A History of Tetris Randomizers

This article about randomizers in the game Tetris is very cool!

(Tip of the cap to Mike Cook.)

Tales from the ArXiv: Was the AI Eaten by a Grue?

This paper, called NAIL: A General Interactive Fiction Agent, describes an autonomous agent for general parser-based interactive-fiction games.

(In my quick glance, I noticed a couple of slightly misleading statements about Infocom and their text-adventure games. For example, one figure implicitly seems to suggest that Trinity came out in the early 1980s, but it actually came out in 1986. I know, I know: I am being very picky.)

I hope that they didn't get eaten by a grue.

Or, given that I mentioned Trinity, maybe they reached into the beehive for a third time?

The Origin of Zork

Here is a short article about the origin of the landmark text-adventure computer game Zork.

We should calculate some network statistics of the Great Underground Empire map. (See the salient hand-drawn figure in the article.)

British Isles with 41 City-States, Raging Barbarians, and Mega Luxuries

Civilization VI!!!

Oh, Hell yes!!!!

Just. One. More. Turn.

(Tip of the cap to Louis Wang.)

You Know What Comes Next: Civilization Edition

I braced myself when I saw this, because I knew what was coming...

Instabul (Not Constantinople)

Fun Fact: I am playing as the Byzantines in Civ V, so the default city is Constantinople (which I of course renamed "Instabul" because it had to be done). I just got my second city, which now has the default name of "Constantinople" because I wasn't using that name. :)

When I conquer the Ottomans' "Instanbul" (or if I play as them), I do the analogous renaming, of course. It simply must be done.

Too Many Turns?

I keep reading the local "Christmas Art and Craft Fair" signs as "Christmas Antiaircraft Fair" signs. Clearly, I have been playing Civ V way too much lately...

(This isn't quite as extreme as the Tetris pieces that used to fall when I closed my eyes and went to bed, but I still don't think that this is a good sign.)

Just... One... More... Turn...

I started playing Civ V last night.

I Have Civ V

My copy of Civilization V, which I ordered through Amazon last Saturday, was waiting for me in my Somerville mailbox when I checked it today (I just got back just over 3 hours ago). Now the question is how long I will be able to resist playing it. This might have a substantial influence on my productivity this term. :)

Just... one... more... turn.

Tales from the arXiv: Online and Offline Gangs

Here is a new paper--just posted on the arXiv preprint server--by one of my collaborators that you might find interesting:

Title: Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by common team dynamic

Authors: Neil F. Johnson, Chen Xu, Zhenyuan Zhao, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nicholas Yee, George Tita, Pak Ming Hui

Abstract: Quantifying human group dynamics represents a unique challenge. Unlike animals and other biological systems, humans form groups in both real (offline) and virtual (online) spaces -- from potentially dangerous street gangs populated mostly by disaffected male youths, through to the massive global guilds in online role-playing games for which membership currently exceeds tens of millions of people from all possible backgrounds, age-groups and genders. We have compiled and analyzed data for these two seemingly unrelated offline and online human activities, and have uncovered an unexpected quantitative link between them. Although their overall dynamics differ visibly, we find that a common team-based model can accurately reproduce the quantitative features of each simply by adjusting the average tolerance level and attribute range for each population. By contrast, we find no evidence to support a homophilic version of the model, nor does conventional time-aggregated network analysis help unravel the dynamics.


Based on the format of the paper, it may have been submitted to Nature or Science.

Lord British in Space

You don't believe me? Just take a look at this article.

Life imitates Civilization?

The title of this article is making me think of the game Civilization (and its sequels). Maybe Bush II thinks he's playing a live-action version of this game? (Can we just stick to trying for the cultural victory? Pretty please!)

I can no longer take your vile provocations. Prepare for WAR!

2007: The Year in Gaming

How's this for a belated blog entry. I should have written this one in December.

Now it's time to discuss the year in gaming. First of all, here is what I wrote in 2006.

