Blog: Books Read in 2020

Wind.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Blood.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Age. Humanity. Chrome.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Games of January 2020

January was a little bit about catching up from last year. I finished the Chrono Trigger play through I started and finally finished up Dragon Quest. Both have a new game plus to tackle, so I'm not really done, but it's good to get some games finished.
My top five games (by play time) for January were:

1. Dragon Quest XI S - I'm finding this one a little hard to keep going with. The story hasn't really grabbed me, but the grinding is fun and the game has just enough of that RPG build that I've had fun.
   
   

   

   The Darkness Before the Light.

   
   


2. Chrono Trigger - Still one of the best games of all time. I'm feeling a bit rusty with this play through, but I'm also trying to spice things up a bit and play with someone other than the Crono, Marle, Lucca power house.
   
   

   

   The Light After the Darkness.

   
   


3. Europa Universalis 4 - Well, I've now experimented with running up as much debt as possible (well kinda), now I'm trying to see if I can go the other way.
   
   

   

   The Austrians are Coming to Eat Me.

   
   


4. Super Mario Maker 2 - I haven't spent too much time making levels. I'm finding the switch interface a little harder to love. I think I've played enough that the weird artificial feeling I had earlier on has faded, but it does feel like it lacks a little bit of charm over all.
   
   

   

   The Team in the Dungeon.

   
   


5. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Fest - Keep on keeping on.
   
   

   

   The Ambition of Alpacas.

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for January:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Mud.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Sabres. Rattling.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: 2019 in Games

This is my third annual yearly games wrap up and I'm taking a little bit to look at what I played in 2019, what I enjoyed playing in 2019 and how 2019 was in games over all.

The Hooflepuffs, true heroes.

Top Games by Time Played

In total I’ve played 60 different games in 2019 and played for a total of 730 hours. The games I played the least were Starfox, StuntFX and Puyo Puyo, all from the SNES Classics on Switch. Mario Golf: World Tour was in the middle of my pack at just above 2 hours and by a pretty incredible margin I played Fire Emblem: Three Houses for almost 180 hours, more than 120 hours more than the next game.

By play time, my top 10 games of 2019 were:

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 179
2. Super Mario Odyssey - 58
3. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - 57
4. Dragon Quest XI S - 48
5. Breath of Fire II - 42
6. Pokémon Go - 38
7. Xenonauts - 29
8. Europa Universalis 4 - 27
9. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 25
10. Fire Emblem: Awakening - 20

Last year I was concerned about how much I played games unintentionally. This year, I think I did a good job actually choosing what to play and enjoying the things I picked.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a very, very good game. It’s also a game with a very large amount of content. It has 4 endings and each of those has enough difference that as you play through the game there are enough things to keep it interesting. I played the first play though on easy and the second on hard which was about the right amount of difficulty. I played the third on easy because I was hoping to see more of the game, but honestly found that it dragged out a lot.

I might not have played quite so much more but I managed to get very sick with a nasty flue for most of late August (which screwed up my teaching schedule something fierce). The switch in general and FE:3H in particular are a really nice addition to being so tired that standing and walking to the bathroom is about your daily allotment of energy.

Super Mario Odyssey was also a ton of fun and so easy to pick up and enjoy at any point. I found it didn’t play as nicely on mobile as it does on the TV, but other than that it was always a joy to play.

Mario is never bothered.

Top Games by My Rating

This year my favourite games were (in alphabetical order) :

• Cadence of Hyrule
• Chrono Trigger
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses
• Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Ogre Battle 64
• Opus Magnum
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Tetris / Tetris 99

I don’t look back at my scores/ratings from previous years, so this is a subjective view from late 2019. Nintendo certainly gets the bulk of my happy time this year. Cadence of Hyrule is a real delight on top of Fire Emblem, Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. I’m usually a little more conservative about Ogre Battle 64, but honestly I do love that mess of a game. Tetris continues along, even if I did land on 99 rather than effect 9or any of the others). And of course Chrono Trigger is still one of the very best games of all time.

Puns and boss fights. Although you might want to check it out for the music.

Thoughts

I played a lot of great games in 2019 and I’m generally pleased with what I chose to play and how I chose to play it. 2019 had a lot of really good games in it and having missed out on the switch for a number of years I was able to play the best it had to offer.

