Friday Links!
From Steven Davis, and Bill Gates has always impressed me in that he actually helps people with some of his billions:
Neglected No More. Also, and this should win you a bet someday, it's
Unbelievable Carpentry Trick. These are just amazing:
Wild New Anamorphic Sculptures From the Warped Mind of Jonty Hurwitz.
From Craig Miller, and this is brilliantly unhinged:
On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK).
From Wallace, and this is an interesting read:
A Day in the Life of a Food Vendor. From Wally, and I had no idea there was more than one way:
Do you pronounce 'scone' to rhyme with 'cone' or 'gone'? It depends where you're from. This is awesome (and hopefully far, far away);
When the developers of Dwarf Fortress die, a museum inherits the game.
From Tim Jones, and these are amazing:
The Second World War as if it were yesterday: Extraordinary collection of rare color photographs reveal life as the people living through the war would have seen it.
From C. Lee, and I have no words:
Investors backing Juicero and its $400, DRM-laden juicer surprised to discover they were fleeced. This is tantalizing:
A 3D-printed key that can’t be copied. I felt like this more than a few times:
Do you have a pointless job? Here's a great bit of gaming history:
The original X-COM was cancelled, but development continued in secret. This is an incredible story:
Man learns--and shows--that his face is not all that matters. This is excellent:
Moral behavior in animals | Frans de Waal.
From DQ Reader My Wife, and I guess AC/DC is universal after all:
KIDS REACT TO AC/DC.
Ask A Developer: 100 Words or Less (Laura Shigihara)
I'm very happy today to introduce another episode of
Ask A Developer: 100 Words Or Less, and today's guest is Laura Shigihara. Laura's upcoming game is Rakuen, and here's the
launch trailer as well as a link to the
Steam page.
Remember "There's A Zombie On My Lawn", still one of my all-time favorite songs in a game? That was Laura. Good memories:
There's A Zombie On My Lawn.
Describe your game in 100 words or less.
Rakuen is an adventure game about a hospitalized Boy who asks his Mom to escort him to the fantasy world from his favorite storybook, so that he can ask the Guardian of that world to grant him one wish. In order to receive his wish, the Boy must complete a set of challenges that revolve around helping his neighbors in the hospital by interacting with their alter-egos in the fantasy world.
What were your objectives (three) with the original design?
1.) My biggest goal was to tell a meaningful story.
2.) However, I didn't want the game to be purely exposition. I wanted to make sure there was actual gameplay (lots of gameplay early on, transitioning to mostly exposition in the later sections), and...
3.) I wanted the gameplay to always match the feel of the story. For example, there's a Zelda-style cave dungeon with an ecosystem of strange creatures that you navigate during a more whimsical part of the game. In contrast, you spend time solving puzzles to escape an eerie hospital while navigating the mind of a woman in a coma.
What distinguishes your game?
You go on this adventure with your Mom. You walk a mile in the shoes of everyone from a retired pilot to a little girl to a stray dog. Your reward for finishing each "questline" is a special song that encapsulates the backstory of the person you just helped; each of these 5 songs combine to make a final song that you perform in order to receive a wish. "Wooden Signs" are a species in the game. You can get a job as a waiter serving tea to snobby flowerbuds in a manion in the sky.
How long does it take to play?
I'd say anywhere between 6 and 10 hours depending on your play style.
What are your strongest gaming influences?
In terms of story/music, I learned a great deal from games like Chrono Trigger and Suikoden. I thought Zelda: Link Between Worlds had incredible dungeon design (Link to the Past as well). I learned a lot about room escape/point-and-click elements from Maniac Mansion. And games like Yoshi's Island inspired me in the area of cute and funny creature design.
Even though Rakuen has nothing to do with Mega Man or Starcraft, I feel I should mention them because I was pretty obsessed with both. I dressed up as Mega Man for Halloween in the 4th grade.
What are your best gaming memories?
This question is too hard lol :) Beating all the different bosses in Secret of Mana with my friend and her older sister (it was so cool seeing them turn that red/orange color, and the screen would fade to white). Staying up super late playing Starcraft LAN games with friends, and at PC Cafes in Korea. Strategizing with guildmates about Challenge Dungeons in Pandaria (World of Warcraft). Getting coffee at Brewster's with a special someone in Animal Crossing. Getting to the end of Fleuret Blanc (a really great mystery game my friend made).
