Monthly update

[jack]

I've fallen out of the weekly updates. Suffice it to say I've been good. But at the start of the month I tried to take stock on a longer term, and though there was too much to be easily summarised, I was very pleased to see I've actually made much progress since I last went on an improvement jag.

Organisation

I wouldn't say I've completely beaten procrastination, but it certainly seems not to be a problem any more. I got a system, the key point being that it works when I get behind, so despite occasional wobbles, it's easy to stay in a good place, instead of being kicked into a bad place whenever something goes wrong.

What things do I not talk about? Well, quite a few things. Here, I admit I used to let something get out of control, and then be too scared to look at it. But it seems that working out what I'm scared of, triaging everything else onto next week's todo list, assessing it, asking what's the worst that can happen, and then what do I need to do from here, works. I highly recommend it if any of you ever feel lost :)

Work

I won't go into details, but for a couple of months it's been interesting and productive.

Summary

OK, I'm not as successful as I could be, but I'm enjoying life, which is good :) What I want to do is accept I can only seriously concentrate on one thing at once, and work out what should come next. Having achieved organisation means I *can* :)

Now I'm a bit older, I can think in terms of spending a couple of months aiming to fix something, and get into good habits which could be retained while I get on with my life, rather than feeling I should be able to do X right now, and if not getting dispirited and not being able to face it. Of course, many of you hopefully have everything you want in life right now, but as I say, there's no point pretending I can do something I can't.

1. Diet and exercise[1]. This should have been first a while ago. Let's see if I can follow mum's good example. If in the next year this was the only progress I made that'd be pretty damn good, all in all.

2. Finance. Check all accounts have good rates, all taxes and bills add up to what they ought, pension and stock options are in order, am on best tarrif for everything, that monthly expected and actual expendatures add up, and think about buying a house... Most of this will only take an afternoon, but definitely have good effort/reward, so let's get it out of the way.

3. Social. Concentrate on what/whose I enjoy going to most. Again, easy, can be done in parallel if I recognise it.

4. Work out where I want to go in life. Programmer? Program manager? Mathematician? Actuary? Accountant? Quant? Author?? It's not too late to do some research.

5. A variety of projects I'd like to do at some point.
* A winnie-the-pooh puzzle game I want to finish programming. (Currently in flash, I'm afraid.)
* Writing.
* Drawing. I need to practice. And I need to do a webcomic.
* Actively learn about programming, rather than solving each thing as it comes up.
* Some other programming projects, but with other thinking too, eg. customise a blog to be exactly how *I* want it, possibly make that available to other people too.

[1] Thanks to Simon for embedding in my mind how to spell this. One word at a time :)

Comments

[innocencest.livejournal.com]

It amuses me that you measure tasks by effort/reward, where you're aiming for the smallest number possible. I've taken a similar method, only it's reward/effort, where the best tasks have the biggest numbers ;)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Interesting point. Examining what I was thinking, I think I would indeed say reward/effort if I was attempting to compare them, but there just plonked them down in any order[1]. I probably put effort first, because I was imagining doing it, and thinking in terms of effort, whereas the reward is over a year, so less tangible.

[1] You could say I was considering the ratio, but without specifying the mapping from that to a number or its recipricol :)

[dragonwoodshed.livejournal.com]

I'm crap at the Poohsticks game.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

You mean mine, or "Poohsticks"?

(I'm awful at poohsticks too -- which is silly, as there shouldn't be any skill at all. On the bright side, it probably means I'm not Eeyore :))

[dragonwoodshed.livejournal.com]

Yours, sorry! Poohsticks I'm not bad at, the trick is to pick the biggest stick generally, I've played off Dolly, but it took bloody hours for the stick to get from the front to the back of the boat.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

No, it's ok. I have to be imperfect at something, and poohsticks is a very inconsequential thing to fail at :)

And thanks for trying it! How far did you get?

[dragonwoodshed.livejournal.com]

I'm not telling! But I'm crap at Tombraider too if it's any consolation.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a very different sort of game. But please don't apologise :)

Go on, would you please email me? I'll be appreciateive.

I would very much like to know another person's perspective, even if you didn't play for very long. If the game could be made more accessible to someone who thinks they're not very good at this sort of thing, or if it seems about right and just not your sort of thing, or if in fact you got to level 9 (which is supposed to be *fairly* tricky) and are disappointed not to have done better.

[dragonwoodshed.livejournal.com]

There's a level 9?! Crap. Ok, I'm going to try it again, but bear in mind I'm sober and have limited attention span...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL. *hug* I'd think being sober would *help*.

