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tinycartridge · 5 years

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Approaching Infinity ⊟

[Guest writer Caroline Delbert brings us a fully unexpected article that manages to be both philosophical exploration and interview-based journalism, at the same time. I couldn’t be happier to share this piece! Find more from Caroline at her Twitter and Medium. -jc]

We live in a golden age of computing power. Our games are filled with giant procgen worlds and RNGs and thousands of ticking background variables. The math is surpassing human ability far faster than we can grasp, and we’ve, I think correctly, put it to work making the grass in Stardew Valley so fun to swoosh through with a sword. But the idea of infinity horrifies people more than almost anything else and remains as confusing and terrifying as ever. As our games get closer to endlessly detailed, I chose four designers who’ve worked on four of my favorite games of the last few years, all with totally different ways of using space, time, and more to give the feeling of an infinite playspace. I’ve also been spelunking the idea of infinity itself and why it makes us feel so uncomfortable and intrigued.

We Contain Multitudes

What is infinity? We aren’t born with an understanding of the idea of something that never ends. Psychology researcher Ruma Falk put together existing studies about infinity. “[C]hildren of ages 8-9 and on seem to understand that numbers do not end, but it takes quite a few more years to fully conceive, not only the infinity of numbers, but also the infinite difference between the set of numbers and any finite set.” You could spend your entire life counting out loud and get to 2 billion. But in calculus, which is all about approaching infinity, a billion is rounded down to zero. An average 2019 computer could count to a billion in about two seconds, depending on the code you wrote. That’s how tiny a billion still is. Falk calls the distance between our human billions and the idea of infinity an “abyssal gap.”

When I talked with Immortal Rogue developer Kyle Barrett about this project, he mentioned Jorge Luis Borges’s famous short story “The Library of Babel.” Borges imagined an infinite-seeming library of books filled with random combinations of letters and punctuation. He sets out 25 total characters and 410 pages. I averaged a few lines from David Foster Wallace’s primer on infinity, Everything and More, which had 57.5 characters per line. For just two lines of, say, 50 characters each, there are over six googol possible versions: that’s a 6 with 100 zeroes after it, for just two lines of a book of 410 pages. The largest math Excel let me do was for about four lines total, which became 3 with 300 zeroes after it.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett has spent decades writing about how humans think about problems and ideas. His 2013 book Intuition Pumps is filled with helpful analogies, including a spin on the Library of Babel. “Since it is estimated that there are only 10040 particles in the region of the universe we can observe, the Library of Babel is not remotely a physically possible object,” Dennett explained. But despite containing far more books than the possible volume of our entire region of space, that number of books is still a real number, not infinite! The takeaway from all this, and then I swear I’ll stop talking about math, is that nothing we can measure in real life is truly infinite. Infinity is a pure concept reserved for mathematicians and philosophers.

Playing with Time: Immortal Rogue

In Kyle Barrett’s 2019 mobile game Immortal Rogue, you begin in prehistory and fight your way through progressive eras in chunks of 100 years. But time is a flat circle, and eventually your progress is bombed back into preagricultural oblivion. The mechanics of Barrett’s game are fun and satisfying and I can’t recommend Immortal Rogue strongly enough, but the framework of endless time is what got my attention.

“It’s not really infinite,” Barrett explained. “It’s a matrix that loops every time you reach the end of it. There’s an x-axis that’s based on time, basically—it goes from agricultural to pre-industrial to the industrial era to the computational era and space age, so time based on human technological development, and if you get too far into the space era you’re gonna destroy the world and go back to the preagricultural era. Then there’s a y-axis that is based on authoritarian control in the world, so at the bottom you have anarchy, at the top you have fascism, and if you go too far into fascism you’ll get anarchy because people will rebel.”

I said I wouldn’t talk about math again, but Barrett brought it up this time. A matrix is just a grid. The Matrix is something else, but if you’ve ever done a “Sally has a blue hat and wasn’t born in March”-style logic puzzle, you’ve used a matrix. There’s also a proper math definition of a matrix and a whole field of operations we do to those matrices, collectively called abstract algebra.

Barrett’s matrix of time and authority determines the overall feel of the levels, but each one is procedurally generated after that. His day job is in mainstream game development, and he originally shopped the idea for Immortal Rogue as the system to power an AAA game. “You can imagine any AAA game with that kind of variety in environment would cost just too much money to make,” Barrett says. “It was a game concept that I had pitched to studios earlier as a sort of introduction piece—not necessarily to make the game, because I know that doesn’t happen, but as far as getting into the industry.”

The way Barrett combined his basic variables means Immortal Rogue does feel endless. My longest life so far is 800 years, and Barrett says a complete cycle in which you beat the game can take anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 years. I’d love to tell you I believe I’ll beat the game at some point and see that full cycle. I’ll keep trying, at least.

Immortality and Endless Time

Would you want to live forever? This is one of the major philosophical questions that underpins western thought and especially the Christian form of the afterlife. Heaven and hell are each presented as an eternity, but again we run into Dr. Ruma Falk’s findings about how humans conceive of an infinite period of time. “One does not get closer to infinity by advancing the counting sequence because there is no way to approach infinity. Nowhere does the very big merge into the infinite.” If the lifetime of the planet Earth were condensed to one year, humans have lived for less than 30 minutes. We balk at the length of lives of record-setting elders who were born just a few years after the 19th century: imagine living that entire time and then living it again and again for literally forever. Our earthly understanding of time, and how our earthly brains process information, just isn’t compatible with thinking about living forever.

For many people, God or another higher power is the only way that infinity can make sense. In turn, a much longer afterlife helps to also make sense of how tiny and fleeting our earthly lives can feel. In the potentially infinite scale of time, our lives are the meager billions. They round down to zero, and it definitely feels that way sometimes. Falk cites 17th century mathematician Blaise Pascal, himself a late-in-life convert to Christianity and the trope namer of Pascal’s Wager. During Pascal’s lifetime, infinity was still a scandalous idea and a wedge issue for mathematicians and theologians. “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in an eternity before and after, the little space I fill engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified,” Pascal wrote. “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”

In her memoir Living with a Wild God, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich describes grappling with the same problems as an isolated teenager in the 1950s. “I didn’t think much about the future when I was a child—who does?” she writes. “But to the extent that I did imagine a future, it held an ever-widening range for my explorations—more hills and valleys, shorelines and dunes. […] The idea that there might be a limit to my explorations, a natural cutoff in the form of death, was slow to dawn on me.”

Randomizing Infinity: Alphabear & Alphabear 2

Game designer Pat Kemp worked on both 2015’s Alphabear and 2018’s Alphabear 2 at Spry Fox. Both have the same core word game, a fresh take on the classic Bookworm where you have to spell words from rapidly deteriorating letter tiles. Unlike in Scrabble and its knockoffs, rare letters don’t have higher point values. And into the mix you throw dozens of different collectible bears, each with a total score multiplier and a specific boost like a bonus for 5-letter words or preventing all Xs and Zs. Both games are free to play with in-app purchases. In Alphabear 2, Spry Fox took the mechanic of the first game and added a linear story, multiple difficulty levels, and a host of other features. Playing the game feels like getting an upgrade at the rental-car place and realizing you have heated side mirrors. I didn’t ask for them, but I love them and now I need them. But why did the second Alphabear get so much bigger?

“I hope this answer isn’t disappointing to you, but the first Alphabear, although it’s a lovely game we’re very proud of and was critically well received and we got lots of features and good reviews, wasn’t much of a financial success for us,” Kemp told me. So Spry Fox went into development of Alphabear 2 with goals to convert more users into purchasers and more purchasers into multiple-purchasers. “The decision-making around making it into a world, and a linear campaign, and building out all the different features […] was creating this rich, interwoven progression system that players can feel invested in and value. Basically how you monetize a free-to-play game is, people play your game for weeks and months and come to really value things in the game.”

In the first Alphabear, each chapter had a set of collectible bears that quickly eclipsed the power of the previous chapter’s bears. “And you would almost never go back and use bears from earlier chapters, just because of the way it was set up,” Kemp says. “So you had this weird ‘disposable’ feel to bears. It was cool when you unlocked them, but the game was telling you, ‘You’re done with that bear, here’s some new bears.’” Now, the bears accumulate over time as one big group, and you can continue to level them up as high as you want, but your progress is paced by how quickly you regenerate in-game energy in the form of honey.

After a certain chapter in the Normal campaign, players can begin again on Hard mode, and then after a later chapter, they can begin Master mode. I don’t know the full length of the basic campaign, but I’m probably 100 levels in and somewhere in chapter 9 on Normal mode. The scope of the whole thing including all three difficulties is staggering, and the game had been out for just seven months when I talked with Kemp. “Have people finished the amount of content you’ve made so far?” I asked. “We know of at least one person who’s completed the master-level campaign,” he said. When I said I was surprised, Kemp said, “Every game developer I know has this experience where they’re surprised by some small portion of their fanbase that is just so into it that it defies all expectations.”

In this case, the fastest player ended up lapping the development team. “It was so far off that we had planned to build whatever happened when you did that later on,” Kemp said. “They sent us a picture of their screen of the campaign board, and all it was was just a black screen, because it was trying to load the next campaign board, which doesn’t exist. We were like, ‘Oh my god, we didn’t even put anything in there, and it looks kinda like you’re in purgatory or something.’” Spry Fox plans to replace the Sopranos non-ending.