Who is your favorite designer, and why?
Well, the first game designer I knew about was Shigeru Miyamoto. I still remember reading about him in Nintendo Power (the Yoshi's Island issue). He seemed so creative, which at the time was a big deal to me. Nowadays I'm surrounded by creative folks, but I grew up in an area that discouraged creative careers so I always felt a bit out of place. The things Miyamoto-san said in the interview really resonated with me, and I thought it was so neat that he was doing these creative things for a living.
What game have you played for the most hours? Why?
Gosh... I'm not sure anymore lol. But for the longest time I'd say I sunk the most hours into Starcraft. I love that game, I never get tired of it.
What is your design process? What would you consider the foundation of your process?
In the case of Rakuen, the whole game actually started out as the story for a music video to a song I wrote called "Jump" (now Rakuen's ending credits song). I came up with the story while playing the song on the piano.
Before I do anything on the computer, I outline the game's structure on paper; I write out the characters and try to imagine their personalities; I think about what gameplay would best match the story; design puzzles, etc. Then I try to prototype it and go from there.
Foundation: Music <-> Story -> Lots of lists and pictures -> Prototype :)
If I remember correctly, you started out as a pop singer in Japan, then moved on to composing, then started doing game development. Is that right? I think I have a general understanding of how composition could influence your game-making perspective, but did being a pop singer have any effect, and if so, what?
I think it probably had an effect :) I love composing background music, but I think my specialty is writing songs. I'm really thankful that I had the opportunity to work on so many vocal songs for video games (Plants vs. Zombies, To the Moon, High School Story, the ending theme for the Minecraft documentary, etc.). With game songs, you don't have to fit into a particular genre, and the mood can vary widely. From the beginning, I had songs in mind for Rakuen's design. There are around 10 lyrical songs, and they are closely tied to the story and gameplay.
How do you handle design paralysis? What do you do to move forward?
If I get stuck on something, I usually talk to friends or family about it. Brainstorming helps a lot. Sometimes I will go to a cafe, drink tea, and then just jot down ideas in a notebook to try to work it out. I've even had times where playing the piano can get me through a creative block.
How has the game changed during playtesting? How long did the playtest last?
We had two rounds of beta testing, both lasted around 2-3 weeks. Since the first playtest, I added some pretty significant gameplay and cutscenes for two of the major questlines, composed 3-4 more tracks of music; fixed a huge list of bugs, and did a lot of things to try and smooth out some of the puzzles. I've learned that puzzles are very polarizing; they can be super easy to one person, and rage-quit-level frustrating to the next! They require a lot of iteration. We also replaced a LOT of the art.
How did you handle the process of getting your game to market?
At GDC a couple years back, representatives from Valve were meeting with developers. During that time I was able to talk with them about Rakuen, and get the game directly onto Steam.
How do you handle marketing?
I guess it's been kind of been a natural process thus far. I enjoy sharing screenshots and music as the game progresses. I've had a personal youtube channel for a while now where as a hobby I upload both my original music as well as video game music remixes; I try to keep my subscribers there in the loop by sharing about Rakuen's progress. I do my best to send major press releases to video game news sites. And of course, if I can do something fun that involves the community (like contests) then I do that as well :)
How much time have you devoted to marketing versus design/development time (in hours, if you know)?
Hmm... I'm not totally sure (especially since a lot of it I just do organically, like posting screenshots online when I finish a scene I really like^^). I definitely sunk a lot of hours into things like putting together a trailer, writing up press releases, sending off emails, etc. But overall, all that still ends up being a small fraction of the time it took to actually make the game.
What is the release date of your game and the price? Where can people buy it?
We're releasing Rakuen on May 10 on Steam (for PC/Mac/Linux). After doing a lot of research, we finally decided on $9.99 as the price.
What is your next project?
I would really like to release a music album. Over the years, I've written so many songs that I just never did anything with. It would be really nice to just get to work on that for a while. I also have a goal to learn how to make really good cream cakes (strawberry, and also matcha).
Eli 15.9 and Tryouts
He made it!
