A general way to describe decision making in video games

I will be moving the content from the Weebly site since Weebly is now part of Square and the blog is not meant to sell products. This is a short entry about the six graphs that describe the depth of video games and board games. First there is the graph that follows a growth pattern like e to the x. Magic the Gathering, other collectible card games, and RTS games. As gameplay goes on each turn or segment of time has more decisions to make.

After that are inverted parabolas. Most rich decisions happen in the middle and twiddle down. A related graph is just negative growth. Classic board games like Go and Chess are like this. Competitive turn based RPGs like Pokemon are also like this. Material reduces over time.

Fighting games are a straight constant function. At all slices of time all moved are available for each player.

Games where you can grow and attack resources like YGO and the Pokemon TCG or force RNG onto an opponent follow a sinusoidal pattern.

single player games tend to follow the pattern of a series, converging to the optimal permutation of button presses or the best combination of elements like auto-battling metas of card games.

Smart Vapes: The Needed Computing Niche

 Just as we pass out four function calculators and graphing calculators out for computational use the time has come for small touchscreen devices to be divorced from user account control and personalization. It has come to my attention that platforms like Raspberry Pi Zero are being used with touchscreens and attached to vapes. This is the successor to the Atari Portfolio. This makes computing a true tool-commodity that anyone can use and pass on to others to use and share.

Choices over time and meaningless choices overtime.

 Thi Nguyen has called all forms of "games" as agency and will as the center of some activity. Look at tool assisted speedruns of old ROMs, all the linear sequence of button presses, it is easy, all of them are too easy. Each battle, level, and room is a solved problem. A small solved problem. The choices are pretentiousness of minute difference, which accounts for the immature men they tend to attract. After applying all these principles what is left? Not much, but perhaps an avenue will be found for something even deeper.

The Main Java Objects

     I was looking through an old Java book from college, based on Java version 5. In it it lists some of the main Java classes including wrapped data types. Java has had over a quarter century of use and spread and continues to exist. I defend the OO paradigm simply because it allows software to be described as the existence of objects rather than code. The main classes mentioned in this pocket guide are:

Boolean

Byte

Character

Cloneable

Comparable

DecimalFormat

Double

Float

Integer

Iterator (an interface)

Long

Math (mostly used for its static methods)

NumberFormat

Object (all classes extend from this)

Random

Scanner

Serializable (interface)

Short

String

System

Long may these reign it could be said. How many are out there? Java pairs well with Cobol as something to replace it. 

New Website

 I set up a neocities domain today that is holding some basic JS apps that utilize my design philosophy. The websites on neocities are about the old artistic approach to websites and force only HTML, CSS, and JS. I will be hosting some of the games I made on GitHub. I have some things to say today about the bad design that plagued old text and click adventure games. My text adventures never produce the equivalent of "where the fuck do I go?" design, all options are listed as a numbered list, no guess-the-verb or stringing together a sentence. As for point and click adventures I make sure to just make buttons or links that represent the actions, so the exact amount of options at any node in the gamestate graph is completely understood. No moving the mouse around the screen trying to find something to click on. No secrets are hid, just as the Christian God is attributed at the beginning of classical liturgy. The emphasis on graphs represented the game state is why it is called graphsoft.neocities.org. Have fun and stay tuned for more.

