Majarkeun: it

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Saturday, May 27, 2017

Make Your Game Easy Then Make It Easier

I started writing my first RPG for Spiderweb Software in 1994. Yes, this makes me old. When I started my cute, little shareware business, I had a lot of instincts for how to write a good role-playing game. Happily, about 85% of those instincts were good ones, so I was able to write solid games and make a living.

But 15% of my original instincts were not good. In fact, they were terrible, and it has taken many years for me to realize that. Even now, I have to fight those bad instincts with all of my heart, and I lose as often as I win.

My worst instinct has to do with game difficulty. Im a hardcore nerd of the old school, and Im not truly satisfied unless a game is really difficult. Other people, also known as "regular humans," do not, in fact, want this.

I used to succinctly describe my views about game difficulty thus:

People will forgive a game for being too hard. They will never forgive it for being too easy.

No. This is, in fact, completely, 100% opposite from the truth. A better summary of reality would be:

People will happily forgive a game for being too easy, because it makes them feel badass. If a game is too hard, they will get angry, ragequit, hold a grudge, and never buy your games again.

Video games are leisure time expressions of adolescent power fantasies. They should only be hard if players specifically request that they be hard.

I tend to like hard games. I am perfectly happy if any given title has 3 or 4 fights that requires 3 or 4 tries each to beat. But I am increasingly recognizing that this makes me a bit of a mutant. I am also realizing that while I like (or at least dont mind) the occasional repeated failure, I dont require it. I blasted through Brutal Legend with ease and I still had a great time. Plants vs. Zombies is easy, and it is also terrific. On the other hand, a game like Ninja Gaiden 2, which would happily make me refight bosses ten times on the easiest difficulty level ... Well, that was just stupid. Never again.

After long reflection, here is my new rule for RPGs I write:

When a player is on the default difficult level, has built his or her characters poorly, and is playing straight through the main storyline with mediocre tactics, that player should almost never be killed.

I can almost hear the heads of hardcore gamers imploding with impotent nerdrage. But seriously. If you have a problem with this, I think youre getting a lot of your fun from making other people have less fun.

Of course, a game should have harder difficulty levels. And, if a player chooses to opt-in on higher difficulty, they should be seriously nasty. But, when played on the default difficulty, the game should be accessible to your mom or average eight-year old.

Im about to release my next game, Avernum 6. And it doesnt live up to what I have learned. In fact, in parts, it gets downright tricky. But then Im going to write an all-new game series, and I promise that it will be pretty easy on Normal difficulty.

And if you turn the difficulty up to Torment, well, Ill be gunning for you.

Oh, and one parting thought.

If your game is actually fun, killing the player wont make it more fun. But nothing sucks all of the fun out of a good game faster than repeated failure.

Available link for download

Make It Silver

I like simple things, you may have noticed, and when it comes to jewelry I believe simplicity rules all. And while I do like a bit of gaudiness (that post will come later), I am mostly a strong believer in things that are simple - and silver.

The other day I went into George Jensen just to look (with my jaw on the ground). Their items have always caught my eye, theyre just very elegant - there is no other way to put it. You can opt to wear their pieces for everyday, or as a focal point for an outfit. The brooch above is beautiful, it has a sense of both old and new.

The setting of the ring above was one of the first I had seen, it came out around two years ago. After George Jensen came out with this design, Tiffanys was quick to follow (but in my opinion not nearly as unique as Jensens).

Add something with a little more sparkle. Jensens designs are very smart, often times there is a choice to pick from to add to a piece of jewelry.

So instead of buying multiples of something next time, find one thing that you think is exotic. Those are the pieces that youll wear over and over again.

These beautiful photographs were in Ws Spring Jewelry edition, 2006.