Tonight
Eli 15.9 has one more tryout skate at 5:30, and we'll find out whether he made the team sometime tonight. I think he's in good shape, but it's still very, very stressful right now.
On the drive to tryouts yesterday, we figured out that there were 22 fifteen-year-old goalies playing AAA in Michigan last year (including 15u and kids playing up in 16u, so 16+6 spots). This year, it's reversed (16-6 spots).
10 spots instead of 22. That's a brutal cutdown.
A Nice Surprise Tomorrow
We'll have a new episode in the "Ask a Developer: 100 Words or Less" feature, and this time, it's with Laura Shigihara, designer/developer of the upcoming game
Rakuen.
Laura is a tremendously accomplished musician, and Rakuen has an elaborate and lovely soundtrack. I've been looking forward to the game since it was announced a few years ago, and I'll have impressions for you shortly after release.
On The Road Again
"I just turned onto Tittabawasee and I'm driving toward Zilwaukee. Am I in a cartoon?"
MLB The Show 17: Design, Realism, and Fun
Enormous Bottoms, now in AAA, had a chance to win both the HR and RBI titles with four games to play in his season (now playing for the El Paso Chihuahuas after his original team foolishly traded him away).
He had 30 HR, one behind the leader. He was comfortably ahead in RBI, with 95, but wanted to reach that magic century mark.
Well, in those four games, his team put exactly zero runners in scoring position while he was at the plate. Zero
So what did he do? He hit four home runs (three on consecutive at-bats in one game), and one of those homers brought home a runner from first.
That's going big, Bottoms style.
34 HR and 100 RBI. League leader in both.
This was perfect. He wasn't rated highly enough to call up to the Majors, but he was good enough that he would destroy AAA until he built up a huge bank of training points.
One week later, he was traded.
He went from a beautiful ballpark to an absolute dump, but there was a short porch in right field, and when he hit a routine fly ball that turned into a home run in the season opener, it looked like it might not be so bad after all.
In the second game, in the first inning, he tore his MCL.
Out for the season.
In the offseason, hewas picked up by the Astros in the Rule 5 draft (one of many arcane rules in baseball). A Rule 5 pickup must stay on the major league roster for an entire season or he reverts back to his previous team.
Uh-oh.
Now healthy but far weaker than the other outfielders on the Astros roster, Enormous Bottoms gets fifteen at-bats in the first thirty games of the season. On the rare occasions when he plays, he presses and performs poorly.
Now, in one sense, this is just incredible game design, because it's an uncanny mirror to real life. I felt frustration, and anxiety, and even a little anger.
You know what, though? It's not very much fun.
I'm torn. One of the things I did in Gridiron Solitaire (which was ludicrously realistic), one of the things I prided myself on, was that the game would organically generate all the crazy momentum swings and emotions of real football, and it did.
Sometimes, though, as in real life, those momentum swings were downright punitive, and quite frustrating.
So I know how difficult it is to make a sports sim seem realistic, and what The Show has done in career mode is absolutely amazing.
I could have had more fun, though.
Zelda (BotW)
After I don't even know how many hours (40? 60?), let me just reiterate that this is an incredible, unbelievable game.
I'm still finding all kinds of new things in the world, and everything in the world is entirely consistent with everything else in the world, to a degree I have never seen before. It's a staggering achievement, and before this game, I wouldn't have thought it was possible.
The rain still drives me crazy, occasionally, but that is a minor annoyance in a brilliant, stunning experience.
A Big Week
Eli 15.9 has two final tryout skates this week, and by this weekend, he should know if he made the team.
This is the last open AAA goalie spot in the state, as far as I can tell. If you're wondering what happens if he doesn't make it, I can't tell you.
He's played extremely well in tryouts, so he's done his part. Tryouts can be wacky, though, and roster spots can turn on seemingly small things.
Like I said, though, we'll know by this weekend, at least.
He also went to Saginaw for Selects last weekend. It was a confusing tryout, because there were three districts involved, and they take kids from each district, but there was no way to tell which kids were from which district, so no one even knew who they were competing against.
We find out about that by May 3. "If I don't make it this year, I'm going back next year and kicking the door down," Eli said.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, and I have a deep affection for pinball, even though I was never very good at it:
The curious story of Magic Girl, the would-be greatest pinball machine of all time.
From Steven Davis, and this is staggeringly beautiful:
The Egg Painter.
From C. Lee, and this is a fascinating article:
The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI. This is an excellent read:
Me and My Troll. This is tremendously interesting:
Engineering the Perfect Astronaut. Next, and I think we all knew this (not really):
Has the Queen's English Become Frightfully Common? This is intriguing:
There are 19 types of smiles but only 6 are for happiness.
From Wally, and this is a terrific read:
The man who catches marathon cheats - from his home. Next, and this is excellent, it's
Notes on Games with Sequential Moves.
Hue And Cry Noticeably Missing
From
Deadspin:
Mallory Pugh, the blazingly fast and wildly skilled winger who played with the U.S. women’s team in the 2016 Olympics, is leaving UCLA to turn pro, according to a statement released by the school. The 18-year-old enrolled at UCLA in January and would have begun her freshman season in the fall. Instead, she decided to take her talents to the professional ranks before she ever played a competitive game for UCLA, which isn’t too much of a surprise considering U.S. Soccer just reached a new collective bargaining agreement with the women’s players, guaranteeing some players upwards of $200,000 a year. Turning pro means she can cash checks from U.S. Soccer as well as pick up endorsement deals.
A freshman (and only a freshman because she enrolled early) leaving to turn pro? Well, I expected a flood of editorials saying that she needed to stay for the college experience, that she wasn't emotionally mature enough to turn pro. What if it doesn't work out? She won't have anything to fall back on because she didn't go to college!
Instead: crickets.
Are the usual members of the outrage cotillion not upset because it's a white woman instead of a black man? I'm sure that's part of it, but I don't think it's the most important part.
The most important part, by far, is money.
Pugh going pro in women's soccer isn't going to cost the NCAA a penny in the larger scheme of things. Nobody cares if she's prepared, emotionally and physically. It's not something that anyone would even think of mentioning.
Young men and women graduating from high school and playing pro tennis, or pro golf? No one cares. No one would even think to bring up the argument.
High school graduates going to play minor league baseball instead of college? No problem.
Let's go to college football and basketball now. The money sports, the two sports where the revenue from television rights is absolutely gigantic.
Oh, now there's a problem.
Anything that would hurt the quality of the product that television networks pay for--well, it's all about the kid right? And the kids just aren't ready for the pros. It's actually
exploiting the kids to let them skip college and go earn a living.
Good grief.
A Minor Cut
Eli 15.9, The Boy Who Would Be Goalie, took a break yesterday to make these:
He clearly has strong cupcake game.
Also:
"I cut my finger slicing tomatoes," Gloria said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said.
"It's nothing," she said. "Very small."
"Those are the ones that kill you," I said. " 'Following Local Woman's Minor Cut, Funeral Services at Noon at Waxworthy Funeral Home.' "
MLB 17: The Show (Update)
This lighting issue is quite baffling.
Here are a couple of pictures that (not terribly well)illustrate what I'm talking about. The first one is the actual batting view:
Like I said previously, there a a ton of different lighting conditions, but for all minor league parks (haven't reached the majors yet), but early in the game, almost all of them are dark to some degree.
However, if the game cuts to a quick flavor bit, the lighting is much better:
That was on the same at-bat as the first picture, and it's a totally usable lighting level. So why is the batting view so freaking dark in comparison?
That's not even the darkest lighting that I see. It's even worse at times, and it generally doesn't get better until the late innings when the lights are fully on.
On rainy days, though, the lighting is fine. So this is appears to be a case of the developers falling in love with the many levels of sunlight, but somehow misapplying them to the game.
Also, like I said, quite a few of these lighting levels look like ass. They don't showcase the game. It's both a bug and a design mistake.
Now, it's possible that this is only an issue for people with PS4 Pros. It might even only be a problem for people using the PS4 Pro with 1080P screens.
Whatever it is, though, it's annoying as hell.
The Tunguska Event, With Chocolate
Gloria surprised us with Easter bags filled with chocolate yesterday.
"Hey!" Eli 15.9 said.
"What?" Gloria asked.
"Dad's bag has more candy than mine! And I know he already ate some, so it's even worse!"