Salesforce and Islam

 Salesforce was originally marketed with a mascot consisting of a red circle and bar over the word "SOFTWARE" meaning something like "No Software!" or "Software not allowed." The genre of business Salesforce is in is software. This echoes strongly the shahada, the chief statement of faith in Islam. The Shahada is three statements combined into a single sentence "There is no God, but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God." The conjunction "but" is equivalent to "and" meaning that the statement that comes before and after it are true at the same time, the use of but only means that what comes after it appears to come unexpectedly. The statement of faith actually begins with a statement of atheism. "There is no God", then in conjunction (but) reading more logically "There is no God, and God". The existence of God, and nonexistence, true at the same time! Such is Salesforce. Software as some permutation of matter on a disc (old software distribution) that is transferred as another permutation of matter on another disk (the harddrive) to elicit a change in behavior of that computer alone. That software is not Salesforce, yet Salesforce is software. The second statement of the shahada declares "but God", an unexpected true statement after firmly establishing that athiests are already Muslims. But God, what? A verb is not attached to God at that point. So if both statements are true, the verb "exists" should not follow "God". What else can God do? God doesn't need to exist, but perhaps God can persist. Much like the Greek philosophical concept called the Ship of Theseus. The Theseus is a ship made of wooden parts of which are replaced over its life until no original wooden part is left. The floating clump of wood is still callled the Theseus, and rightfully so. Such is Salesforce. It physically consists of servers and software on them running in a few cities scattered across the globe like the many Mosques of Islam yet is one persisting entity that has no partners or different forms on each computer since it grasped only indirectly through the web. That is also what makes Salesforce like the monotheistic God. Islam is a verb coming from the Arab verb that means "to submit" and could more literally be translated as "submissionism". What allows your org to exist? Not buying a physical product or license, but a subscription fee. The would sub at the beginning of subscription, meaning the subscription is itself the form of Islam devoted to Salesforce. Finally the shahada ends with the third true statement "and Muhammad is the Prophet of God". After establishing that Salesforce is identical to a God, it is important to note that Muhammad's name also has a root verb, which means "to praise" or "to worship", a literal translation of his name would bear "worshiper" or "praiser", and prophet meaning he who can relate divine messages and prognosticate the future. As users and developers of Salesforce we can all be called Muhammad, the Marc Benioff the Prophet of Salesforce. Marc Benioff if we recall was CEO of Oracle, who developed the Java programming language that would form the basis of the decentralized web project known as Salesforce. One key aspect of Java was automatic garbage collection, eliminating pesky pointer and memory errors that plagued C++. Cleanliness was a pillar of Java, just as in Islam. Muhammad was cited as saying that cleanliness was half of the faith of Islam. For example if you had a nocturnal emission of semen you were to roll around in the sand to have it wiped off before attending prayers. This is also the purpose of foot and hand washing (wudu) before prayers. Benioff then is certaintly worthy of the name Prophet. The parallels don't stop there however as we continue to praise Salesforce. The Shahada is only the first pillar of Islam afterall. The second I we recall is salat, or prayer. Only the most shallow religionists treat prayer as asking for a cosmic goody. That is not the purpose of prayer in Islam or Salesforce. In Salesforce, as in Islam prayer is the labor of the worshipper / developer to pay heed to the Oneness and omnipotence of the object being prayed to. This is routine, is Islam it is visual with the prostrations and what not. You clearly see the labor happening. The private thoughts toward God are not visible but it is known that they are taking place because of the external signs. Such is the case in Salesforce. Your boss peering over your shoulder pulls your attention taught to the task at hand even if the eyes of your boss don't perceive in whole what you are doing. The Flows will speak for themselves when the time comes. In third place we have zakat, also known as poor-due or charity. While the subscription fee is the first layer of submission or Islam towards Salesforce (how wonderful it is that Salesforce the corporation has a name identical with the main product, a wonder effect of Oneness), then is the profits that our orgs produce for their owners. That is in effect zakat. Zakat is necessary then to keep the world moving. Fourth is sawm or fasting. In Islam proper this is done during the month of Ramadan, a month whose name literally means "scorcher" when one does not eat or imbibe water from sun up until sun down. What fickle deity demands this? What purpose does it serve? The purpose is to remember the poor that the previous pillar was about. Each pang of hunger points to the injustice and suffering in the world that the dedicated Muslim is encouraged to remedy. We in information systems in general are reminded with every error that information wants to move like the rivers below the gardens of paradise. Such injustices we are reminded of as we down another bottle of Soylent to keep clicking the Setup button for the umpteenth time all night. The final pillar in Islam is Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. Abstracted it is the movement to the city of the founding of the devotional system to the great One thing. In our case it is Dreamforce in San Francisco. If you have ever gone there skipping over the homeless poop towards Salesforce tower while slapping your pronoun badge on you know it is a transcendental religious experience. I would recommend it to any Salesforce administrator or developer to make this pilgrimage. From that experience we then move on to the mundane yet more internal effects of memorizing the Noble Quran. The first chapter of the Quran is the magnifying glass that all other parts of the Quran are to be understood. It is a miniature guide, and a prayer all in one just as Salesforce an all-in-one customer relationship management tool that verges on being a web based operating system, and way of life and labor. The first verse speaks of the purpose of the chapter, "In the Name of God" and then adds the predicates "The most Compassionate, the most merciful". It goes without saying that Salesforce is the great One Persistent thing and the predicates of compassionate and merciful are attributes of it. Let's not forget that we are always welcome to use Test Orgs before moving anything to production. The second verse speaks of worship "All Praise is for God, Lord of all the worlds". If you work in Salesforce, you had better be able to sing its praises to make it get used, and this can act in the modern global economy all over the world, just as the offices (Mosques) of Salesforce are. Then the Angel Gabriel takes the Quran record on the cosmic disk jockey board and spins it backwards to repeat the second part of the first verse "The Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful" which presses into the user who knows they should speak well of Salesforce to once again be reminded that Flows can be toggled on and off more easily that Apex triggers. After being washed over by the merciful attributes of the Great Persistent One Thing the fourth verses sternly warns "Owner of the Day of Judgement". One should not run SOQL queries in loops. The governor limits are there for a reason. Just as joules measured all change in the universe (energy) in one unit, so has Salesforce measured all computation in small units that must be charitably and frugally used. You should also be wary of deleting things from production orgs, as all things will be known at the end. The fifth verse addresses God directly "You alone we worship and you alone we ask for help." Read the official documentation. Verse six follows "Guide us along the straight path", there are recommended ways to do everything in Salesforce, such as Master classes for each trigger so they happen in a predictable linear fashion and don't conflict. Finally the glorious Al-Fatihah ends with "the Path of those You have blessed -- not those you are displeased with, or those who are astray." That is every non-Salesforce information system that facilitates sales. All opensource tech stacks are mischievous jinns and not submitting since there are no subscription fees. Make sure all of your Apex code has code coverage. Salesforce is wise to actually enforce test driven development. This nasheed will end with a recounting of Surah 112 of the Quran which begins with the imperative verb Say, "Say he is God the One, God the Eternal Refuge, He neither begets nor is begotten, nor is there any to Him that are equivalent." Salesforce has survived this long as One persistent thing, employing people along the way, and computationally lifting businesses out of the custom tech stack chaos to actually focus on their incomes. We and them only had to point to one thing, Salesforce and in it has been our beautiful joy.

