• I am really really jealous

    Hours Categories Reading, Watching
    Comments 4 Comments

    I’ve mentioned many times here my love of Neil Gaiman’s work. Well, check out what happened to this other blog that apparently mentioned it more times than me. 😉

    A little over a month ago I was privileged to be able to share with you an interview with artist Lisa Snellings. The last comment (currently) in that post was from someone named ‘Coraline’ that read, “Hi there! I’ve got a question for you – can you please email me at [email address removed]“. The link to Coraline’s name took me to a website featuring information on the forthcoming film of the same name based on the beloved contemporary children’s classic by author Neil Gaiman.

    With great anticipation I sent off an email and quickly received a response from one of the members of the Coraline Team, the group of animators who worked with director Henry Selick to bring Neil Gaiman’s book to life.

    I was informed that the Coraline Team would like to send me “something special. Something handcrafted. We only made 50 of these something specials, and we think yours will be right up your alley.”

    — Stainless Steel Droppings » Blog Archive » An Unexpected Pleasure.

  • Reflections Across the Board: The “Music” of Game Design: Part 1

    Hours Categories Game talk

    Here’s a cool, very game-grammary approach to board game design that is inspired, as my initial game notation work was to some degree, by music.

    What I arrived at was a series of “discoveries” or “conclusions” about specific models of game design that I assert can help one in the process of identifying not only problems in a game design but also what may be lacking or not present yet that could help a game reach the next level. As I arrived at these conclusions, I found that they felt very much like many of the typical principles of composition that I encountered while studying music.

    via Reflections Across the Board: The “Music” of Game Design: Part 1.

    The bulk of the article ends up examining a particular “atom” called the “Tri-Level Resource Exchange Model.” Atoms like these are usually termed “design patterns” in software. The article lands at identifying the number 5 as apparently very important in this model; I don’t think it is coincidence that it fits nicely in the famous 7 +/2 range.

  • Database “sharding” came from UO?

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 14 Comments

    Lessons Learned: Sharding for startups is a technical post about database scalability. What caught my eye was the term. What an odd term — “sharding.” Why would a database be described that way?

    So I started reading a bit about it. It basically means running a bunch of parallel databases and looking into the right one, rather than trying to cram everything into one.

    Near as I can tell, a quick Google seems to say that the term came about because of a guy who worked at Friendster and Flickr, and seems to . Wikipedia has only had an article for a little while. In the comment thread at Lessons Learned, there’s mention of the term being used in 2006.

    Flickr, of course, was born as an MMO called Game Neverending. In fact, I was quoted in Ludicorp’s business plan, and Stewart Butterfield had asked if I could be an advisor, but I couldn’t do it at the time because of my contract with Sony. Sigh. Anyway, I would be shocked if the term “shard” hadn’t been thrown around those offices… because in MMOs, of course, “shards” has a very specific meaning and history.

    Read More “Database “sharding” came from UO?”

  • Wikipedia, muds, and where the sources are

    Hours Categories Game talk, Misc
    Comments 31 Comments

    Edit: slightly updated with one more “what have I learned” and a few more links. But I could add links to this for hours. 😛

    So at this point, the whole kerfuffle over the MUD articles on Wikipedia has reached a fever pitch, and I am a bit exhausted by it all. Of course, not so exhausted that I can’t write 2500 more words about it.

    But it has been an interesting education for me in how Wikipedia works, and I’d especially like to thank Adam Hyland for his patience explaining it all. I am a bit dismayed that both Richard & I were tagged by some in the debate as biased or “canvassed” or whatever the term is, when I think we both acted in good faith… but there are plenty of folks on the AfD discussion who have pointed this out.

    Me being who I am, it of course led me to dig deeper into citations there in Wikipedia (hey look, ma, I’m a reliable source! No, wait, I’m not!). I think at this point that in theory, I’m a valid source. This may seem like an odd thing to wonder about or worry about, but hey, how can I help issues like this if not? I mean, this is right at the top of the whole MUD category:

    MUDs and Notability — It Ain’t Gonna Work

    Alright, I’ve been pondering this for several days, and I gotta tell you, I’ve got next to nothing. I’ve been in the Mudding community for over eight years at this point, and I’ve been a Mud administrator/coder/builder for over four years. I’d like to think I know the community pretty well. Here’s the dilemma: wikipedia guidelines require that articles on subjects maintain a certain level of notability. That is there are sources not directly related to the subject of the article. In the case of Muds this means we need to find some sort of third party source (be it a review, a listing, etc…) for each and every MUD listed on wikipedia that wasn’t written by players or staff of the MUD in question.

    Well, that’s bloody near impossible.

    — from the Talk page for the entire MUD category

    So I decided to take a look at sourcing. I picked LegendMUD and my name, because though I may not be able to edit those articles, I do know the topics! In fact, I am an expert on me, though biased. 🙂 Read More “Wikipedia, muds, and where the sources are”