The Ephemeral Notebook

This is a futurism exploration and a fun example of turning it into a game based on my last post.  This is largely inspired by Jane McGonigal’s inspiring talk at GDC this year – about how game designers are the reality hackers of the future and how we will be called on to solve problems.  So here goes:

Background

In the theoretical future, a major data collapse happens.  A single service like Amazon S3 or one of those services to back up your personal data online falls to a natural disaster, manmade disaster or virus.  Much like trust in the banks is an issue today, trust in services becomes an issue.  It’s also just a plain-good optimization pattern, disaster or no, but sometimes people won’t move on something until after they should’ve so I pulled this scenario out of the blue as an example.

My solution is the cloud storage game.  It’s also sort of a cloud processing and cloud throughput / latency solution (see last post) but for simplicity of example sake I’m going to focus on storage.  It’s based on parity-driven data storage and delivery models like ZFS and BitTorrent.  Let’s say you take a picture on your phone – it needs to be stored somewhere.  It will of course also be stored on your phone, but that’s not enough because phones die and the data is lost for good.

ManyWhere Inc

Instead of storing it somewhere you store it ManyWhere (my name idea for this).  A number of possible storage vendors are all available for you to store this data with a single API (ManyWhere API) bridging their APIs.  However, as with all these systems, these cost money (in the cast of S3, transfer, request and storage over time are all charged).  Also there’s the trust issue.  Here’s where the ZFS-ish part comes in.  You have some thick hardware lying around – so do your friends and people you would trust to hold onto something.  Through a simple provider interface, they will store some of your data if you store some of theirs.  So now when you store something you have a list of places it will go and a cost threshold.  It will go to ALL of the places below the threshold.  Imagine data being stored (in an encrypted or parity form of course) across your entire social network.

Adding Game to It

Now while companies charge money for this, your friends instead charge points.  By providing storage or processing power for your friends you amass points from them.  Your points are visible as a ‘who owes you’ breakdown as well as an amass of total points owed to you.  You proudly display this on your social networks as a form of social capital realized.  Other friends-of-friends can see that many other people trust you with their data, so you must also be fairly trustworthy.  Local social networks and large groupings have leaderboards (this is again all based on offering up spare storage and cpu – so it’s of no real cost unless you decide to be philanthropic). In addition the number of parking wars -esque games that could be created on top of this is pretty epic.

Corporations and Causes

Ok, now we bring the companies back in.  Companies can be both sources-of-last-resort (trust * cost = social cost) – if you trust them enough and their cost is low (or nothing) they might also make it in past your threshold.  On the reverse side, companies may need storage or processing needs to offer in return for points.  Those points may be microtrans equivalent values (virtual currencies) which may be redeemable by them or by partner vendors.  For example, provide some extra CPU for big internet company A, redeem some virtual goods from MMO company B (a partner of A).  The leaderboard concept still applies and is already gamey (SETI and Folding are two projects doing this RIGHT NOW with no direct incentive).

Results

The end result of all of this would require a descriptor system (looking at you bittorrent, zfs), and would require that this be either decentralized (a DNS-like system or extension would work), or a part of a service (whether hypothetical company ManyWhere, or more likely a partner project with someone like Google).  However the ramifications are – less traffic and latency all around (using the description which is easily cacheable, you could always pull from a close, often local data/processing source), less storage and cpu costs for society in general (we’re not likely to ever move to a word of only thin clients – and due to that there are trillions of FLOPs and Gigabytes lying around dormant), a visualization of social capital mechanics (likely to breed its own decorum, but you can base some value decisions on it regardless), and an incentive for people to provide help to causes they care about (no one has to provide cpu to NastyMarketingCompany but many would choose to offer up social capital for HelpsFeedTheHomelessOrg).

There are some obvious technical limitations to the processing side (universal language – though that’s relatively solveable by bucketing the service into platforms), but the storage side is something people could work on NOW, so I think it at least deserves a PGI award (Pretty Good Idea).  [Edit: This also requires to a certain degree an embrace of OpenID or something like it.  Not from a technical side but from a society-accepting-distributed-trust-brokering side]

What do you think, internet?