Purgatory or Something

Earlier this year, I talked with my friend Tristan about his existential dread. He’s pretty fresh out of college and still figuring it all out. “I was going to write about games,” he said, “and as I entered my last year or so, I was going to write about movies. I don’t know if I’m still going to do that, so that’s a large part of the dread. Not knowing what I was actually doing.” Humans can’t conceive of infinity using numbers, but we can use our pessimistic imaginations. Our set of plausible options is no match for what we dream or panic about.

Christian existentialist Søren Kierkegaard wrote about dread and fear of the unknown in his 1844 book The Concept of Anxiety, where the Danish word angest could be translated as “anxiety” or “dread”. Using the story of Adam and Eve, Kierkegaard posits that anxiety dates back to a fraction of a second after original sin. “The terror here is simply anxiety,” Kierkegaard writes, “since Adam has not understood what was said.” In other words, like a pet in trouble, Adam didn’t know what was being told to him, but he understood it was bad from the tone of voice.

“Anxiety can be compared with dizziness,” Kierkegaard goes on. “He whose eye happens to look into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason? It is just as much his own eye as the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down.” Those who think about Dr. Ruma Falk’s “abyssal gap” between the finite and infinity may be dizzy forever with the uncertainty of what they’re pondering. “A persistent pursuit of the infinite may bring the individual to a blind alley, both emotionally and intellectually,” Falk writes. His analogy isn’t an accident. A blind alley is like another famous philosophical idea, Schrodinger’s cat: without shining a light, we can never know if the alley is empty or full, terrible or fine. And we can never shine that light.

Infinite Reality: Telling Lies & Her Story

At 2018’s E3 conference, Sam Barlow appeared on a panel about the future of narrative. “People will write to me and say, ‘I haven’t played a game in twenty years, and I played Her Story,’” Barlow said. “Or ‘My daughter installed it on my iPhone for me.’” It makes sense: Her Story’s core mechanic is as simple as a YouTube search, and the game is set in 1994, with a Windows 3.1 aesthetic to match. The game also fits with Barlow’s career arc. His 1999 XYZZY-winning interactive fiction Aisle gives players just one chance to type any command before reaching one of the game’s dozens of endings, placing players in a finite setting that even feels claustrophobic, but setting before them seemingly limitless possibilities. He was a natural fit to lead two Silent Hill games after that, and he views Her Story as the surprisingly successful “one chance” he had to make a successful indie game.

“This is something I’ve pitched so many times to publishers, with the rationale that in every other medium, crime fiction, police procedurals, murder mysteries, detective stories—if you have a TV channel and a film company, you’re gonna have a few stories in that world because it consistently works,” Barlow told me. “Games publishers were never into the idea. They felt like the things that sold in video games were power fantasies and superhero stories.” Barlow chose to home in on the interrogation room both as a convenient single setting and the place where his interest in crime stories was naturally drawn. “I wasn’t trying to do the police chases and locations and all those elements which would be expensive, but also, I was zooming in on the dialogue and the interactions and the human side of it,” he said, citing the groundbreaking ‘90s show Homicide: Life on the Street and its Emmy-winning bottle episode “Three Men and Adena.”

“I did a ton of research, reading the interrogation manuals for detectives, academic studies and pieces about the psychology of the interview room, a ton of crime books, movies with notable interrogation scenes and police interviews. This was slightly ahead of the true crime wave that we’ve had since, so I was discovering there’s so much footage online of real-life interviews and interrogations that has been released or leaked,” Barlow told me. “One day, as these things do, I woke up and went for a walk, and my subconscious—which is far cleverer than I am—put all the pieces and all the research I’d been doing together. [T]he detective’s sat at a computer, and there’s always the twist where they stay up all night sat at the computer and then they find that one little bit of information or the one piece of evidence that will break the case.”

Her Story is made of hundreds of discrete video clips, divided into main character Hannah Smith’s answers to an unseen detective’s questions. For his upcoming game Telling Lies, Barlow brought the setting forward into the Skype era and is introducing new mechanical twists to match. “To some extent Her Story was about giving you the writer’s perspective into a story, and here it’s giving you some of that editing room insight, where you spend so much time with the footage, choosing whether to cut out on this frame or that frame,” Barlow said. Instead of separate clips, Telling Lies gives you long, uncut videos that show both sides of a Skype call that you can scrub through—meaning drag the progress bar searching for highlights. “Not only are you coming at these stories in a nonlinear way, but also within a given scene you might end up watching it backwards.”

The text side of searching has also evolved. Because the videos aren’t separated into clips, searching for a specific word drops you into a video at that exact place. “Those conversations are split into two parts, so you can only see one side of a conversation at a time. You have the full seven minutes in front of you and you get dropped in to the point where someone says the word [or] phrase you've searched for,” Barlow said. “So early on, if you search for the word ‘love,’ you get dropped into a moment when Kerry [Bishé’s] character says, ‘Love you!’ and hangs up.”

Including Her Story and now Telling Lies in a group of very big-feeling games runs into a funny obstacle, because they’re both made of a very finite number of minutes of video. Her Story even has Steam achievements linked with what percentage of the total clips you’ve discovered and watched. “Something like 20% of people 100%-ed it. For most games you’re lucky if 20% of people finish the game. It had a display that showed you all the clips you hadn’t seen—that was an incentive and somewhat maddening if you could see there were clips you hadn’t seen. My approach with Telling Lies was to make it so big and huge and messy and colorful that it would feel less like something you could 100%, because I really wanted people to lose themselves in just the joy of exploring these characters’ lives.”

Just Out of Reach

Even with the incentive to find all the clips, in Her Story I found myself revisiting clips I’d already seen as I tried to find new keywords or listen for clues, and I maxed out just past the 75% achievement. The rest eluded me. With Telling Lies, this one kind of mystery will be removed, and that’s a blow against infinitude. In the perfect world of pure mathematics, having one more item just out of reach is one of the fundamental ways we can make proofs of infinite ideas. This structured approach also helps us turn the overwhelming idea of infinity into, at least right now, the one step in front of us. It’s infinity in the form of a child asking a parent for just five more minutes of sleep, then asking for five more, for eternity.

In Daniel Dennett’s book Intuition Pumps he uses this idea as an illustration for why infinity just can’t exist in real life. If every animal evolved from another animal, then there are infinity animals stretching back into infinity long ago, always with one preceding. We know that’s just not true. On the other hand, a study of how children process infinity showed that knowing the names of some large numbers made children think those were the largest numbers. Learning named ideas pushed out the very idea of having unnamed ideas, which makes sense given how large and robust our language brains are. Being strong, clear communicators has shaped our brains and the societies we form as humans. If we all became existentially troubled abstraction peddlers, I don’t think that would necessarily be a step forward.

To consider infinity with a finite mind is a paradox, and as Dr. Ruma Falk explains, “Mathematicians and philosophers are often no less addicted to resolving these paradoxes than some adolescents are to experiencing the limits of existence.” Like the Library of Babel, an infinite world is made mostly of incoherent and random nonsense, compared with a human mind that can only remember its own history in cohesive story form. My friend Martin has a rich life and a beautiful family, and he told me, “My personal greatest fear is probably losing my mind. The idea of being unable to make sense of the world is horrifying.” In fact, studies show that we’re more able to tune out conversations we can overhear both sides of than those where we can hear just one side—this is how deep our need for clear narratives runs, and it’s why we’re not made for an infinite world.

Infinite Liminal: Sunless Sea & Cultist Simulator

In February of 2019, Alexis Kennedy addressed something that had grown beyond his reach, and his post was the catalyst for what eventually became this essay. On the Weather Factory blog, where the developer typically shares updates to 2018’s Cultist Simulator, Kennedy described an alternate reality game (ARG) called Enigma that he’s built into his work—not just Cultist Simulator but 2015’s Sunless Sea and even 2009’s Fallen London. In the Enigma post, he sums up the appeal this mystery seems to have to fans: “If you’re working through things and looking for meaning in your life, then all the hidden meanings in this project may look like they add up to something more important than they actually do.”

I love Kennedy’s work—if we’re friends, you’ve probably heard me talk about it—and while I’ve never mistaken him for a guru, his games have affected and stayed with me more than anything else I’ve ever played. He’s gifted with language, stuffing his work with plausible and evocative neologisms or uncommon historical terms. But his more powerful gift lies in what he chooses to reveal and how long you must wait for it. I’ve thought often of something my friend Diana said nearly twenty years ago, about traveling with other people and seeing their luggage: “They wonder what I’m taking, but I wonder what they’re leaving behind.” I constantly wonder what Alexis Kennedy is leaving behind.

“Gamers tend to be—to borrow a phrase of Mike Laidlaw's—more like dogs than cats in the way they consume content. If the core loop is even moderately compelling, they'll gorge on content and rush through it,” Kennedy told me via email. “As soon as players are doing that, they'll skim text, and if they're going to skim text, text had better not be your A feature. I constantly skim quest text in games, and I'm a narrative junkie. So pacing is a way of saying: hold on, appreciate this, take your time with it.” In both Fallen London and Sunless Sea, one variable shuffles what day it is, so you receive different flavor text or events even when you’re repeating actions or storylines. “I don't think I ever quite recovered from the initial terror, back in 2009, of seeing players consume Fallen London content literally ten times as fast as I expected,” Kennedy says.