"I never get more candy," I said. "Dads never get more of anything."
"This is an outrage," Eli said. "Oh, and what happened to those dark chocolate eggs I had downstairs?"
"Those?" Gloria asked. "I didn't think you wanted those, but I kept them for you. They're in the drawer in the kitchen."
"Wait, do you mean your secret chocolate drawer?"
"Uh..." Gloria said. Eli burst out laughing.
"It's not secret!" she said.
"No, it's just the place where you store chocolate with hand towels," I said. "Nothing to see here."
What the...
As of two days ago, all the trees on our street were bare.
We woke up Sunday morning, and suddenly, there was this:
Apparently, about 10,000 trees did this overnight. Very impressive, sneaky trees.
It's the Most Miserable Time of the Year
Tryouts started last night.
Four skates on consecutive nights this week. Two skates the next week, and two the following week.
If you're a parent, tryouts are the worst time of the year.
The best time? The day after tryouts are over, if your kid makes the team. That's a relaxing day.
You may be thinking that it shouldn't be such a big deal, because there are lots of teams, right? Technically, that's true, but if Eli 15.9 wants to play D1 in college--and he does, very much--he has to play AAA this year. 16U is the biggest recruiting year, by far.
Largely, kids at AA don't get recruited. High school kids don't, either (the best high school hockey in Michigan is the equivalent of high AA). There is a huge gap between AAA and AA, so recruiters are going to spend 90%+ of their time at AAA games.
Then there's the squeeze.
Some kids Eli's age played 16U last year (they played up), so some spots on any 16U team are already filled by kids who played up last year. In Eli's case, one of the goalies on the 16U team was playing up last year, so he's guaranteed a spot.
That leaves one open spot.
There aren't really open spots on teams in the Detroit area. I think one team has one goalie position open--all the others are already filled.
This is make or break, really.
Last night, there were 80+ kids on the ice, split between two sheets. Twelve goalies, although those are all the kids trying out for both the 15U and 16U teams. Huge tryout.
The skate lasted 90 minutes. Eli didn't give up a single goal.
Not in the opening drills, where you're seeing a shot every 2-3 seconds. Not in 3x3. Not in 4x4. Not in 5x5.
It was stellar, but other than me, I don't even know if anybody noticed.
There aren't any goalie coaches evaluating the goalies (which is standard for any tryout), and the coaches have to spend the vast majority of their time watching the skaters, because there are so many of them. So there's no way to know how much the coaches even saw.
I do know one thing, though: they didn't see him give up a goal.
I like the coach. He's very down-to-earth, he's fair, and he sees Eli working at the rink all the time. I hope all of that works in his favor.
This whole tryout process makes parents (including me) incredibly nervous, but the one person who wasn't nervous was Eli. "Dad, nobody's taking this away from me," he said. "I got this."
The Other Mall
I didn't mention this last week, but we went to a second mall in Minnesota.
Not mentioned in the post about Mall of America was how normal everything seemed. Lots of different kinds of people, a consumer melting pot. It was the quintessential American mall experience, just 10X the size.
The second mall? The whitest mall in America.
Luis Vitton. Coach. Lululemon. Vineyard Vines.
Wait, those are super snobby stores, but what makes it the "whitest" mall? Well, 99% of the customers were white, which is a strong indicator. Also, men walking around in sweater vests and ties to shop.
I half-expected a yacht on wheels to come sailing through, with its breezily knotted, sweater-wearing passengers lifting champagne flutes as they rolled by.
Really, it was kind of horrifying.
We passed a store named H.O.B.O. Their website says "Our possessions should reflect our journey".
This is not satire. No way could I make this shit up.
"Is that the most tasteless thing you've ever seen, or just in the top ten?" I asked.
"It's way up there," Eli 15.9 said. "Not gonna lie."
"Next, a store created by rich white people called 'Homeless'," I said. "You know that's coming."
We didn't stay for more than fifteen minutes, and both felt even that was too long.
When we got back to the parking lot, I burst out laughing. "What?" Eli asked.
I pointed to a double row of cars in front of us. "Look," I said, "it's not just the mall that was white!"
2017 IIHF Women's World Championship
We were geeked.
Here's what the stands looked like for the first semifinal (Canada vs. Sweden):
Ungeeked.
