Keeping busy.

posted by Norm on October 18th, 2007 • filed under Game Design, Unemployment, Wordsmith

It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. As far as the site’s concerned that’s more or less par for the course, but in terms of my actual life it’s something of a recent anomaly. This is made somewhat more unsettling because the first half of this year was one of the densest streaks of effort in my entire life. Between Parallels, GDC and trying like hell to graduate there wasn’t a lot of spare time to sit around feeling lazy. Since then, though, job searching has been more or less my only responsibility. The fact that I remain unemployed is a source of constant, low-level angst. Like a kind of microscopic background radiation causing interference in everything else that goes on.

Luckily, the job search has taken a turn for the better recently in ways that I’m not yet prepared to talk about because I am afraid doing so would cause them to evaporate like so much fairy dust. Sufficient to say that it’s the sort of job I think I’d enjoy and, if I’m lucky enough to get it, will almost certainly make me a happy man. In the meantime, though, I’m left with a one or two month period during which I’m not employed but also not actively seeking new employment opportunities. I’m also flat broke, so that eliminates the most irresponsible sorts of entertainment.

With that in mind I finally got around to starting up a project that’s been sitting on my docket for a month or two: Wordsmith. I got the idea for this game during a conversation with George in which he described an idea he’d been kicking around for a story. Essentially, in this strange world words are not free, as we think of them, but are actually owned or trademarked by people and business entities. Thus, if you want to use them you’ve got to pay for them just like any other product or service! This struck me as not only hilarious but a potentially interesting premise for a casual edutainment-style game.

I don’t have all the design details nailed down yet. My central core revolves around a multiplayer “auction house” where words are available to the highest bidder. Players bid against each other, vying critical common words or perhaps trying to snag a rare or particularly valuable word to add bonuses to their sentence. I’m envisioning a system where the players are given a sentence framework – perhaps as mechanical as “include a subordinate clause” or as whimsical as “capture the essence of an old sea-captain” – and then use whatever words they can buy to create one that fits it. Scoring is a particularly tough area, but for now I’m working on something that combines peer reviewing with various concrete bonuses like adjective chains, polysyllabic words and other such things. Other miscellaneous potential mechanics include paying small fees to do things like change the “type” of a word (for example, taking the verb “console” and changing it to a noun), switching a verb’s tense or making in an infinitive, etc.

If this doesn’t sound exciting to you that probably means you’re part of the vast majority this game won’t appeal to. For me, however, it’s an interesting design exercise and a good excuse to learn C#.NET and Windows Forms. I’ll be making minor updates as the project progresses and it’ll be available for you to play around with just as soon as it’s in a condition to do so.

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In which I am injured for your amusement.

posted by Norm on October 21st, 2007 • filed under Biking, Humor, Stupidity

The following is a true story. It may seem, on the surface, to be a ridiculous string of coincidences in which the universe decides to play middle school bully to the small, defenseless kid. It seems that way because that is exactly what has occurred.

It starts off with a rather savage wind storm around my current place of residence, winds strong enough that it toppled a few trees right in front of my eyes. These were not live, healthy trees, of course, but old dead ones. Nonetheless it is a pretty entertaining and perhaps slightly dangerous situation outside my window. Me being me, I decide to hop on my bike and ride around to survey some of the damage and make sure none of the trees that I heard fall (but couldn’t see) have landed on the driveway.

This is probably my first mistake.

As I’m turning onto the sidewalk and generally finding the high winds and whipping branches to be pretty invigorating my cell phone starts to ring. Being an expert cyclist I answer the phone with my right hand, a maneuver I’ve successfully completed hundreds of times in the past. I stop pedaling but the sidewalk is sloped downhill here so I’m maintaining most of my speed. The call turns out to be from my father, and we exchange a few pleasantries at which point I ask if he can hear me clearly. I explain that any difficulty he may be having is likely due to the very high winds around me.

It is at this point, no more than ten seconds after I got the call, that I hear the sound of a tree snapping. I can’t actually see it, but the sound in unmistakable. It is almost immediately followed by a bright orange flash and a very loud explosion sound, not unlike what you would expect from a particularly large firework. All of this commotion appears to be happening a dozen or so meters in front of me and to the side, and in a pure instinctive reaction my left hand squeezes down on the brake.

We can safely refer to this as my second mistake.

I realize my error almost instantly, releasing my phone (and sending it flying down the sidewalk in the process) and trying to get my other hand onto the handlebars. Unfortunately, by this time the momentum is too great to stop and shifting my weight backwards is not enough to keep me on the pedals. With my weight gone the bike comes to a swift and abrupt stop; sadly, my feet are not built to the same exactly quality as my transportation’s brakes. I continue forward and pitch over the handlebars as they catch me just above the crotch, cart wheeling in what I imagine must have been a wholly impressive manner. I do this down a few meters of concrete and eventually come to a stop on top of my bike.

The road I live on does not typically carry a high volume of traffic. Naturally, at the instant I’m making my spectacular dismount there are no less than four cars passing by on the left. The lead car pulls into the next driveway, which is a fair distance away, and out steps a very attractive young lady who shouts to me, asking if she should perhaps summon an ambulance.

I admire her civic minded nature, of course, but I also don’t think that my ineptitude requires official intervention. Thus, I attempt to stand and signal to her that I am fine or, at least, as fine as one can be after catapulting down the tarmac. It is at this moment that I realize that my bike’s seat has become impossibly wedged in the back pocket of my jeans. When I say I have no idea how it got there I am not exaggerating – the physics of the situation are mind boggling. Nonetheless, the seat remains wedged in defiance of all known physical laws and, in a very real application of the rest of them, keeps me from standing up since I’m lying on top of the bike.

This results in a very comical rendition of my stupid ass flailing about in a grim parody of intelligible sign language. I assume she either understood what I was getting at or found my seizures to be too frightening to stick around, because she quickly gets back into her car and drives off. At that point I manage to find the quick release on my seat and proceed to awkwardly slide the pole out of the bike frame, eventually standing triumphantly with the seat hanging jauntily from my pants.

In the meantime, my father has no idea what has occurred. He heard me speaking of high winds and then heard a rush of noise, then a distant female voice shouting about ambulances. He concludes that a tree has fallen on me and proceeds to leave a rather frantic message on the home answering machine wondering if I continue to draw breath and if he should, in fact, be sending emergency personnel to my location. Luckily, my phone still works even after its trip down the sidewalk and I manage to let him know that such measures are unnecessary. I then try to ride the bike back home only to notice that the chain has slipped off during my theatrics. I consider trying to get it back on, but a second glance at my bloodied and battered hand leads me to decide that wrestling a greasy chain might not be the most prudent course of action.

To assuage your no-doubt burning fears: I’m fine. I ripped up my right hand and shoulder a bit and have some nasty bruises almost everywhere else, but all in all I got off pretty well. It turns out that the explosion was the result of a large branch landing on a nearby power line.

As always, it is my fondest wish that my misfortune can provide entertainment for somebody, somewhere.

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