appear after time instead of with an instant ding of the karma meter. And it was glorious.

Quote of the Day
“I just don’t like shooting bell boys. They look like sad little clowns.”
Mike – Alpha Protocol