Image source: George Jensen, W Magazine

Available link for download

Make it Take it Blog Tour

Welcome to this stop for Make it Take it blog tour! Krista Hennebury, the author of this beautiful book, Make it Take it, has been a very lovely friend of mine for years. I couldnt be happier when she shared with me the news she was writing this book. She is a very talented quilter/sewist but to me, what makes her very special is her friendship. She has always been willing to help friends in need, teach them, and support however way she can, (not to mention this amazing alphabet quilt she has put together with friends for my baby!) This books theme is around sewing together which I think is appropriate and perfect for her first book. She has years of experience in attending retreats, sewing with friends, and teaching. Unfortunately I have never had a chance to sew with her just because we live way too far away from each other, but her MQG has always been the guild I want to attend the most partly because there are many other members in it that Ive known for years and have admired as well!

I am just so honored that I was able to contribute my project for this book filled with ubber talented people. To be honest, I was nervous because I knew most contributors including Krista herself are way beyond creative, and I didnt know I could come up with something that is up to the standard! Well, but this is very typical of me to feel inadequate, but this was an opportunity I had to right jump in!

I ended up designing these bags for her book. When Krista asked me to come up with a design for her book, it was right around the time I made this bag over two years ago. I had a lot of requests to make it into a pattern/write a tutorial on it, so I suggested the project for the book, and Krista kindly accepted it. I need to warn you that there are minor corrections to my pattern. Here is a link to a correct instruction. (See the part squared in the yellow line under the cutting instruction: in the book it asks you to cut two pieces but you only need just one.) So sorry about this!

There are so many things I want to make in this book! So far Ive made these double scissor keepers which are designed by the lovely Amy of During Quiet Time. This is so fun and easy to make, and it is such a great project for quick gift making. It is very likely your sewing friend has scissors that need to be organized in a pretty, handy way like this, but it isnt likely she already has a cute keeper for her scissors, right? I am giving these to my mom and my mother-in-law as birthday presents. Now I know I need one for myself too because it is perfect for my great Kai scissors my friend Mary gifted me :)

Fabric used for these is Denise Schmidts older fabric (floral) and my Lighthearted (text).

Here is the blog tour schedule!

Friday, April 3 Blog hop kick-off: Right here!

Monday, April 6: Berene at Happy Sew Lucky and Amy at During Quiet Time

Tuesday, April 7: Leanne at She Can Quilt and Felicity at Felicity Quilts

Wednesday, April 8: Martingale Inc. at Stitch this! (check out their Rainbow Round the Cabin staff party!)

Thursday, April 9: Krista at Spotted Stones and Krista at Krista Withers Quilting

Friday, April 10: Lynne at Lilys Quilts and Cindy at Live a Colorful Life

Saturday, April 11: Ayumi at Pink Penguin and Krista at Poppyprint

Sunday, April 12: Kristie at OCD: Obsessive Crafting Disorder and Christina at Sometimes Crafter

I hope you will get your hands on this fabulous book and make lots of things from it with your friends! If you would like to win a digital copy of this book, leave me one comment! The giveaway will close on the 14th and a winner will be announced soon after that. Good luck :)

Available link for download

Marissa Nadler Was It a Dream Music Video

Last week, we reviewed Marissa Nadlers fantastic new disc July. This week begins with a video for "Was It a Dream?" directed by Ryan Hamilton Walsh. The video features the dream folk chanteuse amid archival footage of silent classics like La voyage dans la lune and a penchant actual film, which we cant help but applaud. Watch below:

Available link for download

Matchmaking how does it work

Imagine that you have four daughters and you want to marry them. You carefully select four guys and let each of your daughters spend some time with each guy. Then all the daughters and all the guys mark their potential partners in the order of their priorities. How do you use this ranking to match your daughters to the guys to create four stable couples? Couple is considered stable if each of your daughters is happy with her partner and she wouldnt rather be with some other guy who simultaneously also prefers her to his current match.

Or take another matching game. Four medical residents need to be matched to work in the hospitals. Each of the residents spent some time practicing at each of the four hospitals in the program. Then all the residents and all the hospitals mark each other in the order of their preferences. Your task is to use this rating to create a satisfactory match, sending one resident to each of the four hospitals. Each resident should be sent to a hospital where he is happy. It may not necessarily be her or his first choice but there should be no other hospital that he would rather be at that simultaneously also wants him more than the current resident you sent there.

