Category Archives: Gaming

September 2, 2023 · 22:10

A casually added cog

This is a stage that has taken time. I wrote about parts of these settings as early as 2021, the last part was I believe in February 2022 (see image below). 

I never stopped thinking about it, but it is all related to the design I made for Elder Scrolls VII (it was 6) called Restoration. Of course as they are now part of Microsoft helping them is a big no-no. Yet the setting could be used for Amazon Luna and Tencent console developers. And lets be clear. Chinese developers are hungry for profit, the question is can they responsibly develop the next generation RPG games. Not, some copy of Bethesda, but a new unique IP? I have too little experience there, so I cannot say. But when you consider the overhauls I designed for RPG, including parts Bethesda never touched. A new NPC combat system making the next generation an entirely new challenge. Yet in all this, my mind was set on looting. I needed to make it new and optionally unseen before. You see most RPG makers took the lazy way, most copied ideas from Bethesda and the early developers. As such I had an advantage. No one had taken this road before, all because I believe in checks and balances. And as such the cogs helped me and at that point I added a cog (optionally two) and that stage could end up having more options. A setting where we see the stores in places like Chorrel, Bruma, Riverwood and no one saw the missing element. As such there are a few options to develop making the stage larger and there might now be an optional requirement to make the map larger still. You see, developers have good ideas and they have bad (or non-workable) ideas. I get that. But how many got irritated in Far Cry 4 when you heard another eagle warning? That game has more eagles than Tibet has people. It just doesn’t work. The idea was great, but it should have been limited to a handful of encounters, not a dozen eagles each hour. It was at that point that my mind wandered into the loot system and adjusting and redesigning it. That also led me to additional shops. Some might be in general stores, but the larger cities could have these two stores, offering more options to make cash. This led to a new artisan that could adjust your gear and items. 

And the funny part is that Bethesda should have been ahead of me, they were not and now others get to benefit from this. I still hope to sell my other IP to Amazon or Tencent Technologies and if they want the other parts added, I might not complain. The reason for me writing this here is that players like Bethesda might shout that they had the idea too, but I wrote about it now, so where were they? Launching Starfield? Yes, I have seen some video’s and I wonder what will happen. I am not commenting on them as I cannot verify the validity. There are plenty of haters around and I am not one of them, I will not feed their hate hunger. And that gets me to the hunger stage, another setting that has been explored in a few ways and plenty of them in good ways, but one side they all neglected. I wonder if someone catches on or if that idea will be added to the pile for Amazon and/or Tencent?

What is clear is that if I am correct the future holds the greatest RPG year we have yet to explore and that will be on the developer waking up. 

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

August 31, 2023 · 23:59

Sentimental journey

We all have these. It usually is about something personal, something we are passionate about and mine for the longest time has been gaming. I took a sentimental journey by replaying Far Cry 3. It still had all the flaws (replaying on the PS5). One was a design flaw, one that massively annoyed me, one was a ‘weakness’ and one was open to debate. I replayed the game 4 times and in order were the PS3, Xbox360, PS4 and now PS5 and this time I stuck around to get the platinum achievement. Three I never had, one was due to me not looking at the issue, one was because I never found it (that Hollywood star with his head above the sand). The toxo thingy (because I never realised that you could do those with explosive arrows and the gamble bully as I never cared for poker. This time around there was just the poker part missing as such I ended doing a side quest I merely shrugged at and now I have it. OK, I looked up that Hollywood person. I initially thought it was one in my party to save. So when I found the solution I had to giggle. This is one of those moments I applaud the makers for such a sneaky achievement. 

This also stirred a few other things. You see, there is a game I want remade, but remade different and now it might not come to consoles because this is a streaming option. I also have been rethinking a few settings in the original games and how it might be done differently and that got me to a new approach to ‘family’ trees. Whilst everyone is rethinking ChatGPT and taking swings at their version of ‘AI’, I have been considering another use. A use in gaming not used before, not to ‘extent’ the gamer, but to extent a system that allows for ‘shoddy data’ and is set to parameters where we decide what to include and what to filter out. I considered it for a while and I suddenly that in some trees pruning is not the reward, but correctly pruning leads to a bigger reward and that is merely one stage to enhance an old game 30 years later and create a very new game. As such I now have 2 out of 4 stages of that game thought through, the third one is also there, but I believe that we need to tune that a little more. So whilst Microsoft is spending billions and billions to acquire IP, I merely thought it through and have a setting of close to half a dozen games ready to add to the Amazon Luna and Tencent handheld stables. I just can’t stop giggling at that premise. They (Microsoft) is trying to spend $69,000,000,000 to buy Blizzard and an idea that could be seen as outdated, I am about to hand Amazon and Tencent Technologies IP at less than 0.1% of that and they end up with half a dozen games that Microsoft does not have and will not have. In the meantime thanks to a brisk idea Vint Cerf had when he was an old-boy at DARPA led to an idea to a new approach to NPC enemy intelligence. Yup, Microsoft really played that part in a boneheaded way. And now (after they spend $7.5 billion for Bethesda) all eyes are on Starfield. I am not focussed on it, because I refuse to get the new Xbox and should that title fail, the goose of Microsoft will be sorely done. I honestly hope it will go well, because hoping for someone’s game to fail is just a dick move. I will merely never play it (unless it comes to PS5, which is a not going to happen). So I am not a starfield hater, but Microsoft placed a bar too high for normal games and now all eyes are on Starfield. I however decided to be more creative and designed several games exclusively for Amazon and Tencent, several of them I placed in the Public Domain for exclusive free development for these two systems. Yes, I know that this was a stretch, but the more I design and the more Microsoft fails, the bigger the loser they are showing themselves to be. It is a stage of lose some and lose some more. And now that my first IP is close to completely redrawn, Tencent Technologies stands to make a fortune on the space that Google Stadia once had and that spells out more bad news for Microsoft. 

