Advanced interaction in FPS

There is always a bit of metho­lo­gi­cal slow­ness when it comes to the first per­son shoo­ter genre of com­pu­ter games: deve­l­o­pers are lazy to try­ing some­thing new, lest they fall flat on their faces. This is sort of true when it comes to advan­ces in level design and gra­phics, where there’s a bit of ten­dency to move along, but only on known lines — next to nobody really adopts open levels. If they do, they are eit­her of (next to) no impact at all (I’m loo­king at you, Front­lines: Fuel of War), or they change the whole game into some­thing that gra­vi­ta­tes around cer­tain hot spots, as in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Cher­no­byl, for example, or the first actual FPS doing this, Strife. And some­thing so open like Ope­ra­tion Flash­point, even though sporting quite impres­sive gra­phics, was never as suc­cess­ful as a rehash like Cry­sis which just slap­ped supreme gra­phics on old and pro­ven FPS concepts.

Then, there was the other extreme, wer some­thing radi­cally new was tried. Games like Tre­spas­ser, which was a game set in the Juras­sic Park uni­verse with some rather nice gra­phics, and a very fre­aky con­trol sys­tem. In this, you directly con­trol­led the arms of your cha­rac­ter, moving them around, rota­ting hands and clen­ching fists manu­ally to grab levers or push buttons.

It was horrible.

But the thing which hasn’t chan­ged at all for quite some time is how your cha­rac­ter inter­acts with the world at large. The big chan­ges in this category:

1. Doom star­ted out with using your key­board arrows to move you along, and PgUp and PgDn for aiming up and down.
2. Quake intro­du­ced the mouse into the mix, which still took some time to get adop­ted, though.
3. Then, Half-Life intro­du­ced the WASD key lay­out to accom­pany its ple­thora of spe­cial keys, which also popu­la­ri­zed the “use” but­ton to inter­act with environ­ment objects, instead of just run­ning into or shoo­ting them.
4. Recently, game­pad con­trol­lers are often used, and there’s a shift in lay­out map­ping to con­form with the limited amounts of but­ton avail­able on a controller.

And that’s very much it. For eons, you run around using your use but­ton to make stuff do other stuff. Besi­des just activat­ing swit­ches, you have your use key trig­ge­ring dia­lo­gues, opening doors, picking up things, and just about ever­y­thing you can ima­gine. If you do anything that bor­ders on com­ple­xity, you’d pro­bably get a pop-up dia­lo­gue explai­ning your opti­ons to you, totally brea­king game immer­sion and, in a few sorry cases, actually kicking in the fourth wall with a vengeance.

This was the case even with my beloved com­plex games like Sys­tem Shock, even if they tried to be some­what immer­sive in their inter­face. But then, there came the least likely can­di­date for reform ever: Doom III. Nobody expec­ted D3 to be anything but a new “shoo­ting demons” thingy; yet not only did it come along and intro­du­ced story to id Soft­ware games (which Quake IV con­ti­nued to flesh out), but it also intro­du­ced a revo­lu­tio­nary immer­sive way of using com­pu­ter con­so­les: instead of activat­ing them with your use key and then cli­cking around on the screen, D3 just chan­ged the cross­hair into an arrow when you viewed at the con­trols of a ter­mi­nal and allo­wed you to push and mani­pu­late but­tons wit­hout ever brea­king immer­sion into the universe.

An example (just the first few seconds, really):

Example screen­shot, bla­tantly sto­len from the site in my post scriptum:

But it didn’t last. And I won­der: why? Was it too com­plex? Did it alie­nate the tra­di­tio­na­list that he had to do more than push ‘e’ to use a com­pu­ter? It’s just so good, yet nobody seems pre­pa­red to adopt it to their games. Bioware’s Mass Effect is quite good at try­ing to keep immer­sion high and making the player expe­ri­ence the game, rather than just play it — but they, too, resort to brea­king immer­sion when it comes to com­pu­ter ter­mi­nals, using a com­bi­ned inventory/data sto­rage sys­tem on a sepa­rate screen.