I’m looking forward to playing more in 2020. I’m especially excited about Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but I’m sure there are going to be lots of interesting things to play. I’m also putting a lot of effort into organizing my work / play time so that I’ll have the time to regularly sit down and enjoy things without feeling like I ought to be doing something else.

I feel like we’re at a point of excellence in games and hopefully we’ll see more creative and enjoyable games come out this year. I also want to make sure I take the time to enjoy the games which are interesting and the games which stand as a more complete art.

The home we come back to.

Blog: Games of December 2019

2019 was a long year (long decade?). So it was really nice to be able to chill at the end of the month and the end of the year.

My top five games (by play time) for December were:

1. Chrono Trigger - I was a little bit inspired by Chuggaconroy playing this during the year, but also there's just something about the December break that calls for SNES games for me. I'm pretty fascinated at the number of things I've learned about Chrono Trigger, having played the game pretty consistently over the last two and a half decades.
   
   

   

   An adventure awaits.



2. Dragon Quest XI - Continuing along, I enjoyed playing, but the game does feel a bit slow.
   
   

   

   Fight! 



3. Cursed Treasure 2 - I love tower defence and out of all the free tower defence games available to play while avoiding marking this is the very best. I think I'm going to try to make my own TD game this year.
   
   

   

   In trouble, but happy.



4. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - The tradition continues.
   
   

   

   Last concert of the year.



5. Super Mario Odyssey - Out of all the games I played this year (more on that soon) this one is the one that calls to me the most to pick it up again. The game play and flow are enticing and it just always a joy to play.
   
   

   

   A game with a view.

Here's my total play time chart for December:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Family.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Books Read in 2019

Joining. Sundering.

I'm on Good Reads

New Year's Resolutions 2020

In 2019 I finished my PhD which has been a goal for a very, very long time. I’m finding myself in a space right now where I feel a little frustrated that everything hasn’t fit perfectly together. To some extent I feel like there’s a lot of things I should do right now, but also I’m slowly realizing that happiness is going to be a mental state I put effort into achieving and not a “thing I’ll get to when my PhD is done”.

via GIPHY

Other than that I have some general things I want to do next year:

1. Finish the thesis - Waaaait a minute.


2. Accept life as it is - As I said, I spent a lot of the end of my PhD feeling like I’d be “happy” once I finished my PhD. And then I did and then realized that my mental state was going to be something I had to manage on my own. So I want to try to take a bit of time and a bit of energy each day to being happy.


3. Go on more adventures - Big or small I want to have a stream of interesting things I’m doing and planning to do. I want to organize my life and work in such a way that I have the flexibility and freedom to see things and people that are important to me.


4. Read more - I gave my students advice to read more at the end of a System Administration class and I should take that up myself. I want to schedule time each day to read.


5. Move Projects Forward - I want to get things done for my personal projects and my home and I want basically to try to work on one or the other of those each day. I’m also not quite sure how yet, but I need to find a way to handle those projects that have stumbling blocks that need to be moved past. I set numbers to this last year, and didn't really follow through, so I'm just going to do my best to keep moving.

via GIPHY

Blog: Games of 2019

This is going to be a lot more work than last year. 2019 was a good year for games and a good year for me, so I played a lot of good games.

I’ve broken the games down into the Okay, the Good and the Great. I also had to add a category “I haven’t played enough” because that’s a thing that happened this year.

The I Haven’t Played Enough

Wargroove

I only played a little bit of Wargroove because I bought it the same day (or just before) I bought Fire Emblem Three Houses. I really enjoyed the little bit I played, but it was mostly (totally?) in the tutorial levels, so I was lacking a little bit of a feeling for how the whole game plays out.

The Okay

Super Mario Maker 2

I haven’t played SMM2 since the recent big update, so I may have to take this back later. Generally I enjoyed Super Mario Maker 2, but I found at the end of the day that it lacked a little bit from the first one. I think this is an effect of the game providing more and better tools and the established expertise of the fan base. It left the game feeling a little lifeless for me, but hopefully at some point it’ll catch me a little bit more.

Luigi’s Mansion 3

I’m enjoying Luigi’s Mansion 3, it’s charming and fairly fun. I find that it’s a little bit of a drag to pick up and play because it’s hard to remember what the objective is, and they are somewhat convoluted. I also find the controls awkward, although that’s getting better as I play more.