Still the sentimental journey played its part. I have been driven (over time) towards games like System Shock and stealth games. Now I see that these stages are also drivers for new IP, not a copy of an old idea, but completely new IP, and as I personally see it Microsoft has nothing to counter it. Yes, Starfield will be new IP, but that is one IP on one system and they are still feeding the Game pass. I have several pieces of NEW IP, new that is never used and to a degree never seen on consoles. As such not only does Microsoft have contenders, but with their Call of duty fetish, trying to counter Epic and its software, they left too much lying on the floor and Tencent Technologies is starting to catch on where Amazon, Google and Microsoft decided not to look and now they are about to become the competitor Microsoft never banked on and as such they have more contenders to fields they never completely understood. First there was Apple with their iPad and the Windows Surface giggle never got close, then there was Amazon with AWS in the first (eat your heart out Azure) then with the Luna and there is Microsoft losing the streaming console war all whilst Netflix is a new contender costing Microsoft even more. Then there was Sony beating the Xbox version X (or was that the Nth degree). And now Tencent Technologies is about to enter the field giving more and more competition to Microsoft in streaming solutions. Making Microsoft the loser 5 times over. So Bethesda has an abnormal amount of pressure on it to make Starfield a lot better then good and after the epic failure that Redfall has become with additional promises not met 3 months later, all eyes are on Bethesda and I do not believe that is fair on Bethesda, but the premise was pushed by Microsoft and they will need a scapegoat should things go south, no idea how they will do that, but there you have it and I am handing over IP for free to anyone that is not Microsoft. You see, to avoid fish getting caught, you can either take the fish away, or make the pond a lot larger. I opted for a combination of both and when my initial premise of 50 million gamers is met, Microsoft will have to hand over the field yet again. Because it is not merely that I gain these gamers, Microsoft will lose those people in a few ways and that was the initial stage. It might be delusional, but I believe that giving gamers pure gaming pleasure is one way of gaining their trust. Not the trust of some analyst and some bing stage, but a stage where gaming for the sake of fun will endure long after Bing went the way of the dodo. I had hoped it would be an Amazon/Google win, but there is every chance that it will now be an optional Amazon/Tencent win and that will lead to a lot more damage to Microsoft over time. 

So whilst some will throw all this to my delusional side, I decided to blog the ideas so that they became open and Public Domain and I there is no regret here, I just came up with another part to an idea that could please a whole cluster of gamers, how large the cluster is is unknown. I understand that this is not some Call of Duty clone and as such plenty will not care for that game, but I believe millions will and that opens other doors and close the doors of Microsoft all at the same time. Why use energy twice, right?

I just have another idea. I think I wrote about it before. I should give it to Netflix as soon as possible just to piss Microsoft off and the more streaming gamers out there, the less is left for Microsoft and lets face it they have 238 million subscribers, so giving them IP merely slows the Microsoft cattle and diverts some of them to other places, a stage Microsoft cannot control and they lack ability to coach. Yup, now just to hand it over to Netflix and another loss for Microsoft is coming their way.

What a lovely way to start Friday (in 9 minutes).

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 27, 2023 · 14:56

The Funny Money Paradox

I have been dreading this. For the most I do not care. But there is one upside. The media have ignored this too and by the end of the story, you will wonder why the media ignored it. They are all uppety uppety for the most silly reasons and they will not care, not until it hurts their digital dollar bottom line. So here goes. In the first Funny Money is a slang term referring to Counterfeit money. Money obtained in a devious or sneaky manner. And that kinda connects to us. It is also a paradox as it is a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true. So that is how I got to the Funny Money Paradox. You see the two largest contributors to this act are Google and Apple, yet they aren’t doing anything illegal. There are merely using all of you to create a new stream income and the stream of income is you. So how is this happening?

You download a game from Google Play (or Apple Store) and you play it. Within the first two minutes you will have seen at least one add, more often 2-3. Now you start playing and the adds keep on flashing by (or is that buy). The game is seemingly simple and it is taunting you that you are to stupid to play it, or that only 1% can play to some distant level (fifteen) and you go for the bait. You are not stupid and you are more intelligent than what they claim and that is how they win. By the first 5 minutes you are likely to have watched 4 advertisements and that is the goal. You see 4 times $0.05 does not amount to much and you might not care, but consider that 250,000 have gone before you. It now starts adding up to serious cash. The game makers gets now $50,000 it starts adding up to serious cash soon enough. Now consider that some games are downloaded over a million times. See how this adds up? And the simple tool (I mean you) keeps on playing and funding the game maker because he has turned GaaS (Gaming as a Service) into a decent stream of income. And it is getting worse. In the last few months I have seen perhaps half a dozen at most that are decently decent games. Yet they have the same setting, but from day one they offer you to avoid ALL advertisements for a small fee (from $4.99 to $14.99) and that avoided watch-time is translated to immediate bonus to you. That is fair, a game costs money and the makers gives you the option. The problem is that most games are so set on cashing in, that they are using more and more simple graphics to cash in as quick as possible and often making more than one version of the same game whilst employing slightly altered graphics to get to the revenue. And it is all happening on the watch of Apple and Google. Now, lets be clear. Neither are doing anything illegal and they can continue as they would like and for me that is good news. My IP will shoot up when people have had enough by being the game makers piggy bank and these makers will not be allowed on the new system. So why am I on this horse? Well, in the first it demeans the status gamer. A gamer is more than an advertisement hub. In the second gaming is a wave of pleasure, not a wave of income. The gamer could be an income and I am fine with that, but these makers are ‘playing it safe’ and exploiting gamers to their own needs first and in the second giving them gaming joy. That is the largest issue I have, the media is second but it is important to see that. They are all uppety uppety on loot boxes and holding the gamer no accountable to any of it and this they avoid? Is this making sense to you?