The ques­tion remains: Why? It’s good, it works, it’s not hard to learn — so why avoid it?

P.S.: While sear­ching for good screen­shots, I found an arti­cle cal­led Through The Loo­king Glass — Fully Inter­ac­tive Sur­faces In DOOM3 by Bernd Krei­meier, which explains things in a bit grea­ter detail.

Nokia N810: The ‘partition bug’

Are you a new user of Nokia’s N810 and have you ever won­de­red why after a bit of use, your inter­nal memory card seems to behave a bit oddly, like not allo­wing some things, e.g.:

mimir:/media/mmc2$ ls
ls: Cannot stat 'My downloads': Input/output error

If you have, you should check the disk par­ti­tio­ning on your device:

mimir:/media/mmc2$ sudo sfdisk -l
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 61440 cylinders, 4 heads, 16 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 32768 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 9

Device           Boot   Start    End     #cyls      #blocks      Id     System
/dev/mmcblk0p1          0+       62719   62720-     200732       b      W95 FAT32
[...]

As you (might) see: the par­ti­tion is actually lar­ger than the drive pro­per. So, to fix this:

1. Back up your data. Just mount the device and copy ever­y­thing off it. Some files might give pro­blems because they’re alre­ady in the wrong part of the drive. Tough luck.
2. Assu­ming you haven’t alre­ady con­nec­ted in via USB to do the backup, con­nect it.
3. Throw a par­ti­tio­ning tool of your choice at the USB Mass Sto­rage device that rep­res­ents your N810’s memory card.
4. Delete the old par­ti­tion, and create a new one in the free space.
5. If your par­ti­tio­ner barks around say­ing some­thing about the bad par­ti­tion, go ahead and zero the first 512 of the device:
   sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1
   (X being the appro­priate cha­rac­ter for your drive — check dmesg if unsure)
6. Create a new file sys­tem on the par­ti­tion:
   mkfs -f vfat /dev/sdX1
   (Take not of the “1” (num­ber one) after sdX — you need to spe­cify it.)
7. Copy back your backup.
8. Power cycle the N810.

Should help.

Kudos to KotCzarny of #maemo fame.

Viral blogging

Recently, I stum­bled upon a site cal­led “soup”. Which, in essence, is some­thing like a collec­tive dump for things people find on the Intertu­bes. You can post texts, quo­tes, images, music and videos, with a handy book­marklet that redu­ces the time bet­ween fin­ding things on the Intar­web and them showing up on your soup page to a couple of seconds. And the intra-soup per­for­mance is also remar­ka­bly: every user can repost ano­ther user’s con­tent with the sim­ple click of a but­ton. Cou­pled with a sim­ple subscription/“friends” sys­tem which allows you to view a uni­fied stream of your friends’/friends of a friend’s con­tent, you can lite­r­ally see con­tent explode over soup in wave­forms (tracking of which is aided by soup regis­te­ring who repos­ted from whom and who repos­ted an item you put into the stream).

Of course there’s a few chinks here and there, but all in all, it works remar­ka­bly well. There’s fea­tures like end­less scrol­ling on the fri­ends pages, and even some sta­tistics for you ana­lysts out there. On a side note, I’m wait­ing for con­tent pro­pa­ga­tion stu­dies con­cerning this site, it’s bound to be only a mat­ter of time.

I star­ted won­de­ring what you could call the con­cept, this “soup prin­ciple”. And in a fit of minor mad­ness yes­ter­day, reve­la­tion struck me: soup is viral blog­ging. And “blog” refer­ring in the direc­tion of what ear­lier web­logs were about — a sort of drop box for con­tent you found on the Inter­net and wan­ted to share (which was rather import­ant when you didn’t just google ever­y­thing), not the heaps of self-centered con­tent crea­tion these days, bar­ring exceptions.