Try playing such match-making and when you are done, watch this video. Click to see Harvard Postdoc Emily Riehl explains the optimal matchmaking algorithm for such situations. You can share this with your 10+ year old kids.

You can also see the explanation of the same algorithm applied to the National Resident Matching Problem via this link.

Note that while this algorithm is simple and is always guaranteed to converge to the optimal result, the algorithm is not symmetric. The optimal solution for girls is different than the optimal solution for boys, and optimal solution for residents differs from the optimal solution for hospitals.

Top image by imaekelley, distributed under CCL.

Available link for download

Make It Rain Love of Money 1 3 1 APK

Available link for download

MAJID JORDAN MAKE IT WORK VIDEO

Available link for download

Make It DIY Sputnik Style Light Fixture

*Psst! Thanks to everyone who entered Mix & Match Design Companys e-design giveaway! Im hard at work going through the submissions and its going to be SO hard to choose just one. Yall have such awesome homes and I cant wait to work with one of you!

If you saw my Instagram from last week, youll know Ive been working on a fun little DIY light fixture for my office. Its been way too long since Ive DIYd something and shared it here, so I figured it was high time to get er done to show yall!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEHbwwQyWE7/?taken-by=mayricherfullerbe

Ive been a fan of Sputnik-style light fixtures for awhile now. Theyre modern, kinda funky and fixtures with exposed bulbs are definitely "in" right now. I needed a ceiling fixture to replace a sad-looking fan in my office, but wasnt ready to commit to spending the big bucks on a new fixture just yet.

Then on Pinterest (of course!) I spotted Little Green Notebooks DIY branch light and I thought a variation on that would be the perfect thing! I made a couple of modifications to make it work for my space and the step-by-step is below in case you want to make one yourself.

Supplies needed: (* Denotes an affiliate link. That means I get a tiny commission when you purchase through my link. Theres no cost to you - thanks for supporting this little blog. :))

Outlet box mount*
2 packages of Y socket splitters*
3-in-1 socket adapter*
Flexible extender*
Light bulbs
Ceiling medallion*
Spray paint

Putting this light together is a little bit like building with legos - its super straightforward and you really cant mess up. You get to be as creative as you want!

Start with the 3-in-1 socket adapter and screw a Y socket splitter into each end.

Keep adding additional Y socket splitters to open ends until you get to the look you want. I ended up using 15 and gave it a pretty symmetrical look. What can I say - I like balance!

Once you finish attaching the Y splitters in a pattern you like, add lightbulbs to the remaining open sockets. Youll take these out to paint the fixture (unless you want to leave it white, which is pretty too!), but I liked seeing how it would look in its final form before heading to that step.

Finally, screw on the flexible extender and outlet box mount to finish the assembly before painting. Here it is before I got my spray paint on.

Before taking it out to paint, I installed it temporarily to make sure I was really happy with the scale and amount of light it gave out. My office isnt huge, but I found that with my original design, it wasnt quite bright enough. No big deal - I just added a few more Y splitters and bulbs to increase the amount of light.

Onto the painting!

But, heres one other pre-painting step thats very important!! Make sure to stuff the sockets with some newspaper to protect the light bulb contacts. It would be a shame to finish painting, screw in those bulbs, and then have the fixture not work!

I decided to spray my fixture metallic coppery-gold and since it was a tricky fixture to paint, I used a cardboard box as a makeshift paint shed - it worked perfectly to prevent overspray from getting on the concrete and helped it stand up for painting and drying purposes. I made sure to use multiple light and even coats and rotated the fixture several times to make sure all surfaces were well-covered.

(Side note: for those who are wondering about priming prior to spraying the metallic paint...I skipped that step. Should I have? Probably not, but since this fixture is installed on the ceiling, durability isnt an issue and I decided to be a total rebel and not prime. Many of these pieces are plastic though, so it will chip if you scratch at it. So far so good though!)

Now lets get to the good part - seeing it after installation! (Outlet mount boxes are super easy to install - just follow the directions in the box. If you dont feel comfortable with that, definitely hire an electrician!)

I added a ceiling medallion to really finish it off around the outlet box and I think it looks great. Heres how it looks with my office area in the background: