Liquid Networks: A Response

Boy oh boy. If rigid corporate CEOs could see a chapter like this one. This is a fine example of other things I've argued for years, primarily the idea that the best method is always in the realm of compromise--often the very center of the two extremes--not on the edges where one idea is "evil" and the other "good."

While it might be a stretch to suggest these rules apply across the board to everything--as this chapter seems to imply--the ideas it presents and the comparisons it makes conjure up a ton of little nuggets of info I've learned over the years, especially in the examples it presents. For instance, the idea of the "edge of chaos" is actually a primary principle in the view of evolution. The idea is that you can track which species became extinct and which didn't by how they adapted. If they adapted too little, remaining rigid in their ways, they died off. If they adapted too easily or too often, slipping into the realm of "chaos," they died off as well. It was the species that managed to live on the edge of chaos that managed to continue surviving for the longest period of time. (NOTE: This might not be an aspect of the theory of evolution per se. It is more in line with chaos theory applied to evolution.) The comparison between solids, liquids, and gases is almost perfect. Gases are too chaotic, solids are too rigid, but liquids are just the right mixture of both (though to be fair, the victims of Hurricane Katrina might have some more harsh words for liquid than the rest of us. BA DUM TISH).

It is also true that Carbon makes up the vast majority of living things, and the probable cause for this is its versatility in combining various elements. In a way, this is a reflection of the adjacent possible, as most innovation consists of combining old things in new ways. How appropriate then that the atom capable of the greatest number of combinations with the lowest energy input is the source of life and arguably the source of innovation itself. The more old things you can combine into a single entity, generally the more innovative the result will be.

Reading this chapter makes me think of the only job I've ever held and the experiences I had in it. When I was working as a courtesy clerk at Albertsons, I started off in what felt more like a liqiud network, but gradually it became more solid until I couldn't take it anymore and quit. To be fair, I'm far from what you'd call "adaptable," so in a sense, I was just as "solid" as the corporate rules were, but I think most people would agree with me that a company like Albertsons runs itself very rigidly. Part of the reason I got to have a more "liquid" setup was because I was the closer. I had a long list of tasks that had to be completed, and there were generally rules for doing them, but nobody was really looking over my shoulder giving me orders. I was kind of free to try changing the order I did things, the ways I did them, and what I chose to prioritize. About 2/3 of the stuff I did worked, and the other third got lukewarm reactions and sometimes ridicule. Most of the time, there were genuinely good reasons to ridicule my methods, and that was frustrating. However, if I do say so myself, I think I was able to find some interesting ways to do my job that most others wouldn't have.

For example, there was often a problem dealing with go backs. They were all put in a cart for me to push around the store so I could reshelve them. However, I would sometimes come back and find that another cart of go backs had shown up. This bothered me for two reasons: 1) it made me feel like I had accomplished nothing when I brought back my cart empty, and 2) it meant that the cashiers had to run to the cart bay and get a new one to put go backs in whenever I took the original one. So I began carrying the go backs by hand, which was not as efficient as the cart might have been, but prevented my job from burdening the cashiers. Unfortunately, this solution was pretty much the opposite of practical, and I got in trouble for it a lot. Then a solution was proposed to me: go get a new cart from the bay before I start doing go backs and effectively replace the one I take. This seemed like a great compromise. This method gave way to another method when I realized that most of the time the new go back care was just getting snatched up by people who needed it: I started putting the go backs into a smaller handheld basket to carry around.

Other aspects of my job changed in a similar fashion, though none of them were what I would call "appreciated" by my employer, and I'm pretty sure that's because it was a more solid than fluid environment. I tried doing various jobs at different times, starting them sooner or sometimes later. I came up with shortcuts that I thought could make things easier, though to be fair some of these weren't exactly appropriate for a customer oriented grocery store like Albertsons. (I'd often find places to temporarily store things instead of putting them away because I would get called away quite often and it just wasn't efficient--or sometimes practical, in my opinion--to go out of my way to put things away. Too often, when I took the longer route, I'd end up getting called away again and have to waste more time putting away something I just spent a few minutes getting out for the third time.) In fact, I actually came up with some ideas that I thought would be useful and original, and none of them were adopted for one reason or another.

The most significant example I can think of is that the bottle area--like it is at most stores--was kind of frustrating to deal with because the machines were so crappy. Half the time they wouldn't take bottles from products we carried and we had to hand count them. Since Albertsons was strict about only giving money for products that we carried in the store, there would be an awful lot of time spent trying to figure out whether we carried something or not. So I suggested to the store manager that he put together a large poster listing everything we carried and posted it in the bottle area. This would make it easier for both the customer and the courtesy clerk to figure out what we could accept and couldn't. I was told this was a good idea, but what we carried changed so much that it wouldn't adequately reflect what we could accept anyway. In retrospect, this seems like a real cheap excuse, as the same argument could be made in favor of making a poster like that, but apparently the inadequacy of the bottle machines was considered a better measure than anything we could create to make the job easier.