There has been a lot of talk about Onlive.com and their stellar presentation at GDC.  Instead of discussing the intracacies of their technical limitations, the business model, etc – I’ll start by sending you to Dave Perry’s accurate depiction of my thoughts on the matter.  I will instead start with an alternate present time scenario for kicks:

The year is 2009, Microsoft never entered the graphics acceleration fray with Direct Draw and instead adopted Open GL (I know, lol).  Open GL over the years gets many extensions driven by the games industry and Microsoft’s foray into it.  A lot of work is done to maintain a steady state in video memory so that new data flushes were required less often (extensions for animation, culling and scene graphing) – due to the fact that the curve of memory costs increased far faster than the cost of bandwidth (due to buss switching and such, see also DMA channel 0, etc).  This focus on throughput optimization leads to a revelation and a very different form of OpenGL ES.  An Onlive-like service shows up (they’re not the first to do this by far), and instead of pushing HD pixels compressed, they’re pushing standardized commands filtered by a recognition of what the output device is.  The television manufacturers or the cable/dsl boxes add in a graphics card to turn the commands into video.  Phones are able to run the same way, with pixel resolution handled by the phones – so yes, hook up a bluetooth gaming pad to your phone and play Team Fortress 2 on it.  Now the problem is flipped on its head – throughput is no longer quite the factor is was and now memory is the issue (one in which we are currently excelling at progressing).  Also, the business is a distributed issue now:  ISPs provide graphics hardware in their black boxes (which has a planned obsolescence – a cherish business model), and partner with gaming companies, as they’d still likely want to house servers in their NOCs due to latency.  Now you don’t have on large company providing the ’service’ (Historically, systems like Onlive which require absolute adoption and ‘cannot fail’ have been trumped by systems which allow failure to happen iteratively and distribute the cost of such failure).

Ok, so enough fantasy – that scenario obviously didn’t happen (and I could even point out a good many reasons why) – but it’s fun to speculate.  The base issue is an optimization one.  For anything digital it tends to be:   Memory – Processing – Throughput – Latency, with the last one generally intertwined with the previous three, so you could for simplicity sake boil it down to Memory – Processing – Throughput.  Much like other optimization triangles (Cheap – Good – Fast), the optimization patterns are typically: ‘pick 2′ or ‘pick 1′.  My above scenario was based on a Throughput optimization as historically it has the worst progression curve.  This optimization triangle is very interesting because we’re constantly playing with it.  The thin-client/thick-client ‘wiggle’ in history has been a product of this.  Back in the 70s when memory and processing were expensive, thin clients (terminals) were the norm.  In the 90s there was a huge shift from processing to memory (with more caches, etc) as the price of memory plummetted.

Now the issues are less technical and more political – Trust, Social Capital, Privacy, Security, Availability.  The problem with the thin client isn’t really a technical issue so much anymore – it’s an issue of trust.  To describe the thin/thick issue another way, there’s the war between Distribution and Centralization.  Except that issue is largely gone – even our Centralization is distributed at this point.  Our centralized data isn’t often stored on a single server – and in the future (or present depending on the service), it isn’t processed on a single server either.

A possible dream for the future (in ARG game form!) is my next post (seperated so this isn’t a TL;DR).

Ok I’m fed up with all the themes I’ve tried – going back to K2.   At some point I’ll get some time to actually tweak up my own theme but right now I need functionality over style and I have a borderline neurotic obsession with margins, paddings and bleeds ‘feeling right’.  While this theme is far from perfect, it’s easier to tweak to get there.  For those reading this on my LJ, ignore this wordpress whine, and instead appreciate this image:

Thus concludes a great GDC09.  My flight back is tomorrow and I’m looking forward to being home and going through my contacts list and posting a full recap.

The Sense Archetypes

They are often called the ‘eyes’ or the ‘arcane’, the 6 sense archetypes are the birthing grounds for magic.  Wheras the 10 Knowledge Archetypes govern skill and knowledge in the realms of the mundane, the sense cover that which is beyond the normal experience.  Each Archetype provides a single channel skill called a sixsense.  Like other channels, they must be activated and they use bandwidth while they are on.

It is common for avatars of one sense archetype to have more than one sense, and there are explicit uses found in combining them.  In addition, the sum of all 6 archetype values is the Awareness score, which is used for all passive sensory checks, and can be thought of the sixth sense.  See The Senses for more information.

