gran viaje

Game Telemetry and Crowd Sourcing New Game Services: How you take over the game business

2012-01-31T15:33:00.001+08:00

A while back, I went for a talk given by Rich Hilleman, VP, Chief Creative Director, Electronic Arts. For those who do not know him, he's the brains behind Madden Football, and many other EA Sports titles. I don't play sports games often (since I suck at them), I first found out about Rich from an interview from Joystiq.

It shouldn't come as a surprised that a huge part of his talk focused on Sports games. As a runner and football (or soccer, as they call it in the US) fan myself, I didn't exactly need convincing with regards to the power of sports. Rich's theory of how Ping Pong Diplomacy kicked started the video game Pong was pretty awesome though. Essentially, Rich believes that we have to thank Glenn Cowan for gatecrashing the Chinese Ping Pong bus for video games. Had he not done that, the ping pong craze of the 70s would not have inspired the creation of Pong.

Sports Games are given less credit than they are due
Sports games are probably not one of the first games that new games developers would be lining up to develop. And for good reason. Often criticized for basically churning out the same game every year, and using it as spinning money, its hard for any budding developer to be excited about the prospect of working with sports games.

Rich gave a few compelling reasons why developers should want to come to sports games:

Technology. While it may be easy to assume that sports games don't bother pushing the tech, thats probably far from the truth. Any game developer who thinks otherwise clearly has not been following the gaming news. Animation, Motion Capture are a few of the examples where EA Sports are dealing with bleeding edge tech. Because of its reach, things like metagaming

Truthfully, I have never underestimated the technical challenge of a sports game. However, technology alone is not a big enough reason to build sports games. I want to working on something that excites me, and the tech is pretty much moot. I mean, its always cool to be playing with the latest tech, but thats just a means to the end.
Unique Development Environment and Challenges. An annual audience is great to collect user feedback, iterate design and improve the franchise. This data is something that any game studio would kill for, and thats what EA has for their sports IPs. Sports faces many interesting challenges, typically UI issues. There is a great divide between how we watch sports, how we play sports and how we play sports video games. (e.g. a 3D football game would have too much information for a user to consume)

Again, I think every single genre has its own set of unique development environment and challenges. I think while some game developers underestimate the difficulty of sports game development, I do not believe that most are unaware of it. Its probably not a big deterring factor against choosing sports game development.
Sports and culture. Rich shared several stories where he believes that EA Sports games have influenced actual gameplay (Scoreboard ticker used by Sky sports, a football player running along the touchdown line to run down the clock, a random gentlemen who can't figure out how to beat his son at NHL asking Rich how to do so).

In an era where beating on video games because they promote "bad" values, sports game may one of the only few games out there that seem to promote "good" values. Rich sees sports game developers as coaches, and players as athletes. A sports game developer's goal is to teach players how to play, make the practice what they've learnt, and finally mastering the skills - sounds familiar? that's exactly how sports coaches work.

I'm probably one of the last people in that room who needs to be convinced of the impact and influence of sports. To me, this is probably the biggest draw to want to enter sports game development. However, I don't think this resonates with most game developers. As Rich put it, most of the game developers don't take kindly to jocks since they were the ones being stuff in lockers by jocks.

So in terms of selling sports game development to us, I wasn't too convinced. I perfectly understand that the good work being done in sports game, but it isn't something I want to do. However, there were many other things I took away from the talk, but I'll just the two I found most important.

Fidelity is based on the accuracy in the minds of the players.

Well, guess what, Rich is not the only one who feels this way. "Players don't want super realistic flight simulators, they want to be Tom Cruise (in Top Gun). Similarly, players don't want to play football realistically, because they suck at it in real life."

I think at times, we get over our own heads in trying to be realistic. Peripherals like Kinect or Wii creates big traps to try to use the technology to be super realistic. However, I think its good to keep in mind that as game designers, our primary role should be fun. How many times have we seen "super realistic" games crash and burn critically and financially?

A video about Video Games and the Uncanny Valley I watched a while back comes to mind. While not completely related, I think it ties in with the pursuit of realism and fidelity. Perhaps accuracy is overrated, and we should start designing more to fantasy, not reality.

Empathy for your colleagues, for your players.

This was Rich's first answer to "What do you look out for in Game Producers?", amongst other more technical requirements. The core ingredient behind games is people. Again, more common sense, but easily something that game designers might forget.

Empathy for players probably refers to how as designers' our job is really to make it fun for the,. and not to show that we're smarter than them. Empathy for colleagues is probably extremely important during crunch times where tempers flare and communication breaks down.

Looking at the above ideas that Rich shared, you'll probably realised that it does not only apply to game development, but software development.

Signing off. There are no shortage of great upcomings talks, and I'll continue to share them here.

[Review] Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

2011-12-08T21:19:00.001+08:00

NOTE: I've decided to reorganize how I dealt with the review. I will talk about the game itself in one post, and deal with the controls in a separate post. I'll also be editing the posts to add pictures.

I grew up with Zelda games, with Link's Awakening being the first game I remember playing to completion. I've since played almost every Zelda game, except its Game Cube outing. All in all, I think Skyward Sword is a suitable swan song for Wii and a celebration of Zelda's 25th Anniversary. The best (and perhaps the worse) of Zelda through its history has all been brought back. I shall discuss the various aspects of the games, and what I felt. Naturally, I will avoid spoilers, but when illustrating some of my points, I might pull out specific instances in the game.

For anyone not familiar with Zelda, it has built its success on the same formula. You start with a sword and shield and have to save the princess from an evil force. In each dungeon, you find a new item, which you will use henceforth to complete the dungeon, defeat the boss and that opens up new areas in the overworld, leading you to the next overworld area and dungeon. Since A Link to the Past, Zelda games typically involve time/inter-dimension travel, through which Zelda's exquisite gameplay and dungeon design is flaunted. Zelda games have an aspect of “open-ness” in that there also are collectables and mini-games available in the game. However, the main storyline and the order of dungeons (except the first game) are pretty linear. Eventually, you get to a showdown with the great evil and rescue the princess.

Having played all previous Zelda games, I completed the game, uncovering every piece of heart by myself, in about 50 hours. So, I think 50 hours is about right for anyone playing for the first time. If you want to dig out all the hearts, it will take another 10-15 hours, probably less if you look up an online guide. In my second play through, I didn't dig up everything, and completed it in about 25 hours. About an hour or 2 went to perfecting the boss rush mode.

The controls have arguably been the most divisive amongst fans and reviewers alike. Essentially, the game makes use of Wii Motion Plus, which allows you to have one-to-one sword controls, amongst other things. The direction you swing your remote affects how Link swings his sword, giving you unparalleled immersion in any Zelda game. As a result, you can no longer blindly waggle your controller, instead each strike has to be strategic and purposeful to defeat your foes. In theory, this makes for an exciting Zelda game. However, the controls are clearly not without issues and I've looked at it as objectively as I could. However, anyone who manages to get the controls working will probably enjoy themselves and not understand what the haters are talking about. Fans who are unable to do so, get ready to use your nostalgia and expectations of the game to tide you past the controls. Anyone who already hates motion controls, don't expect this game to change your mind.

While I cannot blame Nintendo for wanting Zelda to be the poster child of their innovation, I can completely understand how motion controls have and will continue to piss people off. Nintendo may have proved that it is possible to build a hardcore game using motion controls, however, I personally felt that they did it at the expense of Zelda. Sure, the game is great, but I leave you with two questions: Would you have stuck through the controls if this was not a Zelda game? If this game had the controls from Twilight Princess, how much of the experience would have been completely lost?

The presentation seems to be the next most debated issue. Like Wind Waker, the designers have once again manage to use their art style to present the game fantastically. Except, impressionist art is used instead of cell-shaded animation this time around. While there are moments in the game that will easily make you forget that you are playing an SD game, there are just as many moments that does the Wii no favours in the eyes of the typical core gamer today who looks for realistic graphics.

Don't get me wrong, I love the art style. However, there are textures that clearly have been given less attention then others. There are objects which could have benefited from more polygons. Other than that, I love the art presentation.

Many reviewers point out that Skyward Sword are lacking many of the tools to compete with the current generation games. They include lack of voice acting, and quest logs, just to name a few. The former belongs to the "style" category. I really think you're barking up the wrong tree here. I don't think voice acting would significantly change the game. So what if every other current generation game today has it? Its almost as ludicrous as the "good graphics make good games" argument.

However, the latter belong the the UX (user experience) category. I personally feel that Skyward Sword has to improve here. I recall in Twilight Princess, every time you boot up the game, the first time you pick up a rupee of a denomination more than 1, you would be given a brand new dialogue. Skyward Sword improved on this by removing it for the rupees, but forgot to do it for some of the collectables. Skyward sword also has no quest log, which really becomes an issue when you're running multiple side quests, but eventually can't keep track.

Some of these UX issues really need to go. Most of the people playing your games are seasoned fans. Do I really need to hear a prompt every time I enter a new area? It easily gets on your nerves and at times I really rather figure out stuff myself, like how the original Zelda was. I think how Deus Ex handle the problem was good - have difficulty settings, in harder difficulty settings, you lose basic helpful UI elements. I understand that you want to ensure that the game is more accessible to newcomers. Fair enough. To us, your loyal fans, we already know what to do.

Other times, the UX really could be streamlined. If I were to buy potions for the 50th time, do I really still need to hear what that potion does? No. One of the most annoying instances is during the skydiving minigame. The minigame is hard, so a typical gamer would probably need to play it more than 20 times to get the perfect score. However, every time you talk to the NPC, you have to go through all his standard banter. Then you have to walk and drop into the cannon (which is blocked by a hatch so you have to detour slightly), to be launched upwards. Is any of this necessary? Would walking to the cannon immerse me anymore? No. Is it hard to automatically launch me up? No. This is not the only instance of such issues. Some of these problems are dealt with (automatically returning to listing of items to be upgraded after upgrading one of them), while other are not. I'm nitpicking here, but I think more thought put in here would reduce the frustration caused.

Excluding UX issues, the rest of the presentation is, in my opinion, an issue of personal preference. If you want great set piece moments, voice acting and excellent realistic graphics, go play Modern Warfare (which incidentally has some terrible textures in specific areas) or Battlefield. However, there is cause for concern here. I worry for Nintendo, whether they would have the expertise and resources to compete in the HD era when they head over to the Wii U. Skyward Sword took 5 years to develop. Would 2016 be too late for the first HD Zelda title?

I'm actually done getting all the negativity (from me) out of the way. Because at the core of these UX, presentation, controls issues, is solid gameplay and level design. Zelda games comes from a long tradition that excel in both these aspects, Skyward Sword is basically a tribute to the fans. The level design is probably the best in the series. Its very streamlined, so if you're not killing monsters, you're figuring out how to open up the next door. The best design, as with Zelda games' past record, shines when it involves time travel. I really would have wanted more time travel related gameplay because I had so much fun there.

Modern Warfare and Uncharted may have great set piece moments. However, I think Zelda does just as well through its boss fights. Every boss fight is memorable and fun to play. In Hero's mode (unlocked after one play through), you lose twice as much health and hearts cannot drop from the environment or enemies, your skill is tested. I would have liked to see how time travel could be involved in the one boss fight (for example, you have to go to the past to weaken the boss first, then only in the present could you damage it).

Reviewers have laid criticism on the gameplay as well, claiming that it is too formulaic and involves too much backtracking. Its hard to take some of these reviewers to seriously when they talk about being formulaic, because the same reviewers would seem to forget this criticism on other current generation games, great as those games might be. However, the criticism is not without reason. Throughout the game, there was only one or two moments I had to stop and think to figure out what to do next. Being so well trained with the other Zelda games, I pretty much knew what to expect and what to do. Aonuma has promised that its time to shake things up, and I think its about time. As for the backtracking, I think its a matter of perspective, and tolerance. I found it perfectly alright, since I regarded the three main areas as part of the overworld. So the only obvious backtracking to a specific dungeon only occurs once.

