The short version is simple: Quality, Performance, Design.

You want something quality that performs well and then you look for which one looks better. This is a general way of how people select things and also how I’m approaching creating pretty much anything at all.

Let’s look at an example, because these terms are way too broad to make this easy understood at first glance.

A friend needs a frying pan. His old one is way too old so he goes to a store. There he has a selection of 20 different ones, ranging from high end to lowest crap. His need for quality is low, he needs a pan now and he knows no matter which one, after three years or so, the one he buys now is garbage anyways. He goes with one of the cheapest one, which will perform the task as equally as any other (or so close that there is virtually no difference). The design doesn’t even play a role, but I must say it’s a very ugly pan. Thankfully it’s a tool which is used temporary in the kitchen and spends the rest of it’s days in a cupboard. If he had a fancy kitchen where he hangs the pots up for display, he might chose something slightly less eye gauging.

Another friend want’s a new notebook. He has selected a Samsung or a Toshiba one, of the class of machines that are small and thin, but still fully capable notebooks. The quality is roughly equal as far as he can tell and the performance, well, it’s the same guts in essence anyways. So his decision is now down to design in the end. Which keyboard is more appealing, which casing, which screen.

So we almost always start out with a level of quality. That one is also determined by our budget more often than not, but quality is a huge key. Then in that range we look for performance, does it do the job well or better. And once those are satisfied, only then the true design is considered.

There are exceptions to this, like novelty items, or “cool looking thing” that you don’t really need or is impractical, but we select anyways for their design only.

In creating the quality is also paramount. A fine planed application or a quick hack. Performance, ignored (because of time constraints, not needed since it’s only a couple people using it) or highly optimized. And then in the end, a design (not application design, but the look and feel of it) to make it work smoothly or a like a huge kludge.

The principle applies rather broadly, not only to software as you can see in the samples, or purchases or projects. The sense also applies to relationships, to decisions in courses and so on. It boils down rather neatly, as long as you understand the fundamental contributors  of quality, performance and design.

It doesn’t work as advertised. First the install was weird. You need to download the driver and put it on a stick or something before you can actually install anything. After booting the Windows 7 disc, it will not find the drive, period. Out comes the USB stick with the driver. Load it and it suddenly finds it. Strangely it refused to install at that point, telling me it can’t create the partition or some such nonsense and that I should check the install log. What log? A reboot and repeat of the process later and it worked just fine.

A completion of the install later and I’m on Windows. Atto comes out and has a crack at it (standard settings, 256MB size and QD4). The excitement builds as the graphs go for larger chunks and then stops. At about 600 MB read and 700 MB write speed it’s done, no speed increases, nothing. No 1.5 Gigabytes by far.

Now I mentioned the mother board for a reason. See there is a little trick here. If you look closely at the specs of the RevoDrive, it says it’s PICe v2. If you check for the same on the motherboard, it says it has PCIe v2. Trouble is, only on the two beige 16x ports. The black 16x port is wired at 4x but it’s only PCIe v1. Guess which port my RevoDrive is sitting in and you will be right.

Lucky I had that second port free, but now the GFX card and the RevoDrive are sitting uncomfortably close. I switched them both around so there is one empty slot between them.

Booting up again, I gave Atto another go. Look what I get now:

As you enter you see a gap in front of you, a blue tunnel going from right to left above you and completely over the chasm, a ledge at the far end of that chasm with a blue gel dispenser in the ceiling and a button on the lower left. Now turning your attention to the right of the door, is a button, turning the tunnel orange, reversing it’s direction and a shielded wall with three turrets behind it. There is a button there to press as well, guarded by the three turrets. The exit is to the very far right, behind the turrets over another huge chasm.

In short, the turrets have to go and in the process they create what you need to escape. Portal to the gel dispenser, setup that the tunnel goes straight back towards the door where you came in and hit the button. Gel comes out and fills the tunnel. Make it drop once on the ledge of the chasm, so you can hop into the tunnel from there. Then establish the tunnel again, hit the button, and don’t wait for it, but jump into it as soon as possible. Let it carry you across, then hop on the button reversing the flow. Now wait for the gel to make it all the way back into the portal and nearly to the emitter of the tunnel, but past the portal. Now shoot the portal that’s not on the top left portion on to the wall you can see to your right and up, above the turrets. With the tunnel going out, step away from the button. The gel should now be transported back through the portal and start to move over the turrets. Stop the tunnel, let the gel hit the turrets and see them bounce off. This also paints that area nicely.