The buttons down the right let you skip to any level you like. There are 10 at the moment, and definitely intended to be played in order, but you can skip about if you're curious.

Seriously, I don't know -- you might be stuck on level one because you haven't played this sort of game and don't know how the controls work and they're not explained[1], or several levels further on and not able to figure out what to do.

[1] eg. hold the arrow key in the direction you want to walk, everything happens in 1/n second steps, change direction as you're entering a new sqaure if you want to move without a break.

[dragonwoodshed.livejournal.com]

Hey HEY, I'm not stuck on level 1! Take that back. I'm stuck on level 2, which is infinitely less embarrassing.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It's embarrassing for *me*, it suggests I should have instructions.

What's happenning? Do you want a FAQ page? :)

[dragonwoodshed.livejournal.com]

Right, I understand what to do, I can use the controls alright and the path-through-the-maze problems are fine, it's just I'm a spaz with no hand/eye co-ordination whatsoever. I like it though, and the level of instruction is fine if you're aiming it at adults.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'm aiming at people like me who love this style of game, I don't find adult/child makes much difference :) But in a final release I would have *some* explanation, I still remember the first computer game I ever played, very young, neither me nor my family had ever used a computer before, when I didn't know it had finished loading because I didn't know you had to press fire to start, because it didn't say so.

I don't like games that require much coordination, what I like about this sort of thing is that it's either right or wrong: there's a quater of second when you hitting the key has the same effect.

For level two, the walkthrough is: "Press and hold down. As soon as you see CR start to move, release down and press and hold left." That should make it impossible to lose, I hope.

[simont]

Fun game. Level 4 took me a while to figure out, but mostly in the Mao sense (knowing the rules, the solution was simple enough, but the details of the rules took me a while to get straight).

I'm not sure I approve of the aim of the game. In level 6, my best "solution" so far involves killing three Poohs and trapping the fourth completely with pits. The flavour text makes it clear that Christopher Robin doesn't want to have to kill his friend, he just wants to be safe; so why, having achieved this, does the game not consider me to have completed it?

(I assume there is some other solution which kills all four Poohs. I expect I'll go back and have another look for it after I play the later levels. For the moment I'm claiming a moral victory over level six, in the literal sense of avoiding unnecessary killing :-)

Also the clunky response is infuriating me, but then I'm a completely unreasonable stickler for smooth and precise gameplay even more than I am for correct grammar and spelling ;-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Fun game.

Thank you for the feedback! I hope to make a post properly pimping it at some point.

Level 4 took me a while to figure out, but mostly in the Mao sense (knowing the rules, the solution was simple enough, but the details of the rules took me a while to get straight).

That's what I hoped for. Working out the behaviour of the poohs is part of the puzzle, then on later levels working out edge cases of it, then later on knowing everything, working out correct interactions of that with other rules.

The flavour text makes it clear that Christopher Robin doesn't want to have to kill his friend, he just wants to be safe; so why, having achieved this, does the game not consider me to have completed it?

Not quite, or he could just stay still and not kill anything. Killing off the poohs is better than having them exist, and is the only way to progress at the start of the game, but the remarks he makes after finishing level 6 and in the next few levels, are about exploring other options. (Though this will only really be represented in the gameplay in unwritten levels.)

One of my absolute favorite games is Grim Fandango, and the metaphysics are important to me; I know the game can't represent them perfectly, but if you go on being troubled I may rethink if I ever go back to it.

I assume there is some other solution which kills all four Poohs.

Indeed. I designed that level so your solution was nearly, but not quite, right.

[simont]

Not quite, or he could just stay still and not kill anything. Killing off the poohs is better than having them exist, and is the only way to progress at the start of the game, but the remarks he makes after finishing level 6 and in the next few levels, are about exploring other options.

Now hang on a minute. The flavour text makes clear that in later levels the heffalump traps (is the inconsistent non-canon spelling "hephalump" intentional?) are non-fatal to the Poohs, indicating clearly that Chris would prefer to have a Pooh safely confined but alive. I still don't think it's obvious that having him at the bottom of a trap fulfils this aim whereas having him completely trapped between trees and open pits does not!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

is the inconsistent non-canon spelling "hephalump" intentional?

Not really, but is entirely consistent with the fact that *cannon* spelling is inconsistent :)

The flavour text makes clear that in later levels the heffalump traps (is the inconsistent non-canon spelling "hephalump" intentional?) are non-fatal to the Poohs,

I admit I hadn't really thought this out. But the point is that it's all affected by Chris's subconcious. He's watched too many films or computer games where someone being violently hurt (fatally or non fatally) is a big deal and wrong but someone dropping into a pit is all clean and sanitary. The poohs in pits are *gone* from the world in whatever way (which is necessary because it improves the world a little bit), but not *hurt*, and especially not personally pummelled by Chris, because *relishing* violence set the world on the wrong track. Whether the poohs actually die or not is irrelevent.

