Courtesy of BreakAway Games

Perhaps the most elegant example of learning while actually having fun came from a real-time strategy game called Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. But first some gaming history. Strategy games such as Chess, Risk, and Stratego have enjoyed a long heritage. The classic games were turn-based, essentially allowing each player to gather his or her thoughts, devise a strategy, and then move. The transition to the computer added a second exciting prospect – that of games that simulated a seamless flow of events, allowing for the consequences of each move to play out in real time and giving birth to the genre of “real-time strategy” games or RTSs. Developer Bullfrog’s Populus was arguably the first game in the RTS genre, further refined by Westwood Studio’s Dune 2, and then the Command and Conquer series. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, developed by Maryland-based BreakAway Games, was this type of game, but also much, much more. In Emperor, the object is to lead a group of people through the process of building a civilization from the humble beginnings of a small rural community. The tutorial missions, which are set during the Neolithic Xia dynasty, very gently encourage you to understand the basics of community-building from the perspective of a 2100 BC farmer – everything from the proper seasons to cultivate soy versus rice to the vitals of repelling invading marauders is covered, as this description from the game would suggest:

“In the northern region, along the banks of the Yellow River (or Huang He), the fertile yellow ‘loess’ soil and cooler climate was well suited for hardier grains such as millet and wheat. Further south, along the meandering Yangzi, the warmer and wetter climate was ideal for rice, which soon became an important staple of the Chinese diet. Far to the north and west, above the Yellow River and in northwestern China’s Tarim River basin, the extremely dry soil and harsher climate made cultivation without irrigation almost impossible.”

As dry as this may seem on paper, this information proved vital to the survival of my township, which gradually grew and prospered – something that gave me a great deal of pride. I recall how attached I became to each of my little subjects. Added to this was the thrill of our repelling invaders successfully, and the decision to embark upon the gargantuan task of building a little-known monument called the Great Wall of China. In total, just a few hours of game play over some weeks had allowed me to experience some 3000 years of ancient Chinese history. I like to think that Ms. Wilcox, my high school world history teacher (and top-drawer pickle-ball player), would have approved.

Aztreonam is a member of the Beta Lactam Clan, and like others in the family, Aztreonam can take down a range of Lords. She is often sent into battle when the use of her great father Penicillin and his relatives risk more harm to the land than their protective efforts can justify. Thanks to the unique structure of her Beta Lactam, however, Aztreonam can fight alongside other Beta Lactam warriors without causing further damage to the land. She is most effective against Lords of the Gram Negative Legion, as she can is not fit to battle with Soma’s Gram Positive or anaerobic foes, who are usually better matched by Penicillin.

Unlike many of the Apothecaries, Aztreonam are not able to enter Soma via Buccal Bay, but instead must penetrate the world’s boundary aerially through the Respiro Forest, or hydraulically, appearing on the banks of Soma’s rivers and following their tributaries to the heart of the battle. Alternatively, she came spring from below, infiltrating the world in the vast stretches of countryside, then moving to the nearest waterway to travel to the site in need.  But once she reaches the Lords’ infestation, her quick strike is powerful and effective. By inhibiting the Lords’ ability to build their protective armor, Aztreonam renders Soma’s nemeses vulnerable to the attacks of the Defenders. On rare occasions, however, her attacks can cause collateral damage among Soma’s peaceful inhabitants, particularly at the Wall and along the aqueduct, which can disrupt its flow from Buccal Bay to Faex Inlet.

It was during the autumn of 1999 that I fell in love. She was beautiful, complex, tremendously high maintenance, and from the land of the rising sun. Her name was Gran Turismo, and our relationship was tumultuous, fiery, and a constant struggle for performance and power. Horsepower, that is. In a few short weeks, I developed both admiration and awe for Japanese racing cars. The game gently goaded me into learning about real-world improvements that can be made to a vehicle in order to enhance its performance. I developed a working knowledge of drag coefficients and came to understand the delicate balance that had to be attained between torque and tire traction. Every single one of GT’s 500+ vehicles came with a detailed history of its design and manufacture process, and I soon garnered a deep admiration for the racing pedigrees behind the vehicles I saw on the street every day: Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Mazda, to name but a few. My GT experience highlighted a fundamental principle of education to me: immersion is everything. Easily the most exciting part, though, were the lengthy discussions that would take place with friends also caught up in the world of Japanese touring car racing, bringing together the oddest groups of people. I recall an 11-year-old boy explaining to me how he managed to beat his father’s horrendously powerful Nissan Skyline GT in a less powerful Subaru WRX, simply because he stiffened up the rear suspension and invested heavily in racing tires. The result? A vehicle agile enough to corner at speeds that would cause Daddy to spin out in his horsepower-laden Goliath of a vehicle.