If you look at what's stacked against it (debatable motion controls, weak hardware, dated presentation), and then you think about how its still going places in the eyes of gamers and critics alike, its hard not to be impressed. If anything, it tells you how solid the core of the game is, despite its many issues. However, the reality is harsh. I think Nintendo and Zelda faces an uphill battle in the coming years. There are areas in which Nintendo and Zelda must improve, while other areas Zelda can and should stubbornly defend.

I thoroughly enjoyed my 70 hours with the game, but like many, my experience was initially marred by the controls. I sometimes wonder how such big titles can release games with such issue. Its unthinkable that these issues were not picked up by testers. Were they simply pressured into releasing the game with these issues, or were they blind to the issues? I seriously hope its not the latter, especially when you listen to what Nintendo themselves say about the game. Come on Reggie, I am a big fan of the series, but I really wouldn't put aside the competition. I hope the series learns from the issues from this outing, and defy expectations once again in its next outing.

What went wrong with Skyward Swords controls?

2011-12-08T21:16:00.000+08:00

NOTE: This is not the full review of Skyward Sword, just the controls.

Despite the E3 demo gaffe during its 2010 E3 Demo by the legendary Miyamoto, many looked forward to the promise of an immersive control scheme. However, a quick look over the internet, it is easy to find out that the controls is one of the most divisive issues amongst fans and critics alike.

Shane Satterfield from GameTrailers spared no expense at bashing the game's controls. In fact, he guaranteed that you would at least have one moment in the game where you want to throw your controller at the TV in frustration. I respect the man and his views, but at times can’t help but disagree with his obvious biased view. Even so, I cannot help but admit that I had on a few occasions, experienced what he said. I was held back only by the fact that my Wiimote was the brand new gold 25^th Anniversary edition.

Now let me try to break down this whole control saga and make some sense of it. Skyward Sword continues Nintendo's foray into motion controls, this time making use of Wii Motion Plus. These controls are used a few areas, namely: Swordplay (including Shield), Travel, and other miscellaneous gameplay. Let me first talk about these points in order, talk about non-motion control issues, and finally sum up with my thoughts on motion controls, and its use in this game.

Swordplay

Nintendo has been promoting Skyward Sword for its "1-to-1" control. It's supposed to make every fight exciting and immersive. Swordplay is integral from start to the end. Swordplay is perhaps the most maligned aspect of Skyward Sword. It has been accused of being unresponsive, inaccurate and all in all frustrating.

After my first playthrough, I was extremely disappointed with the controls. "This can't be right! How could Nintendo screw up that badly? Am I doing this wrong?" were amongst the thoughts that ran in my mind. I took a break and looked up what everyone else in the world thought about the swordplay. Amongst the banter of cynics ("Skyward Swords controls absolutely sucks! Not responsive at all! I'm an expert gamer!!!!") and fanboys ("The controls are perfect, you only find it bad cos you suck! It works for me, so you must be doing it wrong or your remote is faulty. No more waggling! Immersive gameplay FTW!"), it was hard to get a good gauge of what exactly was wrong. Furthermore, level-headed reviews on controls either showed basic areas, or had controls work perfectly for them, providing no clue on what I was doing wrong. However, I chanced upon a forum thread in gamespot that explained how the controls should be working. Upon finding out the "right" way to do it, the game became much more fun.

One of the first complaints that surface is the accuracy, or the inaccuracy of the sword strikes. This occurs as early as the first monster you encounter - Deku Babas, These plantoids only open the mouth either horizontally or vertically, and they can only be killed if you strike them in that corresponding direction. The problem that arises is that it seems to lack accuracy. In the previous Zelda game, you could slouch on the couch and flick my wrists. Almost immediately you find out that this cant be done here. Wrists movements alone may not always accurately be reflected. However, more exaggerated movements from elbows down would more likely be captured by the controller. So, you'll need to sit up to play Skyward Sword.

I personally found that if you're sitting upright, and using deliberate swings, you'll probably get it right 80-90% of the time. The remaining failures occur when your strike is at the borderline case. I think that this has always been the limitation of motion controls, and Nintendo has already done its best in this regards. Inaccurate strikes become a big issue when you fight against bosses that penalize you when you strike wrongly. Later enemies/mini bosses/bosses counter inaccurate strikes, and deal damage to you. This will undoubtedly cause frustration. When this causes death, it’s easy to see how gamers will blame the game's control instead of their own lack of skill.

The second, and perhaps biggest complaints is misinterpretation of Wiimote adjustment as a sword strike. If an enemy is blocking right, and you were originally holding your remote on the right, you would move your remove from right to left, then strike rightwards. Unfortunately, the adjustment process is misinterpreted as a sword strike, and you end up with an unnecessary strike. In most times, this is ok, but like inaccurate strikes, this becomes an issue when enemies punish you. This becomes even more unfair, since an unintended input was picked up.

This problem is exacerbated by one of the early monsters you meet - the Bokoblin. The Bokoblin holds up his sword to block one side, leaving the other invulnerable. The catch is, the Bokoblin's AI has periods where it almost instantly picks up where your Wiimote is being held, and blocks that same direction. This easily gives the wrong perception that you need to adjust your sword quickly, to try to be faster than the monster. I can see how for many gamers this might form the wrong impression, because in a large part of the game, you actually have more time to think and deliberate your strikes. Gamers are essentially left in a lose-lose situation here. If you try to out-pace the monster, you take unnecessary counter damage due to misinterpreted adjustment strikes. If you take your time, you are not given an opening since the monster will almost always block where you're holding your sword, and eventually they will attack you.

With the later monsters being able to block more directions and counter mistakes, it is not hard to see why so many gamers are bemoaning the poor controls. In truth, the game has misinformed you. This has not been helped by the game's promotional material such as videos, articles, and its famed "one-to-one controls" tag - which promotes you to use deliberate strikes. Sword position and strike angle is in fact independent of each other. This means that you can hold my sword right, causing the enemy AI to block right, yet twitch the remote left to right to still strike from the left. Once you figure this out, the game becomes much more enjoyable as it adds a different dimension of allowing you to "feint" the enemy. Unfortunately, the game never corrects this misconception (at least, I was never able to find a clear in-game instruction that did so), so unless you already figured it out yourself, you're going to be facing a hard time in your last few boss fights.

There is then another big debate over whether this is "realistic" or not. Personally, that does not bother me. I think once you figure this out, the games controls are pretty much fixed. It may not be realistic, but it works as a control scheme. Instead, for the duration of the whole first play through, I defeated this annoyed monsters by "exploits", such as sneaking up on enemies, shield bashing and waggling after getting the lucky first strike. Fortunately, later bosses and enemies required usage of your new items, which was a welcome break for me. Had I not bothered to find out the "right way", I don't think I would have enjoyed the second playthrough as much. The game should have made use of its long and large amounts of tutorials to teach us how to use this mechanic.

(Of course, on the off chance that Nintendo had completely not realized this, then they really need to wake up their idea.)

Lastly, one of the more important moves - the fatal blow, which involves shaking both your remotes downwards, is often not picked up, or misintepreted as a shield bash/sword slash.

Motion Controls - Shield

A second, less widely covered, aspect of swordplay is the shield. Zelda introduced the world to Z-targeting with lock on when it switched to 3-D. Previously, you could use the "Z" to target a monster, and your shield would be held up. You have always had the option of setting "Z"-target to be locked on, so that you don't have to hold to that button. In Skyward Sword, the lock-on and auto shield up aspect is removed. This means that to stay locked on to a target, you must hold on to the "Z" button. There is some degree of auto-targeting when you don't use "Z" though.

Shield is now no longer held up automatically. Instead, the game now has three modes - neutral, attack and defence. Neutral mode is the default mode you are in, with both your sword and shield kept away. If you try to dash, you will automatically enter this mode. Defence mode, activated by a shake of the nunchuk, takes out your shield. Your shield has durability, which falls with each strike. If you time your shield well, you can block and stun an enemy, and not lose any durability. This is an important skill as its one of the only ways you can create openings for yourself in some monsters. Attack mode, activated by the shake of the remote, takes out your sword. Your shield is held down, and you will take damage.

Personally, I love this new mechanic design. Z-targeting with auto-Shield made previous games too easy at times. With 3 different modes, you are given different levels of risk and reward. Keep your shield up at wimp, and risk losing your shield eventually. Run away, and open yourself to attacks and delaying your counter attack time.

Unfortunately, the nunchuk shake is easily triggered, often misintepreted. This becomes an annoyance when you are trying to through a bomb, or perform another task, which gets interrupted due to your inability to hold your shield hand still. The left and right buttons on the main remote were not used. I think that dowsing (which used "C" on the nunchuk) could have been shifted there (since it involved the sword anyway), and the "C" button could be used for the Shield instead.

Motion Controls - Travel

Flying, skydiving, swimming and piloting your beetle all make use of motion controls, by making the controller simulate you, your bird or your beetle.

Flying is your main mode of transport between the various game areas. Skydiving is also used whenever you jump off your bird or edges, and at various points in the game. Despite being a very cool concept, I found flying very tiring and eventually got sick of it. In the past, travelling had always been the time where you can sit back, relax and take in the sights. In Skyward Sword, you have to point at the direction you want the bird to fly. In addition, you are required to shake the Wiimote to flap the bird’s wings. Firstly, this is tiring for long distance flights. Secondly, since your flight direction tied to the Wiimote, flapping causes the direction you point the Wiimote at to chance, leading your flight to go haywire at times. I think flapping is unnecessary for flying, which would make flying pleasant and less tiring.

Swimming and piloting your beetle are similar to flying. The beetle is an item that can be used for reconnaissance, attack, and fetching/dropping items. It’s a cool new addition to the game. The beetle’s turbo uses A, while swimming’s turbo involves shaking the nunchuk. I think these two mechanics are well handled. In fact, I would argue that swimming with the Wiimote is slightly better than classic controls, but that is personal preference.

Skydiving is similar to Wii Sports Resort. Personally, I did not enjoy any of it. The minigame involving diving was up there with one of the most annoying moments in the game. There are areas in the game which require to use skydiving to get to areas in the

Motion Controls - Others

Motion controls are also used in various different areas. The Boss Key, previously used to open the final boss area of each dungeon, is now a rotating puzzle. Insignia drawing, pulling and putting a sword into the ground, jumping while climbing, are amongst other ways motion controls are used. Mostly, these are interesting diversions with no real difficulty. At times, the tooltips provided are misleading. The worst example of this is tightrope walking. You have to hold the remote upright instead of sideways (natural way of holding during most gameplay). Opting the latter would lead you to scratch your head in confusion, wondering what went wrong. Some of the motion controls, such as the drawing of the bow or slingshot is made optional.

It is a little annoying that you have to "reset" the controls now and then. But what's cool about it is that you can end up pointing away from the TV and still aiming at the TV. Ironically, this facilitates slouching on the couch better. Also of annoyance is how when controls go out of sync during flying, swimming you have to open up the menu.

Non Motion Controls
Some other little controls issues bug me, but some were pleasant surprises. After the whole deluge of negativity, lets stray into some positivity.

I like how items are now split up into two menus. It makes it cleaner. I also like how there is only one item slot, and how holding it is for selection. On one hand less buttons are used, on the other, single slot adds more strategy. I suspect the bomb beetle was one of the things they wanted to prevent.

Putting aside the whole motion control, Skyward Sword's control scheme has two more areas I take issue with. First of all, it is the inconsistency with Twilight Princess. Secondly, it is the stacking of multiple overlapping commands. One gripe I had with Twilight Princess

Controls Conclusion

Overall, I think Nintendo disappointed in this outing of Zelda with regards to controls. Yea sure, fanboys can come and claim that it works for them, or that it’s the fault of players for not being able to figure it out. I mean, I'm probably an above average gamer. If I went through one full playthrough without being able to figure out how to easily dispatch the games' 2nd basic monster type without using shield bash, something is wrong.

