Rorschach.net

So, I’m torn. I can see where they’re going with the game Evil Genius from the demo. I like where they are going, like some others ’round these parts I’m a sucker for the base/city building games like Startopia, Dungeon Keeper, Space Colony, and the Impressions city games. EG looks to be a good entry into this field with a nifty background. The problem is I downloaded 200+MB of demo to be led by the nose through the first tutorial mission with absolutely no variance, exploration or the idea of the larger game. If it weren’t for supplemental information I would have tossed this in the trash as a half-assed game built around a solid concept.

Oh, and don’t get me started about the changes they put into the demo to increase the invaders by orders of magnitude to make it more action paced. The same kind of thing happened with the Rome: Total War demo. C’mon people, altering your demo to somehow appeal to the masses just winds up misrepresenting your game and cheesing people off. R:TW is a hardcore military sim of the ancient world, scripting the skrimishers to flee and guaranteeing that your Hannibal will overrun the Romans gives no challenge, no fire. At least with R:TW you can mod the demo to make it more representative of the real game.

Nonetheless I’ve done enough homework on EG and trust the pedigee of R:TW (the Shogun and Medeival versions were great games) to purchase both when they get released. But come on guys, if you’re going to go through the extra work of a demo at least make it worth our while and sell your game not distort what the game is about. Starting to get like a goddamn national politicial party convention around here.

Evil Genius is a cross between Dungeon Keeper and Austin Powers. The demo is out today so let’s all give it a spin and see if it’s a keeper (heh).

What else is happening in the wide world of social software? Other than the gabjillion of the six-degrees-of-separation Livejournal-esque YASNS*. there are two nifty alternatives with Flickr and del.icio.us.

del.icio.us is a community bookmarking site. Get your free account and add some buttons to your link bar and you can easily manage and reference your bookmarks. Add some one word tags to the bookmarks to index them. Why would I put my bookmarks onto a web site when I’ve got a perfectly good bookmark manager in my browser? Well one reason is that the site works for every browser, not just your own (good for kiosks and borrowed computers and the like). The second reason is the big one though. Your bookmarks become public along with everyone else’s bookmarks.

Remember those tags? Go searching on those key words your are interested and you find out what everyone else that uses del.icio.us has marked under those tags. Not really a democratic Google, but it is interesting to going down the rabbit hole into some of the nooks and crannies of the Internet. You’re led by individuals and not a company to experience more of the variety that’s out there. You can subscribe to tags through RSS to keep informed on what the community is bookmarking in near real-time.

Flickr is pretty much the same thing with pictures instead of bookmarks. It’s a gallery of everyday life both artistic and mundane. As I never take pictures even on vacation this has less appeal to me but worthwhile to those who are more camera inclined.

I find it fascinating what people are doing with this new medium and these two services shows that we’re not mired in the same stuff, but continuing to explore and dare I say innovate instead of doing what the other guy is doing and try to make a buck off of it. Damn this Internet thing is fun!

*Yet Another Social Networking Service i.e. SixDegrees, Orkut, Friendster, Multiply, Tribe.net, LinkedIn etc.

Okay kids, following in the footsteps of others before me I’ve created a Livejournal account for the sole purpose of improving the connection between my friends on Livejournal and this web log.

You may call me: RorschachSix

Sender Policy Framework is a new anti-spoofing/forgery tool for email administrators. It is easy to set up by adding a new DNS record to your existing records. Basically when a system receives email the system performs a reverse name lookup to determine if the IP address sending the email is allowed to send email from that domain.

Maybe it’s better if I let the SPF people explain:

Domains use public records (DNS) to direct requests for different services (web, email, etc.) to the machines that perform those services.All domains already publish email (MX) records to tell the world what machines receive mail for the domain. SPF works by domains publishing “reverse MX” records to tell the world what machines send mail from the domain. When receiving a message from a domain, the recipient can check those records to make sure mail is coming from where it should be coming from.

With SPF, those “reverse MX” records are easy to publish: one line in DNS is all it takes.

