Feeds:Friday
"If you don't know that what you have is a proof, then you don't have a proof." -Pedro, 01/04/2005
So I saw Monsoon Wedding. Good show.
Not on the topic of good shows: levels, and leveling systems. Yeah, that's right, I misused that colon. And I'm listening to the Magnetic Fields. Anyway.
I was recently introduced to nethack (harper.uchicago.edu) by Lola, and I've been playing around with it. I have also, as Brian and Leah will no doubt attest, been playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Nethack features the age-old level system of accumulating experience until a new level is reached, at which point all the attributes and skills increase in a way relevant to the character archetype, or in some cases, as the player chooses, within or without limits. SanAn, on the other hand, employs a system derived from that wherin one increases a skill or ability (in effectiveness, power, scope, or otherwise) by employing it. The archtype of this system will always be, in my mind, Final Fantasy II. The beauty of the FF2 system is that you're never really sure what makes some things increase, but one can get the general idea, eg. if you put a character in the front row, she will get hit by monster attacks more often and become tougher (that is, have more total hit points). In SanAn, the system is far more blunt, but still in the same vein; the more you use, say, a motorbike, the faster you can go and turn and the less likely you are to fall (or more often, fly) off the bike. The more you shoot, say, a pistol, the faster you can shoot and reload that kind of pistol, and the farther and more accurately you can aim it. However, none of this is sublimated; everything is announced. Instead of letting one notice that one can now run farther than before, or that one is more muscular, they show a little message saying "Stamina: upgraded" or "Body Muscle: upgraded".
Low class. That's all I'm saying.
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