From a game designer’s point of view, to have a huge loophole in such a fundamental part of the controls is completely unacceptable. Skyward Sword's controls may be the best that motion gaming has to offer, but its nowhere near perfect. There are issues. So just because you personally like the controls, doesn't mean everyone else who hates it are the ones with the problem.

The most common defense out there now could be represented by the following post: “In short the game needs not cater to your ego or twitch skills....unless your on the Olympic team for fencing and are running shieldless, what you see is what you get. Not because it's unexpected...but rather because it was meant to be that way...”

On the contrary, my dear unknown internet friend. As a designer, should you or can you expect your gamers to dig deeper for fundamental things like controls? I would say no. You cannot expect gamers to figure out that sword slash direction and sword position are independent when the arguably more natural instinct is that both is related. Furthermore, none of your promotional material and in game tutorials seem give evidence that say otherwise. The other worst case scenario is that Nintendo might think everything is fine. Either way, it is unbelievable and disappointing that such issues were not picked up by the designers during development or testing. It is one thing to have a certain amount of pride and stubbornness with regards to the way you develop games, it is another to disregard users. (As a side-note, I think Japanese Developers are most guilty of doing this, but thats another can of worms for another day.)

So what is my final thoughts on Skyward Sword's motion control? Lets start with the more frivolous aspects of the motion controls. Honestly, I think the game would not have been any different with or without them. Travelling using motion controls was all in all better, except for the need of flapping my wings. As for swordplay, I'm just as divided on the issue. Swordplay affects you most at the start when you are not equipped with the tools of the trade yet, after which you can just use your other weapons.

In terms of boss fights, I feel that only one or two Boss fight was memorably shaped by motion controls. As for the other epic boss fights, I don't think the lack of motion controls would have reduced its epicness or my enjoyment. I think without motion controls, the game's bosses could have increased difficulty, and development time would arguably have been reduced, allowing less dust to settle on my Wii.

Had it been an option, I think the game would have been just as, if not more enjoyable. Yet, doing so might seriously be a waste of development resources. Ultimately, even though its arguably the best hardcore motion control game out there, I feel that Nintendo has simply painted a target on Zelda and motion gaming's head. Given the choice, I would not have wanted Skyward Sword fitted with these motion controls. It seemed that Mr Eiji Aonuma thought so too.

That took much longer than I expected. Now if you're reading till this point, it may seem that I'm just simply raging/hating/trolling on the game. Clearly, I'm not just one of those waggling haters. Furthermore, I hope my detailed analysis has led you to read with an open mind. Do check out the actual review as well.

Qishan Rant

2011-12-05T01:13:00.007+08:00

I purchased my copy of skyward sword from qisahn.com, at the recommendation of a junior. Qisahn prides itself on providing the lowest price or refund on the balance for the first 7 days, so they do have the most competitive prices out there. As I did not have Wii Remote Plus (needed to play the game), the 25th anniversary bundle which came with a plus controller and the symphony soundtrack was the obvious choice.

Unfortunately, qisahn (who said it was the fault of their packer), did not pack the box properly, leading to the product being delivered less than satisfactory condition. Anyone who has had stuff delivered would know that boxed merchandise typically comes with bubble wrap, or sometimes even additional box to ensure the box doesnt get dented. I may not be a collector, so a small fold or crease is tolerable for me. However, the box's corners were pressed in, each side had noticeable creases. This was mainly caused to the packing (or lack thereof). Instead of properly ensuring the whole box was wrapped, they used a soft foam slightly thicker than paper, to wrap the bottom half of the box.

Qisahn initially gave me the standard bull shit of blaming the delivery man, but was surprised to hear that the packing was done so haphazardly. Despite being unable to exchange as they did not have a "spare box" (hello, just exchange the whole damn product). They offered me $6 credit, which means I could get another product delivered with courier services. I was keen enough to start playing to not press the matter further.

So all in all a bad experience with Qisahn. I don't know if I'm even going to buy another product. So anyone who wants the credit from me feel free to ask :)

the third begining

2011-11-27T23:19:00.000+08:00

i've re-used this blog twice, both for purposes of school courses. ever since the inception of this blog, it has been my intention to involve games and gaming in it.

so i'm going to attempt to do so. i've actually penned out thoughts for witcher 2, deus ex: human revolution, bastion, uncharted 2, heavy rain when i played and completed them, but never actually got down to working on the posts.

so, with zelda: skyward sword inside my wii as I type this, i shall use it to kick start this third beginning of the blog. although i'm only starting with game reviews, i might use this to pen down thoughts and lessons learnt regarding game design, reactions to industry news, and more.

lets hope the stuff i right actually makes sense :)

cs3216 from the eyes of a senior

2011-08-13T04:18:00.000+08:00

as an excuse from doing work, i've decided to come blog a little :) i'm not sure how many of the students from this batch will see this, but since i couldn't make it for the first lecture, i decided to make it up by sharing some of my thoughts (some of which are reused from my reflections post - something you all have to do at the end of the sem)

i took cs1101s in year one, then did cs3216 the sem after. this was followed by CVWO, and finally i did prof ben's latest module cs3217. so all in all, i've already done everything that prof ben has to offer (unless of course he starts something new before he graduates). so i think my advice counts for something? heh

you've probably heard from most of your seniors how awesome the course is and how it has changed their lives, so i won't repeat that anymore. instead, i will share some advice/reflections. since i wasn't there, i might repeat some of the things your seniors already said, but that probably just means how true it is :)

1. plan your time well
you have a lot less time than you think you do. after all, time flies when you're having fun. (well, of course prof ben would tell you that sleep is optional, although i do not agree - i love and need my sleep). fortunately, you will not be working over chinese new year like some of the previous batches since its now in sem 2. however, time pretty much zooms by. before you know it, your mid term exams would come, and you'll be done with all your mini projects.

as you've already realised, the arms race is real. and it probably will not get any better. by the time deadline is approaching (the biggest of which is the poster session), some groups would have completed their project and are now adding enhancements, while some may not have anything close to a finished product/have to return to the drawing board. bear this in mind - this basically means you don't really have the luxury to push everything to the end since your grade is affected by the poster session to a large extent (if i recall correctly).

for cs3217 students, cs3216 is NOT the same. you're not guaranteed an A if you do well for your first 70%. in fact, there is NO first 70%, your classmates and you pretty much decide what that 70% is :)

2. take chances
cs3216 creates an environment that encourage you to take chances. whether it be starting flame wars, changing assignments, working with external people, the class allows you to do it. if you have a real passion to bring forth a product, don't let the worry of not doing well hold you back. i don't think you can ever have the time/excuse/resources during your school life go all-in like this.

prof ben does his best to create this environment by assembling some of the most driven/talented people in school, and brings in lots of interesting people from outside as well. something my classmate taught me last year was that it really doesn't hurt to go speak to people. prof ben proved it too by getting free AWS coupons for the course (i'm not sure if he has told you this story yet, but he probably will)

so went opportunities present themselves to you, do take it. if anything, this, to me, is the most important mindset to have for the course.

3. be realistic
its great to see everyone all full of aspiration right now. at the same time, i'm quite a practical person. as i mentioned earlier, you're really not working with lots of time. as such, i encourage you to be realistic with regards to what you can and are supposed do. for example, if you're someone who has hardly touch programming, dont expect yourself to be able to pick it up within the time frame of the first assignment. your friends from cs3217, soc, engineering who have wowed you so during the show and tell have all been doing it for a while now. remember, you're chosen for this class for your unique skills. work towards honing them.
correspondingly, programmers should not overestimate your design capabilities. make use of each other's strengths, and don't try to be heroes :)

all the best, have lots of fun. looking forward to seeing the great stuff you guys will do!

better late then never

2010-10-21T22:58:00.000+08:00

our group was probably one of the latest to meet up. we first met up a day before the tutorial for the final assignment, and managed to come up with a story that we could agree with.

we settled on a futuristic theme during the meeting and we quickly got to work. i came up with a quick concept for the overall setting.

original concept art for unnamed future city

the features of the city includes

1) higher ground - high tech futuristic architecture with flying cars, domes, etc etc

2) lower slums - older architectures, even slum-like architecture with junk yards and dumps

the setting was inspired by movies (District 9, Batman Begins, Skyline), games (Final Fantasy 7 and 8) and even novels (Dune Series).

When we met up again, I was assigned the role of designing backgrounds. I was happy to get this role as I was not as good at drawing detailed objects, and better at landscape objects and its details. i was required to do 4 locations: future city, slums, school, junkyard

city skyline

junkyard

school and classrooms

slums

Other backgrounds (which reused previous concepts):

night skyline of future city with home background

side view of alley and dark alley (both in slums)

It was pretty fun conceptualizing backgrounds and creating them. At times, I think I created too much detail to the danger of possibly overshadowing the foreground, but I hope that through coloring and touching up the backgrounds could appear to be less dominant.

somewhere over the rainbow....

2010-10-14T21:29:00.000+08:00

assignment 6 was one of the harder assignments. first of all, i wasn't able to understand the requirements well. secondly, choosing a set of lyrics/quote that could easy make use of a myriad of typefaces and variations in typography was pretty difficult.

eventually, my playlist for the night made the decision. i was listening to jason mraz's cover of "somewhere over the rainbow". with my memories of the original wizard of oz, I decided to use this song for my assignment

someplace where there isn't any trouble
do you suppose there is such a place, Toro
there must be
its not a place you can get to by a boat or a train
its far far away
behind the moon
beyond the rain....
~ Dorothy, before singing the song

This quote sets the mood for the whole song. Its about being free from troubles and going to someplace far away and relaxing. With this mood and feeling (something which I was NOT feeling during the time of the assignment), I set out to complete my assignment.

I didn't get much comments again this time around cos time was running out. Julian just asked me to do more.

the added criteria of allowing for 2 A3 papers would allow me to expand on this assignment. I would now try to use more different font faces, and add more pictures and actions. With 2 papers allowed, I would split up two stanzas which I both wanted to use but had problems creating it in one pictures.

in order to communicate my feeling and mood, I wanted it to seem like your troubles started from the chimney and slowly flew into the skies. I tried to use continuity to direct the flow of reading.

i like the idea, but i don't really like the outcome. will be splitting it into two pages.

i wish it were summer right now

2010-10-07T02:09:00.002+08:00

when i started on the assignment, i knew i didn't want to do christmas or new years. originally i wanted to try to still keep in theme (yes! i actually had a theme), which was the whole running thing.

i actually felt it would be a good chance to experiment with color schemes because of the lack of colors (medal - 1-2 colors, string 3 colors, background 1 color). but eventually, i found it tame and decided to think of something else. moreover, i'm quite sad for losing the theme. i initially wanted to do a running-stalker story for the photo assignment, and blisters & wearing proper footwear for the poster assignment. i might actually try them for fun! (the list of to-dos from this module is getting longer and longer :S julian wasn't joking when he asked us to get it right the first time)

i like the idea of the whole warmth and cold colors from the presentation, and i wanted to do a piece that could convey temperature and climate. so i thought of doing a summer greeting card! (cause the school is totally concerned about us enjoying a great summer vacation right? :S)

very first idea. then i decided to apply closure on the right eye

final mock up

color schemes!

i was quite happy to see my work quite well received! (at least for the first 30 minutes I was awake, subsequently i dozed off cos i did it over the night)

without light, warm sun, neon, cool breeze were generated automatically with illustrator's color scheme color wheel function. after experimenting with those, i found out that i actually disliked the products from it so i stopped and manually chose colors for my 4 remaining pieces

i tried triad, split complementary but i didn't like both.

so most of my work is monochromatic, complementary and analogous.

things i want to experiement with:

1 high contrast piece

1 combination of hot and cold

1 traid

1 split complementary

some notable comments for improvement:

1. the hat looks like hair to several people. perhaps i could add more details?