Game designers are constantly raising the bar for applying realism to their interactive digital experiences. Realism implies more that just photo-realistic environments. It implies the use of detailed mathematical algorithms to capture the realistic portrayal of sound, the collision of objects, the movement of a human being, etc. A favorite example of mine occurred to me while looking at a review of an old game I played on the Commodore 64 called Space Rogue. Essentially a space opera, you played a character who happened upon a derelict Scow-class space cruiser while on a routine reconnaissance mission. While exploring the craft, your own ship is destroyed by pirates, leaving you to start from scratch alone in a huge universe. Aside from its beautiful, open-ended game structure (you could choose your own adventures), the spaceflight sequences obeyed true physics principles, including that of gravity. While the rest of the world simply accepted the fact that Voyager Probes 1 and 2 were being slingshotted from planet to planet, I was actually experiencing it thanks to a few lines of code running on a processor with only 64K of random access memory. Vance Hill illustrates this beautifully in his review of Space Rogue:

“My fondest game play memory involved a binary star system where I was getting trashed by an alien, totally wrecked at the worst time. I couldn’t outrun it and I was far, far away from any help. I turned the nose of the ship to face between the two stars and hit full burn. As the gravity started sucking I started flying in faster than the ship could possibly go under its own power. I started to get pulled off course, towards one of the stars, and then… I shot between them and out to the other side, leaving the alien way back in nowheresville.”

What I’m interested in is the science behind the Medic and how the Medic heals the Marine on the battlefield. The lore behind the Medic is that the Medic uses a thin laser and an anesthetic to perform on-site surgery.  In Starcraft II, the aerial replacement for the Medic, the Medivac, operates in a similar fashion. The Medivac is an aerial dropship equipped with a healing laser beam that can fix wounded soldiers on the ground. The lore for the beam is that there are actually two beams at work: a laser-scalpel and an auto-suture, which, when combined, can patch-up all sorts of wounds. The main question, then, is “How do these things work?”. Additionally, if these fantastic elements are a little too bizarre to accept, I’d also like to explore alternative answers to the thought of battlefield healing through lasers.

The Medic uses an anesthetic and a super-hot laser beam that instantly cauterizes wounds. Okay, that makes some sense, since we have recently increased the usage of lasers in surgeries. So, in another couple thousand years, why wouldn’t lasers be able to instantly, deeply, and quickly cauterize a massive wound? What makes this a little hard to accept is the unit it targets most frequently: the Marine. A Marine is clad in thick metal armor, meant to protect the wielder from enemies and to allow them the ability to breathe and fight on foreign planets. They’re combat-geared space suits. How, then, can a laser penetrate armor meant to prevent enemy claws, guns, and lasers from getting though? Any opening the laser could get through to heal the Marine, the hole in the armor would already cause an air vacuum that would most likely suffocate and kill the Marine inside, let alone any physical damage that the vacuum would cause.

Vacuums aside, let’s suppose the atmosphere is hospitable to human life and other carbon-based species, allowing them the ability to breathe. Here, the Medic shooting a laser through an opening in the armor makes sense: if a Marine is wounded and the armor shredded, the Medic can use that same opening to cauterize the wound. Brilliant!

Returning to the original theory, there is a way to make it plausible: the Medic doesn’t actually heal the Marine but instead uses nanomachines to quickly repair the Marine’s armor as it’s being damaged. This stretches the concept a little, but it also fills a conceptual gap in unit design. I’ll leave it to the reader to mull over the nanotech / laserbeam approaches as I still have another unit to talk about.