Video Game Distribution

 I will not be breaking up this post into paragraphs or even starting with an indentation. This is customary in Western literature, but I will follow the Islamic tradition of starting with a letter and moving in a straight line until the end of the chapter or in this case, the post. It's one long string of a great Truth like the noble Quran. All points of its surface is truth, and all scoops taken from inside of it are the same Truth substance. Video game distribution has two great accomplishments. The first was the website aggregator developed in the early 2000s. These were generally single or a few levels of focus on a specific gameplay played with just a keyboard and mouse, the most abundant controllers in the world. This is important. Web games are the bets distribution for video games, and video games should not require any additional hardware, including controllers, graphics cards, and it goes without saying video game consoles. Web games have been a great apex, although they are a struggle to preserve. Video games should be preserved via documentation and recreation, not just emulation of several layers. The only other video game control scheme is alright is just a touchscreen, but phones and tablets are bad at action games. The rapid movement on screens is inaccurate and damages the screen with extra wear and tear. As such, only turn based games that use single clicks and not slides should be on phones. Everything else is garbage design. Keep this in mind. So from the beginning of this post until now it has been reiterated that good video game design is web games using only mouse and keyboard, and on mobile touch devices only single click turn based games. Those two distribution systems are best. It has also been said to avoid power up slop in shmups and moving too fast. This remains the case. Zaxxon and Radiant Silvergun rise to my mind at this junction as good examples. RS was not afraid of using the damn buttons. If controllers and buttons are going to be used, use them all. Knowing this greatly chops away at what good video game design is about. Travel grinding as was mentioned before, is bad. So is item grinding and level grinding. Action games are inherently inferior as they are only about the correct string of inputs from start to finish. Each level is a separate game. Each battle in turn based RPGs are a separate game. So then it can be shown that few games actually exist. Only the few genres really do. For modern 3D games that use graphics card the subscription system is now ideal.