Now go around the shield, press the button. A panel opens behind you and goes at an angle. beside it, to the right, open a portal so the tunnel appears and pushes you upwards. Ride it to the top. Now shoot the portal that’s facing the tunnel generator on the slanted surface. You drop into the portal below you, get flung out of the diagonal surface, bounce on the gel and then straight into the exit.

Enjoy Portal 2 and hopefully you won’t get stuck anywhere like I did.

Why can they lie? The devices are complicated, but for the sake of this bit, there are two major components at work, the controller and the memory. The controller knows nothing about the memory. When you create a device, you have to tell the controller what memory is attached to it and, here comes the clue, in what size! When your computer tells you it has 16GB on that stick, it reads what the controller has been told by the manufacturer. Now how did that cheap stick turn into a 16GB stick? Crafty people have discovered that they can use some tools to access the controller and change the value with a small piece of software. So they buy large quantities of cheap sticks (512MB or 1GB can be bought for next to nothing) then hack them into saying they are 16GB or whatever else size they come up with, and then sell them for what real sticks go at that size. The profit there is a large multiple.

To make matters worse, you will not recognize the problem until it’s too late. It will allow you to store past it’s real capacity, copying data onto it, and happy write your bits into nirvana once the storage limit is reached. You will only get an error when you try to access what you have copied onto the stick, by that time you might have lost or destroyed the original already.

Fear not, there is help. On heise.de you can find a tool called H2testw for Windows, or if you are hardcore, just H2Test for the command line. No Linux version I know off, sorry.

With this tool, which you can change to English once opened, you will find the culprits easy. Just run it on the stick (be sure to have any data you want off it, and make also sure it’s empty) and it will fill the stick slowly with large files. As it does so, it will check the files if they are correctly written. It will try to fill the entire space the controller says there should be. At the end it will report to you how much space you really have on that stick.

So when you buy something with storage, run H2testw on it and immediately react if you didn’t get what you paid for. This does not only include possible shady Ebay dealers, but also happened with USB sticks sold in retail chains! So be vigilant.

First, let me warn you that this is a long post, secondly, let me warn you there are spoilers of rather new games in here (at the point of writing). If you wish to avoid either, don’t read it, better stop now.

Endings are important. They are the lasting bit, the endpoint of your experience of a game. It’s similar in movies. You can, within seconds, describe exactly how Die Hard 1 and 2 ended. How about the last video games you played?

I’ve been wanting to write about this topic for a while. I noticed this a long time back, but it wasn’t as bad back then. Back then begin a couple years. Now it seems this has become the standard.

So what was so bad about Gothic 4? I’ve been playing the Gothic series since the very first game. I have even had a job interview with the guys who were making the game back then once, created a fan page, had a few interesting (and sometimes weird) conversations with a few of their staff. I learned interesting tidbits like someone having a temple fetish. Things I didn’t need to know. But the game was solid in the story telling part, if plagued by a few ugly technical issues, rendering the game often frustrating. If you looked over that, Gothic 1 was probably one of the best games of it’s time. It was an open world RPG in full 3D, with a small but interesting and pretty unique world, with a very large range of areas, from a swamp, to a sort of city feeling, to the high mountains and everything in between. The hero fought, could chose sides, which actually affected the game play but also, up to a point, what kind of missions you had to fulfill. You had a great journey, a heavy showdown and then a satisfying ending, of freeing everyone and killing the evil thing.