The Good

Dragon Quest XI S: Echos of an Elusive Age

I have a real fondness for Dragon Quest VIII. It hit me at the right time with the right amount of depth that travelling the world solving people’s problems was a lot of fun. I’ve started replaying it a few times. Dragon Quest XI feels a lot like a revisit to Dragon Quest VIII. I’m finding it generally fun, but a little bit slow and grindy. I heard a review that complained that the version for the switch ground to a halt for reasons in the middle of the game and I found that to be true, but the first half of the game was pretty engaging.

Euclidia

I didn’t play a ton of Euclidia, but enough to know that I’ve largely forgotten how to do geometry and that doing geometry from first principles is rather fun. (I’m also not 100% sure it’s a 2019 game)

Tetris 99

Tetris 99 is a lot of fun and it’s nice to be able to quickly drop into a game. My skills are a little old school, so there are things like t-spins that I’m not able to do properly and generally I find I’m a pretty middle of the pack player. I do wish the UI was a little more organized and that the matchmaking was a little faster (but secretly I really just want an awesome quick single player Tetris).

The Great

Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda

This is a great game. I was going to put it in the good category and then that was the first thing I wrote about it, so clearly it must be great. I really enjoy the Zelda-lite mechanic of a game that doesn’t have a huge story but does have all of the feeling of a Zelda game. I really like the style the developers chose. The music is, of course, amazing and while I’m not sure the game exactly needs the actual Crypt of the Necrodancer beat mechanic, it’s certainly fun.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I didn’t expect to like this game. Looking at the trailers before the game came out, it felt a bit like it would be too Hogwarts the War Game. As it turns out it *is* Hogwarts the War Game and I actually like it. The developers streamlined and restructured the relationship mechanic from their recent games so that it feels reasonable and not nearly so fan-servicy. The combat mechanics are nicely streamlined, and when played on hard are pretty fun. It is a bit long if you want to see all four endings, but the quality of the deeper story seen when you do play through all four seems to be worth it.

Looking back at 2019’s New Years Resolutions

Hey, it’s that time of year where I think about thinking things. So It’s probably a good time to see if I did anything with my resolutions for 2019.

via GIPHY

General Goals

1. Be Slower - I think (unsurprisingly) my results were mixed. The idea here was to focus my energy towards one thing at a time. I think I managed to do this moderately well when I wasn’t stressed. When I was stressed, I think I fell back to my old patterns.
2. Finish Things - Well, this still isn’t my strength. I did give a lecture on finishing things, which I did finish. I think I’ve generally gotten better at getting stuff done and especially doing things as soon as they come up so that they don’t land on my to-do list at all.
3. Be Comfortable - This one’s gonna be a long process. I spent a little time thinking the other day that I have an urge for “this to be done” so that I can be happy. Finding that way to seperate my mental state from everything else in the world is going to be some work.

Specific Goals

1. Finish the Thesis - Goddamnit :-D
   
   
   
   
   
2. Make Something Everyday - Uh, where the hell did 2019 go? I started strong, lost it a little in the middle and then have picked up a bit at the end. Taking a really motivating art class has helped for sure.
3. Finish a Project a Month - Uuuuh, where did 2019 go? I bombed this one pretty hard, but at least I have moved most of my projects along a little.
4. Enjoy Good Stuff - I think I did okay. Not great, but okay. I’ve read a ton this year and watched a lot of shows I’ve been interested in. I’ve played more games and enjoyed them.
5. See More things - I don’t know that I did this as well as I should have, but I definitely took myself on some little adventures and think I’ll have space for a lot more.

2019 was okay. It was a transitional year and the year in which I moved from being a guy who hadn’t finished his PhD to a guy who did finish his PhD. The bit where the world didn’t suddenly change around me was to be expected I guess, but I’m still trying to figure out how to be out on my own. It’s been easy for years to blame the PhD for the things I’m not happy with, but that’s a crutch I have to give up now, and more to the point, maybe turn it into a nice cane and use it to hook the world into where I want it.

via GIPHY
Tradition now dictates that these posts end with a dancing cat

Blog: Books Read in 2019

"Criminology". Biology.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Books Read in 2019

Oooh. Eeeech. Mmm.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Games of November 2019

As often is the case, November was pretty crazy, so I didn't play that much. My time went primarily to Luigi's Mansion 3 with a little bit of day-to-day play of Sunless Sea and Pogo. Now, I'm tired, but the semester is hitting its end point and I'm dreaming of some of the interesting things I can turn my time to in December.