Blogs usually come in two major forms, when regar­ding the con­tent. There’s the topic-centered ones (like, for example, the Ger­man Netz­po­li­tik (“net poli­tics”) — I’m not really into the whole blog thin­gie cul­ture that deve­l­o­ped yon­der the pond, so just think of your own exam­ples), which occupy them­sel­ves with mainly a sin­gle topic, which can be broad. Jour­na­listic styles are often used, esta­blis­hing reports of infor­ma­tion scra­pable from the Inter­net, occa­sio­nally inclu­ding genuine (and poten­ti­ally off­line) “ori­gi­nal” infor­ma­tion. The other kind of blog would be the person-specific ones, with topics ran­ging from per­so­nal expe­ri­en­ces in life, like com­plai­ning about the crafts­men who just fucked up their kit­chen or what size of load they put in the crap­per that day, to dis­co­ve­ries they made on the Inter­net. But, mostly, they con­cern them­sel­ves with crea­tion of con­tent, not repetition.

Soup picks up some­where there, but in con­trast it focus­ses mainly on repe­ti­tion; you put things in the soup, and others stir it. You can add ori­gi­nal con­tent, which gives the soup a bet­ter (or, well, dif­fe­rent) fla­vour, but it’s mostly about see­ing what others pos­ted and repos­ting it. And in that sense, it’s viral: you inject some­thing into the loop, and it just gets pro­pa­ga­ted from per­son to per­son, sit­ting in their soups.

The effect is noti­ce­able in nor­mal blogs, too, but the ori­gi­na­lity fac­tor people try to intro­duce mudd­les the effect — blogs are a highly sub­jec­tive mat­ter, as oppo­sed to news sites and simi­lar, and usually don’t try to fuzz about it. But some­thing like soup, which just by its for­mat (you can add files and a descrip­tion — and actual text is a dif­fe­rent item from e.g. images) sug­gests you not to blow things out of pro­por­ti­ons, and just be the one who noti­ces and shares.

This can be seen as good, and also bad, but it leads to new ways of what you might define as sub­jec­tive: in being choosy about what you repost. Since you’re limited to small mor­sels of data, except the heaps of noise con­cea­ling data, you have to express your­self in a mosaic way of things — if you want to express your­self at all. But, nevert­he­l­ess, it allows you to put your own stamp on things in a decep­tively easy way, and thus, can be con­side­red blog­ging.

It’s get­ting exciting.

The story of PayPal and the wayward e-mail

It was a quickly coo­ling night after an unex­pec­ted sunny day at the end of Sep­tem­bre when I was rea­ding my e-mail inbox for my CCCC address. Rea­ding the last mail, I was con­fron­ted with a mail from category@paypal.com refe­ren­cing the sub­ject of a recently sent mail of mine. This made me won­der — scam­mers try­ing to mask their phis­hing attempts or UBE as mes­sa­ges see­ming to ori­gi­nate from Pay­Pal is old news to someone who bothe­red che­cking his inbox or spam fil­ters the last decade or so, but what rai­sed my atten­tion me was that I the sub­ject was from a mail I sent to a mai­ling list. This did not seem all too unli­kely, see­ing how I regu­larly get spam­med on all user IDs of my GPG public key­ring, but it was (and still is, actually) rather odd. So I che­cked the mail.