Along came Gothic 2. It was interesting, and through clever use of the level geometry (which has also been masterfully used in Gothic 3 and 4) the area seemed to be a lot larger than it actually was. Again you had a journey which even brought you back to the old place in Gothic 1, although stripped down and changed too much in my opinion, which was a first set back. Also you had to do a lot more leg work there for no apparent reason mostly. The end fight was against a bone dragon (which you can see laying on the cliffs in Gothic 4) but that entire last bit was pretty much removed from the rest of the game, as you had to prepare then you “drop off” the earth by sailing into the sea, which is all done automatically, and are dropped off on an island. You fight through a tunnel and at the end get to fight the dragon. End of story. Kill the big dragon, did not work as well as kill the big nasty beast below your magic prison that might destroy the world. It was mildly satisfactory, though the game was pretty fun.

Gothic 3 blew me out of the water in both regards, positive and negative. The game itself just great, larger than Gothic 2, no old traces left over that might disappoint, the fast travel rune system that helped a lot with the ugly leg work and many choices one could make. Also there was the blazing cold north, the moderate middle and the scorching sand area of the south. As for world building, that still is the top of the crop of the Gothic games for me. And then comes the ending. You walk with Xardas through half of the world to step through a (possibly glitched) stone wall, that’s supposed to be a portal to another world. Really, you spend like 10 minutes walking, and then the end credits roll. One of the worst endings. Ever. After loving the very first game, I dumped my copy of Gothic 3 in the garbage after this. Thankfully it was not as large as the original Gothic 1 copies.

Gothic 4, aka Arcania Gothic 4 came along. I was highly skeptical. I didn’t want to spend a LOT of hours in front of this game and be paid of with the same lame excuse of an ending as the last one. But I had a weekend spare, Fallout: New Vegas and Fable 3 would not show up for a while and my love for the franchise pulled me in. So I just finished it. Verdict is that the game seems cut short. You explore the world pretty linear, overcoming obstacles to make it past the next bridge or wall, doing side jobs, finding treasure and, first in Gothic, freely plunder anything that isn’t nailed down without repercussions. As usual, no weight or item limits exist which is perfect for the game, as it lets you focus on playing. Also you can again craft armor, weapons, scrolls and food, but this time you can do it anywhere as long as you have the ingredients. This is a cut down from the usual RPG experience, where you can just sit down, use a grinding wheel, smoke some swamp weed or the likes, but if I had to chose between being able to smoke a spliff and more content, the content would win any time. Then I was on the east side of the island, lot’s of area still grayed out on my map. I felt getting close to the big goal, getting to the sacred anvil to forge some kind of super weapon to kill the evil king that destroyed your characters home and future wife. All is well, then I get the hint to go to the west, as there is a weird light there that some creatures fear. I go there, slay after a long battle a troll (which are the largest monster as far as I could see) and then suddenly I stand at the entrance to the temple that is supposed to contain that anvil. It blips and I’m through it and it’s not over yet. The super weapon is underwhelming, and the city, whose gate I just stood in front of before the temple, I entirely skipped. I intend to load an old save and explore if I even can get into it. Either way, this is where it goes down hill. You get to the big city which is done with a lot of blockades and locked gates, force fields and so on. You get sent circling around it a few times and to be frank it gets very annoying quickly. You do your deed and when you get to go to the Tower of Xardas, this is basically where it all ends already, just when you received the Sleepers Amulet. Parts of the story just seem suddenly forgotten, the plan gets a bit oddly changed and part forgotten, and you just get sent down a corridor to the end boss fight. It is one of the better end boss fights I had, but then they manage to screw it up, in favor of a Gothic 5 I presume. The evils spirit that possessed the king is freed, literally, and is seen emerging into the world, bang, the game is over. This is not as disappointing as Gothic 3, but it’s making you feel so unfinished, so badly cheated that it’s just simply no fun whatsoever. I had fun playing, but the ending is very insignificant to me the player, the hero of my own story, and leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. A good example of how not to do it.

Another one, very recent, is Mafia 2. The first one ended a bit abruptly, but it had the right feeling, it had the tragic ending with the shotgun. You actually get to be the guys doing the hit in Mafia 2, which I found a very nice touch. But lets ignore the other weaknesses of that game the ending just sucked big time. You kill the big bad boss of one family, only thanks to your buddy letting you live a minute before that. Then as you leave the scene of the crime with a supposed ally, you drive in one car, your buddy in another and then you get told your buddy probably wont survive the next few minutes, because only you get to live with the deal you made to kill that other boss. And that’s it. Aside from that fight not being overly hard, this ending was weak. I felt more involved and also in a way satisfied with the tragic and gruesome ending in Mafia 1, because it made a point with it, it told the story, start to bitter finish. This one feels like a cheap trick, a cop out on what could have been good.