My top five games (by play time) for November were:

1. Luigi's Mansion 3 - I have super fond memories of the first Luigi's Mansion, what with it being the first game I played on GameCube. I really love the way it forms an interconnected world and an immersive environment that's really fun. Luigi's Mansion 3 seems to have a lot of those bones and is generally quite fun, but it feels a little bit short of a really engaging game.
   
   

   

   Ah, nothing haunting about this game at all.

   
   


2. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - This came up in a list of most disappointing games of the decade I watched recently. Every time we play I do find myself thinking about all the little things they could have added to make this game amazing, but it just falls a little short of what you might want. On the other hand it has enough content spread out in such a way that we still find ourselves a little surprised most times we play and its an important part of our weekend mornings.
   
   

   

   Waiting on a winter day.

   
   


3. Sunless Sea - My push to get better at Sunless Sea produced some interesting results. I definitely got to see more of the game and enjoyed the zen of sailing slowly across the vast(ish) unterzee.
   
   

   

   Crabs. As big as the ship.

   
   


4. Europa Universalis IV - Most of my time came from a pretty chill Saturday at the end of the month. Every time I play I'm struck by the interesting balance of feeling of in control and out of control. I think for EU V they could do some streamlining of interfaces and some clarification about implications and consequences, but now I'm enjoying understanding what the flow of a war is likely to be before I actually start it. I've found it extremely beneficial to play on Iron Man because it causes you to follow through and see exactly how things happen.
   
   

   

   Never quite enough resources to take over the whole world.



5. Pokémon Go - I'd have liked to get out a bit more, but didn't leave myself the time or mental space to really do so. I'm thinking even if the weather's a bit crappy in December I should put myself to doing a little more intentional play.
   
   

   

   Big and shiny.

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for November:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Games of October 2019

October was a month where I didn't really have a game I was setting out to play. I've hit a point where I'm a little tired of Three Houses. I played a lot of Dragon Quest as a game to relax with and then somewhat distracted myself with EU 4 a few days in the month. It's also been one of those months where I've found myself watching more things rather than playing, which is often a mid-semester thing for me.

My top five games (by play time) for October were:

1. Dragon Quest XI - As a game to pick up in the evenings and play for a little bit, DQ XI has been great. The feel of the game is very good, even while I have some concerns with other factors about the game.
   
   

   

   Hello! Everything is fine! Perfect! Going exactly as expected.



2. Europa Universalis IV - EU 4 has an amazing capacity for "fun", where in once things start going a little wrong they immediately explode into many things going very wrong. So a lot of my play time has been me trying to crush either the Papel Seat, England or Poland in retribution for the thing they did to me last time.
   
   

   

   Whelp. Time for another vendetta play through.



3. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - October is probably the most interesting month to play Amiibo Fest. They introduce an extra candy collecting mechanics which has a roughly 50/50 success rate and means that you actually have to play with a little thought. We still play a bit on autopilot these days, but Amiibo Fest is still a weekend morning tradition for us.
   
   

   

   Racoon butts.

   
   


4. Sunless Sea - Mark Brown produced a video about rogue-likes talking about how the player skill and the difficulty curve interact. I am bad enough at most rogue-likes that I never really seem to see the game change. Lately I've been trying to improve how I play, or experience, or something, Sunless Sea. The story elements are still interesting, although I had a couple of captains die in quick succession, which broke a little of the illusion of continuity in the story structure.
   
   

   

   Perfect. Totally not doomed.

   
   


5. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Remember how I hadn't burned out on Three Houses last month? Well, now I have. The problem with the 4 endings the game has is that it does require a lot of replay of very similar missions and eventually it starts to feel like I've just done the same thing over and over again. The combat simply doesn't support the amount of story the game has and the reuse of maps is kinda disappointing, at least if you play the Golden Deer and the Blue Lions one after the other. The Black Eagles - Crimson Flower have definitely been more different so far, but I needed a break.
   
