planning
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Airbnb's new maps help you find a room during big events
If you enjoy scrambling and then paying a fortune, try waiting until the last minute to book lodging at a convention. Airbnb is helping event-goers and organizers avoid such heartbreak with a new feature called Airbnb for Events. It lets organizers create interactive maps of accommodation listings close to their venues, then embed them onto event websites, much like you can a custom Google Map. That could be handy for, say, planning weddings in places where hotels are sparse, or for convention attendees using Airbnb as a hotel of last resort.
Google's next campus looks like a campsite from the future
Google's grand designs for a new complex have been upgraded since we saw them last. Its still-in-planning campus (right next to the Googleplex), has benefitted from new renders, revealed in part of the company's planning application to local officials. It's less transparent and, well, dome-y than last year's designs. If you enjoy 40MB pdfs filled with planning detail, you can dive in right here. Meanwhile, we've collected the renders right here:
Elegently manage your ideas with ClipUp
ClipUp is one of the many apps that takes a page from Pinterest's design and concept, but it has much more to offer in the way of functionality. You have everything you need to manage your ideas, plans and to-dos. Upload photos, take notes, link to websites or maps, record audio or take a video. Your first thought when you see an app like this is that it was made for the Pinterest set, but it wasn't. It was designed for journalists to keep track of their research. That should clue you in on the limitless possibilities you have here. Make a list of blog ideas and record some of your thoughts with the voice recorder. Create daily boards that work like a diary with your thoughts and photos or video of what you did that day. If you're an artist, real estate agent or party planner, use ClipUp like a portfolio. Show your boards to clients for a stunning presentation of your work. It's worth noting that if you're going to go this route, having an iPad makes for a more impressive presentation, but the iPhone will do in a pinch. And of course, there are the obvious choices for boards like party planning, recipes, home decorating or digital scrapbooking. I experimented by creating a simple to-do board. I took advantage of the photo option and used a picture of my desk to remind me that I need to organize it and I snapped a picture of my shiba so that I won't forget to take him on a long walk. Plus, I wrote a shopping list and recorded ideas for my next blog post. All of this makes for a visually interesting to-do list. The reminder feature is a huge selling point for me. It almost makes this a candidate for an everyday to-do app. I say almost because you can only set reminders for boards, not individual items within a board. This is a shame, because it would be nice to assign due dates to items. This an important feature, no matter what you use ClipUp for. Hopefully, they'll add this to a future update. I deleted items when I completed them, though it would be great if there was an option to flag completed items. You can share individual items from your boards on Facebook or Twitter. Unfortunately, you cannot share entire boards. A web app is in the works, so this may be a feature that the developer will implement down the line. A few more things to note: ClipUp has a photo editor, so you can add frames, stickers and effects to your pictures. Also, I love the look of the app. It's simple, bright and beautiful. Another nice touch, you don't scroll through each item on your board. Instead, you flip through them like you would a book. ClipUp is free in the App Store, but it has a two board limit. The paid version, which is US$4.99, gives you an unlimited amount of boards to work with. If you want a unique way to manage your ideas, skip the trial app and opt for the full-fledged version of ClipUp.
Leak hints Google may shut down its Schemer goal sharing service
We can't blame you if you haven't heard of Google's Schemer; the goal sharing service launched at the end of 2011, but it hasn't received much publicity (or traffic) since. Accordingly, the crew in Mountain View may be close to shutting Schemer down. Google Operating System has leaked an internal version of Schemer's website that includes an unfinished closure page inviting users to export their data. It's not clear how serious Google is about closing Schemer, however. The internal site may reflect real plans, or it could be a just-in-case placeholder; we've reached out to the company for a definitive answer. We won't be surprised if Schemer gets the axe, though, when Google has shut down more beloved services in the past.
Terraria 2 planned, not yet in development
Terraria creator Andrew Spinks recently discussed his plans for Terraria 2, the direct sequel to the popular RPG from developer Re-Logic. "Terraria 2 is definitely something that will be happening but contrary to several of the articles that went live today I have not started development," Spinks told Joystiq. "I have a list of features and mechanics I want the game to have but that is the extent of the development at this point." As far as those features are concerned, Spinks told Rock Paper Shotgun that while Terraria 2 is "a ways out," it will "have a lot in common with the original. It's gonna be quite different as well. I really want to expand on the whole Terraria universe." Spinks said that he is "locked" in to some of Terraria's established mechanics, such as "the way loot works" and "the way character progression works." With Terraria 2, Spinks said he wants "to have infinite worlds so you're not just stuck to one world. You can travel anywhere. I want more biome diversity in that, too." As for Terraria, he added that the recently-launched version 1.2 will probably be "the last seven-month update" for the original game, but that he plans to finish the "endgame progression" for the update "within the next month or two," as the update didn't include a final boss. He noted that while there may be other updates three or four months down the road, he has "looked into maybe hiring another small team to continue updates while I move onto Terraria 2."