Fallout 3 has a similar problem. You run all around the world, finally find your father, just to have him die in front of you. And then your character “goes into the sunset”. You can chose how to finish the game, evil or good, but neither one feels very different. The ending is just not significantly different. You just saved the world or destroyed your patch of it, but it doesn’t really feel like it. The journey to there is long in any case and interesting, but the ending is comparatively weak. Let’s see how new vegas does.

Grand Theft Auto IV and the other GTA’s before it, usually had a very good ending. GTA 3 ended with blowing up the bad guys as they tried to run away in a helicopter. The protagonist was mute, so the other characters overplayed their part and the girl the guy rescued by shooting the bad guys wont shut up as the end starts going on. We hear a single gun shot a bit later. Bad guys down, damsel rescued, but with a twist. GTA doesn’t take itself very seriously, which is spread throughout the game, so the same applies to the ending. The other GTA’s mimick that and of course in GTA IV we see Nico hunt the guy (one of two possibilities, depending on which two last missions you chose) that shot someone earlier. You get him epically at the statue of happiness, which is a persiflage on the statue of liberty. Bad guy dead, death avenged. Not that Nico or any other GTA protagonist is a good guy to begin with. But in each case of the endings, including the addons for GTA IV, you feel like there has been a progression that led here and this was the great finale. The end has been tougher than what you have experienced before, longer bloodier often. And through that also more satisfying.

Elderscrolls 3: Morrowind, is also a satisfying ending. You fight for a long time to become better and follow the story, which leads in the end to the mountain in the middle of the map. There you climb it and get into a gigantic room where you have to destroy the heart of that god that lives there. The battle is not really the best one there is, but it still is fun. You need to walk out again after killing the god, which could have been made simpler by teleporting the player outside, but the game never does that, so that would break the conventions. Thankfully it’s not a long walk and outside you get to watch the clouds vanish and bright sunshine coming to Morrowind. Aside from getting to that takes forever and there are a ton of side quests that can be done, many of which also depend on time for some people to be around, the ending feels like you changed the world around you, permanently and in a good way.

I remember watching the first Lord of the Rings movie in the cinema. The end is clearly etched into my mind. I watched it in a small one, since I live in a small town, so there wasn’t much of a large room privacy as you would get in other places. You can watch Frodo and Sam walking off into the distance and then the credits roll with the lights going on. Wait one split second and the boo’s came from behind me. I just shouted back “Read the book” and left. This is a case where you can’t win. Originally it was written as six books, then tied together into 3 as most of us know them today and the movies are called the same way. But it wasn’t written as books, it was written as one large story. If you have one of those versions where you actually see where the first book ends, you will notice there is only a very slight indication that there is now a new book coming after this. Now it’s too large to be one movie, one book, but you don’t want to have a lame ending.

Tad Williams said about writing the Otherland books that essentially he had the same problem. Otherland is one large story, one book, but it’s too large to be put into one volume. Add to that the fact that he could not just write 4 volumes for years, but needed to bring something to the market to make money, he had to split it up. When you buy the book then you want to be able to read on, but oops, you had to wait a couple years for the next. So he did not want to leave the reader hanging in the middle of something, but rather bring each book to some sort of ending in itself, one that clearly states, there is more to come, but it always has some satisfying conclusions, that made you not feel chipped in the end.

Gothic 4 did not get there with that ending that could carry over to a maybe Gothic 5 (which I hope gets made) in a meaningful and satisfying way, instead you sit in the cinema booing that you see Frodo walking away into the distance.

So how do you do that? How do you make a better ending? The endings starts with the first line. If the build up is too rapid, or discombobulated your ending has to be really the top notch stuff to carry that one home. Let’s assume that being the case, even if you have a second high point in the ‘middle’ like Gothic 4 obviously had planed, the ending has to have a meaning. Doesn’t mean meaning to the protagonist, but to the player/reader.