   

   

   Inconceivable!

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for October:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Project 20 - That Code Click - Introduction

I like it when things click. When I’m programming I love that moment where things go together perfectly, and I love that moment in my own brain when a topic suddenly snaps into focus. I also like when I’m working with students and I see that moment for them.

via GIPHY

This next project is my attempt to share that feeling and to help people learn about all of the stuff in computing that I think is really cool. It’s a chance to look at how things work, how things fit together, how things were designed and how those elegant moments in problem solving come to be.

I hope this is a chance for me to stretch my writing, teaching and communication skills. Additionally there are a lot of other technical skills I should pick up such as video production and things like that. It’ll also be a nice chance to chase down those topics I’m interested in, but never really have the time to manage while I’m teaching (and then forget about when I’m not teaching).

For the short term I’m going to simply create a few written articles and upload them here while I start building out the idea. In the longer term I’d like to see a blog and then maybe a fully dedicated website to host those articles and other supporting material.

For this first iteration of the project, I’m planning to write one article on “Counting in Binary on Your Fingers” a fun trick I always enjoy using to introduce binary numbers. I’d like to get that finished some time before November 29, including text and my own photos to illustrate. I'll also put together a list of future topics I'm thinking of. If you happen to have a great computing "click" you'd like to suggest, let me know.

Project 19 - Pong - Phase 1

Project 19 - Pong

I am implementing Pong. Yes, that Pong. I’m implementing it both for fun, but also because it’s going to be necessary for a project for work in the fairly new future.

I figured since I was implementing Pong, I might as well make a project out of it. As a bonus since my implementation is basically finished, I get a free finished project out of the deal.

I decided, as is my wont, to work in Processing.org. This is pretty much my go to platform whenever I need to prototype something or do a thing with quick interactions. I’m also educating myself about P5.js which is proving to be fun as well.

My original take was to work with vectors, which has exposed me to all of the linear algebra I didn’t learn or have forgotten. This will also be helpful for my Bubble Puzzler work (which apparently I haven't updated here, to my surprise). I then remember that my Phase 2 for this project is to have a working version of Pong on the Atari ST, and so I’d be better off handling things like coordinates and motion as simple variables. You can find the source in on GitHub.

// player positions on the screen
int p1Y;
int p2Y;
int p1X;
int p2X;

// paddle display information
int paddleW = 10;
int paddleH = 75;

// player scores
int p1Score = 0;
int p2Score = 0;

// ball position on the screen and motion
int ballX;
int ballY;
int ballMoveX;
int ballMoveY;

int ballSize = 10;

Within the program my code is fairly basic, I’m relying on processing’s control of the framerate, and basically assign the ball a speed between 2 and -2 on the y axis and 2 and -2 on the x axis. This feels like a fairly workable implementation of speed, although increasing it as the game goes on would be an option (I suspect an actually competitive game would go on for quite a while).

The ball bounces off the top wall and off the paddles. If the ball hits a paddle near the edge (about 1/8th of its total length) then it bounces in the y direction as well as the x.

void bouncePaddle(int paddleX, int paddleY) {
    // bounces the ball off the paddle 
   if (((ballX + ballSize >= paddleX) && (ballX <= paddleX + paddleW)) && 
              ((ballY + ballSize >= paddleY) && (ballY <= paddleY + paddleH))) 
        {
     ballMoveX *= -1;
     
     // reflects the ball back on the y axis if it hits near the edge of the paddle
     // mostly for fun, not sure it was in pong, but I enjoy it in most clones
     if ((ballY + ballSize < (paddleY + (paddleH / 8))) || 
         (ballY + ballSize > (paddleY + 7 * (paddleH / 8)))) {
       ballMoveY *= -1;
     }
     
   }
   
}

This produces enough interesting effects that I’m calling this phase of the project done.

That being said, in the short term, I suppose I need some more inputs because solitaire pong seems not-too much fun. Beyond that I think that’s probably it for the Processing.org implementation. My next priority is to prepare to produce the Atari ST version of the game. I would also like to produce a version of Breakout because that seems fun and possibly also add in a few interesting visual effects.

I should be done the AtariST version by early January because I need my students to start on their projects by then.