Links
Football, video games, math, food, other stuff.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Some Updates
Been a while since I updated. The past six weeks I've been teaching Math 1000 - the final exam was last week. It was a great learning experience. The one thing that I really didn't realize beforehand was how much time one spends dealing with students - not necessarily with problems they're having with the course, but rather excuses for why they didn't write the midterm, or finish the assignment, or pass the course...
I guess I just didn't really expect how many excuses students come up with. I must have had four or five students claim that they couldn't finish an assignment because they were sick, or there was a computer problem (online assignments). Every time, they would claim to have a note from a doctor or computer person, but when I asked them to come in to see me, explain what happened, and show me the note, they would never materialize.
I got a lot of positive feedback on my teaching from some students, which was nice. I also got some rather unpleasant emails from people basically demanding that they should pass the course. 'Tis the life of a professor, I suppose.
Last week a friend of ours from Waterloo visited, and among other things, we went whale-watching - which I've never done here. After two hours, we hadn't seen a thing, and were just about to return, when a whale suddenly surfaced right next to the boat. It was quite awe-inspiring, actually. They're massive creatures - this one wasn't even very big, comparatively - but so graceful, so smooth. It was also just nice to be out on the ocean. I never really thought about it, but it's one of the few places that humans really haven't built on, so it feels much more like real wilderness.
Meanwhile, I encourage you fans of roguelikes (or D & D) to try:
Incursion
After a few games of this roguelike, I was about to post how it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. However, I always do this - get excited about a game, then play it a few more times and find it's not quite as interesting as I had originally hoped. So I waited a while, played a lot more games...but it's still just as great, if not better than when I first started playing it. It is now my favourite roguelike, replacing Nethack and even the mighty Dwarf Fortress.
The game is literally packed with great gameplay, and I think I know the reason why - it uses a pre-existing game ruleset (the d20 system from D&D) rather than try to invent its own. What this means is that the creator doesn't have to worry about balancing the game's races, classes, and monsters - years of roleplaying has already done this. This allowed the creator to focus on implementing all the great features of a D&D game. As a result, the actual gameplay is much more complex than the average roguelike. In most roguelikes, you spend the majority of time simply pushing against the enemy character to attack it. Here, the abilities you have are much more important. For example, playing a rogue, one needs to hide in the shadows and try to sneak-attack your foes. Playing a ranger means using your wilderness skills effectively to get animals to fight for you rather than against you. If you are a playing a gnome, it is important to use your innate ventriloquism talent - and so on for the other classes and races.
In addition to fighting, there are lots of great features imported from D&D. You can only see hiding creatures after a succesful spot check. Sleeping in the dungeon (to restore health) is ill-advised unless you set traps or get allies to set up a watch. Chasms can be crossed by making a rope bridge. Swimming is nearly impossible unless you take your armor off. The detail level of the game is astonishing.
The final great feature, which is a really nice touch, is the feel of the dungeon levels themselves. As you enter each new room, you are given a description (an ornate tomb, appears to have recently been inhabited, etc.), which helps to set the feel, and then the room actually looks as it is described - pillars, forest, chasms, all these features show up nicely - and in colour too, which helps. This is a great advance from, for example, nethack's rooms which are all simply square rectangles.
Anyways, marvellous game - give it a try.
Been a while since I updated. The past six weeks I've been teaching Math 1000 - the final exam was last week. It was a great learning experience. The one thing that I really didn't realize beforehand was how much time one spends dealing with students - not necessarily with problems they're having with the course, but rather excuses for why they didn't write the midterm, or finish the assignment, or pass the course...
I guess I just didn't really expect how many excuses students come up with. I must have had four or five students claim that they couldn't finish an assignment because they were sick, or there was a computer problem (online assignments). Every time, they would claim to have a note from a doctor or computer person, but when I asked them to come in to see me, explain what happened, and show me the note, they would never materialize.
I got a lot of positive feedback on my teaching from some students, which was nice. I also got some rather unpleasant emails from people basically demanding that they should pass the course. 'Tis the life of a professor, I suppose.
Last week a friend of ours from Waterloo visited, and among other things, we went whale-watching - which I've never done here. After two hours, we hadn't seen a thing, and were just about to return, when a whale suddenly surfaced right next to the boat. It was quite awe-inspiring, actually. They're massive creatures - this one wasn't even very big, comparatively - but so graceful, so smooth. It was also just nice to be out on the ocean. I never really thought about it, but it's one of the few places that humans really haven't built on, so it feels much more like real wilderness.
Meanwhile, I encourage you fans of roguelikes (or D & D) to try:
Incursion
After a few games of this roguelike, I was about to post how it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. However, I always do this - get excited about a game, then play it a few more times and find it's not quite as interesting as I had originally hoped. So I waited a while, played a lot more games...but it's still just as great, if not better than when I first started playing it. It is now my favourite roguelike, replacing Nethack and even the mighty Dwarf Fortress.
The game is literally packed with great gameplay, and I think I know the reason why - it uses a pre-existing game ruleset (the d20 system from D&D) rather than try to invent its own. What this means is that the creator doesn't have to worry about balancing the game's races, classes, and monsters - years of roleplaying has already done this. This allowed the creator to focus on implementing all the great features of a D&D game. As a result, the actual gameplay is much more complex than the average roguelike. In most roguelikes, you spend the majority of time simply pushing against the enemy character to attack it. Here, the abilities you have are much more important. For example, playing a rogue, one needs to hide in the shadows and try to sneak-attack your foes. Playing a ranger means using your wilderness skills effectively to get animals to fight for you rather than against you. If you are a playing a gnome, it is important to use your innate ventriloquism talent - and so on for the other classes and races.
In addition to fighting, there are lots of great features imported from D&D. You can only see hiding creatures after a succesful spot check. Sleeping in the dungeon (to restore health) is ill-advised unless you set traps or get allies to set up a watch. Chasms can be crossed by making a rope bridge. Swimming is nearly impossible unless you take your armor off. The detail level of the game is astonishing.
The final great feature, which is a really nice touch, is the feel of the dungeon levels themselves. As you enter each new room, you are given a description (an ornate tomb, appears to have recently been inhabited, etc.), which helps to set the feel, and then the room actually looks as it is described - pillars, forest, chasms, all these features show up nicely - and in colour too, which helps. This is a great advance from, for example, nethack's rooms which are all simply square rectangles.
Anyways, marvellous game - give it a try.