The Mog Log Extra: Tips for a Final Fantasy XIV beginner
We're all kind of beginners with the new version of Final Fantasy XIV. Some of us have high-level characters already, but none of us has years of experience with the game. At best, you have memories of how things worked in the last beta test or two. But there's still a difference between having a character from version 1.0 dripping with high-level items and having a fresh guy or gal stepping off the boat into Limsa. Fortunately, the game's tutorials now do a solid job of introducing you to how the game works. But there are still some tips and tricks to consider, and it's with that in mind that I present this column. If you're new to the game completely or even just an occasional dabbler in the previous beta tests, here's some advice to help you out during your first steps.
Storyboard: Happening before it's even happened, part 2
Two weeks ago I wrote a column on the ups and downs of planning RP developments before they take place. I ended on the note that it's very important to decide exactly how much to plan ahead, but then I ended the column before actually offering any guidance on how to determine how much to plan ahead. Instead, I promised to talk about that... in two weeks. In television, this is what is known as a cliffhanger. It gets you back in time to watch the next episode, you see. Like so many other elements of roleplaying, there are no hard and fast rules about when something is or isn't a good idea, but there are certainly guidelines. So let's look at some questions to ask yourself before you plot out your roleplaying ahead of time, simple inquiries that should let you know whether this is worth planning ahead for or not.
Storyboard: Happening before it's even happened
I've been doing something I almost never do as I prepare for the relaunch of Final Fantasy XIV: I've been planning ahead. Let me rephrase. There's always some planning that goes on beforehand, usually between Ms. Lady and me. But that planning is generally a bit more abstract, a vague set of character goals. I'm not only going in with vague ideas of what will happen now; I'm going in with an answer to one of my main character's central problems as soon as the relaunch starts. It is the exact opposite of vague in every way, shape, and form. There's something to be said for knowing what path you're taking before you go in, but there are also some pretty major drawbacks. Today, I want to look at the idea of planning roleplaying events and interactions before the game has gone live, preparing for things that will happen before they actually can happen. It's a road fraught with perils, drawbacks, and disadvantages... and a few advantages despite all of that.
Storyboard: Plotting concepts
There's an uncomfortable paradox in roleplaying as regards plotting in advance. If you plan out your character developments in advance, you're not really roleplaying so much as laying out a pre-determined plot that other people are forced to fit within. On the other hand, if you don't plan out anything, you don't have any conflicts driving your characters, meaning that you're trying to force yourself into other character plots in the hopes that you might develop some relevance. Stated more simply -- plotting out your character in detail or not plotting your character out in enough detail are both equally detrimental to your roleplaying. Ever since I've been writing this column, I've been trying to develop a good way to actually handle this issue, and a fairly recent post from Websnark actually kicked me down a new path. For ease of reference, I'm calling it plotting by concept. I can't say that it works perfectly forever and ever, but it's been producing good results for a while, so I'm just going to outline how it works in the hopes that other people can find it useful too.
Capcom plans panels and booth action for SDCC next weekend
Capcom has nailed down its lineup for the San Diego Comic-Con next weekend, and there's going to be a whole lot "Cap-ening" down there. Booth #4844 will host demos of Devil May Cry, Lost Planet 3, Okami HD, Resident Evil 6, and the Vita version of Street Fighter X Tekken. There'll be plenty of merch on sale, too, and Capcom will host some contests and giveaways.Capcom also has four panels throughout the weekend: on the 25th Anniversary of Street Fighter, behind the scenes on Resident Evil 6, a combined panel on Lost Planet 3 and Devil May Cry, and a "World of Capcom" panel, featuring all of the current projects and a big Q&A session. Capcom's official blog will be streaming from the show floor all weekend, and we'll be down there capturing as much of the news as we can. Capische?
Cupertino city council releases 'Mothership' proposal documents
Every building begins as a work of imagination, and one of the challenges architects face when discussing their plans with clients and neighbors is how to share that inner vision effectively and accurately. For Apple's planned 'Mothership' campus expansion in Cupertino, those efforts at conveying the master vision -- in the form of a complete plan overview, elevations and landscaping diagrams, floor plans and space allocation, and pretty pretty pictures -- are now accessible to all, thanks to the Cupertino City Council posting the PDFs it received from Apple onto the city website. If you ever wanted to know how many trees are going to be planted on the new Apple campus (and exactly where), dig in and have fun. [via Apple 2.0]
The Daily Grind: How long do you really plan to play a new title?
