Project Battle Fury Weeks 6-7: The Divekick Transform

Hey all, sorry I've been late.  I've been ultra busy the past two weekends: Weekend 7 was spent working on a card game prototype, and this last weekend I've been daring ludums with a couple friends.

The Heart of It All

There's this super cool game called Divekick coming out this summer.  It's half-parody, half-love letter, and 100% fighter.  I absolutely cannot wait for the release.  I've traditionally loved the idea of fighting games, but mostly hated their execution.  Games like Street Fighter and Soul Calibur pit two minds against each other in a test of mental agility, but until you've mastered the combos and memorized the moves, you don't get an invitation to the mind games.

This is precisely why Divekick is so fascinating.  Divekick strips away everything but the real competitive heart of the game.  It's a digital Double Irish to evade Sirlin's "time tax."  You don't need to shell out $150 for a hypercompetitive controller (though you can if you really really want to).  You don't need to spend your nights and weekends drilling combos and memorizing movesets.  You just jump in and get straight to the battle of wits, which, to me at least, is far more fascinating than a professional's ability to execute his unbreakable half-hit combo.  Divekick is a pure test of players' ability to read their opponent and react to an ever-changing situation.

What if we took this concept and applied it to other games?  I discussed with some friends of mine this abstract concept of the "Divekick transform" (or the DKT, if you will).  A Divekick transform is a function that projects multiplayer games into an intensely simplified form that highlights the competitive essences of the game.  It does this by simplifying unimportant elements that are overcomplicated (to reduce distraction), removing redundant elements, and most importantly, by minimizing non-competitive choice. "Non-competitive" in this context refers to user decisions that are made independently of decisions your opponent makes, which we can trivially divide further into two categories:

• No-ops: decisions in which all options are equally effective (regardless of the opponent's actions), and
• No-brainers: decisions in which one option is the most effective (regardless of the opponent's actions).

Our first example, Divekick, is the result of a DKT applied to Street Fighter (or to it and its contemporaries).  The combo system in Street Fighter, while difficult to execute because of tight timing constraints, is ultimately a non-competitive choice, and is thus removed.  Hitting the second button in an unblockable combo is a no-brainer, because there is no reason not to execute it.  Additionally, the wide cast of players is also removed, because while it provides diversity in playstyle, the characters are (supposed to be) designed such that they are evenly matched against any other opponent, making character-selection an unnecessarily complicated no-op.

Divekicking Dota

So, what does a Divekicked Dota look like? Well, to determine that, we need to argue about what choices in Dota are non-competitive, and what mechanics are most important to the game.  Here's the result of one possible DKT:

• If melee heroes weren't artificially compensated for their short range, there would be no reason to choose them over a ranged hero.  So, let's stick with just one or the other.
• On top of that, heroes are effectively sets of abilities, so choosing between heroes is a no-op, so long as the only choice we leave is a sufficiently diverse hero.  For this example, the only hero available will be Skeleton King. Skeleton king has an excellent range of abilities: Hellfire Blast allows him to gank and disable.  Vampiric Aura allows him to take a more support-based role.  Critical Strike allows him to carry.  Reincarnate, while arguably a no-brainer, can still be foregone to gain more effectiveness in a role that doesn't expect to die frequently (take Blast and Stats, for example.)
• The asymmetrical map has a generally minor effect on gameplay, and is unnecessarily complicated.  We'll make the map rotationally symmetrical then.
• However, the uniqueness of Dota's safe, middle, and hard lanes offer interesting choices with regard to inter-lane dynamics, so the asymmetry between safe and hard lanes will be preserved.
• Lanes spawn more frequently, but only have one melee creep in each of them.  Keeping it simple.
• Jungle creeps can arguably stick around, because the decision to farm the jungle offers a low-risk, low-reward alternative to laning.  The jungle creep spawn types should probably be limited to one per camp difficulty, to limit distracting complexities.
• Now that everyone is playing Skeleton King, most item choices are no-brainers, though many of them were no-brainers before then.  Here are some (but not all possible) notable omissions from a Divekicked Dota shop:
• Boots. Boots are a no-brainer.  The choices offered by boot upgrades are still competitive, but what they offer can often be substituted for with other items.  Leaving them in would mostly serve to complicate things.
• Wards - maybe.  Purchasing wards are also a no-brainer.  If you can afford wards, you should buy them and plant them.  Period.  Without observer wards, sentry wards also become irrelevant.  However, there is some merit to the opportunity cost and placement of a ward.  I don't particularly think leaving this component of the game in is too vital to communicating the spirit of Dota, but some do.
• Most upgrade components.  If the upgrade components to an item are mundane, there's nothing interesting to be gained from leaving them in.
• Most carry damage items.  Dota offers many different ways to increase your effective DPS.  Leaving in Armlet and Crystalis might be interesting, since they each have their own times at which they are effective, but more than 2 or 3 damage items in the game gets distracting.
• Keep the runes, but potentially ditch Roshan.  Many tactical decisions must be weighed when deciding to go for a rune, and on deciding how to best approach it, and it would be a shame to omit this from Dota.  However, Roshan is generally a no-brainer decision, and his tactical value is not particularly interesting.  This is up for debate.
• Now that we've radically simplified the game, we can, Divekick style, radically simplify the controls.  Left click Hellfire blasts.  Right click attacks (and denies).