In the end it will work out better for me, but I then hold myself up to higher values. To exploit this setting just to fair way better is not my cup of tangerine juice either. (I have something with tangerines lately) and I wanted to make sure that I was out on this and you get the chance to seek out the media to see who else reported on this and you will see that many avoided this. So whilst you see another ad on how their game is exactly like they say it is (whilst doing exactly the opposite), whilst you wonder how simple it is that 1% cannot do this, all whilst you know that they can or that gamers are too stupid to get there, whilst you know a five year old can do this, consider that gamers of any age can be made to watch advertisements. So how many advertisements did you see, how many did your children watch and why isn’t anyone waking up to this level of exploitation? Now consider the harsh reality. One source gives us “The global revenue in the ‘Games’ segment of the media market was forecast to continuously increase between 2023 and 2027 by in total 136.8 billion U.S. dollars (+34.53 percent). After the tenth consecutive increasing year, the indicator is estimated to reach 533 billion U.S. dollars and therefore a new peak in 2027.” So how much of that is watching advertisements? How many advertisements are you in for and why are Google and Apple feeding that horse? Consider the answers and consider that even as this isn’t illegal. How do you consider exploitation? 

Consider the points, consider the elements and consider what sources aren’t informing you at present.

Enjoy this Sunday, Monday is a mere evening away.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Gaming, Media

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

August 24, 2023 · 19:41

The brotherhood of NASA

OK, I took notice of news today. I only took notice today as it either escaped my attention, or the western coverage has been dismal. But the BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66590446) gives notice that India is now the 4th nation to land on the moon. Preceded by USA, Russia and China it nows becomes a member of a very exclusive club. Not the UK, not France and not Germany. None of them made membership to the American Express Stellar Black Card (an extremely exclusive version of the AMEX card), it was India who did. And I am happy for India. A nation most nations and its citizens look down on, sneer at and make fun of. That nation is now a lunar nation.

The interesting part is that no one is ‘cashing’ in on that, on the pride. So above is an image, part of an image of a board game I remember playing in the 70’s. It was all about NASA then. I was watching in amazement to the TV when someone left a footprint on the moon (no negativity implied). The board game fuelled our excitement. This is a different board game, but that is the part I remember. Now consider that same game on Facebook, on your mobile. To play with friends and others. 

All now watching the ISRO logo on their board. On trains, in the office (during coffee breaks) and the ISRO has earned it, they are 4th in a game that most would say that India is a horse no show. And India got there ahead of many others, even many G20 nations. They have earned their laurels. 

And for comedy, in light of the accusations that a NAFO fella kicked the Russian moon lander out of orbit I would like to offer the idea of a NAFO block card. If you have it, you can play it whilst the lander is orbiting the moon BEFORE it lands. Then you roll the dice again. With 1-5 the opponent is halted for one move, if you get a 6, the lander is destroyed and that player has to start again at the liftoff point. I saw the NAFO fella ‘documentary’ on Twitter, so it must be real.

But that last part is merely a funny moment for me to add an element. What matters is that there have been moon games going back to the 70’s, perhaps even before that and India can now use that to spread the fame of the ISRO, they have earned it. We can be all kinds of jealous, yet in the end they got to the moon. They might be 4th, but there is no way to tell what else they will achieve and we need to be reminded that greatness comes on all shapes and sizes and from almost every direction. The ISRO showed us this with the Chandrayaan-3. A moonlander who completed its landing on August 23rd 2023 and we should remember this. India has every right to be proud of this moment and so they should be.

Enjoy today and feel free to dream of whatever you want. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

August 15, 2023 · 19:04

When the marketshare is murder

That is the setting and at first I would not really believe it. It sounded correct, but to be honest. I did not think that a place like Microsoft would intentionally target victims, but then there was a second source, the Guardian no less and that’s hen the disgust set in.