Eventually, because of my own stubborness and the stubborness of the basic corporate structure of Albertsons, I wasn't able to continue working there anymore. (That's when I went back to college, where I could put my talents to more creative use. Coincidence? :) ) They wanted me to just do what I was told, and I couldn't. I had to be able to think bigger and work more freely. Not that there's no downside to this; honestly, it can be just as frustrating as living under rigid rules. But it makes better use of my ideas and talents. In the long run, I believe it will pay off better to have a more free-thinking job than the rigid one I held for three and a half years.

I am loving this textbook Mr. Hedges. It almost saddens me that we have no new reading over this weekend. (Almost. I have a lot of catching up to do in my other classes.) I just hope that I can find ways to be innovative enough with this project that it turns out okay. Because doing things differently is very important to me. I don't like to be derivative at all.

The Adjacent Possible: A Response

Reading "The Adjacent Possible" felt like a genuine relief. As I develop my site for troll slayers--or, arguably, trolls like me--it will be important for me to keep this in mind.

To be honest, it kind of changed my views on innovation. See, I tend to define innovation in much more extreme terms. Before I read this article, I pretty much considered true innovation to be creating something essentially out of thin air. Of course, I knew this wasn't entirely the case, as many of the most innovative things in the world took elements from other places. Still, it seemed to me that "true" innovation always contained an element or elements that were genuinely conjured up from the "genius" of exceptionally gifted people. In many ways, this led me to be very dismissive of many games that have been deemed "innovative" because I felt a lot of those "innovations" weren't really changing things; just rearranging them and sometimes borrowing them from other places.

As it turns out, though, innovation isn't something that really happens--even partially--in a vacuum. It pretty much consists of taking what's already there, tearing it apart, taking the pieces from various places, glueing them together, and then seeing if it works. Strangely, I find this a bit liberating, though I still feel as though my potential for innovation is significantly lower than that of others. Guess we'll just have to see as this class moves forward.

This new view of innovation is not without downsides, though. See, for the longest time, I've been arguing with gamers about what constitutes innovation, as they have a strong tendency to scream and moan over the lack of "original" stuff being put out in the industry nowadays. In addition to believing innovation is the only way to move our industry forward, these same gamers proclaim it's not even that hard to do it. I've been arguing against both these claims. I believe that innovation happens in our industry all the time and many players just don't stop to appreciate it. I also believe that innovation is probably one of the hardest things for a developer to do.

Given the way "The Adjacent Possible" defines innovation, I can prove that innovation is not the amazing land of "originality" that gamers keep claiming it is, as it consists largely of recycled and reshuffled parts. But that also means they can more legitimately claim that innovating "isn't that hard." After all, if it's just taking old stuff and presenting it differently, where's the "effort"? In short, this article will prove both invaluable and a handicap in the essays I'm currently writing: "The Myth of Greatness" and "Innovation Crapovation." I'm planning to post both of these on my prospective site for "troll slayers" like myself.

Getting away from how this article will be useful to me in arguments, I want to say that it actually encapsulates some things I've felt for a long time. I used to argue, for instance, that telling people to "think outside the box" was effectively asking them to think outside their own minds, a literal impossibility. In that sense, I believed much innovation was just an accident, some random piece of genius people just stumbled across almost by luck, albeit while thinking hard about doing things differently. What this article calls the adjacent possible is a pretty good synonym for that: our minds are constrained by the parts we have, and we can only grow the mansion by recycling things, not by skipping ahead rooms the way people like Charles Babbage did.

It's too bad more people can't see innovation this way. Otherwise, I think there'd be less complaint about our free markets lacking the drive for innovation. Overall, this was very interesting, and I'm looking forward to the next chapter.

DMF203 Assignment 6: Final Game

Here is a link to the website where I have posted all three files for my Final Game.
I ultimately--due to circumstances and an absurdly inexcusable amount of procrastination--had to settle for what I provided: a modified game of Pong. I'm sorry my final game does not match my original proposal.
Click here to go to my Google Site.

DMF203 Assignment 5: First Game

Here is a link to my google page where you can view the SWF file of my first game:

Click here

DMF203 Description of Final Game

I started this term with a specific game in mind. The idea for it grew a little, and it is now likely impossible to pull off completely. But I believe I can get at least ONE of these games made before the term ends.

My idea is inspired by a subject that fascinates me: chemistry. If you read my first post from this term, I described how I'd like to turn the basic ideas in chemistry into a puzzle game. I even split it into three disciplines, which is why I'm going to do THREE games if there's time. I'll describe my plans for each of them.