2. warm sun is not warm enough. lacking the range of warm colors i.e. darker orange, yellow, red. i think i split this into 4, one for each color (orange, yellow and red) and combine them into one warm sun. the existing one cane be converted into orange

3. sunny is a little dull :(

4. the sunglasses could be improved. firstly i could add reflective ";" to the sides of the lens, and maybe reduce the transparency (yes, i did actually add a layer of transparent lens colors)

5. the white hat doesnt really make "logical" sense in dawn. i might move the white hat to without light?

i'm surprisingly pleased with dusk and night. for my final product i'm gonna go with either sunny, day or dusk. although both sunny and day need to become more summery!

thanks for the feedback! this is one of the first assignment i'm more pleased with.

so all in all, i will try to add in 7 more (high contrast, red, yellow, orange, combination of hot and cold, triad, split complementary) and edit 4 (neon, day, sunny, warm sun).

if possible i will add details to the hat and glasses.

stuffed intestines!

2010-09-30T01:00:00.000+08:00

I wanted to do something related to eating oily food. With an initial idea of using artery, I immediately faced the problem of getting an artery. A quick visit to the market gave me the inspiration to use intestines instead.

Mock Up

Poster Draft (used for critique)

The white stuff is actually corn starch and water, which was a temporary replacement for mayo.

1. Misread the instruction to be MORE than 150 words. Will change the text

2. I personally feel its not bloody enough. Although it also takes a little while to actually get what this is. Will experiment with different backgrounds.

3. Will try to retake a picture with real mayo instead. (if I have time)

4. Will also experiement with more layouts concepts from the lecture (e.g. repetition, balance)

The contents of the cover text would be how your intestines have to work harder to digest fats and oils, and that stuffing yourself with fats and oils is just like choking your insides. Need some effort in picking out the right words and idea

I like the overall outcome of the picture. As did some of my classmate. But I think the poster could do more work.

lecture 5 classroom exercise

2010-09-20T20:50:00.001+08:00

we were supposed to create abstract figures that represent ideas given to us. i was given hot and rich. here is my work:

the coins are a little hard to identify but i think the pot helps. the thermormeter is more straightforward though.

assignment 3 storyboard

2010-09-16T22:40:00.000+08:00

As promised. Do note that the final outcome differed from the storyboard,

my egg-citment wore out :(

2010-09-16T04:59:00.003+08:00

this assignment was the first one that i was most pleased with, before going into the critique that is. it was fun boiling, drawing and decorating the eggs.

Egg-xecuted!

I chose different colored eggs, in order to try to hint segregation. The story is that the lighter skinned egg was discriminated and bullied by the darker skinned eggs.

Some of my classmates was actually confused with this picture, although I actually think its quite clear. The hand requires an egg, and is about to take the white egg. The other idea which I wished to convey as well was that the dark skinned eggs were actually hiding. So in spite of being bullies, they were really cowards. This idea is hard to convey, but not completely important.

The white egg seems like he will be cooked, while the darker eggs are watching. An attempted "foreshadowing" is that the dark eggs are so near the frying pan with eggs, and thus they are the ones who will be cooked. However, I feel that this is at best a poor attempt, just like the example given in lecture (guy cutting holding knife smacking his lips = foreshadowing of killing/eating.... really???). Feedback from my classmates is that there seems to be a lack of focus in this picture, cos the message I intended to convey is not really clear. Suggested improvements would be to change the angle, and to remember to place focus on the white egg.

This is my favourite picture out of my whole series. The shadow created seems like the white egg is about to meet his demise, and the camera angle helps to exemplify this. This shadow in fact contributes to the twist, because it may seem like it is the wooden spatula. Even so, some of my classmates felt that the fear effect could be improved by using a different point of view.

Here's where i think things start to go awry. The twist supposed to occur here because instead of being cooked, the egg is painted on. The egg is actually used as an easter egg. The few problems include:

1. The painbrush is obscured by the egg, so there is no focus on the paintbrush and its hard to make the association with the previous picture

2. The link between this picture and the previous picture is hard to see. It may seem like a sudden change. In fact, due to the way i edited the photo, it seems like this is a darker egg. Suggested remedies include the use of a common feature to show that this egg is the same egg as the previous egg. I kinda over looked this when trying to make the egg stand out from the background.

3. Its hard to tell that this is actually an easter egg. I hope to resolve this by including a final picture with a little girl eat her breakfast and holding this egg.

This last picture is just showing the darker eggs getting their just deserts, following up on the attempted fore-shadow. I'm quite fond of the ~~scrambled eggs~~ ... i mean picture as well, although it turned out much darker than I intended.

All in all, I am once again disappointed in my work :( I found out that had I took the module last year, I would have been one of the many other egg stories. I'm also a little disappointed that I overlooked the transition confusion from the 4th and 5th pictures.

I shall try to do better in the next assignment. Though I'm starting to be really worried. :/

will upload the storyboard later tonight...

stopwatch

2010-09-09T12:38:00.001+08:00

6 levels of abstraction

I chose the stopwatch, which was used in one of my initial drafts for assignment 1. The stopwatch is a index for coaching, running, training. My "company" would be a running coach company.

I began with simple sketches of just the stopwatch itself, but realised that the abstraction was minimal...

Hence, for the actual abstraction, I took a picture with a hand and the stopwatch. Hence, in the abstraction, I was able to abstract away the hand, adding bigger jumps in abstraction level between the different images

Eventually, I chose the 4th design, The rationale is that I felt that while the hand is gone, the stop watch was still able to connote the meaning. In the later two levels of abstraction, I felt there was a loss in meaning as it could be easily misintepreted as a clock.

I chose red as the background because the track is red, and i omitted details such as email and address because my "company" is based online.

all in all, i felt that my work was a little too simplistic and i didn't like it. before the stop watch idea, I had initially started working on track shoes, which was very common, and hard to abstract. i think for the purpose of the assignment, my work satisfied the requirements, but lacked creativity and artistic flair, a common problem in all my work thus far.

abstract:
stopwatch is an revolutionary online portal that will increase your performance in running. here at stop watch, we believe that every runner should have the right to maximise their potential and achieve his/her targets. stopwatch understands that the lack of knowledge stands as the greatest barrier between a runner and his/her goals. stopwatch is here to break this barrier.

with the help of top coaches, who have excellent track records of working with runners in Singapore, our training programmes are suited to the asian climate and physiology. our coaches have devised a customizable training programme which can suit your individual goals and schedule. other than coming up with training programmes, we would be able to provide advise on injury management, dietary recommendations and any other topics related to running.

other than our online portal, stopwatch also organizes training groups at various location. we understand that group training is essential in improving performance. with the personal attention of our experience coaches at various locations accross the island, our training groups provide a different dimension of training to help achieve excellence.

time to return to the drawing block.

with all the blogs out, looking at it really shows of the talents of this batch. which is very worrying :(

my illustrator skills are really poor :(

2010-09-03T14:46:00.000+08:00

finally i'm done. julian was right. your skills (or lack thereof) will limit your capacity to communication. here are my final drafts for my first assignment.

design 1 - the runner

i chose this design for its simplicity and unique use of the running man. like one of my classmates said during the critique, this probably will not work for any other name.

the tracing seems very rough, and the color shading is really rather poorly done as well. although i wanted to convey simplicity, i am thoroughly dissatisfied with the colors. will look into improving the colors, and the shadows. i dont think i will be adding a background to this piece.

design 2 - knights and dragon

i chose this design because i liked the dragon and knight. i was pretty pleased with the knight and force field, however i do not like the dragon. i also feel that the castle is lacking detail, all 3 areas i would be improving upon.

however, the most important flaw was obvious when i printed out my work. the force field becomes rather unobvious, and the old could hardly be made out. i think i might try to add some effects on the back side of the force field, and make it slightly more obvious.

please give me comments!

lecture exercise

2010-09-02T12:04:00.012+08:00

Iconogram - What you see is what you get

pictogram - Isotype representation

cartogram - topographical representation

diagram - charts

Ideagram - representation of concept

logogram - conceptual representation of writing

typogram - typogramical representation

phonogram - representation of phonics

other than the 8 -grams, most of the content from this lecture was from the preclusion modeul NM2101, which is a good revision, but not really too interesting compared to the past lectures :/

The activity at the end of the lecture was another opportunity to practice sketching :)

we were supposed to demonstrate our understanding of icons, index and symbols.

since this is an art module, i chose an artist to be the icon, the paint brush and palette to be the index, and the chinese character "yi" to be the symbolic (wasn't required by julian).

i originally thought that the painting in the first picture could be the index as well, since painting connotes painter some what?

in other news, i'm still a little slow on my assignment 1. my illustrator is working again finally, but my end product is still less than desirable. more after the break

assignment 1 roughs - part 2

2010-09-01T02:59:00.000+08:00

pac man (top left):

if you take a look at the thumbnails, my original idea involved using the corner of the pacman playing field to get the letter J. however, while drawing out the full scale rough i suddenly had the brain wave to include a retro TV and joy stick. the end result was one that exceeded my initial expectations. although it is pretty simple, it achieves both the aim of the assignment pretty well (i think :P) for the font, i used the pacman font from the game. although the piece only shows pacman, i wanted to indicated i love retro games. i wanted to use a retro font within the TV, but the joystick out of the tv might be a little confusing. will also try to implement this piece

game controllers (top right):

this is the generic token piece for this theme. i couldn't think of anything good for O and N so i just used the wheel controller and the wii mote with nunchuk. initially i wanted to do some flight simulator thing. but first of all thats a lie cos i dont play flight simulation games, secondly i couldn't think of anything for O and N. all in all a boring piece. i wanted to do a black and white for this until i accidentally started coloring it.

gun, scope and controllers

before the new pac man, this was my 2nd favourite game piece. however, its plain background makes it a little boring. i tried to use the font from "modern warfare". originally i tried to use empty bullet shells for the N, but then I realized that might be interpreted as I love guns. however, even with the controller, it seems like a very tame attempt to link it to first person shooter. i wanted to use the mouse with wire at first, but that would be copying the controller from the pac man piece.

knight and dragon

my favourite piece :)

the dragon was quite challenging, again due to the fact it had many limbs. in the end, i took away its two hind legs and spread its wings such that it forms the line on the capital J. originally, the knight did not have a magical force field surrounding him, thus was hard to recognize the O. the background for this piece incorporated a castle and open air.

by coincidence, i realised that Jas' piece is almost the same as me, in that he used both the dragon and the door. but we used different items for different letters.

I tried to use the medivial font. if i can find time, i might want to the the dragon breathing fire to spell "my name is", and use medivail font on a banner hanging on the castle for "and i love RPGs".

please feel free to tear any of these pieces down. although its not the actual piece of work yet, i would love to hear some feedback/which piece/idea you think its the most suitable.

currently, i would do the running man and the dragon piece (although this one would be hellish to do on illustrator). i would want to also create the pac man and track with silhouettes to make comparism

some work done, still behind schedule - but a really long entry

2010-09-01T01:01:00.098+08:00

the past two weeks have been a horror. murphy's law at its best. however, those are but excuses and i shall strive for improvement.

for a start, before today's critique, i caught up on everything that should have been completed LAST WEEK. to make up for my lateness, i decided to spend more time reflecting on what i'm learnt through this process

(WARNING - LONG POST AHEAD)

Thumbnails:

finally, i came up with adequate ideas to complete the 8 thumbnails required by the assignment. i felt that this was important because idea generation was a necessary part of design and i wanted to force myself to go through it. moreover, i werent satisfied with my first designs for both themes. for my 2nd theme, i chose games/game genres. more on these ideas below.