Like Sam Barlow, Kennedy reached for inspiration outside of what’s traditionally in the purview of a video game. I asked how he chooses end goals in games with such wide-open mechanics—Cultist Simulator is even more open than Sunless Sea in some ways. “I come at those stopping points from two directions. One is 'what sort of emotions and experiences are we aiming for?' The other is 'what sort of activities would a character in a novel, not just in a game, do in this setting?' So in Sunless Sea, we want people to be thinking about loneliness and survival and discovery, and we also want people to be aiming for the kind of things they'd aim for in Moby-Dick or Voyage of the Dawn Treader or HMS Surprise.” The only ending I’ve reached in Sunless Sea is the most basic one, where you amass some money and retire. In Cultist Simulator, I’ve managed to live a normal working life and then retire, which is considered a minor victory. And still, the game wonders what I’m taking, while I wonder what it’s leaving behind.

Pure Abstraction

“The study of infinity stretches human abstract thinking to some of its loftiest possibilities,” Dr. Ruma Falk writes. “By definition, it calls for modes of reasoning that transcend concrete representation.” What I’ve found most interesting as I researched this piece and talked with these gifted game designers is how thoughtfully they’d constructed gameplay loops that continue to feel fresh and challenging. The games themselves couldn’t be more different in terms of genre or lack thereof, revenue models, or mechanics, but all feel large and immersive inside to an extent that I instinctively ignored whatever seams I might end up seeing.

I asked each designer to share a game that felt infinite to them as players. Sam Barlow answered the question before I even asked it, though. He described wanting Telling Lies to feel like a huge place to explore. “My only go-to reference, which is somewhat ambitious, is the way I felt when I was playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the way that Nintendo made me feel, where I could just go off and explore in any direction and I could let my curiosity guide me and I would always enjoy myself. I would always find something interesting.” He called this kind of freedom a form of magic. “To some extent, Her Story was me trying to get some of the magic and—again, this wasn’t a conscious thing—some of the magic of the old text parser games.”

Pat Kemp also chose Breath of the Wild. “The world feels huge and dense in a kind of unusual way even amongst all the other open-world AAA experiences that are out there. There’s this big mountain and you climb up it, and on the way up you encounter two or three little unique-feeling things, and you make your way down and encounter a bunch of other little things, and they’re all handmade little surprises. It feels like the world is just brimming with delightful little nuggets of story or interesting challenges or encounters. It’s really a remarkable achievement and it’s also one of those things where, as a game developer, I can recognize what a monumental task it must have been to create that world,” Kemp said. “Every inch of it feels handcrafted by someone who cares about that itch, which is just incredibly daunting. It must have been so expensive to do.”

Alexis Kennedy chose Elite: Dangerous, and I enjoyed how his answer mirrored how I feel about his games, where some amount of suggestion makes it easy and fun to project the rest with your imagination. “I put a hundred-plus hours into Elite: Dangerous because I so enjoyed the sense of jumping through galactic-size simulated space. I knew perfectly well that the procgen systems were largely identical in all meaningful ways, I knew the space between star systems isn't simulated and you're just jumping between skyboxed instances, but I've spent 47 years learning how space works IRL and I still carry over those assumptions if the sense of resource cost lets me. I need to feel like I'm working to cross the space and have something that will run out or need balancing.”

Kyle Barrett pointed out that, infamously now, No Man’s Sky sold itself as an infinite game. “The game definitely feels infinite. It also has the effect of what infinity would feel like, which is empty after a while. It teaches people that lesson,” Barrett says. It brought back to mind something he told me before about deciding how much to procedurally generate within Immortal Rogue: “If it’s pure random, I think it normally fails. That’s something designers find pretty quick. So it’s like, what’s the right amount of random and what’s the skeleton that can make the random meaningful?” He mentioned Dwarf Fortress as a game with infinite-feeling possibilities, and Minecraft as something that marries the two. “It feels infinite in scope and the amount of possibility feels infinite, which is why it’s probably one of the best games ever,” he said.

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” Kierkegaard wrote. “Freedom now looks down into its own possibility and then grabs hold of finiteness to support itself.” The games we love might feel infinite, but we only hang around in them long enough to realize this because of the hard work of building structures and feedback loops that make games fun to play. We study infinite math from the security of offices with comfortable temperatures and lighting. As Alexis Kennedy put it, “So it is a design choice, but there's a reason I made that one design choice rather than a million others.”

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#caroline delbert #original #infinity #sunless sea #her story #telling lies #cultist simulator #sam barlow #alexis kennedy #immortal rogue

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mintchocolatemoose · 6 years

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Actually, as long as I’m talking about games, time for a ramble

The project that sent me into ventposting territory yesterday is another voltron game that I’ve been beating my head against for like a month? Basically, an urban fantasy au with a switching pov that uncovers a couple of mysteries, with different plots you can explore based on your choices. Allura lives, Lotor gets a redemption arc, the team actually comes off as friends that support each other. Maybe it doesn’t have QUITE the appeal that a canonverse story would, but it’s adopted from a fic that I tried to write a bit before the desert keith game swooped in and monopolized my time/energy.

But an entire month in I’m realizing... the program I used on Desert Keith is REALLY ill-suited for the game I’m trying to make. IF is good for mysteries, but NOT dialogue and large groups of people. There was definitely an ooc reason Keith didn’t talk to anyone besides wildlife. In the program I was using before, the player gets to type in anything they want, and then I had to wrangle 20 variations of "Ask Keith _" "Ask Keith about _" "Keith, _?" or just "__?" into a way the program would understand, knowing that SOMEONE is going to come up with a weird way to say it and confuse the program despite my best attempts

And then, because they can ask anything, that means I need a response for anything. So there's a dozen lines of:

If they ask about wolves/wolf/werewolf/werewolves/pack/transformation/full moon/new moon/moon cycle/moon, say "Idk man, I'm definitely not a werewolf so I can't tell you"

If they ask about your tragic backstory/past/history/family/story/childhood/mom/dad/mother/father/parent/parents, say "I have amnesia, fuck off"

If they ask about music/song/songs/favorite song/bop/banger, say "How is this relevant, why do yall care to know. Leave me in peace"

It's so many variables and so many options and SOMEONE is going to be a smartass anyway and talk to a character about 2014 meme culture or something that OFC I didn't think of

After typing that out, I realize I have a lot of aggression against the entire concept.

So! As much as I actually liked writing IF games for literally anything else, it’s terrible for a story where warm, pre-scripted conversations give people the warm fuzzies. Plus, because it dumps all the text it has every turn, allowing a conversation to unfold isn’t an option, because people’s eyes will glaze over if they see 20 paragraphs of conversation they have to scroll back up through. Plus, with diverging storylines, I’d need to juggle a lot of variables, so a character doesn’t mention an event that didn’t happen bc of the player’s choices.

Allura: So how about that death we witnessed, huh? You know, when Ulaz died to save us? Shiro: what??? Ulaz, standing right next to them: what?!?!

Anyway, a new kind of game, that’s better suited to a dialog heavy story with a big cast and diverging plotlines? Plus, a little more familiar to our generation?

Visual novel seems like the ticket, and I’ve figured out how to embed it in a webpage already, so no download needed on this one either. The language isn’t something I’m really familiar with, but I didn’t know how to write IF when I started desert Keith either, so I think I could pick it up really quickly.

Three downsides tho:

1) Less chance for me to write out atmosphere. What’s even the point of me writing if I can’t spend 3 paragraphs talking about how the weather makes people feel? (actually, this may be a pro)

2) Lots of images will make it a much heavier burden on people’s internet speed and available memory, and limit how much they can use it on mobile. I was able to have several different tabs of the keith game open on mobile without slowing down my very cheap and very old phone. Even someone on desktop may have to wait for a VN to load.

3)I can’t fucking draw

Like, at all.

So that leaves me with either

A) Learning to draw??? yeah, I’ll get right on that

B) Photoshop, screenshots and stock images. It’s a passible idea, although I’ll have difficulty finding shots I need? Plus, means I probably have to cut the alien characters out? Lotor and Allura could be shopped to look human, but Kolivan and Sendak not as much

C) Going on character creation websites and getting as close as I can? Easy to humanize the aliens, hard to get any sort of personality into the characters. Plus, forces everyone into the same kind of skinny anime twink body type? Valid for like Keith and Lance, not so much for Hunk or Shiro

D) Having an actual artist draw everything. I’ve had two very talented girls who volunteered, but I do feel bad asking for a huge commitment from very busy artists who I definitely can’t pay for their time and skill.

ANYWAY

The other game in the works is a small and simple (we’ll see if that lasts) game about Shiro as a companion piece to the Keith one

#This is just me getting all my thoughts out #i should have a tag for all the game chatter #coding tag #I'll go back and add that to a couple other things

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armeniaitn · 3 years

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Gurgen Khachatryan: Telecom and the future in Armenia

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/technology/gurgen-khachatryan-telecom-and-the-future-in-armenia-73640-18-05-2021/

Gurgen Khachatryan: Telecom and the future in Armenia

May 18, 2021 – 14:11 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – People look at the phone screen at least 58 times a day, ending up spending 4.5 hours a day holding a phone. In 1973, with the advent of the first mobile phone, the technological revolution was predictable, but no one thought that the phone would not only change the culture of human communication, but also speed up the time.