There might have been 300 people in in a 3,200 seat arena to watch the #2 and #3 women's team in the world.
Ticket prices? Dirt cheap. We were five rows off the glass for $15 per game per person. Ridiculous value.
It was so bad that we started in with the bad jokes.
"Look--it's the friends and families section."
"Ladies and gentlemen, we'll have to clear the building due to a bomb threat. Wait--never mind, we're done."
Lots, lots more, and thank goodness I don't remember them. But it was depressing, seeing excellent hockey in front of us and no one else caring.
We showed up for the Finals on Friday night expecting another 300 person crowd, or maybe 500 if we were lucky.
Instead, we drove into a happening.
The parking lot was packed. People were asking if anyone had spare tickets.
Arena? Sold out, and loud. Have a look:
That's more like it, and the rowdy crowd exponentially jacked up the atmosphere.
"This is GREAT!" Eli 15.9 said, more than once, and I felt the same way.
And the hockey--oh man, the hockey was phenomenal. Ultra-fast, ultra-skilled, and rough. Apparently, when the USA and Canada play, checking is allowed unless it's an open-ice hit.
It was just sensational, really, and we were lucky enough that the game went into overtime, which was even better.
Here's the crowd after the US scored the game-winner:
Pandemonium.
We didn't get home until 1 a.m., and after the Minnesota trip and this, I was dead-tired.
So was Eli, but when you're trying to do something special, you go work out when the rink looks like this:
Friday Links!
From C. Lee, and this is an interesting read:
The Death and Rebirth of the Duncan Grapefruit. Next, and this is fascinating:
The Four Color Map Theorem - Numberphile. I had no idea:
Meet the Hunter Troop: Norway's tough-as-nails female soldiers. This is fascinating:
This Is What a Master Pianist Sees. Here's an interview with Yoko Taro, creator of the Nier and Drakengard series:
toco toco ep.49, Yoko Taro, Game Creator. This is an absolutely fantastic read for anyone interested in music (or computers):
Algorithmic Music – David Cope and EMI.
C. Lee is going in big this week, and here are more links. First, and this is a very interesting video, it's
The physics that tells us what the Universe is made of. This is entirely fascinating:
The "Untranslatable" Emotions You Never Knew You Had:From gigil to wabi-sabi and tarab, there are many foreign emotion words with no English equivalent. Learning to identify and cultivate these experiences could give you a richer and more successful life.
From Steven Davis, and this is excellent:
The World's Blackest Material - An Inside Look At Vantablack. This is provocative:
New studies show the cost of student laptop use in lecture classes.
From Wally, and this is a terrific read:
The British airliner that changed the world. Harrowing:
Arresting Cable Snaps During E-2 Landing - USS Eisenhower.
Mall of America
"We're never going to find it," Eli 15.9 said. We had walked several miles already.
"It's okay," I said. "I'm sure many people have just sat down somewhere and started crying, not knowing if they would ever be found."
He laughed.
"Don't worry," I said. "I brought a flair gun. I'll send up a flare and we can wait for the golf carts to arrive."
He burst out laughing.
I'm referring to Mall of America.
We eventually did find the store, passing the skeletons of several shoppers along the way, and Eli did get his University of Minnesota zippered light jacket, which looks quite good.
It's a big, big mall.
From Wikipedia:
Mall of America (MOA) is a shopping mall located in Bloomington, Minnesota...Opened in 1992, it is the largest mall in the United States in terms of number of stores and total floor area.
The Mall of America has a gross area of 4,870,000 sq ft (452,000 m2) or 96.4 acres (390,000 m2), enough to fit seven Yankee Stadiums inside, with 2,500,000 sq ft available as retail space.The mall is nearly symmetric, with a roughly rectangular floor plan. More than 530 stores are arranged along three levels of pedestrian walkways on the sides of the rectangle, with a fourth level on the east side.
Yeah, that big. 530+ stores, 50 sit-down restaurants, and probably 100 fast food restaurants.
When I booked the hotel for our trip, I was looking for the closest decent hotel to the facility where Eli would be training. Happily, that was 10 minutes from the airport and 5 more minutes to the facility. Right next to the airport, on the way to the hotel, was Mall of America.