Did that make any sense?

[simont]

It makes sense, but I'm afraid it doesn't have the ring of rightness to me. If you like, it's possible (your explanation is not inconsistent with any observed behaviour) but not probable (it doesn't seem to me to be how Chris ought to be thinking, or how he would plausibly think, although clearly being a small child he is in principle entitled to invent any random rationale he likes).

(I hate to spelling-flame again, but was it intentional that you said "cannon" in response to my "canon" in a sentence about spelling being inconsistent? ;-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

(No, I was just careless. Apologies. Also, you need to work on your flames, that was way too polite :))

It makes sense, but I'm afraid it doesn't have the ring of rightness to me.

I think I should:

* Look at the flavour text again. Some of it is too devoted to bad puns, and it was mostly written as I went along, so it could probably stand a rewrite.
* Poll my friends to see if they get/like the metaphysics or not.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Also the clunky response is infuriating me, but then I'm a completely unreasonable stickler for smooth and precise gameplay even more than I am for correct grammar and spelling ;-)

LOL. I know this is a problem and I did mess with it for a while. Partly I need to rewrite in something other than flash for a couple of reasons.

And partly isn't it inevitable. For the level to have a correct answer the timings have to be synchronised, or you could be half a square ahead of pooh and he'd catch you randomly, which means CR can only start moving on a clock tick.

I debated between having a keypress register immediately and him start moving later (but this is annoying as you can't withdraw) or having to press the key over the key time (but then there's a possibility of an inaction). Maybe I should give a visual feedback, having CR walk slightly slowly, or *look* ahead of the rest of the game but not really be?

I get the feeling there must be a known answer to this in all Chip's Challenge style games, but need to find out what it is.

[simont]

I agree that the game is fundamentally dependent on there being a synchronised clock tick; my complaint isn't to do with that. It's that it's often difficult to arrange the sequence of moves I want, because you have to press the arrow key at just the right time, and the slow and jerky screen update doesn't help this. I think what I want is for a keypress at any point during one frame to be accepted as Chris's move for the next frame, which isn't currently reliable. I'm sure I could write a version of the same game engine which demonstrated the right behaviour, but not right now since I'm at work :-)

Level nine was fun. Now trying to clean up the last bug on 10; then I'll go back and have another look at 6.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Level nine was fun. Now trying to clean up the last bug on 10; then I'll go back and have another look at 6.

Ooh, praise. Thank you :) Funny, I thought 10 was quite clever, and 9 just a fairly obvious introduction to bugs. I liked the flavour though :)

It's that it's often difficult to arrange the sequence of moves I want, because you have to press the arrow key at just the right time, and the slow and jerky screen update doesn't help this.

OK, I see. Isn't that the first option I described in my penultimate paragraph? I can't remember quite what interface code I left in the end, but I think at one point it did set a flag on a keydown event, and then at the clocktick move if the flag was set, but I decided I prefered the other interface, where it just checks the position of the key then.

The easiest way I find is as soon as you decide which way to go, press and hold the key. When he responds, immediately move to holding the key indicating where you want him to go next.

Of course, I think the flash isn't quite as responsive as it could be. And that the whole thing is also slightly sluggish. But flash optimisation isn't fun or very useful to learn :)

[simont]

The easiest way I find is as soon as you decide which way to go, press and hold the key. When he responds, immediately move to holding the key indicating where you want him to go next.

Yes, that's what I ended up doing. I don't like having to hold the key down like that; it feels as if I'm constantly having to push Chris, whereas I should just be politely telling him which way to go next. Somewhere in my hindbrain this intuitive feeling translates into me holding the key down with excessive force; the jerky response might be to blame for that (he isn't moving very fast and keeps stopping, so I keep instinctively pushing harder).

Mind you, I know some of my reactions are a bit weird like this. Another one I notice is that if I SSH to a machine that's on the other end of a long (>1s) network lag, after a while I find my wrists hurting – because the delay between each keypress and the character appearing on the screen seems to be interpreted by my hindbrain as akin to the characters having to be pushed through something treacly, and hence my natural response is to hit the keys harder to try to get them through the goo more efficiently!

Thinking about it ... the thing about the synchronised clock tick is that this game doesn't have to be in real time, conceptually. There's no reason it wouldn't be just as well defined and have exactly the same puzzles if it were totally turn-based – a surreal Winnie-the-Pooh themed roguelike, in fact. So the mental steps to solving the puzzles are (a) figure out the correct sequence of moves, (b) persuade the game engine to execute them correctly. (a) is fun, but (b) is annoying, so (a) should be hard while (b) is easy.