Let's be honest with ourselves for a moment. While we like to talk about being a lifetime member of a new game, we generally are referring to the game's lifespan rather than our own. No matter how awesome a game is on release, it's going to show signs of age over time, and some of us just don't have the attention span or the will to stick with a game for years on end. It's unusual to even get the chance to be in a game from opening day to closing day, and there are few Ultima Online players who were there at launch and refuse to start a new game until they're completely finished with this one. So we leave. And when we buy a new game, in the back of our minds we pretty much know that an online game is a long-term commitment, but not necessarily a lifetime one. So how long do you expect to be playing a new game once you buy it? Did you purchase RIFT expecting to get a solid six months out of it before you moved on, or did you pick up Aion just for the free trial month? Or did you go the other route, buying Star Trek Online at launch and sticking with it for at least two or three years before changing games? 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!
Microsoft unites with former exec in building a 'smart city' in Portugal
If you want better cities, goes the theory herein, you'll have to start at their very foundations. Steve Lewis, ex-Microsoftie and current CEO of Living PlanIT, has a vision for how to make our cities smarter and more sustainable, and it starts literally at ground level, with the installation of smart sensors into buildings as they're being built. The appeal of his company's ideas has already attracted some tech luminaries as partners, Cisco being among them, and now Microsoft has also been signed up -- to provide the cloud framework required to keep all those sensors talking with its Azure platform. Paredes, a Portuguese municipality, will play host to one of the first such projects, eventually providing homes for nearly a quarter of a million people and costing a staggering €10 billion ($14.1b) to complete. To understand the synergistic benefits of having your life monitored by an omniscient Urban Operating System sentinel, skip past the break for a press release and explanatory video.
Storyboard: The story of the story
Two weeks ago, I went over the bare minimums of running a long-standing story in an MMO. Specifically, I was covering the more administrative and less narrative aspects of keeping a story going, due in no small part to the fact that you can't actually plan most of a story in a consensual environment. Instead, what you plan are setpieces and isolated incidents for everyone to interact with, smaller bits of stage setting that weave together into a larger and more satisfying whole. If you couldn't guess, though, today I'm going to focus more on the latter. For an ongoing story in a game, you need to have some structure and some motivation to keep moving, so you're going to have to know a bit about creating engaging scenes and keeping everyone engaged. This, of course, is no small task in a tabletop game, where you have complete control of surrounding events and are creating a scene to facilitate the characters of others. It gets wonderfully more complex when you're setting up a scene for your character without any control of NPCs or surrounding environments.
The Mog Log: World of Craft-craft
Crafting is optional in Final Fantasy XIV, but that word doesn't mean what it usually means in games. You don't have to take any local levequests or take part in crafting to level up, but you'll find yourself far more constrained and advancing your physical level far more slowly if you ignore the crafting side of things. It should be obvious, really -- combining local and regional guildleves gives you plenty of content, but just doing one or the other might leave you feeling a bit spare, and a full half of the classes are crafting classes to begin with. Of course, the problem quickly turns from "should I bother crafting" to "where do I start?" And that's not even touching on issues of inventory, crafts that work well with others, and which crafts support which classes. So this week, I'm going to take a look at crafting as I've seen it thus far and offer some tips on keeping yourself balanced and sane. Or at least minimizing the enraged outburst when you botch the synthesis at 99%.
The Daily Grind: How much planning do you want for your character?
All MMOs require some amount of planning for your character ahead of time. Sometimes it's just a matter of choosing whether you want to be a warrior or a healer (with apologies to game-specific terms), but sometimes you wind up in a game with a much longer list of options. There are differing talent builds in World of Warcraft, different Virtue specializations in Lord of the Rings Online, and buckets of different skill loadouts for Guild Wars. And that's not getting into the bevy of class options available in Dungeons and Dragons Online. But some people really dislike that approach. After all, it kind of does suck if you get to level 50 only to find that you made a bad choice back at level 14 that's going to screw your character forever. That's where you get reversible choices and non-permanent selections... but you still have to make some choices early on that you can't undo later. So how much do you like to plan out your characters in advance? Do you prefer games that let you make all your choices as you go, with no wrong options? Or do you like making long and detailed arrangements for your characters' future?
