Krakblog

Area nerd rants about keyboards



Pedalboard build log

2018-06-14

Here’s a log of a pedalboard I built. I wanted to upgrade due to lacking space on my old Pedaltrain Metro, seen below, that could barely fit half of my pedals. Not to mention I wanted some funky features as well.

This is the initial drawing I made. The aim was about 1m × 0.5m with rack mounting in the back for a patch panel, DI, and drawer. In the end I opted not to pick up a DI since I don’t have an interface t [...]


A map of Kyuss and related acts

2018-04-19

For a long while, I’ve wanted to make a deep dive in the history of Kyuss, one of my absolutely favourite bands by making a chart of them and related acts. Turns out I took on a larger task than I’d anticipated, but I saw it through. The results are available below:

Draw.io source XML | PNG | [...]


Character control - delegation vs direct control

2017-10-23

Something incredibly important about just about each and every game is that it plays smoothly. Let’s talk more specifically about character control. What makes for smooth control, and such questions.

I’d say that character control is a spectrum. On one end, you have games where you very directly control your character, for example retro platformers. You press jump, your character jumps. You press right, your character goes right. On the other hand you’ve got strategy games and the like [...]


Combat resources

Project Lockdown

2017-07-24

In my former post about cooldowns, I may have failed to explain my idea of resources a bit. You may have asked, what would the effective difference between a shield that regenerates on a set cooldown and a shield that regenerates over time be?

In many cases, these differences aren’t all too big. All in all it’s different kinds of resources. A player might have the following resources in various games:

  • Cooldowns
  • Ammunition (total)
  • Current clip (ammunition [...]


Gear and basic game mechanics

Project Lockdown

2017-07-24

A core part of Lockdown was of course designing your loadout. You’d tailor it to your preferred weapons and use the armour that best countered your average enemy. Common among hero based MOBAs, however, is that items are purely statistical improvements such as higher damage, magic resistance, and so on. Weapons aren’t a choice at all as you’re bound to your hero’s abilities. This is rather boring, as any countering is on a hero vs hero basis, and given their drastically different functions, m [...]


Wishlist

Project Lockdown

2017-07-24

A list of features the game should have, in no specific order:

  • Optional steam integration w/ trade, joining, et cetera.
  • Built in voice chat
  • Fully open source, including underlying technology. The trickiest of these being game engine. One contender is Godot, but it might not be mature enough.
  • Running on Vulkan (or OpenGL) for easy porting
  • Binaries distributed in AppImage format for Linux.
  • Official town square servers for SK nostalgia

Preservation, software licensing, and server model

Project Lockdown

2017-07-24

The preservation of information has been important to humankind for almost as long as society has existed. It is simply an effective way of teaching others and spreading knowledge. Today, it’s of course used for many other things. It can be as simple as videotaping a standup comedian so that others can enjoy their show even if one cannot attend the show. Although this kind of preservation is not necessarily that important, it’s the preservation of culture and without our culture, we aren’t al [...]


Characters and setting

Project Lockdown

2017-07-24

Characters

Something I’ve always liked about Spiral Knights characters is that they’re so anonymous, to the point that they’re inseparable from the player themselves, in my eyes. Games generally let you use a character (e.g. Final Fantasy X) with predetermined appearance, dialogue, and behaviour, or create your own with some settings (e.g. Spiral Knights).

In recent times, even these kinds of charac [...]


Abilities vs Mechanics

Project Lockdown

2017-07-17

One thing I’ve been torn about in games lately is the introduciton of abilities everywhere. In essence, you press a button that makes you do a cool thing and then it goes on cooldown for X seconds. On one hand, I love class based games (no war but the class war amirite). On the other hand, I’ve always felt like abilities are a cheap way out, either to make a game feel more interesting, or because it’s easier to implement than fully fledged mechanics. So what do I mean by mechanic in this case [...]


Project Lockdown

Project Lockdown

2017-07-17

If you’re actually reading this blog, I’ll assume you know me as a friend or acquantance through one of the communities I participate in, one possibility being Spiral Knights. Or at least, I used to participate in it. Nowadays I mostly spend time on the The Arcade Discord server.

For those of you who don’t know, Spiral Knights is a massively multiplayer online action roleplaying game featuring cute little fut [...]