Naturally there are a ton more simplifications you could make to the game, and there are also other directions you could take the game to further emphasize other competitive components of the game.

Limitations of the DKT

The DKT naturally robs a game of its thematic weight and much of its metagame.  It also strips away any entertainment value gained from the interactions of potentially complex, esoteric circumstances.  However, if done correctly, what should be left is the pure competitive essence: nothing but player-versus-player interaction.

I think the real value in executing a DKT would be that the resultant projected game could be used to allow inexperienced outsiders to understand what makes the game so fun.  It massively lowers the barrier to entry, and allows the layman front-row seats to experience the competitive thrill of the game.  I'm sure someone could whip up a server mod to give it a spin.


Weight: 194.2 lbs
Fat: 22.3%

Squat: 255 lbs
Bench Press: 145 lbs
Overhead Press: 117.5 lbs
Deadlift: 280 lbs
Power clean: 95 lbs

Project Battle Fury Week 5: The Facade of Defeat

One of the advantages of suffering from poor short term memory is that you never manage to remember your losing streaks.

Losing sucks.  Everyone knows this.  And few things suck as hard as losing at Dota.

Dota is a kind of game where losing is incredibly painful experience.  First a mistake is made, but you're still not quite sure whose fault it was.  So you get frustrated at both pubbers and friends and swing the blame bat around.  They didn't stun.  Their build is awful.  They aren't warding.  Blame comes back around at you, and you lose your concentration.  Maybe you start forgetting your own stuns.  Maybe you start picking fights you know you can't win.  Maybe you keep trying to "rush" that desolator that you swear will turn everything around.  All this comes to pass, and you're left in well wondering why there's no concede button.

Well, defeat is unavoidable.  Half of all played games of Dota are lost.  If you're new to Dota, most of the games you play will fall into at least one of two sucky categories:

• You go 0 and 7 and get stomped over, or
• Some prodigy (read: smurf) singlehandedly facerolls the enemy team.

Defeat happens to be a reward of sorts, though.  We never learn so much from the games we win as from the games we don't.  There are an infinite number of ways a game can play out, and our mind is a limitless well of planning.  Only by losing can we trim those creative branches that bear no fruit.  So, then, how can we make defeat suck less, so that we may rule out our bad ideas more quickly with less frustration?

Anger management

Defeat is not the enemy - anger is.  And anger does not come from defeat.  They both come from the same place: from a loss of control.

What feels bad is not the fact that you have been defeated, but the fact that you have lost this control, be it control over your own actions or the actions of others.  The second situation above is maddening even if you win, since you doubt your own contributions.  I know that I am most angered by situations where I feel I know what the "right" play was but was unable to act it out.  I believe we get angry to attempt to intimidate control over others, or "faulty" modules of our own self, but generally all it does is cloud our judgement.

So then, if anger comes from a loss of control, then to quash anger we must get ourselves back in control.  Here's my take on how to avoid anger so you can lose gracefully and learn to be better:

1. Communicate calmly and without accusation.  Anger begets anger, since everyone wants to micro their allies, but nobody wants to be microed.  You might have luck with a common technique where, instead of asking your allies to change how they behave, you communicate in terms of how you personally feel.  For example, instead of yelling at the supports to ward, say something about how you personally can't farm or gank because the map is dark.
2. Focus on what you can still control.  If you think your teammate is feeding or playing poorly, forget that you want to micromanage them.  Do everything you can to help the team out, regardless of whether or not you think you're supposed to do it personally.  Zone in on your own hero instead of the others.  If you're a support, just start warding and counter-warding instead of trying to back up your aggressive ganker.  If you're short on cash because you keep losing it, spend it on something cheap that will keep you in the game (like drums or a bracer).
3. Play with your friends, no matter how much worse (or better) they are.  Pubs don't trust you, and you don't trust them.  You won't ever feel like you have control over them unless they really open up or you lead by example, and in Dota, usually only one player in each pub game will present the level of skill required to gain trust.  If you play with (and be nice to!) your friends, you can calmly direct them, and this will keep you focused.
4. Accept that any failure may in part be your own.  Even if you made every right decision for your hero, Dota's nature as a team sport means that it's up to everyone to scrape all the data and communicate.  You may have been able to explain to the rando what was wrong with his build before he started feeding.  You may have been able to call miss on a lane that wasn't yours.  Realize that, the next time around, you may have more control than you think.

