| Game Design Brainstorm - Inventory Space |
[Dec. 26th, 2009|07:52 pm] |
In an effort to get our thinking caps on, I wish to post a design quandry to you all.
Recently, I was moving through a dungeon in a certain roleplaying game, when I came across the quandry that my inventory became full halfway through an incredibly long dungeon which made me not want to drop anything OR trudge back to the nearest seller.
Now, this is a common problem in RPGs, FPSs, and many other games these days. The flat limit of "You have a ton of stuff and you can now have no more" alongside the "Our dungeons are epic and expansive".
There have been many possible remedies to this, including:
*Scroll of Town Portal, popping you back, temporarily, to a homestead
*Sending an NPC back to town to sell your items, losing their fighting ability while helping you keep going
*Light/Medium/Heavy Loads, giving increasing detriment as you continue up towards the heavy load, although this still pushes players to trudge back through the dungeon
So I ask you to brainstorm. If you were halfway through a "dungeon" (as in, any lengthy environment away from base camp/stores), what features can you come up with to help alleviate, temporarily or otherwise, the burden of trudging back to base AND dropping items mid-dungeon. |
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| robin laid an egg |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|11:50 am] |
I think I have determined that I would like Christmas better if it were a workday. Still, you understand, keeping a lot of the cultural overkill in the run-up to it - but in my mind, the real holiday is December 24, because that's the actual height of anticipation, and the holiday itself will be spent in our pajamas, eating, if we are so lucky as to have extra food, or outside having some purposefully industrious Outing, or possibly being lonely and depressed and achingly bitter. I am pretty willing to partake in a lot of the depersonalized traditions involving rich food, horribly overplayed music, presents, numerous days off the dayjob and heightened inclination to give to charities, but as I'm not Christian, the significance of the big day is very much wasted on me, and the Victorian-inspired schmaltz is one big, bewildering collective party, already completely abstracted away from the idea of the birth of a god.
Perhaps it would be more logical for us heathens to abstract Christmas still further away from "Jesus, Lord at thy birth, Jeeeesus Looooord at thy birth", recognize the foregoing month as pretty much cultural foreplay, steal the New Years tradition of some big countdown to a grand orgasm finish, smash a crystal ball at midnight on the 24th, and spend the next day (or two, for Crimbo-observing countries, of which we totally should be one) refreshed and being extra-friendly and extra-badass at whatever we normally do anyway. Observing Christians should be entitled to take the day off, like it's Yom Kippur.
Perhaps I just think this because I'm not a big drinker, and have forgotten the festivity-extending qualities of eggnog and mulled wine. Clearly someone should bring me some frickin' eggnog.
In other news, I am massively sensitized to idea-fail as expressed by magazine cover design today. If the rag in question weren't already folding for lack of funds, I would be sending them a cranky letter for posing 4 employees of some random company with the white hipsterish dude standing beatifically over the black and white women, arms spread like a portrait of a 17th-century patriarch. Dammit, guys, that's not how it's done... but you're going out of business anyway. |
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| How did I do? |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|03:10 am] |
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Back at the beginning of the year, I made a list of resolutions. Now that 2009 is drawing to a close, I suppose I should evaluate how I did.
For 2009, I resolved:
- Not to learn anything: fail. At work, I learned a lot of technical stuff, and also learned about the green energy field and about working with utility companies. Thanks to the BSFC, I learned a bit about the process of getting a new organization off the ground. I learned some relationship lessons. And I learned a lot about Africa.
- Not to launch any products: fail. We launched Google PowerMeter this year with several utility partners (Yello, JEA, first:utility, and SDG&E) and device partners (TED and AlertMe).
- To become uglier and less happy: unfortunately, I made substantial progress on this one. This has been a tough year for me personally. I have been on an overall downward trajectory, and am ending this year much less excited about life than the last. As we put 2009 behind us, I hope I can turn the page and change this.
- To remain in the U. S. for the whole year: a big fat fail. I saw Africa for the first time, and it strengthened my resolve to do something good for those in the greatest suffering and need.