The Medivac does the job of a Medic, but from sky, away from the immediate dangers on the ground. Additionally, the Medivac offers surgical lasers that can pinpoint and remove anything left behind in a Marine after an enemy attack, e.g, a Hydralisk spine, a Zergling claw, or even a stray bullet.

The problem is that the method of a highly controlled set of twin laser beams being sent down from an aircraft hovering over allied units is very difficult to think about in a practical way. In the game, the Medivac hovers over your units and heals them, as if it were a Medic with engines. This engine-bound Medic, however, has a laser that is shot from 40-50 feet in the air.  Theoretically, a laser will not stop once emitted, unless interfered with by an opaque object. This logic would conclude that the Medivac would operate exactly as the Medic does, but from the sky. The same goes for the nanotech repair theory, though that may be weaker from the Medivac due to distance and speed of application. It’s still shaky in theory, but the fictitious elements have certainly taken care to include and utilize real technology and theories.

Both the Medic and the Medivac are interesting cases of science fiction and a potential future of warzone healing. Perhaps the Medivac will be a real thing later on, but instead of sending lasers down to heal units, the units would be picked up, treated in the air, and dropped back off to resume fighting. As for the Medic, we already have such brave heroes on the battlefield. Maybe some lasers could help them someday soon.

- M. B

Nocardia asteroides are wicked foes that can wreak havoc on nearly every inch of Soma’s once serene habitat. They can live harmoniously around the rim of the Buccal Bay, but when they begin to meander inland, particularly to areas already under attack by other Lords, the consequences can be devastating. One of only two Lords in the Gram Positive Legion that can grow in both size and number, and armed with a handful of weapons, including the dreaded cord factor wielded by Mycobacterium tuberculosis that obstructs the activation of Soma’s valiant Defenders, N. asteroides can spread their wrath to each of Soma’s major cities. They commonly attack the Great Respiro Forest, leading to minor earthquakes and sudden wind storms in the region, and can choke the land’s supply of the Blood River’s life-giving magic. From there, N. asteroides often make their way to Left and Right Heart Cities, causing inflammation at the cities’ limits as Defenders gather to guard their inhabitants from the impending menace. The opportunistic Lords can also travel to the Sententia, where they ravage Soma’s Axonias and threaten the country’s harmonic alliance. And at the crater wall that surrounds the island, N. asteroides can cause lesions that expose the world to other fearsome intruders.

Protecting Soma from such a formidable enemy is no easy task. N. asteroides can thrive in a wide range of climates, and once they take hold throughout the land, are often a lasting presence. Though many Apothecaries are often called to the job, it can take up to a year of constant defensive fronts to finally defeat the persistent N. asteroides.

…To be continued

I used to feel that humor was one of the most difficult concepts to do well in gaming, and was shortly proven wrong by Ron Gilbert and his Monkey Island games, followed shortly by what I’ll refer to as the “golden age” of LucasArts’ point and click games, citing The Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle as experiences that got humor right. The evolution of humor has progressed to the point of ultra-satire with the tight writing of Portal 1 and Portal 2, and frankly, I’m loving it.

So no, not humor. How about fear? Well, gaming has fear pretty much licked. From the bizarre polygonal trappings of the first Alone in the Dark game to the schlocky camp of the initial Resident Evil games and the elegance of the Silent Hill and Fatal Frame games, I’d say there are many ways that game devs have to scare the pants off of us.

And speaking of pants . . . (groan) . . . what of love? I definitely remember feeling something for the princess in ICO as I stood yelling into the screen, half dragging her across the crumbling tower in the final stages of the game, controller sweaty with perspiration.

I also thought that the concept of building a game such as Shadow of the Colossus around a young warrior’s love for his lady, scaling truly epic odds in the hopes of offering his one true love a second chance was initially compelling. However, the beauty of that game lay in the eventual love that one gains for each of the hulking Colossuses (Colossi?), which creates a weighty counterpoint to the naiveté of the original premise.

But no, I’m talking about actually being emotionally engaged in that schoolboy crush type of feeling with a videogame character. Probably the first NPC to raise an eyebrow for me was the daughter of Professor Cross in the game Half-Life 2. Her combination of curiosity, playfulness, warmth, and intelligence as a companion through parts of that game certainly made the quieter sections (sans companion) seem quite lonely. I found myself thinking, “I wonder what Alyx is doing right now?” before smiling at the absurdity of it all.