These are the 6 Sense Archetypes and their abilities:

Magician – (Magician)

The Magician is the true physicist.  Waves, fields, particles, energies, bonds, and structures become directly visible.  The Magician is also a mathematician, able to see numeric relationships and the formulas or coefficients that compose any thing they can see.  A Magician (rank 2) for example would be able to look at a piece of glass and see that it has a refractive index of ~1.51724 just as easily as someone else might see something as ‘red’.  Much like all the senses. this information works like a parabolic microphone with a ‘tune’ control.  A little information can be seen about a lot or a lot of information can be seen about a little.  The Magician is able to see ‘magic’ often for what it is, and at very high levels, how to recreate it.  This understanding is a cornerstone for the practice of magic.  Common aspects are witchcraft, alchemy, chemistry, physics, biology, astrology.

Ability: Truth Sense

• Rank 1: Can sense relative power, notable/primary archetype, aura colours representing elements
• Rank 2: Can sense makeup, components, structure, ratios, proportion, full light spectrum
• Rank 3: Can sense causality, flow, rivers (coherence, energy, karma)
• Rank 4: Can sense capabilities, abilities, effects
• Rank 5: Can sense ultimate truth, reconstruction, formulaes (can copy an observed specialization as long as Truth Sense R5 remains on)

Witch – (Empress)

Wheras the Magician is concerned with discrete ‘things’, the Witch is more concerned with the bonds between them.  The Witch is often thought of as the female counterpart to the Magician.  When looking a chair, the Magician would see a base, a back, a hinge joint force, 4 legs, a dispersion force, the gravity, the grain of the wood and the jitter of the particles, the Witch sees a chair, the people who sit on the chair, the person who crafted the chair, people thinking about the chair, or creating similar chairs, and will see peoples’ relative desire to sit, and their usages of the word ’sit’ in every language that they speak it.  To the Witch, these are the parts of the chair, just as much as legs, a cushion and a back might be parts.  This sense is far more powerful when also applied to things that create outgoing links, like things with a mind.  The thoughts appear as if thrown through the air or sribbles as images in muddy crayons and oil.  Words stream from all things and the strongly reinforced ones rise to the forefront as if spoken louder.  Witches are telepaths, mind readers, linguists, psychologists, match-makers, weavers, workers of fabric.

Ability: Link Sense

• Rank 1: Can sense quantum threads, physical entanglements, body links, sense links, possessions (can identify something’s owner through acclimation)
• Rank 2: Can sense mind links, telepathies (uses of link sense to view the mind – rank 2 or 3), probes, strong intent or emotions
• Rank 3: Can sense thought links (if anyone is currently thinking about something), loves, trusts, hatreds, empathy, surface thoughts
• Rank 4: Can sense soul links, puppeteers, summoners
• Rank 5: Can sense creators of things, the user of an ability, originations (homeworlds, etc)

Oracle, “Mother” – (High Priestess)

Most see things through the lens of the self – the bodymind.  The Oracle can sense things without the lens in the way.  The act of sensing, as if taking a photograph, leaves a record.   These photographs persist and can be found after the fact by the trained eye – The Oracle, the great historian.  It is commonly called Post-Cognition, but it is more than that.  It is relocation the sensesphere’s origin to a different temporal frame (different space and time).  Unlike the other sixsenses, temporal sense cannot easily co-exist with normal sensory information, so during the time this sense is active, the main sensesphere is not.  However, on occassion, strong interferences may ‘flash’ into an Oracles’ senses.  Since Oracles can choose their viewpoint, they can literally have eyes on the back of their head, or see around a corner.

Ability: Temporal Sense

• Rank 1: Can sense the just-past, echoes of change (diminishing heat, long tail sound reverberations, remnant air currents)
• Rank 2: Can sense from a distant point of view (any object within range – can be sense-point, however still cannot see past sensesphere), view strong traces of an objects’ or spaces’ past
• Rank 3: Can query a space (count of occurances in a time, look for sensable elements that are most or least – e.g., heaviest person to pass this point), and see from multiple distant points of view (think closed circuit security cams)
• Rank 4: Can maintain a distant point of view beyond the sensesphere
• Rank 5: Temporal Omniscience: can see everywhere, however filtering is required and takes time, can read an object to its origin and see everywhere it’s been

Explorer – (Hanged Man)

The Explorer is the selfless wanderer, always searching for what is just beyond reach, what remains undiscovered.  Much like the other senses, it works as a tunable parabolic-style focus – the further away, the less that is seen.  This can be applied to any sense, including the bodysenses.  In addition, the sense sphere is also extended, allowing the explorer to observe things within a much greater range.