That was perfect, because I hate chasing food on these trips. We would be 10 minutes away from an incredible variety of food.
Over three days, we spent about seven hours in the mall and walked over six miles. Almost every store in the mall is some kind of flagship store for its company, so not only do you see a huge variety of stores, they're the best stores for their brand.
Oh, and the roller coaster. Did I mention there's one in the middle of the mall, as part of a Nickelodeon Universe amusement park?
Now, some pictures. First, the mall directory:
See those little black panels? There are 20 of them, and there are 30+ stores/restaurants on each one. There are maps everywhere, because it's incredibly easy to get lost, and finding a store at random (like we did) is an endurance contest.
There's a LEGO store, of course, and these LEGO sculptures are absolutely massive:
We also, for the first time, saw a store called "FBFG". That's "Farm Boy, Farm Girl", and I am not joking:
I'm not sure about that image for advertising. The red-haired girl looks relatively horrified that someone is expecting her to shop there. Not a great look. Maybe the evil grandmother in the panel to the left abducted her?
This next image is of the crayola store, and if you look in the center back of the photo, you'll see a wall of crayons that you can buy individually. It was a riot of color, in a very good way:
There are plenty of candy stores in the mall, and one featured two of the most offensive candies I've ever seen. Of course, I took pictures:
Sorry, sideways image coming up. Leaving soon and no time to fix.
Lastly, a couple of pictures from the trip outside the mall. First, please enjoy this giant wall of pickled vegetables:
Lastly, a structure that I thought looked very ominous, even though it just supports power lines. With a little imagination, though, it turns into something very different (cue War of the Worlds theme music in the background):
Winning Never Stops Feeling Good
Well, we went to Minnesota.
Edina, to be exact. We went to Edina because it's home to the best visual training for athletes in the country.
True Focus Vision trains NHL players--goalies, mostly--along with AHL/ECHL/D1 college players, with a focus on visual performance. Goalies have extreme visual demands, so evaluating every aspect of the visual system, and correcting any identified weaknesses, can make a huge difference.
Eli 15.9s vision is 20/10, but that's a raw number without any nuance. He underwent extensive testing in quite a few different ways on Monday.
The results were surprising.
Reaction time: excellent. Vision (divergence): excellent. Vision (convergence): weak.
What does that mean? Basically, that as objects get close, it's difficult for his eyes to converge on the object (his right eye is the culprit, mostly).
Boy, that was a surprise. There are several good things, though:
--good grief, he plays at a high level to have this issue
--there is some excellent visual training that can correct this
--he is highly, highly motivated to do the training
We came home with a suitcase of equipment and a training schedule, and he will talk on the phone with his trainer on a regular basis. Everything about this program is measurable, so it's easy to adapt the training if results aren't on course.
Not surprisingly, the training is tiring. Eli was definitely feeling it after each session. But he can't wait for the results, so doing the training won't be a problem.
Okay, two stories from being at the facility.
First, while the trainer juggles, he didn't know that Eli could juggle four balls (and five, at least for a short time), so Eli spent some time showing him the four-ball patterns and how they work.
Later that afternoon, two NHL goalies (including a Vezina Trophy candidate) came by to train. There's an artificial turf field inside the facility, so they all stood out there together and juggled. Eli showed them the four-ball patterns, then went Mr. Clutch and juggled five balls for as long as he ever has.
They were both incredibly nice, and Eli was thrilled, of course. I didn't take any pictures because it was a private training session at a private facility, and I felt like doing so would be an invasion.
I will say, though, that seeing all of them juggling together and laughing was a moment that I won't ever forget, and no matter how I describe it, I can't nearly do it justice.
Second story.
This facility also had a light board. This one:
The board trains reaction time and visual tracking. In the most basic exercise, the board lights up one light at a time, and it stays lit until you touch it, then another lights up, etc.
Those lights are very small, by the way--a little smaller than a nickel. And the board is big enough (over 6 feet tall) that you can't possibly have it all in your field of vision, so hunting down the little lights (and touching them) is tough at times, particularly when you're trying to do it at high speed.
Eli did the basic version (30 seconds) and scored 41.
I had to ask, of course. I mean, I was there already, right? I had to try. It was irresistible.