And then Mass Effect happened. Or perhaps more specifically, Liara T’sonis, the Asari scientist seemingly genetically designed to get under my skin. Able to hold a conversation regarding the ethical implications of the genophage unleashed upon the Krogan species? Check. Playful and inquisitive, with a strong sense of moral balance? Check. A beautiful azure-blue complexion with tentacles for hair? You had me at hello. In classic Bioware style, our in-game relationship grew and manifested as a glorious tryst prior to the game’s final battle. So you can imagine my excitement at the thought of saving the universe with her again in the sequel, Mass Effect 2.

During the sequel, it becomes apparent that she, thinking that I had been killed, had moved on. In fact, when we are reunited in the second act of the game, her reaction to me could best be described as, erm, frosty. And I’ll be the first to admit that I was a little upset by this. So much so, that I had to turn to my IRL wife for support and counsel on this matter.

“What changed? I mean, here I am, back for her, and she’s basically giving me the cold shoulder,” I said as we prepared dinner.

“You’re insane,” my wife responded.

“But I feel that the moral center of this game, namely her, has disappeared. I’m feeling a little less interested in the game as a result.”

Silence.

“The only thing that might even be remotely comparable would be if you were suddenly to be so tied up with getting that critical care fellowship that you forgot or started taking for granted us.”

That got her. Was my fascination for Liara a metaphor for my fascination with my wife? Well, duh!

“She’s probably creeped out by the whole ‘reanimated Shepard thing’ and is still trying to figure out her feelings for you.”

And, of course, she was right. And as it turns out, Liara plays an integral part in this backstory, the details of which I won’t divulge for fear of spoilers. Dare I say that in terms of emotional re-engagements, it was one of the most impressive about-faces I have ever made in my feelings for a character? Brava, Bioware, brava!

So what is the point of all this emotional engagement? Well, if you’re reading this blog, you probably don’t need to be told, but it makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. Dare I say that it was because of my persistent relationship with this NPC with all its twists and turns that I purchased Mass Effect 2, in addition to a ton of DLC – especially the epic Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC which seems as if it was created by the developers as a gift to me alone?

Can you feel the love tonight?

They sat in a circle staring into the fire and pondered their impending defeat.  With such limited numbers, the Apothecaries knew that spawning offspring was unlikely.  There had to be another solution.  Then, it happened – like a smooth drink of spring water, the “Ancient One” flowed into their camp like an answer to their prayers.  Princess Hygiena had returned!

At first glance, her unassuming demeanor made her appear fragile.  The Apothecaries, however, knew better and rose to greet her. With humble bows, they praised her return.  She had never really left, she had always been there for them, but it was not in her powers to do battle unless she was summoned.  In order for her magic to work, she had to be called on often.  One missed summon, and her spell would be broken.  Princess Hygiena was the most ancient and powerful of all of the warriors.  She was well versed in the old magic.  She reached into her satchel and produced the ingredients for a powerful potion.  The sacred twin hydrogens were cleaved with the omnipotent oxygen in a blaze of glory.  She retrieved a sprig of Cholorgalum pomeridianum root from the ancient soap plant and carefully mixed the brew.  The Apothecaries looked on while the mixture coalesced in a bubbling iridescent swirl.  A dram of this tonic could indiscriminately wipe out dozens of colonies in mere seconds.  As the sun began to rise, they steeled themselves for another day of battle….To be continued.

Satisfied in my thirst for knowledge (and a growing fanboyism towards the Havok system), I continued my physics abuse. Though my next point may not directly refer to the physics, it was fascinating nonetheless: weight. The game has a weight system built in to punish the player for taking too much loot, forcing the player to make value-based decisions on what to hold and what to drop. For example, if I’m at max weight (starting base is 300 units of measurement), and I decide to pick something up and it puts me over, I have to drop something to bring me back down to an even max (exactly 300) or under. If I stay above the max weight, I receive a significant cut to my movement speed. As all gamers know, movement speed is crucial to all games, and being slow is usually a bad thing.