Ability: Wandering Sense

• Rank 1: Sense range increased by 100% (2x – 200m)
• Rank 2: Sense range increased by 300% (4x – 400m)
• Rank 3: Sense range increased by 700% (8x – 800m)
• Rank 4: Sense range increased by 1500% (16x – 1.6km)
• Rank 5: Sense range increased by 3100% (32x – 3.2km)

Thief – (Wheel of Fortune)

The Thief (often also called the Gambler) sees everything as warm and cold.  These heat signatures dance and fluctuate in harmonic patterns similar to those of the Wave Function.  When dice are thrown in the air, the thief sees warm and cool numbers flash on the surface of the table before the dice land.  If someone asks the thief what the chance of success of a particular plan or set of actions is, they might respond with confidence “33.33 percent.. repeating of course”. However this does not mean that they can see the future, only the given probability of relatively contained conditions.  The Thief understands that skill and chance are one and the same.  Thieves are excellent gamblers, risk-takers, and opportunists.  They tend to be be self-centered, as opposed to the Explorer’s altruism – afterall, to take advantage of the best path is to take it from someone else.

Ability: Probabilty Sense

• Rank 1: +1 To any Skill Roll
• Rank 2: +2 To any Skill Roll
• Rank 3: +3 To any Skill Roll
• Rank 4: +4 To any Skill Roll
• Rank 5: +5 To any Skill Roll

Hacker – (Tower)

Much like Shiki from Kara No Kyoukai or Raistlin from Dragonlance, a Hacker (often also called a Saboteur or Assassin) can see the death of things.  It often manafests as cracks or visible points of light emenating from the weakest or strongest points of all things.  For others, staring at anything for too long will make the thing appear to shatter or wither away, or slowly seperate into all of its components.  These seperations happen along well defined lines A well trained hacker can attack or manipulate a thing along these weakest point, having a much greater chance of doing considerable damage.  Mastery of certain sword arts, atemi-based martial arts techniques (pressure points, chi flow and ‘death touch’), computer hacking, demolition, and acupuncture are all aspects of the Hacker.  A Hacker enjoys taking things apart, whether or not they plan on putting them back together again.

Ability: Fault Sense

• Rank 1: +1 To Damage Rolls
• Rank 2: +2 To Damage Rolls
• Rank 3: +3 To Damage Rolls
• Rank 4: +4 To Damage Rolls
• Rank 5: +5 To Damage Rolls

Combining Senses

Senses do not exist in isolation.  They work together to unveil that which is sought.  Usually sense related rolls will roll against the Awareness Stat (Magician + Witch + Oracle + Explorer + Thief + Hacker), which represents general awareness, intuition and perception.  However, sometimes a more specific roll is called for when, for example, something is being searched or queried.  Here is a simple list of some possible combination applications:

• Magician + Witch – sense the truth of a linked thing
• Magician + Oracle – sense the truth in the past
• Magician + Hacker – sense the truth of a weakness
• Magician + Thief – sense the probabilities that a truth might change, sense the probable other truths
• Magician + Explorer – sense the truth at a distance
• Magician + Oracle + Thief – sense the truth in the probable future
• Witch + Explorer – follow a link as see from it
• Witch + Oracle – sense a past link
• Witch + Thief – sense a possible link
• Witch + Hacker – sense the weakness of a link
• Witch + Oracle + Thief – sense a probable future link
• Oracle + Explorer – see further around in the past
• Oracle + Thief – sense the probable future
• Oracle + Hacker – see faults in the past, intrusions in the timeline
• Oracle + Thief + Explorer – see further around in the future, more possibilities
• Oracle + Thief + Hacker – see future cataclysms, major fractures in the timeline
• Explorer + Thief – see a wider range of probability
• Explorer + Hacker – see faults further away
• Thief + Hacker – see the most critical probabilities

First my awesome CAST gunslinger girl in Phantasy Star Portable, then this.  Japan – you should stop now, you know what comes next (*wink at Shirow Masamune*). Eventually a robot will dance the ‘human’ on the internet instead of the other way around.