Today, people consume much more content in one day than in a whole lifetime in the Middle Ages. From health, shopping, finances to education and communication; everything is done over the phone, as a result, telecom sector is facing a period of the most difficult and historically greatest opportunities.

Gurgen Khachatryan, the Chairman of the board of directors of “Ucom” telecommunications, has weighed in on a number of issues, from Armenian telecom to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

1. Challenges of the Armenian Telecom. Everyone will experience the consequences

Today is the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day and I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the future of the telecom sector in Armenia by listing the problems and challenges. Today, our country is facing serious challenges to the infrastructure and information security of the sector. Suffice it to say that the recent changes in the basic infrastructure that nourish the country have sharply increased the risks to national security.

The need to attract new investments for the telecom sector in Armenia, the limitation of market volumes, the provision of regional security, the fragmentation of state sectoral policy lead to the weakening of the sector, and we will all experience the consequences – me, you, our families, our state with its sovereignty. So what to do?

2. How did the telecom begin to develop in Armenia?

The Armenian telecom market has been actively developing since its liberalization and the entry of Vivacell. And in 2009 two new and innovative players entered the market: Orange Armenia in the field of mobile communication and Ucom in the field of internet connection and IP television. The intensive investments of these two operators, which by various estimates exceeded USD 400 million, led to a significant improvement in the quality of services in those markets and a significant reduction in prices by contributing to the widespread dissemination of communication services in Armenia.

It is enough to recall that when we first entered the market with Ucom, the prevalence of the Internet in Armenia did not exceed 5%. Today, as of 2021, there are 3,78 million mobile subscribers (127.4% of the population) and 2,2 million Internet subscribers (68.2% of the population).

3. How did telecom transform: the end of calls and SMS

The mobile market in Armenia began to decline in line with global trends. Over the past five years, the subscriber calls and SMSs constituting the traditional source of income for the telecom sector have given way to call and communication applications that use Internet connection (Whatsapp, Viber, Messenger, Telegram, Signal).

With the spread of social networks, the use of digital content by subscribers has increased. As of 2021, there are 1,8 million active users of social networks in Armenia (60.7% of the population), of which 1,76 million (97.5%) access social networks via mobile phones. As a result, the volume of the use of Internet traffic has increased unprecedentedly, which forces the operators to make new investments for the expansion of the network bandwidth.

4. Salvation model. Why are consolidations so important?

Telecom is a sector that requires intensive capital investments with unacceptably low rates in terms of return on investment (ROI). And in the case of Armenia, high country risk also leads to a high WACC (weight average cost of capital) and, accordingly, to low rates of profitability. In other words, the sector is a trend and dream job for young professionals, but it is a real puzzle in terms of management.

There are various regulatory models in the world today to ensure the stability and business continuity of the sector, two of which are feasible in our region. The first is the sectorally segregated infrastructure operator model which operates under the strict control of the regulator, which leases its network to licensed communication operators on a fair-play basis. The latter “sell” the Internet, mobile services, TV, content, etc. Moreover, the infrastructure operator can be both private and public-private partnership (PPP).

In small competitive markets with a limited subscriber base, the second model of “consolidations” prevails. Finally, if it is not possible to rent a telecom network, at least consolidaqtion can bring business to the market by reducing network capital expenditure (CapEx) and maintenance operating expenditure (OpEx). Consolidations make it possible to exclude the construction of several parallel infrastructures. By drawing parallels, imagine how the investments would diminish if there were several water supply operators in Yerevan, each building and servicing its own water supply network. Consequently, consolidation leads to an increase in investment efficiency, reduction of the investment cycle (buyback terms) and reduction of the cost price of services. As a result of all this, the subscribers are continuously provided with more up-to-date and innovative services at more affordable prices every year.

According to the Capital Confidence Barometer, in 2017 alone, the number of transactions published as a result of telecom consolidations (M&A) exceeded USD 117 billion. There are more than a dozen of consolidations in the territory of the CIS. And now, especially after the pandemic, according to the EY report, 59% of global telecom players consider any form of consolidation (moreover, 45% with another telecom operator and 52% with another sectoral player, including banks and media).

5. Low chances of sector viability at the high level of sincerity

I have recently had an interesting conversation with my daughter who will soon reach the high school age. We talked about the professions of the future and about the fields that will be viable in the future. We ranked the telecom business among the ones that are changing and fighting for viability.

Indeed, telecom players in Armenia should seek out new and innovative sources of income, and there is no second option here. People, who are talking about “5G” and “new generation high speed network” all the time in dreamy terms, are either not honest or do not know the sector, and they forget that telecoms are first and foremost economic entities and non-charity organizations, and if there is no profitability, companies will collapse one after another, which will cause much more damage to the economy.

At Ucom today, we set ourselves the task of increasing operational efficiency, and we are not afraid to say out loud that we must first of all monetize the infrastructure that has already been invested, and then make bold investments in disruptive solutions that change the rules of the game.

Today we are digitally transforming all our functional departments and we are not ashamed to say that there are still directions of work within Ucom where effective solutions are missing. And the last issue and similar issues are resolved with quick and adaptive decision-making solutions. In honor of our executive staff and employees, I must say that we have made a great and sustainable progress.

6. Pandemic as a change management manager

There is such a joke; they say that Covid-19 contributed to the digitization of our company. Indeed, the pandemic was an accelerated course of digital transformation, as a result of which a change of about 5 years was achieved in 1 year. The situation was especially interesting for telecom in terms of change of the content consumption vectors.

In the post-pandemic world, telecom has established itself as a provider of consolidated services that ensures the child’s safety for the parent through the smartwatch. Telecom is your smart home that provides reporting and adjustment for the room temperature over the phone. Telecom is your electronic wallet, your notification and purchasing system, the single electronic management window with government agencies, and finally your education and entertainment.

If you know, Ucom has been offering smart home, smart device sales options for a while now, we have a general education channel with our IP TV, Upay payment system, etc. Before the pandemic, I thought we still had time for strategic development in all directions, as we had a strong position in the market. Now I understand that time ended yesterday, and I often talk to my international colleagues of the field that upgrading the same product or service is no longer enough. Innovation is just like air and water, and to get them, you must have the courage to change the telecom business management method and organizational mechanism.

7. Information security as a priority for Armenia

The main topics in the world today are big data, robotics, artificial intelligence… All these, of course, open a broad window of opportunities for telecom. But today, in post-war Armenia, unfortunately, we are working intensely to ensure the minimum, i.e. the information security.

As an economic entity, we, at Ucom, have a fiduciary responsibility towards our shareholders, our partners and our staff. As an Armenian communication operator, we bear a moral responsibility towards our homeland and state not to allow the information blockade of Armenia under any circumstances. I have already mentioned the risks of information security, the rest does not imply publicity.

I just have to say that, of course, we see solutions to the issue, but that solution inevitably moves from the private field to the interstate regulatory field, and it is necessary for the decision-making authorities to finally put the state interest above the interests of playing “team-team”.

8. Ucom as a a strong and adaptive Armenian operator

In conclusion, I would like to urge you to be vigilant and responsible. Those who are already thinking about the future will win. It is important to just remember that telecom is one of the only strategic infrastructures of the country which has an operator with Armenian capital and an Armenian agenda. Ucom is still opening a window of information security and regional influence for the country today, and we have managed to make Armenia an internet transit country. We are currently negotiating to make Armenia a “transit” country of content by bringing the largest international internet companies to Armenia and installing an Internet hub (PoP) in our country.

On the other hand, I believe that the importance of the Armenian operator in terms of the country’s information security and digital sovereignty should be identified at the highest level. With this regard, sharing infrastructures and considering consolidation opportunities are an urgent need.

In Armenia, as elsewhere, there is a tremendous amount of work to be done to meet the changing needs of the telecom sector business continuity and of the subscribers. But challenges do not scare us; we have the knowledge and ability to promote our country and protect the interests of our state.

Read original article here

#Armenia #Covid-19 #Yerevan #Technology

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thecoroutfitters · 6 years

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Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

There are lots of positives to growing food in small containers, especially when we can source them for free or very little money and upcycle into production space.

They’re versatile and mobile. We can cart them to new locations inside a season, maximizing light or giving them some shade. We can cart them to new homes. We can cart them indoors.

Being small, we can also pretty quickly and efficiently cover them using our salvaged and saved shower curtains, window screens, and clear trash bags. Size lends the ability to go vertical with many, increasing our growing space inside a footprint.

Many planters can be done using waste materials we salvage from our own homes and curbside pickups, making them pretty economical. They definitely decrease the work of hacking into soil, and amending really poor, compacted soils.

There are some pretty universal drawbacks. We have to produce or source soil or compost for them. That’s a biggie.

Another biggie: There’s commonly limited soil and limited soil depth. That’s going to affect what we can grow due to root space.

Micro- and mini containers won’t develop the positive soil biology of a larger filing cabinet or raised bed. That contributes to requiring more amendments and specific types of amendments.

All containers are a little more prone to weather sensitivity (both drying out and cold) and the micro-mini’s more so than others.

Still, in many cases, they offer us increased versatility and options, and the ease and efficiency can make them very attractive to preppers at all stages and locations, even on acreage with tractor-tilled gardens and field crops.