From category@paypal.com Sun Sep 23 01:17:52 2007
Return-path: <category@paypal.com>
Envelope-to: towo@koeln.ccc.de
Delivery-date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:17:52 +0200
Recei­ved: from mx1.phx.paypal.com ([66.211.168.231]
helo=phx01imail03.phx.paypal.com) by eternity.koeln.ccc.de with esmtp (Exim
4.50) id 1IZEES-00010K-K9 for towo@koeln.ccc.de; Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:17:52
+0200
DomainKey-Signature: s=dkim; d=paypal.com; c=nofws; q=dns;
h=Thread-Topic:Content-Class:Received:Message-ID:
X-MimeOLE:Date:From:To:Subject:MIME-Version:
Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-Mailer:
Return-Path:X-OriginalArrivalTime;
b=Zid/bPlpxsC2tL+3bTApCi+VUjUI6UMQK+BMSEhAqE9x/CUu2r3fY
sDpPMVCTs5WnFhPmlg0gEqN46IJOMI6Yq9MFnzWqaXYX9dPAE9Z4g
VGwq2wtmHUCfZ3P0JR2uuzWvEbfY7e7P30nT3TZyYEo9TjT2zJpu/ +GU52FkQTxC0=;
Thread-Topic: War­nung vor cacert.org (KMM3385442I96L0KM) :ppk1
Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
Recei­ved: from oma-kaaas-005 ([10.248.144.75]) by
usa-entot-002.corp.ebay.com with Micro­soft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Sat, 22
Sep 2007 18:20:47 –0500
Message-ID: <30057323.1190503245854.JavaMail.kanauser@oma-kaaas-005>
X-MimeOLE: Pro­du­ced By Micro­soft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1896
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 18:20:46 –0500 (CDT)
From: <category@paypal.com>
To: “Tobias Wol­ter” <towo@koeln.ccc.de>
Sub­ject: Re: War­nung vor cacert.org (KMM3385442I96L0KM) :ppk1
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=“iso-8859–1″
X-Mailer: KANA Response 9.5.0.31
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 22 Sep 2007 23:20:47.0312 (UTC)
FILETIME=[34D80D00:01C7FD6F]
X-SA-Do-Not-Run: Yes
X-Verified-Sender: Yes
X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: 66.211.168.231
X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: category@paypal.com
X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on eternity.koeln.ccc.de); SAExim­Run­Cond expan­ded to
false
X-Evolution-Source: imap://towo@eternity.koeln.ccc.de/
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Dear Tobias Wolter,

Thank you for con­ta­c­ting PayPal.

Unfor­t­u­na­tely, we are unable to deter­mine the nature of your inquiry. In
order to bet­ter assist you, we need you to pro­vide us with the buyer
/seller’s email address, along with a case num­ber or other per­ti­nent
infor­ma­tion per­tai­ning to this case. We do apo­lo­gize for any
inconvenience.

Thank you for your coope­ra­tion and we look for­ward to your reply.

If you have any fur­ther ques­ti­ons, please feel free to con­tact us again.

Sin­ce­rely,
Cyn­thia
Pay­Pal Reso­lu­tion Ser­vices
Pay­Pal, an eBay Company

Ori­gi­nal Mes­sage Fol­lows:
————————
Am Sonn­tag, den ##.##.####, ##:## +#### schrieb Stef­fen Dett­mer:
> Nun will man anschei­nend im nachtrC$glich (!) Sicher­heits­richt­li­nien
> fest­le­gen, um in Fire­fox zu kom­men. Wie bitte soll das im NACH­HIN­EIN
> gehen — oder gibt es ein neues root-Zertifikat?
>
> Wei­ter­hin gibt es Zer­ti­fi­kate, die in den Subject-Informationen
> ledig­lich einen Host­na­men beinhal­ten, aber kei­nen Ver­weis auf eine
> jurs­tisch fass­bare Ein­rich­tung.
>
> Das alles ist for­mal und sicher­heits­tech­nisch untrag­bar.
Das kom­plette Kon­zept von X.###-Zertifikaten ist aber von die­sem gro­ben
Ent­wick­lungs­pro­blem betrof­fen. Der Unter­schied zwi­schen CAcert und jeder
ande­ren belie­bi­gen CA ist nur, daC? CAcert nichts kos­tet. Man C<bergibt
in
jedem Falle das Ver­trauen an einen ande­ren, und ab da beginnt der Punkt,
wo Sicher­heit per Defi­ni­ton nur noch bedingt her­stell­bar ist.
–towo
[ Attach­ment # Type: application/pgp-signature Name: signature.asc]
[ Attach­ment #.# Type: application/pgp-signature]

[ Attach­ment # Type: application/pgp-signature Name: signature.asc]

And what do you know… It seems to be rather authen­tic. The Recei­ved: lines check out — or are well-faked — and even the num­be­ring scheme seems to stem from PayPal’s request tra­cker. Also note that there are no spel­ling mis­ta­kes in the boi­ler­plate text, and a script that seems to thought­fully replace poten­ti­ally incri­mi­na­ting digits (those little bas­tards, always snea­king into mails!) with aes­the­ti­cally plea­sing hash marks.