10 was fun; getting the last bug took some thought. I've now gone back and done 6 properly, and now I like it less than I previously did; I thought my original "moral victory" solution was more elegant, and the thing I ended up doing was just brute force. I accept that this is representative of real life and that there are occasions where the right thing is to avoid trying to be too clever, but a puzzle game is meant to be fun :-P

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

as if I'm constantly having to push Chris, whereas I should just be politely telling him which way to go next.

LOL. Good description. And I certainly know the phenomenon: eg. pounding a kill key combination when the computer isn't responding.

There's no reason it wouldn't be just as well defined and have exactly the same puzzles if it were totally turn-based

Indeed. I considered making an option for it to be turn based (ie. a clock tick happens when you press a key). I decided that it had to be one or the other, because some puzzles would have to be differently designed to be the right difficulty.

And I decided that I preferred games like Chips Challenge to Deadly Rooms of Death. There's something to be said for being able to pause and look at the layout, especially coming into a new area, but that it leads to much more fiendish play, and I like games with some coordination.

It's less like one of your puzzles than in needs be, but unfortunately I think it's the game I wanted to write, and still prefer it the way it is.

The controls hopefully can be improved a bit. Or I could compromise; if everything's still, I could pause the clock until you press a key, but that would likely be confusing.

10 was fun; getting the last bug took some thought.

Thank you! That's what I hoped.

We may have to agree to disagree about 6. If you *planned* to hem the pooh in and it doesn't work, I apologise, because the game *would* have misled you, but I think I have to stand by the "getting each singularity [ie. evil creature] removed from the world in some way" aim.

I would not ask you to spend time reviewing every level, but if you have any other impressions of any they would be gratefully received, even if I disagree. It's always very interesting to see if they're pitched right.

[simont]

We may have to agree to disagree about 6.

I think we will have to disagree on the metaphysics, but my other point is that given the metaphysics work your way rather than my way the solution is disappointingly brute-force, with more outrunning and less outmanoeuvring than I'd have liked.

8 made me go "squee", but that's probably because I'm a sad Tron fan rather than anything else :-)

(Mind you, I was less than convinced about the metaphysics in 8 as well, because I was still working on the assumption that what Chris wanted was to survive, and ISTM that even with Pooh at the bottom of a pit he wouldn't manage that indefinitely if left on the Tron level. In all other levels he's actually safe once the moving enemies are disposed of. Perhaps a metaphysics change which involves the presence of nasties on the screen inhibiting Chris's ability to get out of each dream, thus simultaneously justifying his need to kill all the Poohs on 6 and his ability to survive 8 at all?)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

True. Two separate points, but I think we'll have to disagree about the outrunning and outmanouvering as well. I think that planning a long route which takes you to safety one step ahead of pooh is in the spirit of the game as I saw it, and your problem may be with the spirit, which we may have to disagree about.

Of course, even if you agree, it doesn't mean I'm *right*, if everyone agrees with you about either point I may decide I have to change them.

8 made me go "squee", but that's probably because I'm a sad Tron fan rather than anything else :-)

LOL. Oh good! Thank you. It's not an especially clever level, but I really liked (a) the title and (b) the fact that the puzzle is almost entirely defined by the rules rather than the layout for once.

(Mind you, I was less than convinced about the metaphysics in 8 as well,

Fair enough. I think it's plausible, but yes, making him reach a safe place would be reasonable (and easy, just don't stop the game on a trap, and give him a safe place to run to).

But I wouldn't have said he was safe in the other levels. He could starve, or fall in a pit. Or rather, the thought of it lasting long wasn't in my head. Perhaps see the entire world as under tension, with each world inevitably ending soon and you hopping from one soap-bubble of reality to another, and trying to make progress to better ones, eventually reaching our universe again :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

If I *do* decide a good thing to do with my life is port this to C to run as a windows/linux executable, I may ask if you have any advice as to technique for that; if there's a freely available back end engine which does this sort of game that you happen to know of, or if it's easier to write that myself.

[dragonwoodshed.livejournal.com]

My mate Al just came in and had a bash at it and he whizzed happily through the first few levels, he wants me to send him the link so he can obsess over it this evening. Result!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ooh, someone I don't know. Am I famous now? :)

Did my walkthrough help you at all? I feel you'd like the sort of game, if you could cope with the interface. Though if you don't like coordination, you may prefer turn based things like Simon was talking about (ie. no timing, everything pauses while you think, and then when you press a key everything moves at once).