Laundry Baskets

Lined with plastic, cloth, cardboard, straw flakes, or a bird’s nest of yard waste, laundry baskets can be very handy, versatile, effective containers. The liners won’t last indefinitely (lifespan varies by climate) but large or small, laundry baskets can be a very inexpensive way to grow even larger plants like tomatoes and melons.

*Tidbit Time: The “cheap” soft-flexible plastic baskets will actually hold up to weather wear better than stiff plastic, especially the inexpensive brittle storage totes and most buckets.

Basically, anything you’ve seen done in a 5-gallon bucket or storage tote can be grown in a laundry basket. They’re also applicable to most of the tower-barrel growing systems – to include adding an in-situ composting tube or watering hose/tube in the middle.

The increased footprint over a 5-gallon bucket makes them even better for sweet potatoes. Taller options are pretty much tailor-made for add-soil vertical potato planters. They can be used for vertical grow towers for strawberries, herbs, or salad greens – as-is sometimes, or by snipping only small pieces to expand the planting holes.

*Extra Tidbit: For any outdoor container garden, lay out some plastic or cardboard. (Mulch over it for appearance’s sake) and-or a pretty plastic tablecloth. It’ll decrease the number of weeds that want to pop up around and between containers, and limit the number of weeds that manage to find homes in those containers.

Tabletops & Drawers

We can easily produce chair-accessible “trug” style planters by breathing new life into desks, side tables, and even dining tables. We can also create a trug-style bed by sticking drawers (or anything else sturdy and heavy) on top of folding plastic or metal tables, or picnic tables with the benches removed.

The increased height means less bending and the ability to sit and work for everyone, but it’s a great way to keep seniors and those with injuries in the gardening game.

They’re also a great way to limit child, pet, and some pest damage to our plants.

A laid-flat bookshelf can give us the same benefits as a desk drawer, and create a somewhat larger and more conventional-appearing container garden for balconies, porches or right out in the yard. Buckets or block can be used to give it height if we reinforce the backing, or we can slide it onto a tabletop and fill it as-is.

While bookshelves and desk drawers are most usually restricted in depth, and most tabletop builds are also shallow, they’re plenty deep enough for the salads and strawberries that so many turtles, rabbits, and slugs like to munch.

For added depth with a container, we have the bodies/frames of filing cabinets (and some desks). Even using junk-log and straw-bale “fills” for those, they have plenty of root space for even shrubs and miniature trees.

Filing cabinets, desks, and deeper bookcases or drawers can also be lined or sprayed with FlexSeal to build a self-irrigated garden bed.

As with pretty much any freebie container, some types of drawers will have to be lined to hold soil and water, and increase lifespan, while others will need to have drainage holes drilled out.

Shelves as Shelves

Shelves can increase our growing space as-is, too. The wire-frame types allow a bit more light through, although we’ll still want to be pretty strategic as we lay out our under-the-bed totes, coffee cans, and 2L soda bottle planters.

We can also pretty cheaply and easily construct our own outdoor grow shelves with some cinder blocks and boards from darn-near anything we want to salvage. A couple coats of pant, and both our shelves and planters can even be cute.

Don’t forget: Soil holds water, and water is heavy. Build sturdy.

Canning Jars & Soup Cans

On the downer side of containers, let’s talk about the minis and micros. I know we’ve seen the cutesy DIY and retail racks of them, and I’ve suggested them myself. However, they’re even more limited and there are a few things to consider.

Some of the most frequent problems are even more exacerbated with glass jars, even the sizeable quarts and pasta sauce or pickle jars. See, those jars don’t breathe, and they’re rarely set up with even the drainage holes that cans are.

Plant roots must have oxygen to survive. That means we have to be careful with the soil types we use and how much we water them.

Flip side: Super-small containers dry out very easily, especially outdoors or in a sunny window. We may end up watering them a couple times a day to meet their needs without drowning roots.

We also have to look at the size. That goes to both the specific plant in each micro container and how many containers we’ll have.

Aquaponics, hydroponics, and aeroponics get away with super-small root space and soil/media plugs due to their oxygenated conditions and plants’ ability to expand their roots well past their small plug into the air, water, or media around them. Micro and mini planters are much more restricted.

A larger plant like rosemary, basil, and sage just isn’t going to be happy and healthy limited to a soup can or pint jar. Even a quart jar is pushing it, and will seriously stunt our plant.

Sometimes stunting is fine, but how much of our herbs are we looking at taking off at a time if the plant never gets much bigger than six or eight inches? How many tiny containers would it take to harvest reasonable amounts from those larger herbs?

There are herbs that are self-limiting enough to do well in tiny containers, and herbs that yield fast enough and get used in amounts that make it reasonable even if we only have one or two – chives, parsley, and especially the lemon-flavored balm and thyme among them.

There are also microgreens and small cut-and-come again greens that work well in even small soup cans because we can select harvest a leaf or two from a dozen and have ourselves a small salad, taco/wrap filler, or sandwich toppers.

We can also look to our wild edibles in many cases, or the less-common edibles.

If I’m growing peas for their spinach-like sprouts and tips, a small container and low number is fine. Wild violet, henbit, wood sorrel, bittercress, wild mustard, onion grass, and chickweed all handle cut-and-come-again grazing and small containers well – and handle them better than some of our domestic lettuces, mini mustards, and baby spinach.

Those restrictions commonly apply to pockets in hanging shoe organizer gardens, gutter-type gardens, and other cutsey stuff like hanging coffee mugs for planters.

They’re not total bunk. I’ve included them in small-space and winter growing suggestions. But when we’re growing for production — not decoration — the size, per-container and in-total harvest amounts, and some of the plant health issues require consideration.

The extra soil space in vertical pallet gardens, 2L bottles, larger pickle jars, and coffee tubs increases our options for planting, but as with any “small” garden we still want to pay attention to yield factors.

Upcycled Container Gardens

There’s plenty to be said for conventional raised and in-ground beds, but containers have their benefits, too. While there are some downsides, especially the micro-mini containers, they can all give our production big boosts and increase our growing season and versatility.

There are plenty of options out there available for curbside pickup, from filing cabinets and desk drawers to shelves where we can stack cut-down soda bottles. There are also options like laundry baskets that are pennies on the dollar what the same volume bucket/keg or weather-hardy tote would be if we can’t salvage what we want.

With so many options, there’s no reason not to get started right now, taking advantage of end-of-season seed and soil/compost sales to get some autumn salads and roots on our plates. Go get dirty!

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The post Prepper Up-cycling – Container Gardens & Micro Planters appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

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etechwire-blog · 6 years

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The best universal remotes 2018: the ultimate beginners guide

New Post has been published on https://www.etechwire.com/the-best-universal-remotes-2018-the-ultimate-beginners-guide/

The best universal remotes 2018: the ultimate beginners guide

Are you – or, more likely, someone in your household – experiencing remote overload? Do you have more remotes than you have devices in your living room? That happens to the best of us.

That’s because, while tech keeps marching forward, we’re still not close to getting rid of the traditional remote. If you’re a home enterainment fan, there are probably a half-dozen in your living room right now.

A universal remote is what you need.

They cut down clutter in your living room by taking on the role of several standard remotes. Some phones can even act as a universal remote.

If you’re here, however, it’s because you need someone with the background and experience needed to help you reduce the remotes, clean up your living room and bring audiovisual nirvana to your humble abode.

You’ve come to the right place.

What is a universal remote?

Before we get down into the nitty-gritty of dissecting all the different types of universal remotes, it would perhaps be fitting to get into what exactly the best universal remotes do. Well, to put it simply, they’re remote controls – like the ones that come with your TV – that can imitate the signals sent by the original remote of your TV, AV receiver or whatever device you own that uses an infrared signal.

Wondering why you should buy one? There are two main scenarios where they’re ideal: either you’ve lost your original remote, and your TV provider wants nothing less than your first-born child to pay for the replacement, or you’re looking to have fewer remote controls because you want to streamline your AV experience. The best universal remotes are the answer to both of these scenarios.

Pretty much every universal remote uses infrared, or, IR. Which is the same signal used by manufacturer remotes.

Cheap vs expensive

If you’re considering shopping for a cheap universal remote, such as the One For All Essence (only available in the UK), you’ll use a pattern of button presses to program the remote, selecting the right set of instructions for your hardware. Manufacturers like Panasonic and Sony have only used a couple different patterns of instructions over the last decade or so for most of their TVs. You can just cycle through them until you find the set of instructions that lets you operate the TV in question.

The low-cost One for All Essence can replace two remotes

One For All URC-7140

Many mid-tier universal remotes boast companion apps and large databases that let you just select the TV or receiver you have on your mobile device. It’s quicker, easier and less of a hassle to add new devices, in case your AV setup ever changes.

Generally speaking, the more devices you’re looking for your universal remote to support, the more money you’ll be spending. Logitech’s Harmony Elite is compatible with up to 15 devices with just the one remote, while low-end models, like the One for All Simple, only support one. Just like most things in the tech world, it just comes down to that classic use-case question: are you replacing a lost remote or do you just want to use just one remote instead of a half dozen unique ones?

The Logitech Harmony Elite is one of the top-end universal remotes

Logitech Harmony Elite Remote

When you start getting to the High end of the spectrum, you’ll start seeing remotes that allow you to set up custom macros, or ‘activities’. These ‘activities’ will let you make a single button or touch screen press send off several commands.