If you want to learn Dota, you must come to terms with defeat.  To get good at a game, you must know what can be done better, and only in the throes of defeat can you learn how to get better.  This is going to sound cliche, but it's a lot like weight lifting.  Your muscles don't get stronger from lifting weights they can easily push around, they get stronger when you lift weights that break them down.  After a good bowl of meat and some rest, they rebuild back stronger than before.  And that's where the real victory lies.


Weight: 194.9 lbs
Fat: 26%

Squat: 225 lbs
Bench Press: 130 lbs
Overhead Press: 110 lbs
Deadlift: 255 lbs
Power clean: 75 lbs

(No missed sets this week! Woo!)

Project Battle Fury Week 4: Gettin' Heavy

Hard to believe it's already been 4 weeks into this thing.  The most important thing about exercise and dieting is making sure you stick to it.  The change that comes with exercise is a slow and laborious climb up a tall ladder, and you quickly learn that it's easier to fall five rungs than grab the next.  Doubly so for someone like myself.

I made some changes to the plan.  My "Phase 1" hope was to burn off a ton of fat, then mix lifting and cardio during "Phase 2."  Turns out this is a serious pain in the butt.  Building muscle requires a caloric surplus, high in protein.  Rapidly losing weight, however, requires a caloric deficit.  Taking some advice, I solidified some suspicions: it would be much smarter for me to gain muscle mass now, then worry about burning off that fat later.

It's actually a pretty simple principle if you look at it from a Computer Science standpoint.  Doing cardio burns fat at a constant rate - O(1), as we like to say.  However, putting on lean muscle is a linear-time improvement - O(n).  This is because while cardio is excellent at burning calories while you're doing it, the only lasting improvement it makes is to your heart strength.  (Not that there's anything wrong with that, though.  Your heart is a pretty big fucking deal.)  Gaining muscle improves the rate at which you burn fat just sitting around.  It's a choice between $25 now, or getting your account's interest bumped to 5%.  Putting on muscle rewards itself in the long run, and the longer you wait to do it, the less time it has to work its magic.

So, who knows if I'll be hitting that 175lbs mark at June. The one thing I do know is that if I do all this right, I'll have less fat around my waist by then, and I'll be in better shape to do harder exercises.

By the way, here's what 4 weeks of lifting and judo have done to me:

Antediluvian

Postdiluvian 

Doin' it right, every night

The fact that I'm already writing my fifth consecutive blog post just further reinforces my understanding that human memory does not keep memories linear.  While it's been an entire month since the first post, each of these Sundays has felt closer together than the rest of the days in the week, scrunched together like the neck of a drawstring pouch.  Yet, I still can hardly believe that I'm still in the game.

I got the results in the mail last week, and I now can officially say that I have that thing everyone thought/thinks was/is bullshit and wasn't/isn't actually a thing. It's good to have this kind of perspective about yourself - to know what exactly is and is not within the jurisdiction of your executive consciousness.

The report says exercise is one of many things that helps with the focus problems.  First-hand evidence compels me to agree, though the effects don't last particularly long.  Still, it makes me feel even better about having taken the hit to my gaming time to go to judo and pump rubber-coated-iron.  What I've always worried about is having the focus in the first place to stick to an exercise routine in the first place.  I have to show up at the gym, three times a week, do this ancient pole-and-disc ritual, then go home and make sure to eat exactly the right things.  This must be repeated every week until I stop caring about the well-being of my meat bag.  So far, so good, as they say.

I usually quit after an excuse floats through my head.  Archery fell through when the costs added up and lasting benefits failed to manifest.  Fencing provided no community for my age, and plus everyone there was either far better than me and grew impatient teaching.  One of the unfortunate effects of this condition is having difficulty internalizing the outcome of past challenges - success or failure.  When you fail to internalize success, they call it the impostor syndrome - though it is not an official pathology.  I suspect it is one end result of many different diseases, ADHD included.  When you can't remember the successes of past trials, the only thing you can remember is how embarrassing starting as a newbie can be.

So, how is it that I've managed to log a full month's worth of lifting and dieting?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Publicizing Project Battle Fury may be keeping me honest, knowing that I'd let more than just myself down if the whole thing fell through.  The fact that the whole project is non-competitive helps a lot too.  I don't have to compare myself to other people to strengthen myself.  Finally, I suspect the simplicity of the whole thing plays a big part.  The biomechanics of lifting weights is so simple, I know that if a press seems impossible one day, a couple good nights' rest and a pile of dead animals will make it possible the next time.  Every other activity requires what appears to me to be a gargantuan level of focus, but the simple, steady progress of lifting asks nothing so strenuous of me.