Just found out from Jack that The Touch will be a Guitar Hero song.  I want to cry.

click for full size

Not at this very moment, but QUITE OFTEN this perfectly describes how I feel

Ryan Shwayder over at Nerfbat made me laugh yesterday morning with:

“But I’m so hardcore that I was finally able to give them my money after nearly two weeks of trying.” and  “They invented Browser-Refresh-PvP, so maybe more of their ideas will be awesome.”

… regarding the horrorfilm that is Darkfall Online, which I can only imagine will be like an virtual version of what would happen if you skimmed off the 17-and-older population of 4chan and somethingawful (with a strong leaning towards 20s+ ex-uo types) and threw them into a giant Darkon match with boffers of their choice – which is to say, not as entertaining as the non-virtual version of said experience.

I’ve always wondered where the testosterone-gamer obsession with being hardcore comes from – probably not too far off from where those boffer weapons come from.  It just reminds me a lot of:

If only there was a more appropriate macro.  Oh wait, here it is:

Baww, it even has a sandbox.

That being said, feel free to let me know how it is… I want to play it not to prove how hardcore I am, but for the same reason that people search the internet for 2 girls 1 cup.  On that note someone should make 2 guilds 1 server.  Oh wait, EVE already did, nevermind :)

Now that the basics of the Rank system are out of the way – on to some of the more special cases:

Restrictions

In addition to Ability Variables, some abilities may also contain one or more Restrictions.  These work like negative variables (thought they often have less ranks, often only 1).  For each Restriction purchase during the usage of an ability, the total Rank Cost goes down by 1.

Duration and Bandwidth

Abilities in Tatha do not have ‘durations’ attached to them.  Instead, there are three types of abilities:  Instant, Channel, and Burst Channel.  Instant abilities subtract their usage cost from ones’ current stats immediately upon usage and have no lingering effects.   Channel abilities temporarily consume stats for as long as they are on.   This means that you record 3 pieces of information per stat:

1. What the current maximum stat is (typically 100, unless modified by abilities or equipment)
2. What the current stat value is
3. The sum of the currently active channeled abilities that use this stat as a cost

Of these three numbers, #2 is often called the Bandwidth.  This represents the current maximum for the third number, the Channel.  Any channeled ability can be deactivated at any time, but the effect is terminated immediately with it.  If at any point the available bandwidth is smaller than the current channel, then the player must deactivate channeled abilities of their choice until the bandwidth is equal to or greater than the channel.

Burst Channel is the last kind of ability, and it is simply a combination of two abilities: an Instant and a Channel.  As such it will be listed with two costs: the instant cost and the channel cost.  The last things that can come into the equation here are Overpowering, Contests, and Conditions – all of which will typically drain bandwidth (like an instant), but may do so on a periodic basis or based on a failed roll or other condition.

Collaboration

One might look at the Rank chart and say: “with only 100 Energy, what’s the point of having Rank 5 on an ability that costs 400 Unit Energy Energy – no one can ever cast that”.  And that would be correct – so you need to get more than one to cast it.  Collaboration can be a tricky however, and may not even prove fruitful (too many cooks can spoil a broth).  When collaborating, the output of the group is determined by the following ’simple’ formula:

Total Output = Sum( Ability Unit Cost * ( 2 ^ ( User’s Rank – 1 ) ) ) – ( Ability Unit Cost * (Number of Collaborators * ( ( Number of Collaborators – 1 ) / 2 ) ) )

Whew.. Now this looks pretty complicated , but it’s not.  Another way to put it is that the amount of energy that this rank would cost if the user had the ability at rank 1 is added to a pool and the pool loses the cost of the ability times the number of unique connections between people involved off the top and that .  This pool is then used to cast the ability as if the caster had the ability at Rank 1.  To simplify calculating the number of unique connections, otherwise known as the Triangular Number (ref1, ref2, ref3), here is the following table for most real-world uses of this:

 1:   0
 2:   1
 3:   3
 4:   6
 5:  10
 6:  15
 7:  21
 8:  28
 9:  36
10:  45
11:  55
12:  66
13:  78
14:  91
15: 105
16: 120
17: 136
18: 153
19: 171
20: 190

Now some examples: (for all these examples, the ability cost is 20Energy).