Strange shit. I replied; let’s see what happens.

Sep­tem­ber 23^rd: Lo and behold, there was a reply:

Return-path: <category@paypal.com>
Envelope-to: towo@koeln.ccc.de
Delivery-date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:56:54 +0200
Recei­ved: from mx1.phx.paypal.com ([66.211.168.231]
helo=phx01imail03.phx.paypal.com) by eternity.koeln.ccc.de with esmtp (Exim
4.50) id 1IZStC-00074y-1H for towo@koeln.ccc.de; Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:56:54
+0200
DomainKey-Signature: s=dkim; d=paypal.com; c=nofws; q=dns;
h=Thread-Topic:Content-Class:Received:Message-ID:
X-MimeOLE:Date:From:To:Subject:MIME-Version:
Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-Mailer:
Return-Path:X-OriginalArrivalTime;
b=oHyWWASLC9BdnFKCIoYuhdAvrIzwNLwSqeLKlmdtsblKs/7q44RTj
4U6syRHlPPe3hNgXEUlhmp2ZCJM4+oh7UTr4M3/H0+CEEnm47d4K2
PKXOl4ZnKHFGEZx0oHFlibru3zNGlADolPbHwH0hxTcp0ffcCw7MN Sk/CbeOFmkME=;
Thread-Topic: War­nung vor cacert.org (KMM3505931I96L0KM) :ppk1
Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
Recei­ved: from oma-kaaas-005 ([10.248.144.75]) by
usa-entot-002.corp.ebay.com with Micro­soft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Sun, 23
Sep 2007 09:59:42 –0500
Message-ID: <996629.1190559582213.JavaMail.kanauser@oma-kaaas-005>
X-MimeOLE: Pro­du­ced By Micro­soft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1896
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:59:42 –0500 (CDT)
From: <category@paypal.com>
To: “Tobias Wol­ter” <towo@koeln.ccc.de>
Sub­ject: Re: War­nung vor cacert.org (KMM3505931I96L0KM) :ppk1
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=“iso-8859–1″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-Mailer: KANA Response 9.5.0.31
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 23 Sep 2007 14:59:42.0319 (UTC)
FILETIME=[5F1FEFF0:01C7FDF2]
X-SA-Do-Not-Run: Yes
X-Verified-Sender: Yes
X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: 66.211.168.231
X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: category@paypal.com
X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on eternity.koeln.ccc.de); SAExim­Run­Cond expan­ded to
false
X-Evolution-Source: imap://towo@eternity.koeln.ccc.de/

Dear Tobias Wolter,

Thanks for wri­t­ing to us. I app­re­ciate the oppor­tu­nity to assist you=20
with your questions.

Busi­ness and Pre­mier account hol­ders receive Pre­mium Cust­o­mer Service,=20
seven days a week from our Busi­ness and Pre­mier account spe­cia­lists. Our
team is spe­ci­fi­cally trai­ned to accom­mo­date the needs of pre­mium account
mem­bers. There are a num­ber of ways to con­tact specialists:=20

=B7 By phone: 08707 307 191=20

=B7 By Email:=20

1. Log in to your account at https://www.paypal.co.uk/

2. Click the ‘Help’ link in the upper right-hand cor­ner of any=20
Pay­Pal page=20

3. Click the ‘Con­tact Us’ link=20

4. Select ‘Con­tact Cust­o­mer Ser­vice’ for help by email or=20
’Ser­vice Centre’ for help by phone=20

=B7 By post:=20
Pay­Pal Europe
P.O. Box 9473
Dub­lin 15
Ireland=20
For future refe­rence, this infor­ma­tion is also loca­ted in the Help=20
Centre. To locate the Pay­Pal Help Centre please fol­low these=20
instructions:

1. Click https://www.paypal.co.uk/help

2. Go to ‘Con­tact Us’ under Cate­go­ries on the Help Centre page=20

Thank you for using Pay­Pal for your online pay­ment needs.

