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The Daily Grind: How patient are you with explanations?
I run a lot of random dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV. It's not uncommon to wind up grouped with someone who hasn't seen one of the newer dungeons, or even someone who just happened to forget the mechanics in a lower-level fight. That's fine, and I have no problem explaining the fight in detail to people. What gets my goat is trying to re-explain as someone either ignores the directions or does exactly the opposite time and again. Some people are far more patient than I am. I've watched players explain the same mechanics a dozen times without ever showing signs of irritation. And of course, there are people far less patient than I -- people who explain the fight only once in mangled shorthand or even outright refuse to explain anything. So what about you, dear reader? How patient are you with explanations about fights, areas, mechanics, or anything else in your game of choice? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The under-appreciated hard drive gets torn apart and explained (video)
We don't know about you, but we generally don't give much thought to our hard drives or how they work. And that's a shame because, as you'll find out in the video after the break, they're veritable miracles of modern science. Bill Hammack, also known as Engineer Guy, takes us on a detailed tour of the inner workings of the ubiquitous hard disk drive -- from the Lorentz Force driven arm, to the head that floats a mere 10nm above the layered cobalt platters thanks to the wonders of aerodynamics. Maybe after this lesson in modern magnetic storage from Mr. Hammack you'll appreciate how much more there is to storing your collection of Mission of Burma b-sides than simply printing ones and zeros on a shiny, spinning thing.
LCD technology torn down and explained in the most lucid and accessible terms yet (video)
Look, we know you know all about LED backlights, light diffusion, subpixels, and the things that turn them on, but not everybody does. The humble LCD you're most likely reading this on still retains a level of mystery about the nitty gritty details of how it works for the vast majority of its users, so here's a terrific video breakdown of both its component parts and method of operation. Bill Hammack, a self-appointed Engineer Guy, takes us from the LED arrays that provide the light for most current LCDs, through all the filters and diffusers designed to make that light uniform, and into the ways thin film transistors make it possible for us to show moving color images of cats diving into boxes on such displays. It's exciting, deeply nerdy stuff, and it awaits your audience after the break.
Final Fantasy XIV expands details on the battle system
While Final Fantasy XIV doesn't go out of its way to be massively accessible, Square-Enix is clearly making a conscious effort to avoid confusion wherever possible. The official player site has been steadily receiving updates about how game systems work and what's going on behind the scenes, with the newest update discussing Battle Regimens and incapacitating body parts in combat. The systems had never been discussed in-depth before, but they now offer players a chance to understand exactly what each system entails. Battle Regimens are distantly similar in theory to the skillchains that ruled Final Fantasy XI's combat, but they have many differences in practice. Rather than being a chained deployment of specific skills, chains of general ability types will both buff the party and debuff the enemy party. Body parts, meanwhile, are targeted and damaged by certain weaponskills, with a helpful chart explaining what skills target what and which types of monsters can be affected. While it doesn't reveal the full details of Final Fantasy XIV's combat, it should provide players with an excellent place to start understanding the system.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Blizzard tweaking nameplate visibility
Zarhym has posted information about an interesting change in effect on the PTR right now. Blizzard is tweaking the way that character nameplates (those names that you see floating above everyone's heads) works. First, nameplate vision has been extended, so that you can see player names from farther away. They've also adjusted some line-of-sight issues, and players will no longer be able to see nameplates through anything that blocks line-of-sight (so no nameplates of players hiding behind doors or walls). And multiple nameplates in one space will now overlap -- we'll have to see exactly what this looks like on the PTRs, but it sounds like a big group of the same mobs (i.e. Onyxia whelps) will now just have one nameplate to share.Interesting stuff (and I didn't realize that some of this stuff, especially the nameplate overlapping, was even possible). Zarhym has a few other notes in the thread about how you can change or update the options on the PTR, including a checkbox to turn on or off totem or pet nameplates. Elsewhere, Ghostcrawler says that it's not just line-of-sight, as Arena pillars and other "objects" won't affect the nameplate view, but doors and walls will. If you're on the PTR, keep an eye out for these changes, and note that Blizzard is still asking for feedback. It's unknown which of these changes (or others) will end up on the live realms in the future.