You see we know advertisements, we know advertisers, but for a system like Xandr to intentionally target people with gambling problems is a new low, even for Microsoft. This is what the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/15/tab-gamblers-betting-australia-targeted-microsoft-xandr-advertising-database) gives us. The article heads the accusation with ‘‘Heavy TAB gamblers’ among groups targeted by online advertising database’, there we are told “The dataset of 650,000 international “audience segments” was discovered on the website of Microsoft’s advertising technology platform Xandr by Wolfie Christl, a privacy researcher at Cracked Labs. It listed dozens of data providers looking to offer advertisers the ability to reach certain types of people online”, so not only does the law seem unable to deal with drug pushers, now they are enabling a place like Microsoft to hit the internet by ‘gamble pushing’ victims of this event. As such we get “Of the more than 40 categories identified as related to Australian gamblers, the majority were split into subsets related to gambling interest, sport interest or a particular venue: “Gambling at Pub / Club”, “Spring Carnival Punters” and “Online Gaming – NRL”, for example”. I think it gives a new meaning to the slogan “Long may we play”, perhaps it should be “long may we exploit the gamer”, even though gamer is a stretch, the fact that I have seen scores of these advertising on on Apple, my thought might not be too far away from the reality that people face. Then we go into the unknown with “Everything from our location to our purchase history are data points that can be packaged and used to serve advertising, often through the creation of profiles based on assumptions about our demographics or potential interests. But we know remarkably little about how the ecosystem works.” So not only were we served all kinds of BS against Facebook and Google Ads. These same BS servers have no idea what Microsoft with its Xandr is up to? How is that for slow minded investigations? 

Even the excuse was ‘outdated’ and moronic. What we get is “Microsoft said in a statement to Guardian Australia that the document was inadvertently published on its website and was outdated. The spokesperson said Xandr’s data privacy practices were regularly evaluated “to ensure compliance with applicable data protection laws”.” The words inadvertently and outdated are stop words into nothing. The fact that this data existed was wrong to begin with, they were going after a marketshare, the desperate (as I see Microsoft) are so hungry for revenue that they are willing to look the other way in too many cases. I believe it was 10 years ago when I wrote an article with data that Microsoft was uploading xbox data in excess of 20GB in a month. So, why was that? It was also on dates when I never touched a multiplayer game, I checked the data and the amounts and they did not add up. Was that to feed Xandr? Was that to feed other needs? So what would have happened when Microsoft got to complete the Activision Blizzard deal? How much data would Microsoft get access to? I wonder how many people took a hard look at that, because in March that was 368 million gamers and all that data would be going somewhere, would it not? It might be nice for Activision, but I have some hardcore reservations when Microsoft gets involved. And now that we see the accusations by the Guardian, the show changes. The fact that Microsoft would allow to hammer the people with a weakness to gambling makes me wonder how they are getting the other $198.3 billion in 2022 with 6.8% more in 2023. So how many victims did Microsoft approach? All questions, but there is a downside there, the questions should not even exist and that it the disgusting part of this setting. Until today I never thought Microsoft could sink that low, but there is space to think they could do worse and that is an unsettling stage. So where are these high and mighty senators now? They were all willing to grill Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. Where are they now? Does Satya Nadella have too many friends in the senate? Is that why they think they could avoid this? Inadvertently is not an excuse, outdated is no excuse, that dataset should never have existed in the first place and that is now the larger question. Why was that dataset created in the first place. One source gives us “Xandr is used by 0.8% of all the websites whose advertising network we know”, yet what we need to realise that there are (according to some) 1,986,154,062 websites, even at 0.4% that amounts to 7944616 websites and if even one of them is Yahoo or any media site, the damage gets to be astronomical. But I reckon those senators will gladly pass over those numbers, won’t they?

We get it, advertisements are part of our daily life, but what happens when victims are intentionally targeted on their soft spots? Did you think that through?

Enjoy the week and remember the next gambling advertisement could be a mere click away if you are being targeted by Xandr.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Gaming, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 10, 2023 · 19:35

When the past and present meet

I made a promise yesterday and it is time to keep it. This idea is freeware for EXCLUSIVE development of this in game form for the Amazon Luna or the Tencent Handheld (or both). This will be a streaming game, Sony does not need my help and it is too big for the Nintendo. A few nights ago I took a walk down memory lane regarding the Dawn of the Dead. I saw both the remake and the original by George Romano. 

I loved the original and I enjoyed the remake, yet it was then when the investigations I recently did regarding my new IP and looking into malls took a sidestep. You see, there was once a CBM Amiga game based on that movie. I barely remember it, but I knew of it. Then my mind took me to a new setting. You see our computers and streaming systems are a lot more powerful. So what happens when we make the setting a lot more realistic. Not waves of zombies with trigger points and trigger events. But a scene with a set amount of zombies and the setting for every level is a mall and the two blocks around the mall (whenever possible). As such the game could start in London giving us
Trocadero mall
Liverpool street station mall
Battersea Power Station

The setting is that the malls are completely mapped out, the Liverpool Street Station Mall is above a station, so you need to find other ways to get a secure location, the malls have doors, shutters, just like in reality and the task is more than just take out the Zombies, you need to survive for 5 days in each place. As you progress you will find upgrades, new weapons and unlike all other shooters, ammunition is an issue, so you might find weapons, but ammo is an issue making weapons like bow and Arrow, crossbows a lot more important, as do all kind of melee and slash weapons. The stage is that the initial level will give you the intro and will introduce a party NPC. Party NPC’s could be anywhere and you need them to upgrade skills and keeping places more secure. As you progress through the game you will get additional resources from NPC’s and that gives you the larger game. The big burger is the mall, where there is an abundance of goods, but swarming with Zombies. 

Then we get the Netherlands with
Bijenkorf Amsterdam
Magna Plaza Amsterdam
Shopping centre Rotterdam

You basically get to test and try options to secure places and stay alive. As far as I can tell there is no game like it, not one that takes zombie apocalypse survival in a serious way. They are all about the turbo and the cutscene setting and there are all kinds of games in this we get to the third place which is Los Angeles, and after that Dubai with its Malls making the last one (Dubai Mall) the largest enterprise, with over 5.4 million square feet will be the largest challenge and it also has a supermarket (Carrefour market) and when you get through this you will be zombie apocalypse master certified.