Full Scale Roughs:

I chose to colour all four ideas for 2 reasons. 1. my illustrator died on me while I was doing my actual piece halfway. It was already 3AM, so I didn't want to go into critique empty handed again. 2. i took it as practice (even though i'm already running late ahaha)

running man (top left):
my personal favourite - because it had is integrated, and i finally was able to make use of the RUNNING MAN! i have conquered my nemesis. i think the shading/colouring for this picture is pretty important, since the J uses only the hand, while the N requires the hand and the side of the shirt. the O, represented by the squarish number tag might also be a bit tricky to see. the jersey colour also needs to be a simple unassuming colour, so as not to draw away attention from the number tag. also, this piece looks completely different with and without colour.

track with silhouette (bottom left):
this is my second favourite piece, being my first decent idea. although i initially felt that it kinda "took the easy way" since it simply arranged items to form the letters, julian said that in this case it had a "competition" theme, which was actually very creative. i would develop both of these to decide which is my final running themed piece probably next weekend. a concern i immediately had was the amount of detail required to draw 12 men. instead, i decided to use silhouettes, which are a good contrast to the red track background, and easier and more reasonable to execute based on my skill set.

shoes, stop watch and running starting (top right):
my least favourite piece. one of my earlier ideas, which i didn't like at all. involved the simple arrangements of items. however, the track shoes and stop watch were good practice for assignment 2 (which i've already STARTED, suprisingly). also, i tried using the Holland Football Team colours, and found that I really liked it. The colour scheme is perhaps the only saving grace of this piece, the good contrast between orange and black colour adds life to an otherwise dead piece.

track and field (bottom right):
the last token piece to fill up 4 ideas. i got this idea while running on the track. in this piece, i tried to make use of the surroundings more, like in the other track piece. i found the end result too simple. the old, represented by a discus cage was also not really easy to see. the N was supposed to be represented by javelins, although I'm not sure if people without prior knowledge would know. i tried to practice a bit of distance/horizon drawing with the track, but its very un-obvious :(

i paid little attention to the fonts in the running theme pieces, so i decided to put a bit more effort in the games pieces.

i will continue the second theme on another post, so that comments (if people read this) can be more well targetted.

i've never hated my own name as much before

2010-08-30T00:52:00.000+08:00

a quick intro to my NM2208 friends!

i'm jon lew, from Communications and Media, School of Computing. i took nm2208 in hope to explore my artistic side, a skill i've tried to hone through the hours of scribbling during lectures in a bid not to fall asleep. in my free time, i run (a lot), but recently cut down on it cos i tore my knee ligament last year, and am still recovering from the surgery. i like games, and i hope to make games in the future.

in the past week, i'm so glad that my life ambition was NOT an artist. i spent hours and hours trying to come up with ways to put my name, and my intended themes together. running and J didn't like each other. the main problem is that I was too fixated on using the whole silhouette of a runner, hence his 2 other irrelevant limbs and head often cause lots of problems.

the only half past decent idea i came up with for the running theme was to arrange runners and hurdlers for them to spell my name J.

hence, for my first critique, I had almost nothing to show. :(

new beginnings - nm2208

2010-08-16T04:19:00.000+08:00

year two has officially begun.

while i thought i would leave this blog to rot, it seems like another module requires it services.

at some point, i actually thought i'd make this a developer blog or maybe even a game review blog. unfortunately, the summer was spent on CVWO, which i would perhaps talk about in another entry. as for now, this blog is going to be my nm2208 learning log.

I am looking forward to learning from Dr Julian, my tutors and peers alike in this coming semester. I believe I'm not very talented in the art department, but I think I have some basics, which is why I took NM2208 in the first place. I hope to hone these skills and develop them, if ever so slightly, as I believe that they would serve me well in my journey ahead.

The first lecture covered perception. Dr Julian highlighted how visual communication is not like visual art. There is no multiple interpretation, instead you want to share a clear message across. He also highlighted that something does not need to be aesthetically pleasing for it to convey the message well.

I think that it is totally possible to achieve the best of both worlds. Perhaps he was simply trying to comfort those who may not be so aesthetically inclined. A piece of white paper with the words "Out of Order" covering the coin hole of a vending machine may do the job, but it is an eyesore. Conversely, a nicely laminated sign, possibly with the company logo and date of maintainance not only looks nice, but conveys much more information too.

I've attached my work for the exercise from the first lecture. I tried to follow the time limit strictly, hence the bottom half became very simplistic. I thought of doing another one, but decided to spend my time instead on the fist assignment, seeing how it is actually very similar.

P.S. I'm absolutely ~~disgusted~~ suprised at the number of macbooks in the NM2208 lecture :P

full circle

2010-04-18T11:58:00.001+08:00

as wonderful as cs3216 is, i personally can't claim that it has had a revolutionary life-changing impact on me. i can't claim any credit for this though. great as prof ben is, so were my past teachers. i have been blessed with great teachers in my primary school and secondary school (not JC) days. moreover, i don't want to overemphasize the impact on cs3216 because i really don't think this should be the end or peak of my experiences in universities, seeing how i'm still in year 1.

that is not to say i've learnt nothing. through the module, prof ben has encouraged many mindset changes, reinforced past lessons, and provided food for thought and call to actions for the future. i find it hard to narrow down X things i've learn without repeating what has been said time and time again by prof ben, my classmates or my other blog posts, so i decided to share some key thoughts i had over the past sem. its going to be a little messy.

if there was an award for least number of meetings during cs3216, it'll probably be me. I had 2 meetings for Who is the Monkey? and Facebook Seminar each, and 3 meetings for Drag and Drop Search and Prince of Persia each. since i don't have to stay behind after every lesson to be in a meeting, i've had plenty of time to be a kay-poh (busybody). thanks to my tolerant classmates, i've been allowed to shamelessly plant myself in their meetings.

being the guest members leaves me with no real stakehold on any issue. it was then interesting to observe the tendencies that different people have on view points and arguments. not that you can't do this during your own meetings, but believe me, its different when its not your project. like the saying goes, 旁观者清. i can almost definitively say that i've learnt just as much from being a kay-poh as from my own nightless hours.

so one of my first thoughts on working in a group is to say less, listen first, then think more. of course, this is not a one size for all solution. someone people think and listen too much, but don't say anything. but generally, I think the above works for team leaders (who generally are more out-spoken and opiniated). possibly.

i forgot where i heard/read this from - you have two ears, but only one mouth. what you can say and what you can hear is inversely related. the more you want to say, the more you'll not be able to get new insights. not speaking is not enough, because you need to listen. if you're too full of your own thoughts, even if you say nothing, you won't absorb anything from others. and let's face it, nobody likes not being listened to. so it'll be nice to let your team mates know that you're listening. incidentally, my brother just came back from his MAS scholarship interview, and was told that he should have thought more before speaking. so there.

when opportunities are offered to you, you jolly well grab it, cos its not gonna wait for you. eldwin wrote kind words about me. the truth is, i've seen too many opportunities fly past me through the years. this lesson was taught to me quite a long time ago, just not followed for just as long a time. in fact, i was almost about to do the same in this module, had it not been the timely encouragement/reminder of Reuben. And it wasn't some long speech. It was just a simple "Just go speak to him la. Go, now." After that, the "grab opportunity" switch was kinda flipped. So yup, I can't take credit for this really. Thanks, Reuben. in general, university is a great time for such opportunities. more so in cs3216, where effort has been made to bring these people to us.

Which brings me to my next point. There's actually a lot you can learn from each other. The class is not short of people who are talented in their own right. Interacting with each other, you get to know each others experiences, successes, and even failures. (Flame Shield Up) Its even easier to learn from others' mistakes than your own. Why? Because often, you tend to be slightly blind towards your own shortcomings. When you look at others, you'll be slightly more open. You'll keep in mind that you won't make that mistake. Right?

Wrong. Interestingly, you may possibly go one full circle and then make the same mistake yourself. So the real point here is that, you really can't be too stubborn towards yourself, and you have to be ready to fail quick and fail fast. If anything, this is THE lesson I've learnt. Its weird, because it goes against everything that we've learnt in school, academically at least. the interesting thing about failing yourself is that you will have felt the pain for yourself. the pain could by you not listening, or simply because its something new that will be added unto your experience. for the former no matter how many times people give you a certain advice, it may fall on deaf ears until you see it for yourself. for the latter, in the world of evolving platforms, things are extremely dynamic, and you pretty much figure out what works and what doesnt along the way.

Before i start rambling, I'm going to end off after sharing a few additional random thoughts.

i've come a full circle from my first post, and i'll first like to use this picture again.

the more you know, the more you know you don't know.

having dabbled in education and coaching, when i actually look through the whole semester, you really can't help but notice the effort and careful thought put into designing the module such that it achieves it aims. from requirements such as blogging, reports, pitching, to getting external speakers and even classmates to come to the module to help broaden the perspectives of the students.

i suddenly recalled what one of my teachers sent the class in an email.

life's full of adversities. we keep thinking of when things will get better, but the fact is there is no better time to be happy than now, because life is a journey, not a destination.

i means its great that everyone is on a high now. but its really more important what happens after this module has ended. my greatest wish for all my classmates (and myself) is that when NUS, life or work returns to the drone it was before CS3216, we remember that all CS3216 did was to show us what we were capable of if we put our mind, heart and soul into chasing our dreams. the profs, classmates, and environment shouldn't matter. i believe all my classmates are capable of this. i hope to be able to do so too :)

and on that note, i'd like to thank prof ben for staying so late all the time, putting us in front of his own children and wife, our tutors who have been working so hard being the scenes to ensure everything has ran smoothly, my group mates who have endured my incapabilities, and my classmates who've put up with my flame wars :P

the end......or not ;)

perceptions

2010-04-06T23:08:00.001+08:00

upon discussion with some of my classmates after the peer review session, something (actually something really obvious) dawned upon me. that 7 minutes you have up there convey different messages to different people.

it may seem stupid that i'm saying this, but consider this: some groups have coding gurus. some groups don't. some groups (you know) have been putting in a lot of effort. some groups have put in just as much, if not more effort, but you're not aware of that fact. some groups you just don't like. some groups are made up of your best pals.

as a result, everyone's rating of you would really differ based on their perception. to people you know, that 7 minutes probably won't matter as much because you have a lot of background knowledge.

unfortunately, when we go out there to pitch to the prof's next week, we're not going to have any background knowledge from the profs. they are just going to judge you there base on what you have. some of our classmates are clearly much better and showing of the true value of their apps, and its a good learning point.

so at the end of the day, even though this mark doesn't matter to you - it really is an indication of what others perceive of your work - based on what they know before hand, and what they managed to get out of the 7 minutes. therefore, even if you're super in love with your application, and think that your idea is damn fantastic - and the feedback comes back to be otherwise, it'll probably be a good reflection.

how to judge effort?

2010-04-05T21:07:00.001+08:00

how to judge who put in more effort?

mythbusters and privacy

2010-03-31T20:18:00.024+08:00

I shared this video during my 1105 presentation on security and privacy.

strange thing about people is that while they complain a lot about privacy, they want convenience, they want to establish an identity on the internet. yet these 2 actions often contradict privacy.

i look at some of the stuff the kids i taught and my friends post on online, i have nothing to say. i think most people (especially singaporeans) really have no idea on how easy it is for future employers to dig up their information on facebook. even though the security groups feature have been up around, most people's photos can still be easily stalked.

i'm pretty worried for the little ones actually, they are not going to learn the ill-effects of not cherishing their own privacy until they suffer from it. too bad.

and the nominees are...