So if you have SPF active on your email server, and you get an email from jokeysmurf@rorschach.net, your server will ask my DNS for the SPF record. My server will respond with “you can only get @rorschach.net email from 24.124.27.134“. If the email came from that IP it’s good, if not it’s bad and can be dropped on the floor or quarantined as spam. Even if your email server doesn’t support SPF, set up a SPF record on your DNS to cut down on spammers and phishers using your domain to send emails.

All the cool kids are doing it so if you run your own DNS or mail server get over to the SPF main site and get yourself set up.

The Great Scam tells the story of Nightfreeze, and avid player of EVE Online, a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) based on trading and combat in space. He’s a good player, working up through the game amassing money and power until a change in the rules of the game (which Nightfreeze fails to recognize) causes him to lose almost everything. So he decides to scam the players of the game for a huge amount of in-game money.

His tactics are at best immoral, he cheats other player out of hard won resources, but the story of what he does and how he does it is entertaining and informative on how the “real world” interacts with the game world.

Clay Shirky has an excellent analysis of the online social implications of this scam over at the Many 2 Many web log.

Coming up on 30 hours without sleep, and I’m fading fast. The problem is if you break something, and especially if you’re the expert, then you’d better stick around until it’s fixed. So 12 hours of PKI work later (starting at 8pm) and it’s fixed now. But I’m stuck in the Monday rush as all these semi-cheery and wide-awake people start their day and drag me along with them because things are broke and I’m an expert.

But I didn’t break this time it so the hell with that… I’m going to bed.

Finished Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay last night. I’m going on record as this is one of the best, if not the best game of 2004. The graphics are impressive, and the action and story are well paced, driving you towards the end. All the characters in the game are varied in appearance and voice, and the different sections of single, double, and triple max within the prison are interesting and well themed. I’m a sucker for immersion in games, and this one has it in spades.

If you own an Xbox this is well worth the rental or purchase, those kids from Starbreeze really crafted an excellent game.

Bruce Sterling has published an article in Wired 12.08: VIEW that espouses four things that must happen now to combat “Cyberterror.” The first request or demand is to Stamp out Spam. This is just another example of someone misusing the terminology of the day to try to make a point.

We may have dodged the computer equivalent of 9/11, but we’re becoming mired in a digital Mogadishu. The threat isn’t only from rogue nations and stateless terrorists bent on storming the citadels of power. A loathsome tide of scammers, spammers, phishers, and ID thieves is attacking the populace wholesale.

To make any kind of correlation between 9/11 or even Mogadishu and the amount of spam or identity theft going on is irresponsible. It weakens the focus on real terrorist threats (the kind that you can die from) and makes information security professionals look whiny.

Don’t get me wrong. All four points are very reasonable and should be acted upon immediately to improve the quality of life on the Internet but shame on you Mr. Sterling for invoking terror in an attempt for people to pay attention.

Games Workshop is a tabeltop wargaming miniatures company out of the UK that has a great property in Warhammer 40,000. The background for this age of constant warfare 40 millennia in the future has been developed over the last 20 years (at least). The background of humanity under the brutal reign of the undead Emperor, fighting for survival against the forces of Chaos, Orks, Eldar, Tyranids and others is great stuff. There’s a million stories and some really cool concepts and ideas that have gone way beyond the fantasy origins (Orks=Orcs, Eldar=Elves).

It’s a great property to make a video game from, but it took Relic (them what brought you the excellent Homeworld RTS series and the not so great, but good idea on paper Impossible Creatures) to create Dawn of War.

I’m participating in the open beta and it is hands down the best Warhammer 40k game out there and probably the best RTS of 2004. Of course drawing on the intellectual property being developed over the last 20+ years gives you instant backstory and design concepts. Relic has stayed true to the tabeltop game by nasically animating the miniatures but is not a slave to the wargame itself. Instead they put a darm good RTS around it.

So if you’re a fan of RTS or a fan of Warhammer40k, you must get this game. Get into the beta if you can, if not pick it up at the store when it comes out. It is well worth your time.

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