IAM Blog Engine

As I started to develop much more complex applications for work, more and more bugs started to come up. It got to the point where I couldn’t reliably keep a written or simple list of what I had to do and what was not working. And I definitely couldn’t keep it in my head. Luckily at work we had a FogBugz account. FogBugz for those of you who don’t know is a pretty advanced bug tracking web application made by Fog Creek (Joel Spolsky’s company).

At first it took a while to get used to the work flow of FogBugz, but once we all started using it at SNM I really got into it and it helped me out greatly. However as I started to use it more and more I started to see problems in the interface and general application. It just took to much time and clicks to make bugs and close bugs. Now I think most of these problems are not really Fog Creek’s problem, they made an excellent enterprise level bug tracking system. However using it in the small scale (two people) I think makes a lot of the features of FogBugz redundant and adds a lot of extra complexity.

So after spending some time experimenting with the FogBugz API I started to formulate an idea to make my own interface that would stream line the process. I wanted to see a simple list of bugs, ranked and color coded by priority with the latest message about the bug and a button to assign it to someone else and to close it. So after spending some time getting used to the API and building the interface I created a simple Django application that let me interface with the API and store simple user information in the servers memory. Here is a screen shot of the end result:

I was pretty happy with the first version. It let me quickly see what I had to do and check off things when I was done. This got me thinking, is there a market for a really simple ‘to do list’ or bug tracking web application for people like me? I think so. There are definitely quite a few other applications out there that do what I want but I have yet to find one 100% targeted at people who want something simple and to the point.

We’ll see what comes of this idea. I’ve wanted to try to start developing my own apps for a while, and after thinking more about what I could do with a bug tracking application I really think I might be on to something. But then again maybe not. I’m never going to learn if I don’t fail a few times anyways.

If you do use FogBugz and you want to check it out please do and let me know what you think, http://buggie.bmdev.org I don’t use any database at all to store any of your data it all lives temporarily in the server’s memory. Also if you want to check out the code you can see it on GitHub

(Cross posted from my blog)

Before:

After:

We are starting a new project at work and with it we are going to use our custom CMS, Stratus, as the back end. In our last project we heavily re-factored and streamlined the latest build. But the interface has had little or no changes since its initial version. So after I had the scaffolding of the CMS in place for our new project I started to make adjustments to the UI. The first major thing I did was change the colors around a lot. The old UI used whites, light grays, and light blues all over. The only background color is used in the header (as you can see in the first image above). While this isn’t a ‘bad’ interface at all I felt like the interface was not adding anything. It didn’t hold you back from using the CMS but it didn’t help you either.

Because this is a commercial CMS and we always are making it for a specific project we work with the client and show them how to use it (a luxury that most web developers don’t have, and one that none should rely on) UX is not high on our list of priorities. However after thinking about what I could do to make this CMS better (out side of the backend code) I realized with a cleaned up interface we could cut back on a lot of the time we took explaining how to use the CMS to clients and make the CMS less of a chore to use. The first thing I wanted to do was to use color to create a visual hierarchy in the interface. The thing that is most important on the page is the current elements you are working with. For example if you are on the ‘Categories’ page the thing that is most important is the actually category elements. To do this I made the header a dark gray background and the rest of the site a lighter gray background. The only use of white is the center content area (following our categories example, where the categories are listed) making that the very clear center of attention. Besides making the background of the main content area white I also used darker more saturated fonts in the center to further enforce that this is the most important area on the screen. The real challenge here (that resulted in a lot of back and forth between TextMate, Photoshop, and Chrome) was keeping the interface as a whole coherent. When I made the sidebar and header too light and blending in too much it make the center content area overpowering.

While there is still a lot of work to do in the UI I found it to be a really refreshing and an interesting challenge trying to create an interface that needs to be very extensible. Meaning the interface needs to keep up with the complexities of the CMS. If we decided to add a grid based list of a specific object the CMS’ UI needs to deal with that.

The Evil Summoner FAQ was a blast to read, though it’s relevance to the class doesn’t really come in till the end, where we get the spoilerly bits. It’s essentially your basic Gamefaqs FAQ, except way more snarky and with a lot less detail. Essentially, it’s how to get through the game Summoner as quickly and time inexpensively as possible. He essentially throws out titular gimmick of the game (Summons) and claims it’s useless. He calls many of the character morons, and points out design flaws (such as the games confusing speed system, and the blunt weapon’s superiority to swords).