2010-03-23T12:45:00.004+08:00

most inspirational: tong yee from the thought collective

its extremely comforting to see that in this harsh world of start ups, there are still entreprenuers who stick hard and fast to their beliefs and visions, without comprimise, even in the face of a greater dollar. other than hardwork, its nothing short of god's grace that they managed to do well even when turning down the obvious route to riches just to strongly (albeit a little naively) hold fast to doing the right thing. how often do you hear a successful person who tells you "we don't do this (which isn't even something wrong) because we don't believe in it". its like intentionally adding barriers to yourself. as if the road of an entreprenuer isn't rough enough.

i must say i disagree with tong yee's point that sports do not teach skills that are transferable to the real world. sure, there are no hard skills, but there are soft skills aplenty. values such as tenacity, determination, discipline, teamwork are much better experienced in sports as opposed to the "nerdy" CCA. on the other hand, i think shelfing books, setting up visualisers, sitting in an aircon room can't achieve these as well.

i also have another question/issue - isn't it a tad too dangerous for an organization to be built around one person? i mean (god forbids) that person gets into an accident, then the company is going to disappear? shouldn't there always be transition of leadership, planning for worse case scenario? maybe not.

i'm a little acquainted with the whole NE framework and the problem with teachers, so I must say that its extremely gratifying to know that there are teachers who are out there willing to try to change the system. it is worth noting that in a lot of the independent schools which control their hiring, there are many teachers who are equally inspirational and are interested in trying to shape mindsets. even in the moe, there are good teachers who want to shape their kids beyond the textbook. unfortunately, there are (possibly more) teachers who really don't give a crap.

on a slightly related note about mindsets,

Get fit, get a bonus
Some firms rewarding workers for keeping fit, recycling, charity work

i think this is ridiculous. why do you need KPIs to make people care about their own health and the world around them :S is this asymptomatic of our education system? no KPI = don't do? its like compulsory CIP hours all over again :S

respect/adversity award: Chin Leng from SingaporeBrides.com

(i think) for many singaporeans, the story normally ends at the abyss. being adverse to adversity and change is really not going to help our case. can we really have a high adversity quotient in a country that has enjoyed many years great economic success with a government that has done a stellar job in deploying infrastructure? how can we deal with upset, failure and rejection?

i'm quite a suck for "against all odds" stories. Chin Leng may not be the coolest, most eloquent, smartest person around, but he's mighty resilient. and that deserves respect (even Hoong An used him as inspiration).

persuasionFAIL award: Hoong An from HungryGoWhere

prof ben tried something similar for cs1101s. he tried to tell us why we SHOULD not do it. he got seniors to tell us why we should not do it as well. in the end, only 2 (i think) people got off the "speeding bullet train". to any aspiring entreprenuer, i think instead of dissuading them, i'm pretty sure that he reinforced their beliefs. well, most of the time, like Chin Leng said, the brashness of youth allows such advice to be turned into challenges, channeled into the desire to break the mould.

bottomline: i don't think negative persuasion works :P in fact, i think it beckons people to take up the challenge. especially in a class like 3216.

i like his pragmatic approach. if (and a very big one at that) one day, i become an entreprenuer, i would choose his & leslie's route. i think its important to stock up your resources before you embark on a journey. yea, sure, you could bulldoze your way through, but you'll probably going to need a lot more intelligence & resilience. pragmatism oozes from Hoong An actually, if you were like me and were kaypohing around after class, you would be able to see that from all the suggestions and advice he gave.

i-ran-out-of-awards: Ash from Interactive SG
unsurprisingly, Ash was flooded by the most people after the presentation. what impressed me immediately was how he offered everyone who brought an idea to him with a opportunity to go down to his office to pitch to him! opportunities have to be taken when given. in that LT last night, was opportunity to speak with 6 people prof ben considered successful. i think more of us should cherish these opportunities.

one of the highlights of the night was when ash displayed the title of his slide right after prof ben said "there is no formula to success". irony WIN.

other than that, a lot of what Ash said is rather consistent with what 3216 has been trying to tell us. that's cos Ash works in the online space, where the rules of engagement are different.

my personal favorite: Leslie from Redsport

cos i like sports and its about sports. plus i've already talked about redsport the other time :P i'm pretty excited to see how redsport grows with our local sports scene which is progressing at (sadly) a glacial speed.

recurring themes from the night

1) success = pain

2) no passion = pain

3) no $ = pain

life is all about pain. beat pain to have a shot at beat life.

one of my favourite shows about pain - Rocky 4:

background, rocky faces of with a steriods-boosted russian who killed his friend in the ring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSzdlL6arH0 - Rocky talking to his son about going one more round in life (from 4:39 till 5.45)

ceteris paribus

2010-03-16T00:00:00.000+08:00

Cēterīs paribus is a Latin phrase, literally translated as "with other things the same," or "all other things being equal or held constant." It is commonly rendered in English as "all other things being equal." A prediction, or a statement about causal or logical connections between two states of affairs, is qualified by ceteris paribus in order to acknowledge, and to rule out, the possibility of other factors that could override the relationship between the antecedent and the consequent ~ wikipedia

i disliked econs in JC because of the whole study of ceteris paribus. sure, its required for us to understand basic concept, and isolate individual relationships, but thats really not what happens in real life. don't get me wrong though, i like econs, just not the way it was taught. its good to keep ceteris paribus away when testing web apps. you can't keep everything else constant. the same message was repeated again and again, its not enough for an app to work on one station where all variables are controlled.

i LOVE the hotel buffet example. its pretty fantastic. instead of focusing on just maximising individual performance, looking at improvement at a higher order would be probably more effective - that's what i gathered.

i like how this course tries to make us to think big, look at the big picture, get ready for scaling up. in the post-lesson discussion, prof said that there's probably no way we cant compete with mit, harvard in terms of brilliant minds in research, but we probably have a shot getting a facebook. so beyond programming, its really more about high level perspectives. i don't think any other CS mod teaches this.

i enjoyed the presentation very much. i'm sure many of the more technical people had their appetites satisfied.
it was pretty high level technical stuff, din really get much, but it put lots of interesting ideas in my heads - things to keep in mind as I continue with the other modules.

prof said that zit seng was a "better person to teach [this topic] then me". he probably can deliver the same content, but what zit seng had was real life working experiences. when you sit in such sessions, its quite easy to tell between someone who's simply just read about it, as opposed to someone who's actually done real stuff. that's the whole idea of me wanting to come to 3216 into the first place - doing real stuff, hearing it from real people.

this optimization thing really is an art :)

my driving instructor once told me "i tell you your mistake how many times also no use, if you fail once, you'll remember the mistake." thankfully, i failed only on the trial run in the circuit by another instructor. i guess that's the strange thing about humans, some mistakes or lessons really just need to be hammered into you the hard way. its like how little children will never touch anything hot again after scalding themselves.

sure, the post-lesson lesson was kinda interesting, but i didn't really find it a big deal. maybe its really cos I have an elite uncaring face. i mean if you spend all your time complaining, comparing, speculating (zit seng's example of the guy who gave ACTUAL HARD DATA to back up the SoC lag comes to mind) to do actual stuff, you'll be much better off. i mean, its not like i don't complain.... (i complain a lot in fact), but its important to remember that nothing is really gonna come out of it.

kudos to my wave team! 2 X Guru + 1 X Noob + 2 other awesome members = win!

... and then a miracle occurs ...

2010-03-08T21:51:00.000+08:00

Is UI really just common sense? In some ways, yeah. But in more ways than one, its not. Like the doctor who made his patient fall, the UI designer often fails to see things from the user's point of view.... or maybe just his browser.

One of the most repeated suggestion today was "give clear instructions" (she said it for more than 5 of the apps). When I had to manage little kids, I always remembered to be absolutely detailed in my instructions. Even then, some idiotic kid will still get himself into trouble because he DIDN'T follow the instructions.

The biggest takeaway from the lesson last week was from getHelp's idiot proof step-by-step. Instructions mingled with limited things to view. I think that's an excellent way to "teach" people how to use apps. Instead of having to read a "wall of text", they are guided through the process.

Unfortunately, our extension has lots to improve in this regard. Too bad we din get any pointers from Pamela Fox :P (PLEASE GO ADD OUR EXTENSION!!!!)

Most of the time, miracles are really supposed to occur in our applications. I guess, we just need to remember to help users find it :)

when you've only got 100 years to live

2010-03-08T15:58:00.000+08:00

15 there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to lose
15, there's never a wish better than this
When you only got 100 years to live

The past 2 weeks have be CRAAAAAZY. I've never gotten time to take a breath since Chinese New Year. Its been fun and tiring at the same time.

During the Friday Pitching session, Prof said that CS3216 is essentially for us to sit down, spend all our time doing things that we've always wanted to do but never had the chance to do it. (might not be the exact words, might not even be his message... but oh well). I think in some ways that's right and wrong.

Its right because, well, most of us ARE doing what we've always wanted to do but never had the time/opportunity to sit down. But at the same time, I think its WRONG because why do we need a lv 3000 module that's worth well more than the 4 MC its allocated to get our asses off? i think something's wrong here (with us, or maybe just me). What happened to that child like innocence and enthusiasm that we once had to just do whatever we wanted. Now we just find excuse after excuse not to do stuff. Why do we need a module to push us to do things?

Perhaps I only speak for myself. When Prof Ben said those words, I sat there thinking "Does it mean we wouldn't have sprung to action had we not taken this module?" Perhaps thats the strange thing about humans. You need some form of trigger.

I almost chose NOT to go for the pitching session because I wanted to study for my 2100 (which i tanked anyway <.< ) But I'm glad I went for the session. But while its all fun and good to be talking about ideas, I think the true value lies in action on it. Talk is cheap.

I have no real idea why I'm feeling so pensieve, I started on this entry while listening to "100 Years" by Five for Fighting. Originally I wanted to do the usual "what did I learn from the pitching session", but midway it turned into a myraid of disconnected thoughts.

I guess time really flies by. I think we should make use of every opportunity and time we have. Whether its during CS3216 or in the future.

the world aint all sunshine and rainbows....

2010-02-23T17:10:00.001+08:00

Background: Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is a retired boxer in Philadelphia. He's going to take part in an exhibition fight current world champion after an ESPN program ran a simulation of then and now - declaring that Rocky would win.

opiniated individuals ... and dare you throw money into the sea?

2010-02-23T04:21:00.006+08:00

This blog says that the problem is that many times people that do have strong opinions refrain from expressing them because they are afraid of what other people might think.

Clearly, Chewy does not belong to this category. And he sure can back them up. And even better, he's open to opposing opinions. I think that's a really cool trait to have. There are many things you can be impressed about with regards to Chewy, his confidence, his witty humour, his willingness to get his hands dirty, his humility. Little surprise that he's pretty high-flying for 32 year old :)

A side-thought before I continue in topic: Yea, US may be pretty screwed up. However, all things equal, you'll be hard-pressed not to find distinct differences when looking at how people educated there carry themselves compared to Singapore. Sure, I may generalise and maybe I just haven't seen enough people yet, but based on my personal experience (2 US educateed God-sisters, 2 close pals in US), I have always been pro-US Education system (well, of course if you can afford it). What do you think?

sgFail...or not?

I shamelessly quote from Reuben in our MSN convo "im qt surprised google makes 100mil in sg. 100mil is no joke at all, no matter what industry". I mean sure, I've always kinda knew that search is a big thing. in some ways, chewy really smashed away the myth that there's no market in singapore. its even more interesting that he feels that the consumer culture in singapore is screwed up. personally, i'm more inclined towards his view points. i think in sg, your power as a consumer is really bad. like ryan said, the culture is one of the main reasons for this scenario. then begs the question, is it REALLY possible for the scales to be tipped? too often, we have tried brave souls try and fail. what is the problem?

i think its a matter of our mentality towards failure vs comfort zone: generally sgeans are more comfortable to stay in a bao-jia situation. if it aint broken, why fix it? why make your own life so hard? and i blame the education system. students flock to the ivle to post stuff. they say the stupidest thing in classroms for participation. why? becos we're damn kiasu and kiasi. this psyche can not be better illustrated then looking at your google reader/rss reader for the past 2 days, after sadistic prof welcomed us back to the real world.

and it really does works! i had this discussion last sem, and i really think the education system in sg really not helping this culture

that said, i realy can't (in the forseeable future) see consumers grabbing the power back in sg.

throwing ideas against the wall .... and money into the drain

branching off from the previous point, i believe this concept is totally unorthodox to most sgeans. with no offence towards those who expressed doubts against the CPA, i often find sgeans (myself included) quick to find fault or failure. but like the second segment of chewy's talk on our tinted glasses, we often think that we're able to see from other people's point of view, but more often than not, we're still fixated on our own viewpoints, which we developed based on our experience. we're really not as smart and knowledgeable as we think we are... well, i don't at least.

which is not a bad thing. but perhaps, its time to look at throwing money into the drain .... even though we might not own a palace in indonesia

here's to a wonderful 2 weeks of deadlines and tests ahead!