Storyboard: Lasting past level two
So you have what you are absolutely certain is a spectacular idea for a character. You spend the better part of a week planning and preparing for this new addition to your stable of alts. Then you create your character, get into the starting area, and you start going to town... and then you log off. And you never touch that character again, because every time you think about logging back in, a deep malaise takes over and you quickly switch to someone else. It's not that you didn't genuinely want to play the character. But for whatever reason, that concept that you had which was so solid turned out to be lacking a fundamental element: something to make you stick with him. It's a bad fate for a good concept, and today, we're taking a closer look at how you can try to ensure that your newest baby doesn't end up getting tossed out with the bathwater.
Storyboard: A group effort
Roleplaying is like many other activities in MMOs -- it can't be done alone. That means that no matter how much of an antisocial player you might be for the rest of the game, you'll need a number of other people to make any roleplaying work. By extension, any longer storylines and character development require people working together with some level of consistency. You can technically have a character's development take place without the same audience, of course, but it won't mean as much to the late arrivals. Put very simply, you want a coherent overarching sequence of events that you can point to for your characters. This is going to require some level of group coordination, and group RP events are a great excuse for roleplaying bonds to form anyway, so it's fully endorsed. For this week's Storyboard, we're going to take a look at running a group event in the smoothest way possible, ranging from a simple one-off night of adventure to a long guild-wide storyline that ends with time travel. (You know the story is really getting overwrought when the time travel makes things simpler, see.)
Breakfast Topic: Learn something new every day
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. I learned a pretty important life lesson from playing WoW. Now, I am well aware that this statement makes me sound like a loon, like someone claiming his whole life underwent a reversal after reading The Secret and now everything is so much better and wonderful. I'm not saying WoW did that for me. But it has taught me something about time management and design goals, by way of dailies. Specifically, dailies have shown me that if you devote a certain predetermined amount of time each day to the completion of carefully detailed and prioritized tasks, you will reap benefits and rewards over a finite and moderate time period, with better benefits and rewards over a longer time period. People who are good at time management and at prioritizing, and who do not have a tendency to procrastinate, are probably thinking, "Duh." But some of us poor slobs out there do have problems managing time and imagining the benefits that can come from consistently devoting time to specific activities, especially when those benefits won't materialize for a long time. Personally, this really hit home for me the past few months as I was planning my wedding. I wanted to do most of the stuff myself, because there was no way I could afford someone to do things for me. I wanted to make my own centerpieces, guest favors, cake topper, wall decorations, thank-you cards, invitations, paper picture frames for souvenirs, bridesmaid's hair pieces and so on. I read enough wedding blogs to scare myself into thinking that making everything was going to result in a time management nightmare. So early on, I set out to prioritize and schedule my daily tasks -- just like planning out Sons of Hodir rep, accumulating Champion's Seals to collect all the pets or running through quest chains on the way to Loremaster. I allocated one to two hours every night in order to complete a set amount of work and determined the best way to space out all the tasks over the following months. I got everything I wanted to get done with two weeks to spare. Days before the wedding, I was stressing out because I had nothing to stress out over. Some will find it silly that it took WoW dailies to get me to organize myself, but it really is just a very good time management model. What have you learned from playing this game? Leadership skills, perhaps? Diplomacy? How to be a politician, or a socializer, or a mediator? Or (dare I ask), an instigator? Have you ever wanted to write for WoW.com? Your chance may be right around the corner. Watch for our next call for submissions for articles via Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. The next byline you see here may be yours!
The metagame and its importance to MMOs
What is the metagame? It can mean a lot of different things depending on context, but all of the meanings share the sense that the metagame is not the game itself, but something above and affecting the game as a whole. In a casual game of poker, the metagame could be as simple as one of the players having an exceedingly poor poker face which makes betting that much easier. On a more complex scale, you have things such as the entire Band of Brothers incident on EVE Online, which has been called by some as what amounts to a forum war that was fought out over the space of the game. That's a Terrible Idea recently had a post regarding the problem of MMOs as "serious" games due to how they interact with the entire concept of the metagame. As the post outlines, you're first cut out from the endgame by the leveling game, which is changing the variables of the game itself, and when you finally reach the end of the curve most of the strategy involves memorizing specific character builds and raid strategies. The metagame, in this case defined as "the process of strategizing and conceptualizing out of the game," thrives on the viability of different strategies and the necessity of discussion. While there are certainly sites devoted to this sort of theoretical work, they frequently involve simply boiling everything down to a single optimal setup. Take a look at the article (and, if needed, the supplementary piece on terminology), as it's interesting for anyone with an affection for the genre and its overall development.