One remote, called ‘Watch TV,’ for example, may turn on your cable box, audio receiver and TV, change the receiver to the right channel and switch your TV to the right HDMI input. Another classic is to turn all of your equipment off with a single press of a button.

Who makes universal remotes?

There are two main players in the universal remote control game, and they’re the ones we’ve listed out thus far. Logitech makes all the best high-end remotes, in the shape of its Harmony models, while One for All is the best brand for more inexpensive remotes.

The Doro HandleEasy is as basic as universal remotes get

Doro Handle Easy

In the US, you’ll also see a plethora of low-price remote controls from RCA. And if you’re buying for an elderly relative, or want a super-simple remote that only covers the TV basics. The Doro HandleEasy lets you change volume and channels. It has been around for years, but is a great lo-fi gadget.

Phones that are universal remotes

Some phones will also function as universal remotes, although perhaps not the models you may think. They need to have a feature called an IR blaster, which enables them to transmit the same signals as a normal remote control.

These used to be somewhat common, but have become quite rare, with the feature regarded as unloved and generally useless in the phones that had it. Current phones with an IR blaster include the Honor 9 and Huawei P20 Plus. Some Xiaomi phones have one too. The common thread? These are Chinese companies.

The Honor 9 is one of the few new phones to have an IR blaster

The most recent mainstream phones to feature IR blasters were the LG G5 and LG V20, while the last flagship Samsungs with IR were the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, and those came out almost three years ago. These phones have apps that let you configure your own setup, with on-screen buttons for (almost) all your remotes’ functions.

We actually know people who owned phones with IR blasters a few years ago, but who ended up spending a significant amount of cash on a universal remote, oblivious to their phone’s abilities.

Have a phone with an IR blaster? You might want to check out a third-party remote control app like Peel or Sure, as these have a smarter interface than most built-in apps

Controlling consoles and smart homes

A weakness that the vast majority of universal remotes share is that they can’t control most smart home devices, or Sony’s PS3 and PS4. This is because they use either Bluetooth, RF or Wi-Fi instead of IR. The answer is a hub that supports these other standards, and right now you have two major options.

Logitech offers the best, and the most popular one. The Logitech Home Hub is compatible with Microsoft and Sony game consoles, and a wide range of smart home gadgets including Philips Hue lights. It connects to your home Wi-Fi network, and can be controlled either by a mobile app or one of Logitech’s higher-end remotes.

Logitech’s Harmony Hub levels-up the abilities of universal remotes

Logitech Harmony Hub

Using one of the Harmony series’ tasty macro activities, you could therefore set the lighting level for movie night, as well as turning on your AV setup, with a single press.

Elsewhere, the Broadlink RM and RM Pro are hubs that can control IR and RF (Pro model) devices through a mobile phone app. They’re significantly cheaper than the Logitech Home Hub, although as they don’t use Bluetooth you can’t use them to control a Sony PS4.

It is a low-cost way to make up for the lack of an IR blaster, though.

Voice control

One additional benefit of the Logitech Home Hub system is that you can already control it through Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa.

If you have an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot you can add a Harmony ‘skill’ to it, and using this you can say “Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on the TV”, and it’ll do so. We’ve tried it out as part of our research for this guide, and it works rather well.

You can now use your voice as a universal remote, with the right hardware

One day we’ll be able to control everything over Wi-Fi, but until that day it’s reassuring to see that universal remotes aren’t content to become ‘retro’ gadgets; they’re keeping up with the times.

Logitech Harmony at a glance

As the Logitech Harmony series is easily the most important range of universal remotes for people looking for an experience to suit a high-end setup, let’s take a quick look at what’s on offer.

The Harmony family has two main lines – there are newer remotes that work with the Harmony Hub, and older pure IR remotes that don’t.

The Harmony Ultimate is one of Logitech’s full-fat universal remotes

Logitech Harmony Ultimate

The newer kind includes the Elite, Ultimate, Touch, Ultimate One and 950 models, all of which have screens. Logitech’s Companion remote supports the hub but doesn’t have a display, making it a little more affordable.

Those after something even less pocket-draining should check out the Harmony 650, which has a display but no Hub support, and the Harmony 350, a basic £35/$38 remote that’s a classic universal remote but can still combine the functions of eight remotes.

So, what is the best universal remote?

Logitech Harmony Elite

For AV adepts and smart home aficionados, this is the best universal remote

Activities automate your routines

Compatible with loads of devices

Polished design and feel

Can’t launch into most video apps

At $250 (£99, AU$449), the Logitech Harmony Elite obviously no small investment – and if you’re not absolutely serious about the form and function of your home entertainment setup, then you needn’t bother. But for anyone who wants one remote to control just about everything, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything that is both this functional and relatively easy to use out of the box.

If your setup is complex and you’re seeking some automation in your routine, or you just can’t stand the sight of a handful of differently-shaped remotes laying on your couch, then the Logitech Harmony Elite might be a luxury worth splashing out for. Despite the occasional hitch, it’s a powerful remote that can wrangle your audio/visual madness, plus it looks and feels pretty good doing so.

#beginners #guide #remotes #Ultimate #universal

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game-refraction · 8 years

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Game Review: The Legend of Zelda - Breath Of The Wild (Switch)

“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.” was the only instructions given to Link when we were first introduced to the character, and series, back on the original NES. That all too brief bit of advice actually told us quite a bit. The world was in peril from some sort of evil, and that Link would need to be well prepared for it. It is that same underlying message of being prepared that is introduced to us all over again in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and it couldn’t be truer. Breath of the Wild is not only the most wildly ambitious and incredibly polished entry in the Legend of Zelda series, it’s quite possibly the greatest Legend of Zelda game to date.

I consider myself a fairly big Legend of Zelda fan, despite not fully completing a few entries in the series. My favorite, up until Breath of the Wild, was Wind Waker as not only was it as near perfect to an adventure game as you can get, it just had a level of polish that most developers can only dream of having in their games.

Right from the beginning of Breath of the Wild, you are told very little. You are given a few hints on the plot and then set on your path. You know that Princess Zelda is out there somewhere and that Ganon, or as he is called here; Calamity Ganon, has taken over the kingdom. You’ll come across a few gameplay hints via the loading screens or from various NPC’s that litter the world, but a lot of it, and I mean a lot of the what’s and how’s, are left up to you to figure out, and the creative fun that comes with doing so.

I’ve heard a few stories about how some players tackled certain objectives, despite how complex or simple the more traditional methods would be. One such example left me rather impressed. During one of the Dungeons, a player couldn’t find a second power node to open a door. They noticed that both platforms required electricity to run and they, in an act of desperation, came up with a rather impressive trick. When Link is out in a rain storm you have to be worried about wearing metal when you hear thunder about as you can get struck by lightning. Using this logic, they placed metal weapons from one node platform to the next. Upon placing the node on the platform, it transferred enough power to the adjoining platform and powered the door. During my playthrough, I had no problem finding that second node, but it’s nice to know that no matter the player, you can find your own way. I lost track of how many times I had an idea and it paid off, with the game at no point telling me I could play that way or forcing me down one direct path of reasoning.

It is in this creative ingenuity that makes the open world of Breath of the Wild so fresh and original. Sure, the world abides by a few open world gameplay designs like collectibles strung everywhere and points of interest allowing for fast travel and map revealing, but it is the way in which you interact with this world that is unlike anything I have ever seen. Want to bake apples? Hold a torch under an apple tree. Want to cook some fish or sear a steak? Throw it on the ground while visiting Death Mountain. You can freeze meat with an ice arrow or throw a metal weapon at an enemy in a storm to have lightning finish the job. There are so many different ways that the environment will affect either Link or the materials of his weapons or items that I could just go on and on, but I’ll leave the rest for you to discover on your own.

As you explore the massive open world around you, you’ll often rely on your paraglider, an item you’ll earn within an hour of starting the game, should you stick to the main path. The paraglider allows you to glide on the wind currents to essentially fly around the map. Should you need to reach a higher location you can simply just scale the surface. These feats of exploration are held in check via a upgradeable stamina system that also limits how far you can run without becoming winded or swim without drowning. The wall climbing is also limited to outdoor areas as climbing up walls in dungeons or shrines are just not possible, it’s also worth noting that rain will prevent you from scaling surfaces as well, but oh, we shall talk more about the “rain” later on, don’t you worry. The game also has a 24 minute day and night cycle that changes the locations of various NPC’s, merchants and even what types of items and enemies you can find nearby. Even certain side quests and various shrines are only accessible at key hours in the day.

Before I get too involved talking about the story, weapons and various other systems the game has to offer, I want to take a moment and talk about how gorgeous this game is. While I am playing on the Nintendo Switch, the game still looks rather impressive on the WiiU. As I mentioned above, Wind Waker was my favorite pre-Breath of the Wild Zelda game and a lot of that had to do with the art direction. Breath of the Wild grabs ahold of the look that Wind Waker contained and finds a nice middle ground between that and the previous Skyward Sword. The game has an almost anime inspired look to it, with characters looking fully animated and having remarkable detail even among how simple their designs can be.