Now the end of the article is where Mochan tells us what he thought of the game’s story. He mentions that the plot wasn’t actually all that, but the writing was just pathetic. Furthermore, some of the things that happened in the game were just totally fake (like Joesph forgiving Flece). Or Jekhar’s lack of hateful behavior even though he supposedly hates Jacob. He even complains about the way time passes in the game.

Mochan’s problem with main problem with Summoner, despite its attempts to fuse oil and water (console and PC RPG’s), is that it lacks immersion, even though Mochan doesn’t say it implicitly. But if you look at what Mochan says, you can the problem is pretty apparent from the start. Really what Summoner really seems to have to fucked up on his the little, and with so many little things fucked up, Mochan can’t help but not take the game seriously.

Keep in mind though, he hated the interface too, which also decreased his immersion.

“Petri Purho’s Nordic Game Jam 2009 experiment Four Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness has elicited some interesting and rather strong reactions among gamers who have found themselves mystified by his creation. Some seem compelled to continue “playing” it over and over in a desperate bid to “win,” while others, including The Escapist’s own Julianne Greer, have asserted that it’s not a game at all but merely an application, and a broken one at that. Regardless of what it is, Purho appears to have accomplished what he set out to do: Push boundaries and get people talking about what a game can actually be.”

-Andy Dell, “Can Art Be Games?”

That’s in reference to “Four Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness”, a quote on quote “game” that as mentioned in the article is arguably not a game. If you haven’t played it yet, I’d suggest you do. It’s not exactly the most exciting game, but it’s only four minutes and 33 seconds, that is, if you’re lucky and last the whole game (you probably won’t).

“Four Minutes and 33 seconds of Uniqueness” is essentially a loading bar and a program that search’s the internet to see if anyone else is playing. If any is, the program closes down. If there isn’t it loads for, well, four Minutes and 33 seconds.

I’ll admit it is hard to classify that as a game, but the thing is, it is possible to do so, despite it’s complete lack of of interaction on it’s interface. It’s similar to a Nomic or many other games in that it requires the player to bring a lot to it: including the illusion of interaction. The way I see it, the game is a player versus a world. Sure the goal requires you to be the only person in the whole world to be playing, making any victories a really hard one, but getting that little bar is a hell of an achievement after all failures. For some reason I can actually see this game being imported to XBLA, and having one achievement worth 200 points: “World Beater: Survive Four Minutes and 33 seconds”. But then again, that requires a specific mindset. Hence why I think the concept of this “game” is genius.

A lot of the other games mentioned in the game are really hard to define as games, though. While it would be hard to argue something such as “Flower” isn’t a game, the arguments about “September 12″ and “The Cemetery” not being real games are tangible, admittedly. Still, I guess the arguments for why they should be considered games exist also. Furthermore, I guess you could go as far to say things we’d define as games, Mario, Halo, etc, are not games, from a certain point of view, if one chooses not to play them for example.

zeFrank has a cool new voice-drawing toy on his blog.  You raise and lower the notes you’re sing/humming to turn the drawing line.  Check it out.

Rehak’s article is part History of the Avatar and part psychology. The psychology of it is probably most important and could have been summed up as “We tend to interpose ourselves upon the avatar controlled in the game to directly experience the happenings of said game.” At least this is what I gathered from all the technical rhetoric. It was how the advancement of avatars help to make this possible and eventually that we need to be able to break away and realize who we “really” are. I suppose this ties in to why some violence is attributed to video games, and perhaps sometimes rightly so. I will never defend that video games CAUSE violence on the whole. But if one is replacing the character in GTA with themselves, perhaps I could see why that person then cannot separate them self after they put down the controller, though I will still contest those people are a bit unbalanced. FPS’s are the epitome of the trend of interposition of self into the game enviroment solely because the avatar is blank; an implied avatar.

An interesting article I found on C|net that relates to one of the topics that we had talked about in class. Link: http://news.com.com/Who+governs+virtual+worlds/2100-1043_3-6140249.html?tag=nefd.top

As games like World of Warcraft, Second Life and EverQuest grow and develop more sophisticated communities, that question will become more and more important. So much so that a group of experts appearing Friday at the fourth annual State of Play/Terra Nova symposium at New York Law School here spent nearly two hours putting the subject in context.