The nicer part is that as a streaming game you get to tweak a few things, there is no way you get this right without serious testing and the setting of using the actual mall in a game is novel to say the least. I have no idea of the legal implications, yet I believe that visibility to well over a million gamers will be a boost for any mall. 

In the setting I looked at the environment. How to survive and how to find stuff you can use. I still have some internal questions on the NPC’s, some stay, some will come with you to a new mall (one per city), the rest you need to find, but the boosts and skills they gave you are permanent, so over the towns you will learn more and more. The idea of an Alpha Zombie comes to mind. One in every level. You can kill them from a distance, you can engage them (very dangerous move) but they will always have a unique thing. It could be a bulletproof vest, it could be a piece of clothing you cannot acquire any other way. There are a few things more, but I will let you figure that out for yourself. So good luck and I hope you get a nice slice of these gaming billions that some claim are out there. 

Close to the end of the week now, so enjoy the day.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 7, 2023 · 01:31

Reinventing the wheel

It started on Friday night. I had the weirdest dream. I was in some kind of information centre. It looked like a mix of an ATC centre, but with attached CCTV centres. None of it made sense to me and the weirdest part was that everyone was talking and no one was listening to any of it. It made no sense to me, but then I woke up and my mind was resetting things. Still up to this point I have no idea what started it, but a few hours ago my mind set aside a new kind of CCG for computers. The game was free and every 12 hours you get a free pack. You could buy packs as well, a pack was $0.99, but there was no need to buy any. The game had a starter pack, which was free when you installed the game. So let’s take a look. The game has elements of Illuminati (a game by Peter Jackson), parts of Android: Netrunner (the newer version from NetRunner WotC) and a few other games. The player has two decks, the offensive deck and the defensive deck. Both games have a header card and there will be several headercards, each having a strength. 

I decided on making fun of the current alphabet groups. In the example I created a ‘CIA’ card, but it could have been MI-6, DGSE or another team, all with a ‘new’ designation. So in this case the CIA header card will have the ability to defend an attack without using defense points. But there are other abilities. It connects on all 4 sides, all header cards do that. It is the combination that makes for a structure. 

The connecting card has one input, and up to three outputs. So some cards will have no output, it will be an end card, some will have output points. They all have strengths, a local strength (in this example 5) and a total strength (3), that means if you have 3 of these cards, the entire structure would have 9 support points to ward off attacks. The stars and dots are the strength of the card, as you get more cards and more of the same you can merge them (or when you win games) the stronger card will get an additional local or total srength point and in some cases you get an additional output connector. So a one connector card. Could become a 2, or 3 connector card.

This is the attack deck, the defence deck is similar, but it now has versions of the FBI, NSA, AIVD (Dutch) and so on.

So how does this game play? There is the storyline and there is the free-line. In the free line you set your deck up against another player, but it is played blind. The player does not know who they played and you do not know against who you played, but the results are there. The outcome is Win (they never surpassed you), mate (they defeated you, but never got to the header card), or loss the header card was overruled. If you win, one of your cards (usually the card that stopped the attack) will get an extra point (the 5 balls on he top right), when all 5 are filled the card gets an additional star. 

When you open packs you get new cards, when you have three the same you merge them into one stronger card. You can have the three cards separately, as you have 4 output ports on the header card and you could have more than one CCTV card, but that is up to you to decide. As the game progresses, you will have additional cards and you can rethink your organisation. The attacker has an agent, the agent can use any part of the organisation once only to get past an obstacle. So you get James Brand for MI-6, Reminder Stamp for the CIA, Hubby Bonsoir for the DGSE and so on. These agents  also have abilities. JB has technology expertise (so he can avoid CCTV likeminded cards), RS has Charisma, so he could avoid or gets an edge when one of the connector cards is a person and so on.

The part that I haven’t figured out is how to set the automated stage. I was first thinking on some version of electronic dice, but that might make the game unplayable, I hate to rely on random events, it is a solution that is weak and not really capturing. A pack would have 8 cards, 4 attack, 4 defence and that is set to 2 commons and 2 uncommon cards, when you get a rare card, you get 1 uncommon card and every deck has one rare card (either defence or attack). The starter deck will have all the organisations and all the agents. So you always have those from the start. The setting can evolve and you can build more than one deck as such you get a larger stage. When you play the storyline you setup your deck and during the game you see the opponent cards and see how your deck holds up, so you face an agent, or you play your agent and that sets out the story. As you fail you redo the mission, or wait until you get a stronger deck, in that case you have the option to play your game against the opponents and see how they fare. In my setting your first opponent is the Miniseries of National Strawberries (Jamaica, a Dr No wink) it has no real power and no real opposition, but it shows the options of the game and it will be your first win, which is 2 packs, together with the 2 packs you got with the starter, you will now have 16 cards for defence and 16 cards for attacks, as such you should have a starting set to match up.

There is a lot more to this game, but I thought it was essential that the CCG games of the past would not be lost to the digital era. When you go back and you see the vast offer of CCG games, it is such a shame that it was never pushed into the digital era, only Wizards of the Coast with their Magic game made it to the digital frontier, but there was so much more. It seems a waste to see it all fall away, hopefully whomever gets this game running, will entice all the others to make it to the digital stage. Anyway, I remained creative and as such feel free to use this idea to set up your own solution for Streaming solutions or consoles. 

