Seven years ago I blogged about why I was unhappy with tablet computing.

Here’s the article: https://forums.joeuser.com/540

As i wrote back in 2003:

But the suckitude of Tablet PCs is a team effort. It's not just Microsoft fault. They all have worked very hard to create an inferior product that doesn't meet the needs of the market the claim to want to support.

First, they're too heavy. That kills them right away. This Tablet PC is over 3 pounds in weight. 3 pounds isn't a lot until you try lugging it around like a notebook (real notebook not a laptop) for an hour or two. Us geeklings have weak arms you know. The OEMs are to blame for that. Until they can get the weight down to 2 pounds or less, they should just not bother.

Secondly, they're tedious to write input into.  Microsoft's hand writing recognition doesn't work. I mean that. It's not just bad, it basically just doesn't work.  If you are one of the 47 adults on earth that still use cursvive to write, then it works fine. But the other 99.999% of us write our characters in print and for that it fails dismally. Microsoft can be blamed for that.

Thirdly, the voice recognition flat out doesn't work in any useful way. I even bought an expensive headset to train it. I went through the lessons and trained the thing. It's unworkable.  I've used the products from Dragon and IBM and they work pretty well (at least on the PCs I've used them on). What's built into the Windows XP Tablet Edition is just junk.

What it basically boiled down into is that the early tablets were too heavy and too tedious to use.  Weight. Means of Input.

Apple’s iPad seems to address all three issues – almost:

• At 1.5 pounds, it’s pretty light.  Is it light enough? Too early to say. I’ll have to hold one. This could be a killer issue still.
• A great touch interface solves the need to use a special pen to do input.
• If you have the Google iPhone app, you already know how wonderful voice recognition is on search.

When I got a tablet PC back in 2003, I was hoping to use it as a great way to read the net while sitting in a comfy chair without having the bulk (or form factor) of a keyboard. Right now,I just use my ThinkPad T400 for that or, more commonly, my iPhone with its tiny screen.  Assuming the 1.5 pounds doesn’t make using it tedious after hours, this is a useful thing. 

That said, it also has some big big negatives:

- No Flash support.  That really cripples modern web browsing.

- No camera. I mentioned this in my other blog, this is a pretty poor choice. I use Google Voice to send all my calls to my cell phone and my Skype #.

- No multitasking. Not that the above matters though since no multitasking means no Skype running in the background.

- The weight. Again, 1.5 pounds… we’ll see.

- No SD card support. I wasn’t expecting it necessarily but again, it really diminishes the utility if I can’t stick in new pictures easily. 

Yea, I’m going to buy it. But bear in mind, I also bought the crappy tablet back in 2003.

The beta group has had an immense amount of influence already on the course of the game’s development. 

One example of this has been in the way we’ve been thinking of implementing magic in the game.  Often times, users don’t necessarily make specific suggestions but instead get us thinking on a different track than we previously were.

With Magic, originally players had 5 different types of mana – life/death, earth, fire, water, air. Controlling a shard would, each turn, put mana of the appropriate type into a sort of mana bank.

So what’s the problem with that? Plenty. First, it means that the guy who sits on the shards is going to win the game. It really aggravates our biggest pet peeve in these kinds of games – the game being won in the first 10 minutes and then spending the next 2 hours going through the motions.

Then there was the spell research. Originally you would research spells much like you research tech. You’d build academies and the points would go into whatever you were researching.  Besides being boring, it took away a lot of choices.

So instead, your academies generate spell knowledge (spell points) which you can then spend, at any time, to learn a particular spell.  Much much more fun.

THIS is why the open beta works so well though.  Without all the discussions and brainstorming here on ElementalGame.com we might have gone down the original path we had designed and then been committed to it (i.e. – once the expensive visual assets are produced, you’re pretty much stuck with it, that’s why we’re doing the cloth map and such because it’s cheap to make radical changes).

Update: Just realized that I didn’t talk about what we’re doing with the shard systems.

Spells require mana to cast but will also need certain shards (earth, air, fire, water) as well. So a spell may require 200 mana and control of 2 fire shards and an earth shard.

Short answer: Yes. I’m going to get one.

Why? Well, for me, two main reasons.

One, I currently use my iPhone to browse the net in the evening and its tiny screen is a bit of a bummer at times. I have my beloved ThinkPad T400 but it is a bit too heavy to just have sitting on my lap to surf the net and its form factor doesn’t lend itself to reading.

Two, I use my iPhone for watching movies while I work out and it’s small screen is annoying for that. I don’t use the laptop because, again, the form factor doesn’t let me easily put it up on things.

I kind of feel bad for people who bought the Kindle. This thing will kill that.

I am quite bummed it doesn’t have a camera. I could imagine this thing being super useful for Skype video chatting but oh well.