Ghostcrawler on the Path of the Titans
Our good friend Ghostcrawler (I can say that now, because we all got to meet him at BlizzCon the other week) has done his best to explain the new Path of the Titans feature coming in the Cataclysm expansion over in this forum thread. We had this same question come up on last week's podcast as well, and we said pretty much the same thing GC does: Path of the Titans is a brand new way for max-level characters to keep improving themselves. Of course, the feature is still being developed, but the goal is a "gated, not grindy" way (as in, you'll earn rewards by doing things, not by doing them over and over again) to experience character progression outside of just reputation grinding, PvP, or raiding.He clarifies the idea more later in the thread as well. The different paths of the Titans are meant to be class-independent, but GC says that they do want players to debate which path is best for which class, even if they do end up with a "best" solution in the end. Archaeology is meant to be a part of it, so GC agrees that it could be more of a mandatory secondary profession than Cooking or Fishing has been in the past, but they're aware of that danger. And just because the paths may be tied to dailies or instances doesn't mean they'll work the same: the time in which you can progress might be longer than the daily quest limit or shorter than the weekly raid limit. The idea, as above, is to give players who don't necessarily raid or PvP something else to do with character progression at endgame.Should be interesting to see what they come up with. Personally, this sounds a little bit to me like D&D's prestige classes -- not nearly as powerful or varied, but a way of separating your character out from the rest of those that chose the same class you did. That's just me being hopeful, though -- Blizzard seems to have a lot of development before we see this as a finished product. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Everything you need to know about Repairing Permissions (and more)
The 'Repair Permissions' function of Disk Utility has been under quite a bit of speculation as of late. There are those in one camp, such as John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who believe repairing (restoring, resetting, etc.) permissions is not much more than voodoo, while others in the support end of the Mac OS X community swear by it as the first line of defense. So what's a confused Mac OS X user to do when trying to draw up a formidable troubleshooting game plan? Heading over to Dan Frakes' Repairing permissions: what you need to know article at Macworld is a great first step at trying to cut through all the confusion. Dan dissects virtually every aspect of the permissions repair process, from explaining what exactly 'permissions' are, to a few specific situations when it's a good idea to add the operation to your troubleshooting tool-belt. It's an informative read that helps demystify this much-debated aspect of Mac OS X.
List of Mac OS X's processes and their purpose
Have you ever opened Activity Monitor to check on what processes and apps your Mac is running, only to be greeted with a list that's about as understandable as ancient Greek? (This of course assumes that you don't know how to read ancient Greek). Well, through the beauty of diggdot.us (all the del.icio,us, digg and Slashdot posts with none of the snarky comments), I found this fairly thorough list of Mac OS X's processes that attempts to explain just what is going on under the hood. Scott blogged this a year ago, but I figured this couldn't hurt even if it is review for some of us.The author reminds us that this list is by no means complete, so don't panic if you have a process running that isn't on the list. With that said, this should be a fairly educational resource for most of us, as the list is written in plain English (as opposed to the aforementioned ancient Greek) to help make sense of just what our Mac is doing with all those little processes. Check it out.
Quicksilver basics: shake hands with your preferences
Yesterday Quicksilver started acting a little goofy, and I wasn't surprised; I have just about every beta and extra turned on as I just can't stop exploring all the neat stuff this app can do. During my troubleshooting efforts I resorted to the simple trick of quitting Quicksilver and simply moving its preference file (located with other preference files in ~/Library/Preferences) to my desktop, forcing Quicksilver to re-create a clean new preference file. This fixed the issue, but it also forced me to dive back into my preferences to tweak, toggle and change some of the options I use to make Quicksilver do what I want.That experience made me realize, however, that part of the Quicksilver learning curve for new users really is to get to know its preferences, since they act as a handy springboard into what Quicksilver is capable of. A lot of fantastic tutorials, like those at 43 Folders and Blacktree's own site (the makers of Quicksilver), sometimes assume that you already know what you're doing with Quicksilver. Another complication is that the actions (and sometimes plugins) used in these tutorials are not installed or enabled by default. Some of the email actions - for example the "send item immediately" action that allows you to email an item to someone without ever touching a mail composition window - are oddly not enabled in a default Quicksilver installation, which means a user has to open Quicksilver's preferences (once invoked, a quick cmd - , does the trick) and dig around in the Actions section to find what they need. Ultimately, I figure there are three key areas of Quicksilver's preferences that might help new or aspiring but confused users get their feet grounded: Catalog, Actions and Plugins, and here is a brief explanation of each: Catalog - this is a pretty straight-forward list of everything Quicksilver keeps track of on your Mac. Looking through the Catalog and the Actions preference panel should help you get a grasp of what items Quicksilver can find and manipulate, and then how you can manipulate them. Actions - this is a list of the defining ability that separates Quicksilver from mere seek-and-find applications. Actions allow you to do something with the item you have found, far above and beyond simply opening it. Actions are (loosely) categorized to help you find your way around: Address Book actions allow you to do more with your contacts, Text actions (an optional plugin) allow you to do things like looking up word definitions right from within Quicksilver and appending text to a file buried somewhere, etc. If this panel doesn't excite your inner productivity geek, you should consider consulting your physician. Plugins - Quicksilver is highly, highly plugin-able, which is where even more of its beauty radiates from. Plugins for Backpack, alternative browser bookmarks, the Mac OS X Keychain, NetNewsWire headlines, a multiple-item clipboard, hundreds of web search engines and much, much more all have your name written on them. Go wild. Quicksilver is one of the few apps that is so different and powerful that the classic "just open and play with it" phrase might not be enough for some users to grasp what's going on. If you are one of these users, I hope this brief explanation will help you to take your first step into the wide, wonderful universe of Quicksilver.