Monday is about to start west of Australia.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , ,

July 30, 2023 · 08:20

It started with a book

Yes, I have something for you the game developers. There is however one catch, this is for developers that make games exclusive for Amazon Luna and/or Nintendo Switch. Under those conditions this IP is free for you, no Microsoft allowed. I stated that I will aid in their downfall anyway I can and handing IP to developers in other regions is fine by me, optionally the Tencent handheld can be included in this deal.

This all started a long time ago, it was just a dream, an idea that involved time travel. In my mind it could have ben a movie, but then some time back I considered that it could make a game too. A stealth game and the burning of the Quran brought it back to the forefront of my mind. You see, we have lost a lot due to fires. So I came up with Quantum Theft, a stealth game (with a catchy title). In this game you are an entrepreneur in discrete entry and removal operations. Yet in this day and age, you will be found, unless they do not know that there was a theft. So in comes the time traveller (you) and you get to sack places. But there is a catch, you can not get caught or it is back to the start you go. You need to sneak into a place, replace the items and you only get 1-4 hours to get the job done. No save games in between and as you are a better thief you will get better gear, more options to loot and more options to gain fame. The introduction is the Library of Alexandria. It caught fire some time ago (48BC) by Julius Caesar, who swore to me that it was an accident (as if).

As you see the mage of Desperados above, there are similarities, the view so that you can see where people are looking, but in this game the colour is also important. In 48BC slaves would look and ignore, until you become a hazard to them or their masters and they would shout for help and the guards tends to not be so nice, so not being seen is important. The game would be larger, like Aloy in the Horizons game. I wanted to set a tradeoff with gender. The female character is more agile, but cannot force doors, and she carries less but be faster whilst carrying stuff. The male can force doors, carry more but be less agile, so they can have very different routes in the game. The game will take on elements from the original Tenchu game (PS1), as such guards and slaves have different routes every time you start again. In the first 2 levels you get the introduction, but you still have set targets. Also every stage, you look the part of the time, as such you blend in, but I wanted to have a few extra elements there. In ancient Greece colours mattered, as such I wanted to exploit that part in the game, also the senatorial robes would be excellent to fend of the guards, but I still want it to be a challenge. 

The first two levels are

  • Library of Alexandria – 48BC
  • Athens and Piraeus – 86BC 

The second level has streets and houses, there will be more chaos and you need to take heed on how to proceed. You kill anyone, you change the timeline and the game resets, you get caught, the game resets. You get trapped, the game reset. You need to copy the item, so that the timeline remains intact, remove the original and get out. This is a game of pure stealth. 

In the first to levels it will be about getting scrolls, amphoras and figurines.

Then we get to the real levels and I came up with the following

  • Constantinople – April 1204 (4th Crusade)
  • Florence February 1497 – Bonfire of the Vanities (what gave me the idea for this game)

Florence will add a new setting, books and paintings. Under the cloak of stupidity worn by Girolamo Savonarola the people decided to burn books and paintings that they deemed secular. This level will also have a lot more places and more people, the challenge becomes harder. 

  • Iconoclastic Fury 1566

This will be a different challenge, you see this happened all over Belgium and the Netherlands. But you only get two stages. Instead of relying on the same area this level could by in Zürich, Copenhagen, Münster, Geneva, Augsburg, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Maastricht. As such you get two locations to loot. 2 out of 8. A setting that has never been done in gaming. You have to first in some fields and this is one. 

  • French Revolution, Paris 1791
  • Kristallnacht, November 1938
  • Nazi Plunder, Berlin Fire Department, March 1939

In the last three levels all stops come off, both have masses, armies and you need to remain unseen, but by that time you should have a fair amount of upgrades aiding you in that process. This is merely 8 events I singled out. There was the burning of Rome (64AD) when Nero (aka Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also know as that fat fuck) decided to have a little fire, the critics are not all on the same page as for what the reasoning was. I still remain that he was an arson driven little shit, but that is me, always seeing the good in people.

There were plenty of other events like the great earthquake of 1906 which redesigned San Francisco and that list goes on. What matters is that the stage as I wrote it here has never been done before and there is a lack of stealth games, even though the Horizon series shows that there is appeal to that kind of game. There is even an additional upside, but that is still int he works. When you play those on the Amazon Luna, the idea is to be able to put the scrolls to your Kindle so you can actually read the scrolls you ‘saved’, the paintings and statues you can see on your Luna and might have a link to more too. Like your safe-house where you can admire the art you saved. Just a thought, but this is something I thought up in hours (and some will not see this a an optional game), on the other hand, Microsoft hasn’t had an original idea for some time now, but they buy for billions and they seemingly have nothing to show for it. Now the Amazon Luna and Nintendo Switch (optional the Tencent Handheld too) get a gaming idea that they didn’t have to pay a penny for, life is hard for some and for some fresh roses are delivered at no cost at all.

By the way, Microsoft reported a slowdown in growth of parts of its business recently, lets see if we can add more bad news to their future by giving all other systems great games. If they can match it, they can go right ahead, they paid all those billions haven’t they? So where are their great games? Me laughing out loud now.