Let's break this down by category:


Board (and card) games:

For one thing, I played Ticket to Ride correctly for the first time. I enjoyed the game both with the correct way of playing and with the incorrect one, and I was even still able to apply graph theory intuition when playing it correctly. I'd like to get a UK edition of the game because I've been on several of the routes now.

I also played the British Isles Edition of Apples to Apples, which contains a mixture of cards that could be in any version of the game and some that are specialized for this one. Among the latter, I now understand a few things but most of them are still almost completely lost on me. Obviously, this game is awesome.

Another expansion I tried is the Dunwich Horror Expansion to Arkham Horror, which makes the game even more complicated/involved than it was before. One new featured that I very much appreciated was the opportunity to develop psychological problems when one runs out of brains unless automatically going to Arkham Asylum. Mmmmm... braaaaaaaains.

Speaking of braaaaaaains, I also played the non-zombie version of Fluxx. One way to describe this---who was the person who described it this way? It wasn't me...---is as 1000 Blank White Cards with rules. It was extremely fun, even without the zombies.

Another card game I played is Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot, which is an expandable card game. It is like the game Nuclear War, except with bunnies. The game dragged on the couple of times I played it, and I wonder if some of the expansions help.

I also tried Blokus this year. That was pretty fun.

I'm sure there are other board/card games I tried for the first time this year. Some of them that I have tried pretty recently are coming to mind, but I'm pretty sure that all of those date from 2006 or earlier.


Role-playing games:

Let's see... I played in two one-shots in March when we visited Mylanda in Florida. I played a somewhat monkly kobold (though he actually had one level each in three different classes) in a D & D game. I'd really like to spend a lot more time playing as this character (which I was really getting into), but given the game's one-shot nature, that probably won't happen. My die rolls when creating the stats for this character were just about the best rolls I've ever seen. The other one-shot was a Serenity game that Zifnab ran. (Mike)^2 was able to participate via video iChat, and this was done in quite a clever manner. (We were the field team and he was back at the ship. It worked quite well, though I think my feet occasionally got in the way of my laptop's camera.)

After I got to Oxford, I played in a Vampire game without vampires. We used the psychic powers expansion book, and my character specialized in seeing and interacting with dead people. The setting was contemporary Oxford and it was interesting to play in a world that was basically my current world with a fantastical twist. I believe that there will be a sequel to this minicampaign at some point.


Console games:

I played Guitar Hero II for the first time in January when I visited Travis and worked up my skill level from needing to play even the early songs at easy to being able to pass Freebird at medium. (I had seen the game before but hadn't played it, and I had played a total of one or two songs on the original Guitar Hero.) I also spent a bunch of time playing this in Pasadena and its environs at various times throughout the rest of the year. When I visited Travis again in August, we worked our way through Guitar Hero: Rock the 80s, although only a few of the songs were ones I really liked. (Unfortunately, they didn't include too many new wave songs. I did, however, find out just how much knowing a song really well helps one with this game.)

More recently, I played a lot of Rock Band when I visited the gang in December and January. The guitar stuff was more of the same (though it was cool to play using the spiffy perky goth guitarist who I designed), and I was trying to make the transition from medium to hard (which I am finding to be extremely difficult!). I can do some songs on hard with effort, and I can now actually get 100% on some songs in medium, which is quite a far cry from where I was in January 2007. The rest of the gang is much better than I am, but I'm happy with improving my ability compared to what I was before. It doesn't matter how I compare with other people. Playing the drums was really fun, and I am currently making headway through the songs on medium level. As I wrote in a separate blog entry a while back, the thing that makes Rock Band special is rocking out with ones friends. That's what I liked best about the game. I wouldn't get close to as much out of it playing on my own.