2010 will be the…

BEST

YEAR

EVER

If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan…or more specifically, a Tolkien fan, much of this is known to you.  However, if you do not know the true history of Middle Earth, some of this may be shocking.

The will of Illuvatar

In Middle Earth, there are only two natural sentient races in the world. Men and Elves.

Everyone else, EVERYONE else, is unnatural.

In Elemental, those unnatural races are called The Fallen.  In Middle Earth, they are given different names: Dwarves, Orcs, dragons, and yes, even our beloved hobbits.

Of all sentient creatures, the first made were dwarves. But they were not sentient first. It’s a long story but dwarves were made by one of the Valar (similar in scope to a Mithrilar in our universe).

The elves were the first “natural” sentient race brought into the world. And much of the sorrow that later came to the world of Middle Earth was because of the uncertainty about when and where the second natural race would come from – men.

One of the Valar, called Morgoth, took natural creatures of the world (including elves) and using his arts created (or bred) orcs and dragons and other unspeakable things. Even some lesser Maiar (Gandalf, Sauron, and Saruman were Maiar – they’re equivalent in scope to Dred’nir and Elas’nir in our universe – see Twilight of the Arnor) got twisted by Morgoth – Balrogs.

Mortal Men and Dragons

Now, in Elemental, there are two “natural” born races – Men and Dragons.  Of the two, only men create civilizations thus only 1 playable race in the game is naturally sentient.

But there are several unnatural races in the world which we have referred to as Fallen. They’re called “Fallen” because the history books are written by men and have a man-centric bias. And ironically, men tend to be selective in what they call Fallen but that’s for another time.

The Fallen races in the game players deal with include the Urxen and the Trogs.  Urxen breed quickly. There’s a lot of them. Trogs are far less common but far more lethal individually.

There are also the Sions but they’re not a race as much as, well, children of the sovereigns. The sovereigns are channelers but their children aren’t.  Channelers have a very long life (hundreds of years – they’re effectively immortal in our game but they’re not truly immortal). Their children have a normal life.

The 4th age of Middle Earth

Now, getting back to Tolkien’s world, by the start of the 4th age, middle earth only had one natural sentient race – men.  The elves were gone. And while orcs still festered here and there, they were on the decline as well. The halflings (hobbits) were confined to a small area of middle earth.

Obviously, Elemental takes place in a totally different universe. But hopefully this helps players understand where some of the terminology comes from and how it is relatable.

Now that I can stream movies in HD, I just don’t have it in me to go out and go to Blockbuster anymore.

I can’t find Gran Turino on Zune (xbox360) or comcast so I’ll just go without it.  I’m just that damn lazy now.

So this week the dynasties got in.  To skip to the good part, your sovereign gets married and has children. Eventually, those children grow up and you can then arrange marriages with them with other sovereigns. Your children, in turn, will have children of their own.  And that’s where things got interesting…or more specifically: ugly.

For today’s code review, we were looking at the algorithms being used to produce off-spring.  We don’t want them to be just random but rather have the traits of their parents in interesting ways – both from a stats point and cosmetically.  To see how far we could take things, I had my daughter marry the son of an Urxen sovereign (one of the races of the Fallen).  Urxen look a lot like goblins.

Well, my beautiful daughter and the Urxen prince had a child.  And let me just say, there are things you cannot unsee.  A half-man, half-urxen is something that can’t be unseen.

So if you end up deciding to marry your children off to other factions, take a good look at their family first lest your grandchildren look like that half-human half-alien from the last Alien movie.

WinCustomize 2K5 home page:

• Displays top 3 most popular
• Displays 3 top most popular master skins
• Displays  featured skin
• Displays poll no one uses
• 1 Promotional item
• Right side has command bar and ad.
• Lots of icons that mean nothing to most users.

…Compared to…

WinCustomize 2K10 home page:

• Top 5 newest skin thumbnails
• Top 5 most popular skin thumbnails 1 click away (no page refresh)
• Featured skin
• Top skins and skinners available.
• 3 Promotional items available
• Mouse-over access to galleries, articles, news, and much more.

WinCustomize 2K5 Skin view:

• Top half of screen used to describe what WindowBlinds is in a wall of text.
• Right side has little that’s useful to readers and just adds confusion when someone is trying to link to a skin.
• Lots of text, little information.
• If you want to browse other skins, you have to hit the back button.

…Compared to…

WinCustomize 2K10 Skin view:

• Lot less wordy (though URls need to be fixed in comments)
• Can go to next skin easily
• Other skins by author displayed
• Featured skins for category displayed
• Further down displays top skins and top authors for that category.

We’re pretty excited about the new WinCustomize.  Here’s a video demo I did today during lunch (literally):