Enjoy the weekend, its almost over.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

July 26, 2023 · 14:41

Conscription Calamity

I heard of the notion, armies have had issues with getting meat for the grinder for as long as I remember. There were the crusades and the lords of the land beckoned with the option of wealth and the avoidance of utter poverty. And that was the feeding frenzy for those grinders. Almost 5 million people were lost over these numerous squabbles. From Accra to Jerusalem, millions were lost and the loss of people in those days implied that the shortage of manpower almost ensured the end of poverty and non-stop hunger. There was the Russian Revolution as well as WW1. By 2016 Russia was down 10 million souls and that was not the end of it all. WW1 took another 10 million souls (approximate losses both sides) and that was almost the end of it. There was of course WW2, there we have around 23 million military deaths and well over 50 million civilian losses. Yes, we have all made a mess of the setting. Yet all that fades to comparison to the Russian setting we see now. First I saw one article (see article three), then the article from the BBC giving us (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66304522) ‘Russia expands pool of men eligible for call-up’, which gives us “Russia is raising the maximum age at which men can be conscripted from 27 to 30, making more of them liable to serve in the armed forces”, which was not in line with the first article, as such I looked what I saw earlier, I did not see it, but I got the Express (at https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1794927/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-conscription) giving us ‘Panicked Vladimir Putin rushes through new law allowing Russia to conscript pensioners’ with the added text (the one I saw earlier) “Vladimir Putin has ushered in new legislation which will enable him to conscript men over the age of 60 in an apparent bid to shore up his armed forces 18 months after his invasion of Ukraine.” As such, even the pensioners aren’t safe anymore. How desperate do you need to be to take such precautions? Consider that Russia has a population of well over 134 million, I reckon that 25% is of an eligible nature, which is well over 30 million and they have to resort to pensioners? The math is wrong on a few levels. I showed you all how 4 settings of the Russian Army has failed them (Artillery, Logistics, Supplies and Medic) and now we are given that the army themselves is falling apart. This has got to be the biggest defeat and humiliation of Vladimir Putin. When we look at the history of war (Crusades, Russian Revolution, WW1 and WW2) we never saw a failing of this degree and it is seemingly getting worse. The strongest part of them is a group of mercenaries (the Wagner group) that must feel downright wrong to the Kremlin. A place where they were vying for supremacy with America and they cannot hold up against the 20th strongest army on the planet (aka the Ukrainian army). And that is all whilst the Ukrainian army is depending on other sources for supplies. 

A clambake fest that should have been over in a week and so far the Ukrainians are holding out for well over 510 days and I reckon they aren’t done yet. There will be payback for all the intentional bombing of civilian targets, not sure how, but Russia might face a much tougher setting than the Germans did in the treaty of Versailles. On 28 June 1919 it was said that these reparations was assessed at 132 billion gold marks (then $31.4 billion or £6.6 billion, roughly equivalent to US$442 billion or UK£284 billion in 2023). I reckon that this amount will by higher by 200%-300%, this implies that all the oligarchs need to hide whatever they had, because global organisations will come for them and when they do organisations like the Dutch Heineken company (who apparently are still doing business in Russia) and numerous American and European companies will be a similar state. It will be a mess that will not stop any day soon. Those who were pro-Russian will hide behind miscommunications and they have the option to run for their lives to Russia or become the centre-point of ridicule both them and their children alike. The Dutch have some experience with their NSB people in 1945. I reckon this might be worse. The French had the Vichy France collaborators. Neither ended well, the Dutch collaborator Pieter Menten got off (after 8 months) in 1945, but the setting changed in 1976. He fled to Switzerland but was arrested soon thereafter. He died with dementia, he never escaped his fate. I wonder what will happen to certain Dutch pro-Russian people like Thierry Baudet and Wierd Duk? I have absolutely no idea, but they banked on the wrong player and there will be consequences there too. That is all in addition to the Americans supporting and going soft on pro-Russian players. And in all this the Russian army is now relying on pensioners and setting them up against Ukrainian fighters who are by now all veterans. They pretty much made short work of the Wagner group. As such I do not give the Russian pensioners much of a chance. Meat for the grinders and the Russian grinders are low on meat a setting where 5 out of 5 of the land forces are failing. That has not been the case since before the Crusades. In that meantime defence forces had Sun Tzu (the Art of war) as well as Carl von Clausewitz (On War) these two books had basic information that Russia could have used to avoid the setting that they are in now. The weird part is that Amazon dot com offers both books for a total that is less than $50. So when you look at the list of losses, how stupid was the Russian setting to begin with?

I will let you decide, the middle of the week has begun, the stroll towards the weekend is now in effect.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, Law, Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 23, 2023 · 16:59

Blue laundry leaking

It happens, sometimes the colours get into the other colours and your white stuff is no longer white. I had my issues with myself, overlooking a red sock with my white shirts and behold, I was suddenly the owner of pink shirts. This is a problem as it is not fashionable pink, but a melee of pink shades in white shirts. The fashion looks a righteous mess. This is something we all dread, and in IT land it is not different, especially when the detergent is Microsoft.