One time, I was at 300 weight because I’m brilliant and didn’t level up my carrying capacity. Or, at least I thought I was at 300. No, I was at 300.1. That one-tenth of a weight measurement (I’m guessing lbs, but I’m really not sure) was the deciding factor between running and waddling. So, I looked in my inventory and saw a potato that managed to sneak into my gear. After tossing the potato, I was back to maximum movespeed. I suppose this is the modern rendition of “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, referring to things piling up and being too much to manage, but in this case referring to a potato that encumbered the great hero of Skyrim.

Curse you, cumbersome potato. I hope some sabrecat ate you.

My point, though, isn’t to avoid potatoes. My point is that the game, regardless of your vast strength, has an entertaining quirk (a necessary one, at that) where a simple potato can hold your hulking hero back from sprinting along and saving some estranged NPC from a dragon or a bandit. Also, there are various renditions of my potato story, including, but not limited to: Butterfly wings, mushrooms, salt, carrots, troll skulls, and your spouse’s homecooked meals.

Potatoes aside, there are some really neat mass interactions in Skyrim. My personal favorite is with the spell Telekinesis. Telekinesis lets you pick up an object within a set range and pull it towards you. However, you can also throw the object and watch the physics engine freak out in ways akin to the murderous mule cart. You see, the Havok engine, to the extent of my knowledge, registers velocity in a very sensitive fashion. If I were to pick up a goblet with Telekinesis and drop it, it would bounce a little, roll on the ground, and eventually come to a halt. If I were to throw that goblet into a pile of baskets, however, the baskets would register no resistance and scatter across the room as if a grenade were tossed at them. For those of you who have the game, I thoroughly recommend abusing this, as it is extremely entertaining and is a good way to grind levels. It’s worth mentioning that baskets are not the only potential victims, making me think that these collisions and their hilarity is fully intended by the Bethesda crew.

So far, we have a murderous mule cart, plump potatoes, and goblet grenades. What’s next? Being clubbed by a Giant.

When a Giant attacks you at early levels, it will instantly kill you and send your body hurdling hundreds of feet into the air. This is a pretty amazing collision interaction: The Giant, which is about four or five times larger than you are, slams its club onto your head, causing the force to course through you. Instead of diffusing into the ground, the force comes back skywards, sending our hero on a quest to the moon. There isn’t much more to it than that the physics engine only accounts for terrain when the Giant misses, at which time a temporary crater is formed. Otherwise, the terrain about as absorbent as a tissue in a pool.

I think that about wraps it up for the majority of Skyrim physics. However, there are more interactions that are worth noting, but the gameplay experience itself is much more gratifying than explaining them. For example, when a dragon lands, the controller and camera shake. Makes sense, considering the dragons are massive. Another interaction is with instant-kills with a bow and arrow, which propel the enemy backwards. It’s really more gratifying to do than to explain, as you get a great sensation of power and success by plowing some poor villain back into last Tuesday with a well-placed arrow.

- M. B

The answer is to continue along the path the game allotted to you, since the sequence of these dungeons is linear. However, there is one great obstacle in your path, the one thing that is truly the source of your dread: The mule cart. A simple cart meant to be drawn by a beast with the intention of delivering goods is the greatest threat in this damp dungeon of horror, but why is that? Well, there is (or at least, was. It’s probably been fixed by now) a physics issue with the mule carts of Skyrim.

Upon walking over an upturned mule cart, the cart will sporadically fly across the room and bounce off of whatever surfaces are available. Worst of all, this mule cart is deadly. That’s right, it’s a murderous mule cart with a dark past and an angry heart. I ventured down the very same dark path that you did, but my journey was abruptly cut short by this devilish fiend. However, I was apparently not the last of his victims…

Unlucky Man Attacked by Mule Cart!

Though very frightening, we must consider this incident and use it as a springboard moving forward. We must learn from this and be cautious of other “Mule Carts” in games, as they serve as constant reminders that physics aren’t always on our side. With the cart in mind, let us be thankful that our world doesn’t have flying mule carts. Or fire-breathing dragons, for that matter.

- M.B