- Not to produce anything of noticeable benefit to others: fail. I contributed to the SMS for Life project, which is starting to show good results. In one of our pilot districts, stockouts were reduced by about 75%, which likely meant that lives were saved. I think it's reasonable to attribute some of this to the new information on stock levels that became available through our project. And I hope that the mapping piece I contributed made the project more effective, even though I have no direct evidence of that yet.
- To give up the guitar: wellll... I haven't given it up, but I've played it much less this year, and have barely played at all in the last few months.
- And absolutely not, under any circumstances, to build absurd contraptions: alas, I succeeded at this one.
What for 2010? I'm considering a few things. I guess the main thing I learned this year is what happens when I try to focus singlemindedly on saving-the-world goals to the exclusion of all else, including myself. It seems rational, but it's turned out to be pretty bad for me. I reached my limit and went beyond. I'm not sure exactly what to do next, but I'm thinking that I need more music in my life, and a commitment to enjoying life. Believe it or not, the latter is a very strange concept to me right now, and it's hard to accept. |
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| We are halfway through the SMS for Life pilot. |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|01:41 am] |
IBM put out a press release about the project today: Saving Lives with SMS for Life. See more articles at mobihealthnews, FastCompany, and Google News.After visits to clinics, hospitals and dispensaries across Tanzania, IBM, Novartis and Vodafone initiated a five-month pilot of the SMS for Life solution, covering 135 villages and over a million people in different geographic locations across Tanzania.
Vodafone, together with its technology partner MatsSoft, developed a system in which healthcare staff at each facility receives automated SMS messages, which prompt them to check the remaining stock of anti-malarial drugs each week. Using toll-free numbers, staff reply with an SMS to a central database system hosted in the United Kingdom, providing details of stock levels, and deliveries can be made before supplies run out at local health centres.
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During the first few weeks of the pilot, the number of health facilities with stock-outs in one district alone, was reduced by over 75 percent. The early success of the SMS for Life pilot project has the Tanzanian authorities interested in implementing the solution across the rest of the country. Tanzania has around 5,000 clinics, hospitals and dispensaries, but at any one time, as many as half could potentially be out of stock of anti-malarial drugs. This project is a collaboration among many people; I'm glad to be a small part of it, and it looks like we're helping the Tanzanian Ministry of Health achieve some significant reductions in stockouts. |
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| Unprecedented State of Busy |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|10:54 pm] |
Both now and in general. 2009 is probably the most notable year I can recall. It must have something to do with how busy I've been. Too busy to write in my LiveJournal, that's for sure. And there's been growth and development on all fronts: intellectual, financial, personal, interpersonal, professional, physical, etc.
At the same time, there are daily issues to overcome, stress of many projects and upcoming deadlines, and the occasional bout of exhaustion. I still need to pull my finances into better order, get my semi-professional brand out there as an umbrella for all my projects, and figure out at what point will I retire from pure technology. Most of my major projects are so long-term and require a constant stream of smaller projects to support them, I'm not sure I'll know when I've succeeded.
It may be that what I'll ultimately end up doing is moving where there are more people doing what I really want to do. Living here means I'm completely surrounded by startups and technology, so I can't help but spend cycles thinking about that. It frames my thinking and inspiration.
We'll see. |
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| Kickstarter 2010 in with a calendar |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|04:55 pm] |
You might recall that I made some photomosaics a while ago.
A while ago, I stumbled across a site where people can propose projects, and other people can pitch in to fund and participate in those projects. That site is Kickstarter, and there's a bunch of neat projects there, from a building project in Zimbabwe to an elephant conservation documentary to a spooky short film project to DIY fusion.
You'll admit, that's a range. But one thing that hasn't been there is a calendar of PhotoMosaics for 2010.
UNTIL NOW.
I'm asking for $1231 to make a calendar filled with photomosaics. Each month will have a collection of themes, like February will likely have Valentines and Black History pictures (along with probably 3 or 4 other themes). If you want to help out a lot, you can even submit a photo of your own for one of the months. Or select a theme for the big picture - maybe you want July's big theme to be National Ice Cream Month. Done and done.
Or, maybe you'd like someone's birthday, or your anniversary to be printed in the calendar for all to see. For a mere $150, it will be so.
That link again: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davelecompte/2010-photomosaic-calendar-0
Tell your friends! |
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