Sin­ce­rely,
Scott
Pay­Pal, an eBay Company

Copy­right =A9 1999–2007 Pay­Pal. All rights reserved.=20
Pay­Pal (Europe) S.=E0 r.l. & Cie, S.C.A.
Soci=E9t=E9 en Com­man­dite par Actions
Regis­te­red Office: 5^th Floor 22–24 Bou­le­vard Royal L-2449, Luxem­bourg
RCS Luxem­bourg B 118 349

Ori­gi­nal Mes­sage Fol­lows:
————————
Am Sams­tag, den ##.##.####, ##:## -#### schrieb category@paypal.com:
> Unfor­t­u­na­tely, we are unable to deter­mine the nature of your inquiry.=20
In
> order to bet­ter assist you, we need you to pro­vide us with the buyer=20
> /seller’s email address, along with a case num­ber or other pertinent=20
> infor­ma­tion per­tai­ning to this case. We do apo­lo­gize for any=20
> inconvenience.=20
>=20
> Thank you for your coope­ra­tion and we look for­ward to your reply.=20
>=20
> If you have any fur­ther ques­ti­ons, please feel free to con­tact us=20
again.

Yeah, I’m really inte­res­ted to know why you boi­ler­plate (since my Ger­man
obviously didn’t faze you in any regard) me with a mai­ling list pos­ting
that seems to have somehow found a way into your request tracker.

Care to explain?

For com­ple­ten­ess, my sup­po­sed ori­gi­nal mes­sage fol­lows…
> Ori­gi­nal Mes­sage Fol­lows:
> ————————
> Am Sonn­tag, den ##.##.####, ##:## +#### schrieb Stef­fen Dett­mer:
> > Nun will man anschei­nend im nachtrC$glich (!) Sicher­heits­richt­li­nien
> > fest­le­gen, um in Fire­fox zu kom­men. Wie bitte soll das im NACH­HIN­EIN
> > gehen — oder gibt es ein neues root-Zertifikat?
> >=20
> > Wei­ter­hin gibt es Zer­ti­fi­kate, die in den Subject-Informationen
> > ledig­lich einen Host­na­men beinhal­ten, aber kei­nen Ver­weis auf eine
> > jurs­tisch fass­bare Ein­rich­tung.
> >=20
> > Das alles ist for­mal und sicher­heits­tech­nisch untrag­bar.
> Das kom­plette Kon­zept von X.###-Zertifikaten ist aber von diesem=20
gro­ben
> Ent­wick­lungs­pro­blem betrof­fen. Der Unter­schied zwi­schen CAcert und=20
jeder
> ande­ren belie­bi­gen CA ist nur, daC? CAcert nichts kos­tet. Man=20
C<bergibt=20
> in
> jedem Falle das Ver­trauen an einen ande­ren, und ab da beginnt der=20
Punkt,
> wo Sicher­heit per Defi­ni­ton nur noch bedingt her­stell­bar ist.
> –towo
> [ Attach­ment # Type: application/pgp-signature Name: signature.asc]
> [ Attach­ment #.# Type: application/pgp-signature]
>=20
> [ Attach­ment # Type: application/pgp-signature Name: signature.asc]

–towo

P.S.: category@paypal.com sounds like a serious mail sys­tem char­lie
fox­trot for a sup­port address.

[ Attach­ment # Type: application/pgp-signature Name: signature.asc]

Seems like no-one there is keen on being sup­por­tive in the least.