Engagement Shoot

Wedding Photos

Maisie & Al's Wedding (Mark Anthony's Pics)

During the meeting
Ken: So the status for build 2 is that it is 70% done.
Dude: I thought it would be at 80%. Why isn’t it at 80%?
Ken: Based on what?

After the meeting
Ken: (Retells the story of what happened at the meeting)
Me: Were there like lines coming out of his head? Like Spidey-Sense?
Ken: I think those were stink lines.

The past few months have been pretty hectic. I have placed heavy focus on work and letting too many things relating to work get to me. I have skipped out on church for over a month now and I feel like a once calming influence is gone. I’ve been quite angry over the past few weeks with the way things are going at work, and I think it is starting to affect my health. Lately I’ve been trying to take it easy and focus on life away from work and the things that are important. Trying to get away from the fact that my job is consuming me, and affecting my demeanor even when I’m not there. Promises were broken, and my faith in society took another hit. The first step is to get back to church to remind myself of the things in life that matter. Step two is to start focusing on my attitude and not put work as my number one priority.

Moves are too hard to do
The shoryuken is too hard to do. The SPD is too hard to do and so on. If anything moves for newcomers have been made easier to do with the lax input timings and large number of shortcuts. If anything it has been made more difficult for people that are more precise with their motions, as shortcuts sometimes lead to unwanted conclusions. Moves require execution for a reason. Execution is a part of Street Fighter. Moves that have invincibility or deal a lot of damage should require some execution to do. The time it takes to do a motion to do a move is also important. I am pretty sure no one wants to see a one button SRK that is completely guaranteed and instantaneous. It would be like playing basketball where shooting was guaranteed. You’d never miss and the game was just based on trying to get shots off.

Combos are too hard to do
Building on moves being too hard to do is the concept that combos are too hard to do. I think a lot of this is swayed by the Trials mode where a bevy of unusable combos are there for your disposal. The main bread and butter combos are pretty easy to do, and the more difficult ones that deal more damage should have some risk and reward tied to it. If I am going to deal 40-45% damage, there better be some risk involved for me to try. Even if I could bait an opening, it shouldn’t be guaranteed that I could take a huge chunk of damage off. The game should still make you work for it. Without having some execution barrier, the game would just boil down to both players just trying to bait waiting for instant guaranteed massive damage.

SFIV relies too heavily on combos
Combos have always been a part of SF … and in every game has never been the most important aspect. Spacing/footsies/mindgames/mixups etc are much more important. Combos are just something you do to punish mistakes that you bait. Scaling prevents you from losing all of your life on one mistake. I’m not sure what the issue is.

At the end of the day, like any other multiplayer game, practice is required to be good at it. I’m not sure what people are looking for in a game where everybody is instantly good at it. Without a ramp up … it would be difficult for anybody to be actually better at the game than anyone else. FPS games require you to aim quickly. RTS games require you to be quick with your micromanagement. Fighting games require you to practice your execution. They all have some execution barrier and it is a layer of the game that I feel is beneficial to its longevity.

Maybe it’s this new generations’ mindset of having save points and having the computer half play the game for you. Maybe they weren’t privy to the old school … where if you get hit once you get sent to the beginning of the level. Regenerating health FTL.

However, the problems with development are rarely ever code related issues. Generally the logic is sound enough with the possibility of code not being able to handle bad data, or the error handling is not robust enough. All in all, the code is generally good. We aren’t building some complex protein folding application. It’s just processing of data and displaying it. The bulk of the issues come from not building what was desired in the first place. The requirements are not sound, or complete, or correct. They are not written in a means that makes it easy for the developer to build what has been requested. Now why aren’t business analysts or project managers subject to the same scrutiny as developers? A developer can build code absolutely to spec, but if it is not exactly what was desired by the end user, a defect was logged …. and it all falls on the shoulders of the developer.

Anyways, it’s probably been a few years since I have really made the effort to post something I actually cared about. It’s been a few years of just posting about the fact that I had added additional content to the site. I feel like I’m all grown up now. I have a beautiful wife, and we live in a beautiful house and for the most part, life could not be better. It took a visit from Jason to remind me that life isn’t just about work, and that other things in life are important too. So while things could be a little better at work, I shouldn’t kill myself over it. Whether or not there is some type of cosmic karmic kickback at some of the injustices that go on there should not get my Rage meter maxed out. I should be more worried about maintaining my own principles and not doing things that I would regret later on from a personal level.