Mafia 1 ends with the protagonist being shot close range with a shotgun as an old man, after turning into an informant against his previous superiors. The ending is harsh, even gruesome but also expected in a way. Your protagonist expected it, yet he wanted out for his family’s sake.

In GTA you have the easiest way out, but also one of the clearly more successful ways. The end is a big fight against the bad guy, usually wading through masses of henchmen and pursuing the actual target. One the final shot has found it’s target, you have a glorious victory, the end. This builds upon a good pacing of the story in itself, but that already has been declared a given.

Imagine if you would have the end fight at any other point in the game. That’s a bit how it felt with Prey, as you were shown your progress by the entity controlling the structure you were in, it was slow. Yet it was entertaining and you had the feeling of making slow but steady progress. It had a gritty feeling that made you think you were out for revenge, and in terminator style, nothing could stop you, you would see it through to the end. But then suddenly you were given a portal that brought you almost to the doorsteps of your enemy. That one move, put a huge crimp into the feeling of progress. You could have had a portal right at the very beginning that would have brought you to that last place. So I cannot stress the importance of progress here.

So that’s about it for now. This is by no means exhaustive, but I hope that future games will be more careful about their endings.

Another thing I just noticed, this has now been 2751 words I could have spent on Toreas, but this topic has been keeping my head busy for a while, so it had to come out now.

In June I made a total of about 3 dollars, not being really active at all, yet still having 16 things and 51 clicks (worth per incoming click, about 6 cents). July was 4 things strong, with about 50 cents worth of revenue on 22 clicks (bit more than 2 cents per click). August saw 7 things, 56 clicks and 1.45 in revenue (2 and a half cents per click worth).

Now why sum these up and make a September post at all?

5 things posted in September, 2 of which were forum “thanks” flattrs. One was the Flattr MediaWiki extension and one was the May post, I already linked above. These 4 things accumulated 5 clicks and 1.53 in revenue (a whooping 30 cents per click). But there is one thing missing, and that is ReFlattr. With only 16 clicks, it has managed to get a revenue of 14.52, or about 90 cents per click. Adding the whole month into one bundle, we get 21 clicks, 16.05 revenue and 76 cents worth per click.

This is a pretty huge jump, compared to the low click values of the months before this, even the ones that aren’t ReFlattr. But I haven’t talked about ReFlattr before.

The idea is simply to allow people to Flattr again without having to remember to Flattr again. The REST API of Flattr would generally allow that, except you can’t get the data needed yet. Doesn’t mean I can’t be programming it and be prepared for the moment when you can actually grab said data.

This also shows me that people really want to have this as a feature, so I will spend some more time on the code to make sure it is ready for when the data comes.

I’m accessing a blob in a MS SQL database that is pretty much nothing more than a JPG dumped straight into the field. I read them and echo them with a jpg header in PHP. All is well. The script runs and parses all the images, doing some caching magic with them. The result is that about a third of the images are broken, seemingly random. Mostly they just “stop” at a random spot over the whole set, but in one image it always stops at the same spot.

I suspected data corruption on input and a refresh on what inserts them in the first place worked, sometimes at least.

Digging down, I saw that the result I get back for the broken images is always 64512 bytes, exactly. That’s 2 to the power of 16. Can’t be a coincidence. Turns out, it isn’t.

I’m using freetds to access the database and there is an entry in freetds.conf that reads something like this:
text size = 64512

Upping that number (and restarting the webserver, apache or IIS) did the trick. The images stored in the database were all around that point, so it looked like a random bug, but thankfully it wasn’t random.

If you don’t use freetds but the mssql extension instead, then this line would be of interest:
mssql.textsize = 4096

Yes the default is only 4 kilobytes.

Maybe the desk will work as a third hand for the triple face palm.

Of course my sample size is rather small, Flattr is still in it’s early and humble beginnings and many options are still missing from Flattr. But for a first full month, this is a respectable kick off.

aptitude install psmisc

Works perfectly fine on lenny. Hopefully I never have to look this up again.