Regardless of traversing cliffsides above lakes of lava or racing through the forests of Hyrule on the back of Epona, the widespread environments of Breath of the Wild are stunning in their beauty as well as the secrets that hide around almost every corner. The lighting and shadows that come with the day and night cycles can drastically change the look and feel of your surroundings and standing on a mountaintop to see the fog creep over the mountains is something else.

The Switch runs the game at a modest 900p, while both the WiiU and the handheld nature of the Switch run it at 720p. The WiiU version does have a bit of slow down even at 720p and the Switch, while docked on the tv at 900p has comparable slow down as well, mostly in areas that have lots of shadows in play. I never noticed any slow down while playing via the handheld mode of the Switch, but this could be due to the game running on Switch hardware at 720p. I also noted that playing Breath of the Wild via the WiiU gamepad’s screen is mostly blurry and I would recommend sticking to the TV mode for that console if at all possible.

The Legend of Zelda has always had tremendous sound design and Breath of the Wild ranks up there with the best of them. Each selection of music or sound effect is absolutely perfect and they even throw in a few classic sounds in some really interesting places. I love the musical melody that plays when your Sheikah Slate is scanning the map, or the ping your arrow makes when you get that critical headshot. Several characters of the game also feature some terrific voice acting that I wish happened more often throughout your journey.

As the characters you’ll interact with all have remarkable animation and detail, so do the various enemies you’ll encounter during your 60+ hours with the game. While there isn’t a staggering variety in types of enemies, the small details that encompass them will make you enjoy each encounter despite how repetitive it can get. Should you disarm your foe and then pick up their weapon, they will lash out with surprise and anger, pointing at you and shocked at what just occurred. I had an enemy retreat to set his wooden club on fire to attempt a better tactic against me, except I threw an explosive barrel at his face and he flew off the cliff. The personality given to many of the game’s foes is fascinating and can lead to some rather fun ways of dealing with them. One of my favorite moments was when I took a Cucco from a nearby village and caused a Lizalfos to indirectly hit the Cucco four times causing a massive army of Cuccos to unleash chicken hell on it, he didn’t last long.

After you break away from the basic Bokoblin’s and Moblin’s, you’ll start to encounter the Guardians, giant pillar looking enemies that can be stationary or mobile, should they still retain their spider-like legs. At first, they can be incredibly intimidating, but once you figure out a neat trick you can do with your shield, I started to go on a killing spree collecting all the rare items they would drop upon their destruction. Also, upon upgrading my stasis rune to freeze enemies, I found that I could halt them in their tracks for a few precious seconds and start chopping off their legs, crippling them in sheer delight.

There has been some talk about the weapons in Breath of the Wild as for the first time in the franchise, we have weapons that can break during combat. Each weapon has a variable limit to how many fights it can withstand and this can make or break your experience. Early on you will find weapons that will break after an enemy or two and later on you can find weapons that can outlive dozens of foes with even the Master Sword needing a small recharge after a certain amount of abuse. Eventually, you’ll find weapons that can be repaired, but I didn’t find them to be that much better than the disposable ones littering each and every battle. I often would revisit shrines to grab a few more Guardian weapons; glowing blue spears, axes, swords, and shields, as they can last fairly long and deal out some nice damage, plus it helps that they look really cool. Breath of the Wild has a vast amount of weapons for Link to wield, which is a huge change of pace from prior entries. I never found myself bored with combat as there was just a tremendous amount of variety in how to dish out damage to an unsuspecting foe and attempting to master the dodge and parry systems can be rewarding as well.

With the world being much bigger than anything else Nintendo has ever made, closing the gap between you and a nasty little Bokoblin can be made much easier with a solid arrow to the face. Link’s bow is far more essential this time around than ever before in a Legend of Zelda game. Arrows come in regular, fire, ice, shock, bomb and the ancient Guardian arrows that can one-shot almost anything. Jumping in the air and unleashing your bow will freeze time as long as your stamina holds out. I approached a small Moblin camp that had 2 of them sleeping while another kept guard. I paraglided in from a nearby mountain and dropped from the sky with my bow at the ready. The added time the slow down mechanic gave me allowed me to headshot the guard and fire off two arrows at explosive barrels that were just a few feet from the sleeping duo. Needless to say, the camp exploded in a flash of yellow and orange.

Working alongside your arsenal of swords, axes and bows, are Runes. These are special abilities that Link has access to via the Sheikah Slate, an ancient tablet that can learn new skills and be upgraded later on. These Runes are all available within the first few hours of the game so that you can freely tackle any of the Dungeons or Shrines in whatever order you see fit. The Runes that Link will have access to are Bombs, Magnesis, Cryonis, and Stasis. Bombs are pretty self-explanatory, but it’s the other three that really shake up the Puzzle dynamics here. Magnesis lets you lift and move metal objects around, Stasis lets you stop time to objects and enemies, and Cryonis creates ice platforms out of bodies of water. Several areas of the game force you to use these powers in tandem to one another and can lead to some very creative methods to solving puzzles. Later on, you will use the Sheikah Slate to take pictures or utilize the Amiibo compatibility.

Breath of the Wild’s large open world has a lot to explore and you’re going to be picking up a ridiculous amount of items and resources everywhere you go. The room you have for weapons is fairly small early on but can be upgraded to allow more space, which is great considering how fast some of your weapons can break. The resources you gather like fruit and meat can be used to cook meals that grant more health, temporary hearts and other buffs like extra stealth or boosted stamina. You can use monster parts like tentacles and bat eyes to create Elixers that do roughly the same things but without the health recovery. The cooking is incredibly addictive and the music and charm of the food bouncing around in the pot makes this a system that you’ll want to use, rather than need to. You will also outfit Link in a variety of outfits that have some sort of stat like extra defense, better stealth, or surviving harsh climates. Several outfits and weapons are also locked behind the use of Amiibo’s, which also work as a method of collecting resources as well.

Breath of the Wild changes up the themed Dungeons of Zelda’s past by making them giant mobile animal shaped mechs from a long passed civilization. These animal shaped fortresses are called Divine Beasts and there are four of them. As you progress from the start of the game, you’ll find that Link shares a history with the custodians of these Beasts, a group of warriors that attempted to help Link and Zelda stop Calamity Ganon 100 years ago. Considering the world is currently ruled by said evil gives us a clue as to how well this attack went.

While the Dungeons are very creative and well designed, they sadly don’t last too long and can be cleared in well under an hour. Once you discover the map in each Dungeon, you can alter sections of the Beast to allow access to sections of the Dungeon that are normally blocked. The Divine Beast Vah Medoh, the Bird, as an example, can tilt left, right, or just remain straight flat. Despite the disappointing length to these locations, they are still very engaging experiences that I still rather enjoyed. I would say that my biggest complaint regarding them is their lack of variety inside each of the Divine Beasts as they look nearly identical from one to the next.

While the Divine Beasts were once used to destroy Ganon, here they are actually tools to be used by Ganon himself and conclude with a boss battle with one of his minions. Each Boss has an elemental effect that is paired with the type of Divine Beast they inhabit. While these encounters are fun and engaging, I had harder battles with some of the Lizard enemies found in various areas of the map. Each boss has a few phases that are rather easy to figure out and I honestly can’t remember if I died once during these encounters, or had much of a challenge provided to me. I still think they are rather entertaining, I just wish the fights were a little more challenging.

Despite the short length to the Dungeons and somewhat disappointing Boss battles, the real stars of the show in Breath of the Wild have got to be the Shrines. These 120 locations offer up combat challenges, puzzle rooms or just a simple room containing a chest. The combat challenges range in difficulty while the puzzle rooms are where the Shrines truly shine. These elaborate puzzles make great use of the motion controls that Nintendo has perfected here. I’ve had to tilt my controller almost entirely around to solve a few rolling ball puzzles or swung it like a golf club to send an orb flying. I’ve been stumped by a few puzzles like one where I had to transport an Ice Block from the start of the Shrine to the end, carrying it in my arms until I had to drop it to use Magnesis to block a wall of fire. I sat there wondering how I could move the Ice Block with my hands full using Magnesis until I figured out that I had to fail certain aspects of the objective to succeed.

I wish I could say that the underwhelming Dungeons and Bosses were the only issues I had with this near perfect masterpiece, but sadly, no, there are a few more problems with the game I need to mention. I’ll start with the biggest problem I had with the game; the rain. While I really loved the elemental effects that the game can offer with regards to creative game design, the rain can become more bothersome than anything else in the game. See, you can’t climb during the rain and often upon nearing the top of a mountain or needing to climb to find a Shrine or some other motivation for the tough climb, I’ve had rain storms show up suddenly and cause Link to just slip and fall off the mountain. While I didn’t find this to be game-breaking, it did lead to much frustration and often I would just give up on that area and move on to something else. Had some type of climbing claws or a climb-during-rain perk for the upgraded Climbing gear been made available later on in the game, I could have dealt with it, but as it stands now, rain can put a damper on how fun this game can be.

As for Link himself, he can be quite the problem as well. I’ve had to run away from various enemies and have had him auto-climb a tree or a rock or if you got too close to the camera and initiated the auto-climb, it can be a split second mistake that can cost you your life. While the auto-climb is great when you’re falling to your death and glide into a wall, it can be disastrous during a combat encounter, especially against enemies that can one-shot you. I also had an issue with the recovery speed of Link when he gets knocked down. Many times I would be knocked down by a Guardian or one of the Lion flavored Minotaurs, and before I could get up I’d be blasted or hit all over again. I don’t mind challenging combat, but at least let me get back up and get injured due to my own mistakes and not poor game design.