I got my Wii in 2007, so I've spent some time with a few of those games. I did some Wii sports, which is basically a tech demo. It serves it's purpose, however. My favorite game on it is tennis, and the boxing game is quite exhausting (especially when one is punching madly before the game actually starts! Oops...). Making a Mii is pretty cool as well. Mine actually resembles me quite a bit, and my collection now includes Miis that several of my students (and a few of my colleagues) have made. I tried Rayman Raving Rabids, which has lots of minigames. There was one that I just couldn't handle at all (sometimes, one has to just recognize that something isn't working), but watching others play the game and the associated sense of humor was a pretty fun diversion. But there were only a couple of minigames that was interested in actually playing.

I have now beaten the boss in Super Paper Mario, though I still want to do the pipe of 100 battles (or whatever its called) and the 100 consecutive battles against the Samar people (I died at the 90th battle yesterday... bloody Hell!). As with prior games in the series, this one has an excellent sense of humor. Also, Mario's special 3D ability is awesome and the allusions to things like Flatland (the first world is called "Lineland" and, for instance, has fake mathematical equations in the background), nerd culture (Francis is awesome), and more were really great! I'm also almost done with Zelda: Twilight Princess. I'm on the final boss battle (which I tried once and failed), and I plan to do the Cave of Ordeals after that. It's not a huge jump over recent Zelda games, but there were some very clever additions (like Spiderlink and the ball-and-chain weapon). My copy of Super Mario Galaxy arrived, but I haven't technically tried it yet. I will soon. Also on the docket (finally!) is Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which will arrive pretty soon after its layover in Pasadena.

I tried a bunch of console games and a couple of card games at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). (See my old blog entry on that.) It's not really worth getting into the various details because there would be too much to write to cover all the things I tried. I beat one of the designers at an incomplete version ('You can't play as that monster yet.') of a Godzilla game for the Wii. That game wasn't very good, but I pretty much just tried it because it was there. Another of the many games I tried was a Wii version of ping pong, which I had previously tried for the XBOX 360. I prefer playing in real life.


Portable games:

I also played a couple of Nintendo DS games, and I am eagerly anticipating playing the DS version of N+, which I tried at PAX for a different system and which was most recently slated to come out two days ago. (I plan to pick it up while I'm in LA, assuming it's actually come out.) I have done a bit of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, although I have lately been concentrating on my console games. I also played some Puyo Pop Fever (Did I actually buy this in 2006? I don't remember anymore.), whose computer players are ludicrously challenging in the player-versus-player mode! (Somebody should have playtested that better, because it reached ridiculous levels.) Of course, I am quite pleased to have a DS version of Puyo Puyo. "Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!" Also, I think I spent some time playing New Super Mario Brothers last year, but that was more of a 2006 thing. I ought to finish that game at some point...


Computer games:

I played some Civilization IV and decided that I really like cultural victories. That's about it. (Does Scrabulous count?)



I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing, but this entry is already way too long, and I should have written it in December anyway...

Just...one...more...turn.

Civ IV arrived in the mail today, bringing with it familiar feelings and addiction.

In the absence of companionship, one can spend more time with one's Wii. And in the absence of a Wii (because I have not yet been able to procure one and I am unwilling to spend tons of money or tons of time in the process), one can have a few more turns. (I'll also get some more work done, but now is definitely a good time for me to get Civ IV and I finally have a computer at home that can handle it. I wasn't going to install it on my office computer... I know what this series of games can do.)

Anyway, I stopped for tonight because I'm eager to read a chapter or two of a book with which I'm almost done. I also want to blog about a movie that I recently saw. (I think there are something like 5 movies I still want to review, and I'm pretty sure I have more Oxford stuff about which I want to blog---though my memory is starting to get hazy about specifics I may have wanted to mention. Maybe they'll come back to me.)

I used shuffle settings in my first Civ IV game, and I believe there may only be two civilizations. I finished exploring my island and there aren't too many other good places to found a city, so I'm quickly advancing my naval capabilities so I can go take over other continents.