It all started (at https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/stolen-microsoft-key-offered-widespread-access-to-microsoft-cloud-services/) with ‘Stolen Microsoft key offered widespread access to Microsoft cloud services’ where we are given “Redmond revealed on July 12th that the attackers had breached the Exchange Online and Azure Active Directory (AD) accounts of around two dozen organisations. This was achieved by exploiting a now-patched zero-day validation issue in the GetAccessTokenForResourceAPI, allowing them to forge signed access tokens and impersonate accounts within the targeted organisations.” I was at first cautious. There are intense haters of Microsoft and they do not throw around any kind of evidence, as such I wondered how far this went and behold, ITWire gives us (at https://itwire.com/security/danger-from-microsoft-azure-breach-still-remains,-warns-wiz-researcher.html) ‘Danger from Microsoft Azure breach still remains, warns Wiz researcher’ and here we are given “New York-based cloud security firm Wiz has warned companies and organisations affected by the recent Microsoft Azure breach that the impact of the intrusion may be much wider than reported, and could affect applications beyond those claimed by Microsoft to be impacted.” In addition we are given “Our researchers concluded that the compromised MSA key could have allowed the threat actor to forge access tokens for multiple types of Azure Active Directory applications, including every application that supports personal account authentication, such as SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, customers’ applications that support the ‘login with Microsoft’ functionality, and multi-tenant applications in certain conditions”, I see this as an issue. The larger scope is not merely the cloud. That thing has all kinds of security issues. No, the small ‘hidden’ text becomes “The breach came to light on 13 July, with the email account of US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo cited as one of the more prominent accounts to have been breached” it came to light as a ‘prominent’ account was breached. So how long was this mess there? There is a reason I do not trust Microsoft and as such I do not want them anywhere near the 50 million accounts that I see coming, or the ones that follow, which will be a massive amount of accounts. Even more I reckon as I concluded a new stage in Dubai. I saw the opportunity when I investigated the Dubai Mall, the Mall of the Emirates, the Dubai Marina Mall and the Battuta Mall. There were a few more, but the setting of malls this big all in one city was something I never considered and it gave me more ideas, more options and that made me consider the interactions of my Augmented Reality IP with two other IP’s. Actually four, but that is a story for another day. What is absolutely clear is that I do not want Microsoft anywhere near it. Not with the mess they have, so either Amazon wakes up, or Tencent technologies gets it all. I never discontinued my interest in Google, but they basically took themselves of the field. No idea where Apple is, but that is not my problem at present. You see, the larger stage is the security risk that Microsoft is and it is also seen with “The news agency said Adair’s client had not forked out what Microsoft demands for its premium security suite, and hence detailed forensic data was unavailable.” Really? They are all about the forking out, all whilst their solution is like a 45 year old prostitute claiming to be a virgin? I would suggest that forking out is the least of their problems. That is even beyond the fact that the transgressions are requiring ‘detailed forensic data’ all whilst the transgressions are what the first article is implying “by exploiting a now-patched zero-day validation issue”, all whilst IT Wire implies that the damage is well beyond the ‘pretended’ scope and as such might (a speculation from my side) not be patched, not to the degree it needed to be. And anyone wonders why I do not trust Microsoft with my IP? They haven’t been able to close their barn doors, at least since 2019, optionally long before that. So your data (and my IP) would have been at risk for well over 4 years. We are also given “This isn’t a Microsoft-specific issue, if a signing key for Google, Facebook, Okta or any other major identity provider leaks, the implications are hard to comprehend. Our industry — and especially cloud service providers — must commit to a greater level of security and transparency concerning how they protect critical keys such as this one, to prevent future incidents and limit their potential impact” This might be, but I have never seen these levels of transgressions on Google Cloud or Amazon AWS, but that is merely my point of view. Then we get an interesting side “while Microsoft had ensured that Azure Active Directory applications would not longer accept forged tokens as valid, by revoking the compromised keys, the danger from the breach still remained” well, it might be, it might not be. Microsoft stated that they had the most powerful console in the world and within 2 years that Nintendo launched the weakest nextgen console of them all, they surpassed all sales records Microsoft claimed to have had, so I am not holding my breath here. The number one question is ‘Why could Microsoft not differentiate between real tokens and forged tokens?’ That would have ben my first question, but I am not seeing that here. Possibly for very valid reasons, but the missing out is a case here. So whilst some stare at “setting up application-specific backdoors”, my issue is that with every application, the change of interaction and transgressions increase. It just does. For example (a bad and debatable one), if EVERY application has a zero day issue (pure speculation) we get with 3 applications a speculative 9 zero day problems. So what happens when the average corporation has Azure and 35 applications. This implies that this customer has 42,875 risk factors. Yes, it is a speculation, yet the ITWire article gives us this with “The full impact of this incident is much larger than we Initially understood it to be”, as well as “We must learn from it and improve”, a setting that sounds nice, but consider that Azure was launched 14 years ago, if you are still learning, you have a much larger problem. In December 2020 I wrote ‘Historic view versus reality’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/26/historic-view-versus-reality/) there I quotes the No Such Agency giving us “National Security Agency warns hackers are forging cloud authentication information”, as such the Microsoft claim “Microsoft had ensured that Azure Active Directory applications would not longer accept forged tokens as valid” as a hollow joke. The NSA made the statement 3 years ago, as such Microsoft should have put (buggy) solutions in place to stop forged keys, but it seems they never did. Another mess they made with their own hands. Don’t take my word on this, the NSA send out warnings in 2020. Warnings that Microsoft seemingly never took to heart. Still happy with your blue cloud? I reckon it is time for people to consider Amazon AWS, Apple iCloud, Google Cloud (GCP), Oracle Cloud or wherever you will be trying to keep your data safe, as I personally see it Microsoft is not that place and with that they are scuttling yet another (what I personally like to call) a spin system, just like a washing machine trying to tumble dry your data on servers where you do not have access to them. But that might be my short sighted feel on the matter.

Enjoy the day, Monday is now but a day away.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Gaming, IT, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,