So I tried it, too.
Scored 38.
Eli went again and scored 46. That is really, really fast.
I went again. 40.
I tried two more times. 40. 40.
There was a bit of good-natured chirping, of course.
On Tuesday, we came back for one more training session before we flew home. A few variations were introduced in the light board, including one where a three-digit number appeared in that little gray panel above the center circle, and you had to sum the numbers. If you got even one of the sums wrong, your score didn't count.
It's much, much harder, because you have to add numbers while you're still trying to score points on the board.
I wanted to try one more time--puncher's chance, right?--and I was going to do the straight 30-second test, and then it hit me.
Math.
"I get to make the challenge, right?" I asked.
"Sure," Eli said.
"Math version," I said, and he started laughing. "You go first."
"Oh, no," he said, halfway through the 30-second period. The panel had flashed 3 numbers, but he hadn't seen them. He kept going and finished with a 36.
"Thirty-six with an asterik," I said.
"I just looked away for a split-second!" he said, laughing.
"The power of math," I said, and stepped up to the board. Through a strange quirk of fate, this light board had played right into my hands.
38.
"Yes!" I said, raising my arms.
"Oh, no," Eli said, laughing.
Eli's trainer thought this was hilarious. "Wait a minute," he said, and he took a medal down from his bookshelf, put it around my neck, and made us pose for a picture.
I know I never show you guys pictures of myself, and I probably never will again, but this was too much fun to not share:
Where in the World is...
I'll tell you tomorrow--good story, I hope, but for now, these should give you some hints (this eventually winds up as a hockey story, as everything does these days):
MLB The Show 17: Impressions (5+ hours)
He's back.
5'5", 220 lb. Enormous Bottoms has resumed his quixotic effort to dominate major league baseball.
He hits 485 foot bombs and strikes out with equal aplomb. His swing has no regrets.
His arm is a cannon, but so are his hands. Big throws and frequent drops.
No regrets.
Even though he was leading the AA Southern League in home runs, RBIs, slugging percentage, and strikeouts, he wasn't an every day player, due to some bullshit "attitude" problems.
If you have a problem with E.B.'s attitude, then
you have an attitude problem.
In the AA All-Star Game, he hit a 475 foot rocket to outer space. In the Championship Series, in three games, he hit 5 HR and had 15 RBIs.
Over 150 strikeouts. 2 bases on balls. Go big or go home.
***
I never thought I'd say this, but here we are:
The Show is starting to show its age.
Compared to Horizon: Zero Dawn or Zelda (I know--different genres, etc.), The show looks positively dated. It's still very slick, and there have been some important improvements for Road to the Show players (playing multiple games without returning to the clubhouse, which cuts loading times significantly), but it's losing ground.
Plus, the game has at least one significant problem that is driving me crazy: the lighting.
This is a good example of developers falling in love with a feature that turns into a detriment because of how it's used. The Show loves to change the lighting as the game progresses, and that's fine.
What's not fine is that some ballparks, in the early innings, are practically dark.
This must be a bug, because when the announcers cut to a replay, or to any other view than the hitting view, the light is fine. Also, when the lights come on, the light is also fine, so something is going very wrong early on in a game.
Almost as bad is that while the lighting effect is cool, many of the lighting conditions that get used don't favor how the game looks. They make it look worse. Why would you do that? The game sparkles in bright sunlight, and at night (in certain lighting conditions), so why wouldn't you use that lighting, or come as close to it, as often as possible?
Baffling.
My screen is well-calibrated, in case you're wondering, and like I said, the cutaways from the main batting view all look fine in terms of lighting.
One other baffling note. Now there's a red circle around the ball, and it can't be turned off. Looks like ass. A developer over at Operation Sports said they took out the option to turn it off because no one used it.
Sorry, man, pretty sure that isn't true. I'd like to have it my way, not your way. No offense.
Still, though, I'm playing it, and quite a bit, so it's still an excellent package, and there's one huge bonus this year: an announcer narrating the personal scenes in RTTS mode (like the career in 2K) with all the presence of a BBC nature documentary. It's outstandingly funny, even unintentionally, and totally entertaining.
So, to sum: a few cracks at the seams, some lighting oddities, but still a full-featured game that is the best of its kind.