When disputes arise over in-world fraud or avatars attacking avatars, for example, what law should prevail?Despite what the designers of some virtual worlds might like to imply, the group agreed, such environments are not autonomous countries and are therefore subject to real-world national laws. But because lawmakers in countries like the U.S. have been slow to understand virtual worlds and the legal, social and economic issues that arise in them, the experts said, legislators have not yet addressed many of those issues.

Perhaps the biggest question is whether the trade in virtual goods–weapons, armor, clothing, buildings and the like, all of which have real-world financial value–is taxable. Because that is such an important question, a separate panel is planned for discussion on it Saturday.

But beyond taxation are plenty of legal issues, which the experts addressed at the event, largely an academic gathering where professors from a slew of top universities come to talk about the intellectual, legal and social issues around virtual worlds.

One of the first questions was what game designers can do to stop players from defrauding each other. Such activity can happen in many ways, including dishonest transactions of virtual assets.

“If fraud is fun, and built into the game, and people are defrauding each other with virtual items with real-world prices, you might say, ‘You defrauded me,’” said Josh Fairfield, a panelist and associate professor of law at Indiana University School of Law. “Well, yes I did.”

And while many players may expect that rules governing fraud are set in games’ terms of service or end-user license agreements, Fairfield said that’s not true.

“Contract law cannot regulate players’ interactions with each other,” Fairfield said.

That means there’s nothing a publisher can do to stop such behavior, and players who find themselves with such complaints may have little choice other than to seek legal redress. But such help may well be slow to come, the panelists suggested.

Another issue Fairfield brought up was so-called real-money trade, the buying and selling of virtual goods for real money that occurs largely outside online games. It doesn’t take place officially under the auspices of the games because most publishers say they oppose such behavior. But hundreds of millions of dollars in such goods are traded on markets like eBay each year, and the publishers have done little to stop it.

“They say publicly, ‘No, we don’t like it,’” Fairfield said of the publishers. “But privately, they support it…Why? Because it makes them money.”

To Greg Lastowka, a panelist and assistant professor of law at Rutgers School of Law, the virtual-world governance landscape boils down to two categories: internal and external views of governance.

Internal governance, Lastowka said, is that which takes place between players and publishers. External governance is how any organization handles disputes with the real government.

As far as internal governance goes, he explained, legal disputes between players or between players and publishers are likely to be treated like any such dispute.

“The ultimate governance of virtual worlds is the state,” Lastowka said. “The law doesn’t treat virtual worlds as any different. The state is not going to accept” virtual worlds being treated as autonomous regions.

That leads, however, to the examination of external governance, which means disputes between real governments and the community of players and designers.

Thus, Lastowka said, the question of whether real-money trades is good or bad for virtual worlds is a lot like a yacht club dispute over whether members need to wear jackets in the dining room: it’s something that can be resolved without getting the law involved.

And that’s probably good, as he suggested that the law is not particularly attuned to the issues revolving around games.

“Law is so close to games, in that games set up rules and structures, and try to set them up around specific rules and behaviors,” Lastowka said. “The reason the law is dismissive of games is that it recognizes a similarity and wants to say, ‘No, that’s not what we’re doing.’”

Thus, he suggested that the law of virtual-worlds is going to be similar to law of sports and other forms of private organizations.

To Thomas Malaby, another panelist and an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, governance comes from the confluence of control–of players and their behaviors–regulatory schemes, social and structural conventions and material constraints.

Malaby said any form of governance, in virtual worlds or beyond, comes from law and regulation–the idea that enforceable rules are put in place and that there are consequences for breaking them.

Yet, clearly, virtual world players want more clear lines of demarcation when it comes to governance, and when it comes to players asking for such help, publishers often reply that it’s too hard to build it into their products, said Timothy Burke, a panelist and an associate professor of history at Swarthmore College.

“Secondly, they’ll say, honestly, ‘We’re scared of the consequences of having more robust tools for governance.’ Governance isn’t fun. (Publishers) don’t want that in their games. It’s just a small group of freaks (who want it, they say) and most…don’t want you to have it, because they don’t like what it does to their games.”

Ultimately, then, the panelists seem to suggest that if players want real governance, at least when it comes to issues between themselves, they are going to need to self-govern. As to complex issues between players and the publishers, it’s likely that real disputes will need to be elevated to the courts.

“The rules players develop do stop each other from bad acts,” said Fairfield, “and that’s all the governance we probably need.”

Out the 10Base-T, through the router, down the T1, over the leased line, off the bridge, past the firewall…nothing but Net.

-Dj3Dub