http://www.monkeyblah.com/ Personal web log of Swedish computer scientist Peter C O Johansson. en-us Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0300 Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:41:16 +0300 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/06/24/teatime-in-shinomen-mori/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/06/24/teatime-in-shinomen-mori/ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:40:31 +0300 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/06/24/spider-duelist/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/06/24/spider-duelist/ Click to enlarge. Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:16:41 +0300 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/06/21/its-just-a-flesh-wound/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/06/21/its-just-a-flesh-wound/ Dungeons & Dragons 4E came out about two weeks ago, and I've had a few chances to look at the sourcebooks. I notice that scrolls of resurrection are still in the game—and no wonder. They're a staple, and after a while, you might really need them. It reminded me of something I've always wanted to talk a little about: times when narrative and gameplay collide. Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:38:36 +0300 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/05/11/egg-of-pan-ku/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/05/11/egg-of-pan-ku/ My latest project, which has been in development intermittently for a couple of months at this point, is being released today. Called Egg of P'an Ku, it is a virtual tabletop application for playing Legend of the Five Rings online against other people. There have been other applications like this for L5R. Unfortunately, they are all old and unsupported, and with somewhat lacking interfaces and capabilities. Furthermore, their developers seem to mostly have dropped off the face of the earth. Egg of P'an Ku is intended to remedy this. It has a sleek interface with native look through wxWidgets, supports an arbitrary number of players, and is cheatproof—only the server has perfect information about the game state. To prevent it from becoming orphaned, it is free/open source software. It is portable (once a few details have been taken care of), written in Python. For more information, screenshots and downloads, visit the Egg of P'an Ku website. Sun, 11 May 2008 14:11:44 +0300 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/04/10/mr-gryle/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/04/10/mr-gryle/ Mr. Gryle the banshee plays a fairly big part in the Discworld novel Going Postal. If this was a spoiler for you, I'm sorry. Anyway, on to the sketch. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:34:04 +0300 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/04/03/noscript-no-service/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/04/03/noscript-no-service/ NoScript is a wonderful little addon for Firefox. It stops any Javascript or embedded objects on any web pages you visit from running unless you explicitly allow them. I can't tell you how useful this has been; no longer slave to slow JS slowing page loads down to a crawl, and no unwanted tracking urchins anyway. My recent experience with NoScript, however, has enlightened me to another problem I honestly didn't think existed in the first place: many web programmers are idiots. Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:11:55 +0300 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/03/31/the-innsmouth-look/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/03/31/the-innsmouth-look/ Today, a sketch. This fishy fellow has the Innsmouth Look so typical of Dagon-worshippers. Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:15:10 +0300 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/03/29/its-just-a-jump-to-the-left/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/03/29/its-just-a-jump-to-the-left/ One of the many side projects I have going is a MUD written in Python. I want to incorporate some sort of semi-realistic concept of time into this game; activities, like crafting, should take time, billboards and announcements in the game world should expire after some time, time-limited festivals should be held, etc. However, having in-game time correspond exactly to real life time would be undesirable. So, we have a problem. Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:15:14 +0200 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/03/25/gaming-in-the-goldilocks-zone/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/03/25/gaming-in-the-goldilocks-zone/ It seems to me that we have been seeing a new trend in PC gaming recently. One one side, we have the old established juggernauts of old, companies like Epic, id and Blizzard, who churn out massive new games every 2-4 years. One the other, we have casual games so simple and innocent as to border dangerously on the vapid, often delivered in the form of a Flash application somewhere. But, in between the two, we are seeing an entirely different class of game, rapidly gaining ground at a surprising pace. Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:05:51 +0200 http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/03/19/shutdown-philosophy/ http://www.monkeyblah.com/blog/2008/03/19/shutdown-philosophy/ One of the core guidelines of computer usability is this: Always let the user undo his actions, if possible. There are many good reasons for this. People make mistakes, and the more lenient we can be with that, the better. It lets users experiment and explore your interface and get used to it without fearing permanent data loss. Yet, today I ran into something that I couldn't undo: Shutting down the computer. Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:18:02 +0200