(ps does this make me a fan again? :) )

help us help you....

2010-02-19T23:21:00.001+08:00

interestingly, my facebook assignment group's very first idea was very similar to getHelp. of course, looking at our final product, you can probably guess that we were not too favorable on it.

one thing i learnt from 2 of my best friends is.... 2 of the best people around don't necessarily make the best couple. in some ways, i think this application tries to put together too many "greats", and possibly turned out not too great. i don't like to fixate myself on 4 points, so i'll do a general sweep on various aspects of the app.

idea
on the first look, it seems like a great idea. having a one stop location where you can get help and give help. "i need help with ..." is so open-ended and it gives freedom. harnessing the power of the social network + great idea = success! right? wrong.

i think the biggest flaw with the idea is that its a little too open-ended. there is no focus. case-in-point, stack overflow was launched at the end of the year that this project was done. it only focused on programming. did it need the social network? no. is it successful? probably yes. with 135,000 users today, i'd say its pretty successful. getHelp is essentially a bloated up version of this, where you can ask for help from everybody and anybody.

but don't get me wrong, i'm not against thinking big. i just think that its better to start small. look at google, did they start by trying to conquer the whole world? sure, they probably had big dreams, but they focused on their search engine which we all can't live without today before branching out to compete with other big guns.

why do i talk about the idea even though we really are suppose to be talking about execution? i think that a group's idea, or more accurately their mindset when they are coming up with this idea, affects their entire mindset during the whole project - including creation of user interface, features etc.

interface 1: looks

As I've mentioned several times, I'm a believer of simplicity. It brings about a certain sense of elegance in design, and intuitiveness for users. Eye tracking studies have shown that the average user doesnt read text thoroughly. Thus, blocks of text to explain how to use interface is really not going to cut it.

I think the creaters of getHelp did have some sense of this idea, unfortunately, somehow or rather I think the final product still looks a little too cluttered. or rather, important information can't really be differentiated from the rest. this could be attributed to the the colour scheme. grey should not be used for the text, its hard to see when compared with all the bright colours all around them. the tabs are a little hard to see as well. why use 2 types of tabs? when you look at the project page, its a big case of TMI: too much information.

theme

Although the theme of a fireman, fire starter is cute, but the red buttons contrast too starkly against the default facebook color theme. Moreover, the theme of fire is hardly used in the application. Fire breathers take away the "negative" connotation of someone requiring too much help

I think a theme is good to capture certain audience groups. However, it is important to keep the theme and follow the theme, otherwise it feels a little lame.

Also, I think there is a lack of consistency between the images. Some are cutesy while others are serious/professional. It gives the feel of an identity crisis.

i think its a real big waste. perhaps they ran out of time, or they had too many other issues to resolve, or they came up with this theme half-way through, either way, I think if they had used the theme properly, they would have made their app much more interactive and engaging, whether they wanted to take a professional OR cute approach (only can chose 1)

interface 2: feel

whats the point of looking good if everything is rotten inside? the other (more) important part of interface is user interactions. based on the screenshots, i think generally everything can be done easily, and these actions seem to be mostly self-explanatory.

need quick help? : is it a different version of help compared to the normal one we have? what's the difference between dateline and estimated time?

what will be posted to my SMS & twitter & feed? how is all these information going to work? will there be a preview screen?

for the purpose of the app, I think it lacks very important OVERALL figures that should be present throughout the whole app (requests answered, request unanswered etc etc). The demand for a plug-in as simple as a G-Mail unread indicator should able to tell us how important most users find this feature.

feature set & implementation

the app has no short of features, it allows you to posts to other places, allow you to go for achievements, allow you to recommend. however, i think more thought could have been put into these features. the general feel i get is very "kiasu"-ish, where they just wanted to include everything.

firstly, the "karma system" ineeds a lot of thought in it. how much reward to attract helpers? how to determine who are real "experts"? one badge and a simple ranking board probably isn't enough. one of the driving force in forums is your "rank". hand in hand with ranks, is the karma system. when you help others, you gain karma. this is a cyclical process, and the alturistic nature of mankind will help drive the forums. in many sense, this app is a forum. you need a multi-tiered achievement system, to drive users to come back.

furthermore, some of the the categories are just not useful. why is there a need to track the top firemakers? how is "hottest" project important? (what is hottest project for that matter) it just add most unnecessary clutter to the application.

the wide buffet of methods to "spam" simply turns me off. not only will you spam on one platform, you will spam on multiple platforms. i believe kiasu helpees will just check all options, and helpers will just get annoyed and leave the application. its good that they thought of giving choice, but choice could possibly come back to bite them. i would personally only choose to implement it on 1 at most 2 channels.

there also seems to be a gap in the "viral"-ness of the app. recall that this app was created in a time where massively large amounts of apps were being added day after day. people were already starting to ignore apps. although getHelp is great for... well getting help, i don't think its the best way for giving help. after all, once your status is set, I don't have to use the app to contact you on the necessary information. i won't even find out about the great karma system behind the app. i dont think a helpee has incentive to want to become the greatest firestarter....

then it brings out a final issue: why cant I just post what i want.... directly where i want it?

my verdict? i think getHelp is a great spamming machine for helpees which is likely to get abused, preventing helpers to want to add the app. i think they tried to do too many things, and with a bad idea to boot, they just slogged it through in the end.

social network is a great resource, but not necessarily a good resource for everything. if however, they had (at that point in time) aimed for a primitive facebook connect, i think it would have been a much better idea.

pigeon impossible

2010-02-15T20:50:00.004+08:00

Check out Pigeon Impossible if you haven't already. the video's great, but the interviews, blog posts and pod casts are all awesome stuff as well. I first watched it embedded (on prof ben's facebook, heh), so I didn't check out the guy's website.

Success formula #1
learning by doing + learning by failing + importance of basics

Success formula #2

9 hours X 5 days * 52 weeks * 5 years = 11700hrs
(assumes 5 day working week with 8-5 working hours, which is probably an underestimate)

Happy Chinese New Year all!

best pitch in my book

2010-02-09T04:20:00.003+08:00

it may not have been the most prestigious option to be working on for your final project, but the pitch that left the greatest impression on me was given by This Man.

how many times have you heard that "there is no future in (insert field) in singapore"? i had my fair share from my father. in fact, he was so adamant on his point that he almost forcefully tried to withdraw me from my CCA, with bad results as an excuse. thankfully, i had wonderful teachers who knew much better.

so why redsport? although i'm not to keen to pursue it as a final project, i cannot help but be amazed by the passion that emitted from the guy. with a no frills presentation, he highlighted just how much of a difference redsports made. kudos to yanjie for trying to contextualize this for many of our foreign classmates, but as a sportsman and assistant coach myself, i knew the value of redsport to the local sports scene.

i was still in school about the time redsport started, and it got more popular when i was helping my coach. before redsport, there was no consolidation of local school sports results and reports. several sites had tried to do the same thing as redsport, but their execution failed and eventually they faded into the depths. redsport is the only site that had withstood the test of time.

Mr leslie focused on what he was good at, which was basically to bring the sports story to us. and most importantly he stayed true to his passion. I quote:
I’m not sure I can comment about that but for me, I’m driven by the need to do something meaningful for society. Telling the sports story of my fellow Singaporean makes this website worth doing for me. Without meaning, I can’t get excited about the work I do. Of course, starting is the easy part. Now is the other struggle – persevering, focusing on the next step. The other thing that works for me is just keeping things simple and executing well. There are a thousand and one ideas out there but executing well and repeatedly is the hard thing to do.

70k (was this the number? i can't remember) daily hits may not seemed much for a page, but if you think about the community who is actually bothered about local sport, its actually quite a huge number. its one thing to follow your dreams blindly, its another thing to follow your dreams and successfully make a difference. and can you say tell a 13 year old that redsport doesnt really make a difference in the grand scheme of things? of course you can't, to them, this is their grand scheme of things. how could then say that redsport is not a success?

and if all the bolded phrases sound familiar, its because they are. these few catch phrases have been repeated again and again throughout this module, whether its by prof ben, or other successful people have said.

i look forward to hearing and learning more from him in the next session we see him.

the 62 comment lesson

2010-02-05T23:31:00.006+08:00

well, thank you all for your support for my previous post. don't expect anymore exciting flame wars like that anymore :P i'm normally a very peace-loving, low profile guy. (its true.... though i doubt most of you would believe me) i hope nobody took any offense from the whole episode, and i apologise for any grief caused.

anyway, i think there were quite a few things i learnt from the whole episode.

1. (i think) generating interest isn't very hard compared to sustaining interest. the latter is the recipe for success in this fast pace, tightly knit web 2.0. the former normally fades into darkness due to the lack of real substance(aka me). there are definitely exceptions, but frankly I don't think such people make any contribution what-so-ever to this planet.

so i think the biggest challenge lies in turning attention into opportunity and value.

2. watch your words on the web. because of the lack of tone, context and familiarity, your words can be easily misinterpreted. again, this by no means is something new, but i think nothing drives home the message clearer than making the mistake yourself.

3. (i feel) its pointless getting into a fight online. there are no winners. i think people who have frequented forums will definitely agree with me. even though you may be right, bowing out really might not be the worse thing. there are jackasses (like me) who just want to start a fight for the sake of starting a fight. just let them be.

or, if you're bored, you could always just entertain them.

4. prof ben is cool. seriously, find me another prof that would praise you for starting a flame war?

an utter waste of time...

2010-02-02T17:49:00.007+08:00

(note: the title refers to the app, not the presentation)

10 things I want to say about Fame League...

1) It is in no way fun at all.

2) The first time I tried to play it, I left within a minute because of the annoying music.

3) It spams your friends when you add the game WITHOUT informing you before hand.

4) Even though it runs you through a tutorial.... I have no idea how to play the game

5) Is it even really a facebook app? It uses a iFrame to a website which is independent of facebook.

6) There are too many options and functions.

7) The UI is extremely unintuitive.

8) Important information like time left before market closes is hard to see.

9) Many stock market concepts are poorly introduced, especially to first timers.

10) I've already deleted the game.

I really think fame league is a poorly executed idea, in true Singaporean fashion. I'm wondering what their revenue model is like, and I'm actually very surprised to know that it even managed 27000+ monthly users. It may be a GREAT game, but I'm never going to find out, because the start of the game has already turn me off. Superficial as I am, I believe all casual gamers out there are the same.

More talk on UI. To begin with, why make a complicated UI and have a tutorial? The best facebook games can be played without looking at the help or tutorial, because its extremely intuitive. To casual gamers, UI is extremely important. I'm assuming the target is casual gamers, otherwise it really wouldn't make sense to infiltrate the facebook market with this application. I think the irony is a lot of games is that they make it very complicated, then they try to teach you how to use it.

Look at bejeweled blitz. In its early days, the game used a 760X600 (canvas size) screen divided into 4 to explain how to play the game, and that was ALL the help consisted of. It was simple and it worked (damn well at that). After 2 years of introduction, they have been careful in adding in small features which don't make your life harder. Its still just as fun today.

FAME league really needs to change its initial learning curve to attract more people. If it has spammed all 27000 users friends, I wouldn't be surprised that at least 20 million users has seen Fame League appear on their feeds. However, the numbers remain low, and essentially this boils down to the fact that the game isn't really fun enough to generate enough hype. Sure, you can have some local press coverage, but thats really not going to get you far.