Only time.

Weight: 194.9 lbs
Fat: 24.2%

Squat: 210 lbs
Bench Press: 120 lbs
Overhead Press: 105 lbs (seriously fuck these)
Deadlift: 245 lbs
Power clean: 55 lbs

Week 3: Building Character

I started doing power cleans this week.  The first time I tried them, on Tuesday, I was well convinced that the form was impossible or my body somehow did not properly support it.  I stood cluelessly by the squat rack, phone in hand, attempting to discern just how far up my elbows were supposed to be and how in the world I was supposed to do this when I had a neck in the way of the ideal place of the bar.  I made a couple awkward jumps up, bruising, in turn, each of my shoulders and each side of my collar bone.  I gave up that day after "completing" a 3x5 set of power cleans, resolving to stick with the barbell weight the next time.

Then, Sunday rolls around.  Turns out a few good nights' rests, forgetting your lifting gloves in the car, and generally chilling the fuck out makes the impossible possible.  I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out today.

Keep doing what you do, Dota

People have a lot of arguments they make when asserting one roughly comparable game is Clearly Superior(tm).  Usually people criticize how "competitive" a game is versus how "fun" the game is (presuming the two can be exclusive), or how steep or shallow the learning curve is, or how realistic or visceral the experience might be.  I personally have one big test for video games that Dota 2 happens to pass in flying colors: how much character the game has.

Character is two-dimensional measure of a game and its components: it is both how unique a game and its components are, and how consistent that uniqueness is.  For a good character to stand out in any story, he must be unique (or otherwise be unremarkable), but also have integrity (or otherwise be poorly defined and difficult to grasp).  Character can be found in many levels in Dota 2:

• The consistent, colorful art style.  The beautiful pastel approach to Dota 2 makes it stand out at a distance, and the insane level of polish that goes into the models and UI make it look crisp and confident.
• The styling of the characters themselves.  From the pefect silhouetting that Valve honed in TF2 and brought over to Dota 2, to the absolutely astounding writing and voice acting, Valve have brought each of these little action figures to life with their own unique egos, personalities, rivalries, and senses of humor.
• No-holds barred hero ability design.  Each of Dota's Ability 4-Paks contains thematically consistent and hard-edged skills that further compound the character of the hero, and no idea is off-limits.  A hero that only works at night time? Sure, why not.  How about a hero that can physically rewrite the map?  While we're at it, why not add one that can ignore it completely?  One of Dota's heroes has exactly one clickable ability.  Another has no less than  fourteen.  Many of these abilities are instantly lethal in the right circumstance, but can be rendered useless with a bit of wit.  Dota's heroes are generally jacks of no trades, but masters of one.  Though Invoker happens to be a master of one trade, that trade being the mastery of all trades.
• Compare this to LoL, where Riot's own hero list suggests the heroes can be roughly compared just by looking at a few bars.
• Hard-edged item design.  Like the heroes, items in Dota have particularly specialized purposes.  Their abilities are generally the reason you buy the item, and every one of them is a game changer - in the right hands.
• The Physical/Magical distinction.  This is a highly under-appreciated feature of Dota, in my opinion.  Physical and Magical damage are not treated as simply as, say, "elements" in other games.  If your game has Fire damage and Lightning damage, chances are I can get otherwise-identical items that provide me X points of Fire resist and X points of lightning resist.  It's not quite so simple in Dota.
• Physical damage comes from auto-attacks.  Magical damage comes from abilities.  This distinction is still pretty common across MOBA's, but the addition of Harkon's Blade to HoN muddles it in a way that bothers me.
• Physical damage is naturally scaling.  Magical damage is naturally static.  There's no "Ability Power" stat in Dota.  Dota's flat treatment of spells, which are magic damage unless with exception, give them a very unique flavor - one that spikes in usefulness the moment you get it, and tapers off if you don't capitalize in it.  Physical damage, however, scales naturally with items you would normally buy for your hero - even for spellcasters (thanks to the STR/AGI/INT mechanic).
• Physical damage is common-place and slowly adds up.  Magic damage is sudden and violent.  Even the weakest of magic DoT abilities are threatening until they expire.
• Physical damage takes a lot of work to protect against, while magic is easily foiled with a focused effort.  Black King Bar is, in many ways, one of Dota's most defining items, as it renders all magic damage and, with few exceptions, all disables, completely useless.  This causes you to suddenly value your auto-attacking carries that have been otherwise totally useless all game.

Say what you will about if these are good or profitable design decisions, but I would argue they give Dota 2 a unique flavor that makes you feel like you're dominating the game in your own special snowflake-y way.

Weight: 194.1 lbs

Squats: 185 lbs

Bench Press: 115 lbs

Overhead Press: 95 lbs

Deadlift: 220 lbs

Power Clean: 45 lbs