I’ve spent the better part of three days writing this review and wondered if I would award a perfect score to this game or not. While it has its flaws, it still is a game that I constantly think about and count the minutes in my work day till I can get home to play it again. I converse with friends and co-workers endlessly about this moment or the next, eager to see how someone tackled a particular foe or puzzle. Yes, the rain can be bothersome and yes Link can cling to a tree or rock during a crucial battle, but in the end, Breath of the Wild is a fantastic experience and worthy of the highest score I can possibly give. A game like this, one that raises the bar in so many areas, needs to be awarded praise and recognition. This is a game very untypical of Nintendo and it can be rare to see this type of genre redefined. Even after beating the game and tackling every Shrine the game has to offer, I am only just getting started, and until then, you’ll catch me east of Hebra Tower playing Snowball bowling for another 300 Rupees.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was reviewed on a retail copy of the game, and comments regarding the WiiU version were from observations of seeing it in action. All screen captures were taken from the Nintendo Switch via its upload to Twitter function.

Game Review: The Legend of Zelda – Breath Of The Wild (Switch) was originally published on Game-Refraction

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recentanimenews · 8 years

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FEATURE: Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale Review

Spoiler Warning for the entirety of Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale.

Some movies are made for a single moment.

For Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale, that moment is when Yui appears in the middle of the film's final battle—a showdown with the boss of the Aincrad Castle's Floor 100—bringing with her all of Kirito and Asuna's friends from stories past. There's a swell of music (the tune's called "let's join swords," and it's a remix of the franchise's most memorable track, "swordland"), and suddenly we see the silhouettes of Kirito's iconic dual blade against the backlighting. Along with back-up, Yui returns to Kirito and Asuna their appearances and weapons from the original Sword Art Online game, and the entire group explodes into frenetic action that carries through until final moment of the battle.

If you have even a shred of fondness for Sword Art Online as a franchise, particularly the Aincrad arc, this moment alone is worth seeing Ordinal Scale for. It's the moment the entire film drives toward, a rush of near-euphoric glee enough to make me scream with delight under my breath in the theater. It's been five years since the first season of Sword Art Online began airing and nearly three since SAO II ended, so it feels like we've been without new Sword Art Online long enough for it to feel like an event of the past (despite the continual chatter following the show since then). This, in turn, gives us enough space from the early days of Sword Art Online, the time when it truly felt new, that Ordinal Scale can actually get away with remembering Aincrad, both as an motion within the film itself and outside it with the fans.

I walk into my local showing of Ordinal Scale about 30 minutes before the film began, wondering what kind of crowd I'm going to see. An awkward pass in front of the screen looking for a seat later, I'm reassured that this won't be like some of my other anime filmgoing experiences, as the crowd is substantial—and boisterous. Occasional laughs about the "super easy" quiz questions rotating on the screen pepper the dull buzz of conversation; I hear one girl mutter "Must get" to herself with a vengeance upon seeing an ad for the recently released SAO mobile phone game. And although less interested in the welcome messages from LiSA, Haruka Tomatsu (Asuna), and Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (Kirito) before the film begins, by the final corny slow-motion fist pump from Matsuoka, a genuine cheer finally emerges from the crowd before giving way to silence and the movie's opening moments.

Whatever else was true of my company for Ordinal Scale, one thing was certain: these people were fans of Sword Art Online. And that was good, because this movie—all else aside—is for fans of Sword Art Online.

I'm no stranger to being a fan of things generally, but as a fan of Sword Art Online (it was one of the first anime I watched once I'd finally figured out what "anime" was and decided I wanted more) it was delightful to see Ordinal Scale speaking a language only those who care about this franchise—warts and all—can understand. In the moment when we see Starburst Stream unleashed once again or Yuuki's spirit embracing Asuna as the Mother's Rosario Sword Skill appears in a burst of purple lights, the film clearly, unavoidably asks but one thing of its audience: "Remember. Because if you remember how you felt when you watched Sword Art Online, this is for you."

So, that's the fanservice angle, but what's really neat about Ordinal Scale is that it pulls this metatextual conversation with its fans into the actual text of the film itself. The primary conflict in Ordinal Scale is, at its most basic level, one dealing with the importance of memories—specifically those of Aincrad. Memories that are immeasurably painful for some and bittersweet for others. One of Sword Art Online's ongoing themes has been a question of the validity and value of virtual experiences (although this idea's traced an admittedly inconsistent arc throughout the franchise's various stories), and so Ordinal Scale putting Asuna's memories of her time in Sword Art Online (the game) on the line aligns it strongly with this tradition—and, by the end of the film, doubles down on the Aincrad arc's very serious affirmation of the worth of such experiences.

So when Ordinal Scale instructs the audience to dig into their own memories, it marries the meaningfulness of the fan's memory to those that Kirito, Asuna, and their friends hold dear. Whether or not the memories were all good or all bad matters little—rather, the key is that they mean something to them (and, ultimately, carry tangible weight in the real world as well). In some ways this parallels the fan act of immersing yourself in a show, finishing it, and then fondly carrying on the memories of your time in the world with you as you move on with your life—possibly even allowing them to affect who you are as a person. Of course, it's not like this kind of unity between fanservice and themes is anything new, but it's certainly enjoyable to experience it with Ordinal Scale if, like me, you do carry some measure of affection for SAO.

This kind of textual/audience resonance aside, as a film for fans, Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale succeeds because it reaches for and achieves a single peak of unadulterated fan joy. It can be watched, thought of, and loved purely in these terms. That single shot of Kirito once again becoming the Black Swordsman who saved Aincrad justifies the entire movie. It was the only thing the film needed to do.

On the other hand, there are still 2+ hours of film that aren't that moment, I think it's still necessary that I note that on the whole Ordinal Scale is a surprisingly detached movie. While Ordinal Scale is certainly a more restrained, mature take on the world of SAO, at the same times it feels like it looses some of its charm in the attempt to present itself this way. The crisper, flatter character designs lend themselves less to diverse facial expressions than the more cartoony and moe designs from the TV series, and when paired with the lack of interesting character acting animation, the vividness of these characters had in the TV series finds itself drowning somewhat in the darker, grittier, colder world of augmented reality. It's without a doubt satisfying to see Kirito and Asuna looking and behaving like the young adults preparing to head off to college that they are, but I can't help but feel that the overall effect is one that makes the whole film feel rather cool in a way that lacks the passionate spirit of Kirito's over-the-top video game coolness from the TV series.

There's also a disappointing lack of immediacy in film's cinematography, which relies heavily on long shots that place the characters in large backgrounds and distance them from the camera. Director Tomohiko Ito and his friend Takahiro Shikama shared storyboarding duties for the film [1], and both have proven to be excellent at the task in past works like the Sword Art Online and ERASED, but the direction in Ordinal Scale is depressingly lifeless outside of the more dynamic action scenes, completely lacking the engaging energy of the TV series. One scene that's emblematic of this problem occurs midway through the film. Following Yuuna, Kirito finds himself on a bridge in the virtual world and talks with her. Framed with a long shot, we can only see the barest outline of each character's face, and even as Yoshitsugu Matsuoka's voice rises along with Kirito's frustration, all we see is Kirito walking in a basic cycle across the bridge towards Yuuna. The direction completely sucks the power out of the encounter—a frustrating pattern that recurs throughout the movie.

Happily, the story and script have a bit more of a spark to them, although the former is disconnected and the latter somewhat inane. It's fortunate that the key to the story of Ordinal Scale is, basically, that for the first time since Aincrad we finally have Asuna and Kirito's relationship back in the spotlight. Despite many battles that frankly don't always feel like they have actual stakes and the script's amusing failed attempts portraying friendly banter between Kirito and Asuna's group of friends (someone says something vaguely amusing, the rest of the group gently laughs), it's the promise that our two heroes made back on the 28th floor that holds it all together. If the final boss battle is the film's justification for existing, then it's Kirito and Asuna seeing the stars together at the film's end (and having their kiss interrupted by Yui lol) that validates the story.

Which, really, is just to say that Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale is, at heart, Sword Art Online—a sometimes bumbling, sometimes ineffective, impossibly dorky, and charming invention with nothing but the best of intentions. SAO being SAO, this was never going to be a perfectly crafted movie—but it captures so many of the charms of the franchise whilst also avoiding nearly all of its most aggravating faults. It may be a few dozen minutes longer than it needs to be, undercut its own the drama by putting off the twists until near the end of the film, and lack the personality-driven dialogue that could really have made its characters come to life on the big screen, but it's still trying to be good and succeeding just often enough that I can't find it in my heart to ignore those efforts.

And, again: Yui appears, the Black Swordsman and Lighting Flash Asuna return. That was everything. And it was glorious.

[1] Thanks to Canipa from the Canipa Effect for making available his list of the full animation staff for the film. Be sure to check out his video breaking down the film's staff and the paths they took to this movie.

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Isaac eases his compulsive need to write about anime on his blog, Mage in a Barrel. He also sometimes hangs out on Tumblr, where he mainly posts his drawing practice as he seeks to become a renowned idol and robot fanartist. You can follow him on Twitter at @iblessall or on Facebook.

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