Considering that I originally disagreed with many things that Yanjie shared during his presentation, I found myself very convinced of what he said during this group's presentation. I find it a little ironic that while they suggested focus for FAME league, the presentation itself lacked focus. Was he trying to tell us prediction markets was an interesting concept? Was he trying to tell us that the game sucked? This was extremely surprising, considering that the presenter was one of the better speakers out there.

Takeaways from the presentation:

1) The potential for Prediction market is huge

A quick google would tell you how big the potential of this is. Like the presentor said, its like an oracle to the future. Thanks to this presentation, I read up on prediction market. Although I din really get a clear enough picture of a prediction market from the presentation.

2) Less is more

The makers of FAME league clearly tried to bite off more than they can chew. Whether it is the UI design itself, or what they tried to achieve as an application. On facebook, less really is more.

3)It is indeed a waste of potential

If they don't capitalize on this, they have essentially wasted the first-mover's opportunity they have.

I must say that Prof Ben's question at the end of the presentation nailed it for me though: "If you think this app sucks so much, why are you even looking at it?"

I don't really think the creators intended to create a game that uses prediction markets. Its a trading/popularity game more than anything else. The prediction aspect of it is more of a side-feature kind of thing. I find the link between fame league and prediction markets at most trivial, even though the concept of prediction markets might have interested me.

During my googlewave meeting after the lesson, Henry said that we should support Singapore start ups. Much as I love hungrygowhere, but I support it not because its a Singapore startup, but because its good and provides me with what I need. Its just like how the FAS demands that Singaporeans should support the young lions instead of EPL. Like Prof has mentioned before, there are so many terrible Singapore start ups out there...

I guess you have to give kudos to Sociolico for their adventurous step forward. I for one will never have embarked on this project. FAME league was a waste of my time. I'm still darn annoyed that it spammed friends.

P.S. In other news, I feel extremely lucky to have been the first one to go first among everyone who quoted or used Prof Ben. Dilip's drawing lot skills FTW! I think Tomithy had a great draw to, to have gone after Pillow Fight and Causes.

tag team (delayed post)

2010-02-02T12:29:00.005+08:00

the deadline come and gone like the wind.

it was a fun, enriching and great experience working with 2 lao jiaos. (old bird) they were patient with my ignorance, and were extremely generous with praise and encouragement. even though I hardly coded, i got to muck around in Silverlight and Fireworks, and manage to come up with passable stuff.

dynamics-wise.... my group was totally drama free. everyone was ready to work, and there was no need for any conflict management or whatsoever. if we have differing views, we sort it out quickly and move on. i don't think there's a need to be too emotionally attached or anything. getting the job done is more important, i think if you want to be more effective, you should focus on that.

that said... in the last 12 hours we were at the mercy of AWS, facebook and SoC, who sent us a storm. our efficiency was limited just by the problems they created.
seb: "eh you kan cheong (nervous/panic mode) or not?"
jon: "no... not really... why leh?"
seb: "k good, cos i'm damn kan cheong. so don't talk to me."
... a while later....
seb: "@#$#$*&^%%&**! facebook is damn useless la!"

anyways, i think the best part for me was to hear my friends (who, in their own words, "dont speak computer" tell you that its really fun. i dont really know how we can sustain interest for the game.... but hey, its just the first assignment. i hope to come up with something more exciting for the final project.

so i think i've powered up (some what) and looking forward to the next adventure.

two roads divered in a wood.....

2010-01-29T08:52:00.000+08:00

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

"One server can fail, but a fleet of servers will never fail"

sure, the guys from AWS were essentially here to "sell" amazon web services, but I really appreciated how they took into consideration that we were students, and did less selling and more sharing and teaching. i especially liked it when simone shared his experiences in order to put into context some of the concepts which wouldn't have made much sense to someone who has little understanding of the whole business of maintaining data centers

"If it ain't broken, don't fix it"

management of large companies with small foresight may not want to switch over to a whole new system. they are afraid of failure or perhaps resistance to change? the ground people probably don't have the guts, motivation or power to push for these changes. after all, why make your own life more difficult if everything is working right now. i too believe in the old adage. when things are going fine, why risk problems by fixing it? i mean, after all, the current way of doing things is most likely a process or framework that has been perfected after many runs and iterations. right?

maybe not. based on what little i know and what i've learnt from cvwo, when you develop a workflow, you're more than likely going to stick with it and live with it. only during the starting honeymoon period, where the workflow is being developed is there incentive for improvement and changes. once you've kinda settled into it, that's probably set in stone. you'd never want to risk a change whenever you couldn't afford it. an example would be as simple as getting from home to work/school. if you're used to a certain route, would you dare risk it on a day where you have an extremely important meeting/presentation?

The first mover's advantage

in business, this is damn important, apparently. this concept was first formalized to me by my econs tutor in jc. and in this scenario, like simone puts it nicely, it is the economics behind that is forcing the change into cloud computing. i think while we're focused on not fixing unbroken things, we should also look breaking new ground. in a way, thats WHY i'm here on this voyage - to sail into waters uncharted, to see lands unexplored.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

on a last note, nice to know that amazon has set up camp in the little red dot.

I destroyed my hands :)

2010-01-24T14:17:00.004+08:00

Alright! I totally destroyed my fingers using with the Adobe Pen Tool. But I'm still very unsatisfied with my end product. Looks terrible kiddish, and unprofessional. Bah...

So I took a break here: Gametrailers' Angry Video Game Nerd: Hydlide Review

The video is part of a series which runs at Gametrailer.com. Essentially, a vulgar, angry dude picks out terrible old school games on old systems (Atari, NES, etc) and complains about them . In this episode, the target of his wrath is "Hydlide".

If you're allergic to vulgarities, you might just want to skip to 6:30min for the gist of the whole video. Why I'm sharing this video is because I felt that he actually said something that made some sense. He noted that essentially, this crappy game was just as cryptic as the first Zelda (for those who don't know what this is, Zelda is one of the all time most popular console game series) in terms of how to progress in the game. However, what made the difference is the design of the game made it fun for people to play, so people were willing to collaborate and discuss it, even though the game's puzzles were extremely difficult and cryptic. In order to beat Zelda, fans collaborated to come up with guides and game world maps (it was considered massive at that time) using game magazines. (obviously there was no Google then)

In days where collaboration was no mean feat, the design of Zelda managed to bring about such huge steps in their players. Today, Google makes this process so much easier. In some ways, I think this idea is rather important for facebook apps. As long you manage to earn some form of leverage over the users (be it a great design, addictive gameplay, essential services), users might actually be willing to help you back.

Of course, its not going to gain that form of leverage nowadays, since users can simply just SWITCH to alternatives once you can't deliver.
Anyway, i must do a disclaimer on my statement from my previous post. Its GOOD that Prof Ben keeps repeating himself. Why does he repeat himself? I think that it could be for two reason...
1) He really believes in what he says (in that its important for us to hear it)
2) People don't listen/People forget to what they hear

I had lots of fun (and pain) getting the version one of whoisthemonkey's UI done. Too bad I'm not paticularly pleased with my end product. Well, enough 3216 for the weekend.

when you come to know that you dont know much....

2010-01-19T22:11:00.004+08:00

...you work even harder... (after spend some time feeling sorry for yourself)

sat's workshop on AWS might have been a little daunting for people with no real background with web development (including me). the aws lesson and start up guides are excellent in telling you the HOW aspect, but if you want to get a basic overview on WHAT is happening and WHY we are doing all this, you might want to take a look at a newb-friendly guide (the title says it all really). so you might want to check it out if you're still pretty lost on whats happening.

the advent of scrum/agile really isn't all that surprising. after all, we are in a world where change is so rapid. i think its a cool approach to doing things, not just big projects. the software development lecture on a whole was enriching, interesting and funny.

on an unrelated note, i just felt inspired to talk about prof.

1) prof often says the exact same things many times.

2) prof loves to pick on people (of course, its all in the name of fun :) poor angad)
3) dont ever walk in on him teaching if you're not in prof class. well, if you do, you could always come back with a witty retort.
4) there is an inner army regular in prof that surfaces rather often. (especially in his speech)

anyway, back to the topic. i especially enjoyed the sharing sessions. just from their presentations, i could see how and why they were project lead, production managers or team leads. i found myself sitting on the edge of my seat excitedly to be listening to their sharing on how work is like in those organizations. too bad there wasn't time to ask more questions.

the past week was interesting. for the first time, i got to REALLY try my hand at design. i was awfully disgusted by my product. i present my proud achievement:

( i'm sorry NUSSU SAVE.... i'm a proud tree killer, just like how i won't give up eating meat)

after this past week, i've come to know how much i don't know. i may be from computing, but i think i might be easily one of those who know the least. and being surrounded in such knowledgeable company, is just like staring at the wide horizons and knowing how small i am compared to it. and these people are probably only the tip of the iceburg. i mean, sure, prof always says these are the best around in NUS, but there are definitely lots more talented people all around who didn't chose to take cs3216.

(which happens to be the EXACT same thing that prof ben said in his 1101s "last lecture"... though he din do any pushups)

also, my whole body is aching TERRIBLY from my physio sessions....to top everything up, my first assignment is not going as well as i hoped it would be, but i'm glad to have such experienced and cool team mates.

BUT i guess this presents an opportunity for me to learn from the wealth of experience and knowledge available around. and i think the question is whether i can pick all these up fast enough.

so to sum up.... its been a terrible week....

...or not...

well, too bad life is not long enough to be mopping over your inadequacies. i deeply apologise for the apparent gloom and doom phase i seem to portray. the truth is, i'm not feeling particularly sad or anything. not that i have any time to. but i think its important to have this self-awareness to conquer greater heights...

a trip to the doctors

2010-01-12T20:23:00.002+08:00

so i just came from my physio session in the afternoon.

while i was waiting for my turn, i saw this giant of a doctor talking to a patient, who had a cast with a special shoe over his right foot. the doctor was trying to explain something to him. the patient obviously felt that talking to him while seated was either uncomfortable or discourteous, so he stood up. the doctor then asked him to be careful and sit down, and then proceeded on with their discussion.

within seconds, the patient stood up again, before the doctor asked him to sit down again. after two more times this happened, the patient finally lost his balance and tripped. fortunately, he only fell back onto the chair, sustaining no injury.

so i was watching this spectacle rather curiously. why didn't the doctor just sit down beside the empty sit beside the patient, who clearly was NOT going to stay seated to talk to the doctor?

of course, i could say all i want, because
1) there's no guarantee i won't overlook the exact same thing if i were in his shoes, like the saying goes 旁观者清 (which means things are clearer to someone spectating)
2) maybe the doctor was REALLY REALLY busy at the end of the shift

anyway, my point is, i think if we remember to apply some common sense, and try to see things from the users point of view, we would be able to provide a much better user experience.

ship out!

2010-01-11T11:02:00.003+08:00

Main Entry: ¹voy·age
Pronunciation: \ˈvȯi-ij, ˈvȯ(-)ij\
Function: noun \
Etymology: Middle English viage, veyage, from Anglo-French veiage, from Late Latin viaticum, from Latin, traveling money, from neuter of viaticus of a journey, from via way — more at way
Date: 14th century

1 : an act or instance of traveling : journey
2 : a course or period of traveling by other than land routes
3 : an account of a journey especially by sea

i’ve chosen to name my blog gran viaje, which is spanish for grand voyage. was feeling particularly adventurous when i created the blog.

i think cs3216 is gonna be like a voyage. you kinda know the general direction what you're going towards, but you're basically heading into the uncharted waters. there will be no shortage of adventure, blood, sweat, tears and joy.

the funny thing is, i don't exactly know what i want to learn from this course. i mean, sure, there is going to be no shortage of hard web development skills, teamwork etc etc, what i truly desire is the experience of the unknown.

its just like what was said in the talk by tina seeling. there's no way of teaching things like creativity and entrepreneurship in a strictly classroom setting. we have to get our hands dirty. i love getting my hand dirty :)

so, i cant come up with a WHAT WILL I LEARN FROM CS3216 list, but i am hungry for the gran viaje that awaits me.