TITLE: CHEMISTRY WARS

GENERAL: This discipline deals primarily with how to read the periodic table and the bonds formed between atoms of each element. My idea for the game is to make the mouse the primary method of play. When the round starts, a random element from the first 20 in the table is chosen and replaces the mouse pointer. When the player clicks, it lays down the element. Then another random element is selected and the process repeats. If the player sees that two elements can form a molecule or begin the formation of a molecule, s/he lays them next to each other. For every completed molecule, a set amount of points are added to the total and extra time is added to the game clock, which signifies when the game will end. The more complex the molecule formed, the greater the points and added time. The completed molecule will also disappear from the field.
There are three elements in the first 20 called Noble Gases that cannot form bonds. These are indicated with a star in the background. These are the "bonus blocks." If a player lays one down, it will automatically bond with everything around it and remove those elements for a huge bonus.

ORGANIC: Organic chemistry deals mostly with nomenclature (that's how to name molecules) and identifying "groups." For example, a carbon bonded to 4 hydrogens is called "Methane," two carbons bonded with 6 hydrogens is called "Ethane," three carbons bonded with 8 hydrogens is called "Propane," and so on. The game version is kind of the reverse of the GENERAL discipline. There's a random group of elements ALREADY on the field and the player needs to click on elements to create specified groups. If they complete a molecule, another one is randomly selected from among the possibilities programmed in, and the player now has to complete the NEW molecule. Naturally, the player scores points every time s/he completes a molecule. As with the other game, there's a time limit that can be restored as molecules are completed.

BIO: Biochemistry deals with DNA and the atomic structure of many biological molecules like carbohydrates and fats. It also explains how the body constructs proteins. For me, the DNA is the most interesting part, so I intend to focus on that. In this version of the game, the player takes the complimentary bases found in DNA--adenine pairs with thymine and cytosine pairs with guanine--and uses them to construct DNA strands. In addition, there is a single strand called RNA that uses uracil instead of thymine, and the player can construct either of them at the same time. A completed strand of either RNA or DNA nets the player points and a fresh strand. This is probably the simplest of my ideas.

So this is my game idea(s). Let me know which of these sounds the most interesting and which is the most feasible in the three weeks we have. :)

DMF203 Assignment 4: Animation Symbols

Please click on the link below to visit my Google site. My animation symbols are naturally the two files labeled "Animation Symbols."

Click here

DMF203 Assignment 3: Programmatic Collage

This is what I was trying to do:

Unfortunately, this is all I could accomplish: Visit my webpage
And this is the code I used to get it:
 package  {
    import flash.display.MovieClip;
    import flash.text.Font;
    import flash.text.TextField;
    import flash.text.TextFormat;
    import flash.events.Event;
  
    public class Main extends MovieClip{
        var shapeOne:MovieClip;
        var shapeTwo:MovieClip;
        var shapeThree:MovieClip;
        var shapeFour:MovieClip;
        var shapeFive:MovieClip;
      
        public function Main() {
            // constructor code
            trace ("I really hate coding this shit!");
            //End printing stuff
            shapeOne = new TitleScreen;
            shapeTwo = new PeriodicTable;
            shapeThree = new BioCollage;
            shapeFour = new OrganicCollage;
            shapeFive = new InorganicCollage;
            //Now, the stage manipulation stuff...
            //the colon says "It MUST be a MovieClip"
            //CHANGE "Chlorine" -> the "Linkage" of one of your symbols
            addChild(shapeOne); //add to stage
            addChild(shapeTwo);
            addChild(shapeThree);
            addChild(shapeFour);
            addChild(shapeFive);
            shapeOne.x = 125;// location LEFT RIGHT
            shapeOne.y = 100; //location UP DOWN
            //NOTE: Y-DOWN is Positive
            shapeOne.scaleX = .5;
            shapeOne.scaleY = .5;
            shapeTwo.x = 88;
            shapeTwo.y = 187;
            shapeTwo.scaleX = .5;
            shapeTwo.scaleY = .5;
            shapeTwo.rotation = 45;
            shapeThree.scaleX = .5;
            shapeThree.scaleY = .5;
            shapeThree.x = 224;
            shapeThree.y = 324;
            shapeThree.rotation = 315;
            shapeFour.x = 280;
            shapeFour.y = 67;
            shapeFour.scaleX = .5;
            shapeFour.scaleY = .5;
            shapeFour.rotation = 315;
            shapeFive.scaleX = .5;
            shapeFive.scaleY = .5;
            shapeFive.rotation = 45;
            shapeFive.x = 0;
            shapeFive.y = 0;
        } //Function Main
    }
}