• 1 Person Rank 4:  160 (Rank 4)
• 2 People Rank 4 for both:  160 + 160 = 320 – (20 * 1) = 300 (Rank 4 – almost Rank 5)
• 3 People Rank 4 for all: 160 + 160 + 160 = 480 – (20 * 3) = 420 (Rank 5)
• 4 People Rank 4 for all: 160 * 4 = 640 – (20 * 6) = 520 (Rank 5)
• 5 People Rank 4 for all: 160 * 5 = 800 – (20 * 10) = 600 (Rank 5)
• 6 People Rank 4 for all: 160 * 6 = 960 – (20 * 15) = 660 (Rank 6)
• 7 People Rank 4 for all: 160 * 7 = 1120 – (20 * 21) = 700 (Rank 6)
• 8 People Rank 4 for all: 160 * 8 = 1280 – (20 * 28) = 720 (Rank 6)
• 9 People Rank 4 for all: 160 * 9 = 1440 – (20 * 36) = 720 (Rank 6)
• 10 People Rank 4 for all: 160 * 10 = 1600 – (20 * 45) = 700 (Rank 6) !!!

So if you notice this pattern here, while simplified because they are all using the same Rank of the ability, you will notice that after a while, adding more people becomes fruitless, even harmful.  Here are some more random examples:

• 2 People Rank 2 each: 40 * 2 = 80 – (20 * 1) = 60  (Rank 2)
• 3 People Rank 2 each: 40 * 3 = 120 – (20 * 3) = 60 (Rank 2)
• 2 People Rank 1 each: 20 * 2 = 20 – (20 * 1) = 20 (Rank 1)
• 3 People Rank 5 each: 320 * 3 = 960 – (20 * 3) = 900 (Rank 6)
• 2 People Ranks 2 and 3: 40 + 80 = 120 – (20 * 1) = 100 (Rank 3)
• 4 People Ranks 3, 3, 2, 2: 40 + 40 + 80 + 80 = 240 – (20 * 6)  = 120 (Rank 3)
• 4 People Ranks 3, 3, 2, 3: 40 + 80 + 80 + 80 = 280 – (20 * 6)  = 160 (Rank 4)
• 5 People Ranks 3, 3, 2, 3, 2: 40 + 40 + 80 + 80 + 80 = 320 – (20 * 10)  = 120 (Rank 3)

Some observations can be made about the following examples:

• The threshold for ‘useless addition’ comes sooner the lower the ranks being contributed are
• Conversely, the higher the ranks being added, the more resistant they are to the loss
• Rank 1s are always a hindrance, never a help (because the addition of 1 rank 1 adds at most Unit to the total, but will add at LEAST Unit worth to the loss)
• This isn’t to say that Rank 1 users can’t help, they just need to spend more than usual (instead of spending 20E, if they spent 80E, they’d be a rank 3)
• In the last example, the 4 people had an already stable Rank 4 usage – the addition of the extra Rank 2 user actually destabilized the ability, dropping it a rank

However, there is a way to beat the loss.  Any Soul Link groups are counted as a single person as far as the Triangle Number section is concerned.  This means that two users with a Soul Link have ZERO loss, allowing them to effectively double their output (which will mean if they are using the same rank, they will get 1 more than what they could have individually).

• 2 Soul-Linked People Ranks 4 and 4: 160 * 2 = 320 (Rank 5)
• 2 Soul Linked People Ranks 3 and 3 + 3 Non-soul linked Rank 3s: 80 * 5 = 400 – (20 * 6) = 280 (Rank 4)
• 2 Groups of 2 Soul Linked + 1 Non-linked People all Rank 3: 80 * 5 = 400 – (20 * 3) = 360 (Rank 5)

The difference between the 2nd and 3rd example there is not the addition of any people or any ranks, but just the linking of two unlinked users.

Notes

I will probably develop a simplified system for collaboration (based on tables of the likely outputs from this formula), but this system was developed by my usual means:  I know the curve/effect in my mind that I want, and then I look for the formula that produces it.  A simplification would probably look like a rule of thumb for ’small group’ scenarios:  Everyone must use the same rank.  To raise the rank of the output 1 rank, you need 3 people, or 2 people under a Soul Link.