Online Game: City of Wonder

I've always been a fan of building games like SimCity and Civilization, so when I saw an add for City of Wonder on FaceBook, I knew I'd be trying it out. The basic concept of CoW is really the same as SimCity, with a multiplayer aspect thrown into the mix. As the lord and ruler of your land you decide what buildings to put where and how to design your city. The game doesn't go quite as indepth as SimCity does, so you are not setting tax rates or anything similar. This keeps things simple. What CoW does have is a time aspect, each action takes time to complete and while that is happening you can't do much of anything else. This is typical of all FaceBook games, so to be expected.

There is a paid aspect to the game, where if you are willing to spend real world money you can complete tasks faster and gain access to items and buildings that are far superior to those a free player may use. This should have been my first clue that I wasn't going to last all that long in this game. Some of the times you can buy are many times more powerful than the free items, so much so that it is impossible for a free player to even stay without shouting distance of a paying player. This created in essence two separate games, one for the free players and another for the paying players. The problem is the paying players still see and interact with the free players, they just get to roll over them whenever they wish.

This wasn't a problem for a long while, seeing as I didn't pay much attention to the PvP (Player versus Player) aspect of the game. I was only interested in building my city and making it look nice. My goal was to have the city remain looking like a city, functional and interesting, while still utilizing the best buildings and units I could.


Turns out I was one of only a few that had this goal. Most players were going for the "borg" type city where roads were barely, if ever, used and the only buildings in play were the very best. This makes for a very cluttered and ugly city but allows the player to get the most benefit for each square used. So I wasn't even able to compete with free players in regards to anything either, since I wasn't willing to do this. As such I simply went along my way ignoring everyone else and building what I liked.

After a while the developers were done adding content to the main city and they branched out to colonies.

The first colony was a port type location where landmass was restricted to only a quarter of the available squares. The available content here was quickly completed and I remained away from any military buildings due to my aversion to a borg building setup. Here is where another thorn in my side occurred. The developers released research that required real world money to unlock. Once unlocked everything inside could be used with game credits, but you had to pay up front first. Since I had no inclination to pay for this game, I was locked out of large swaths of buildings and units and as such this colony was barely used once completed.

Which lead to the last colony the developers released before I stopped playing. This colony was a military camp where the PvP aspect was in the foreground.

The goal here was to train units and then attack other players. Simple and easy to do, except I had two problems with the concept. First was that the paid buildings and units were ten times more powerful than anything I could create. Not the biggest of issues since those that paid would get so far ahead of me in a day or two that I wouldn't be competing with them anymore.

The second problem was by far more aggravating. It took time to build each unit, and they get lost quite quickly when attacking. As such you need to replace the units all of the time and for someone like me that plays once per day, it would take me weeks to replace all of the units I lost in a single hour's worth of attacking. So I would have to build up my force for weeks, then attack for a couple of minutes and repeat the process all over again. I could see the game was quickly moving away from being a casual game and more geared towards those online all the time who could login often. That simply wasn't something I was able to do.

So that coupled with the fact that I wasn't happy about having larger and larger amounts of content locked due to my unwillingness to pay sealed my fate and forced my decision to give up the game. Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting game but it required more of a time commitment than I was willing to give. As such I redesigned my main colony to be a rural one, and then deleted the application from my profile.

Java: Hotline Update #14

It's been quite a while since I've updated this blog. During this time quite a few changes have occurred with the Hotline program, mostly cosmetic. Names of representatives have been added or removed, options have been added or removed and I've update the reporting tool a bit. This last part is the most important of all the changes that have occurred as of late.

Previously the reporting tool was a large If-Else statement with an array being populated with call/email option values depending on what date range was in the If part of the statement. This was messy, and each time new options were added a new If-Else piece had to be added and some corresponding changes to other parts of the code made to manage this update. No longer. I've updated and condensed the code into a single array that contains all of the values ever assigned for email/phone options.

issueNumber = 50;

issueNames = new String[issueNumber];
issueNames[0] = B1;
issueNames[1] = B2;
issueNames[2] = B24;
issueNames[3] = B31;
issueNames[4] = B3;
issueNames[5] = B4;

And so on and so forth. Now the order of issues saved is always the same and the same array is used regardless of the date range searched under. What I do instead is any value that is zero is simply excluded from the report, so only those values that contain real information are visible and I'm not reporting on values that aren't in use for the date range selected. This also helps to reduce the lines of code in each portion of the project and makes updating for the future a far easier concept.

Next project for this application is to include some additional reporting tools that will allow the CS managers greater flexibility.

Castle Age: MySpace Version

Yes Castle Age is now on MySpace. Actually it has been there for a while now but I've just neglected to say anything about it. While I didn't get in on the first day I did join MySpace purely for Castle Age and have been developing a character there for 55 days now.

I did not go the same route as I did on Facebook. Instead this character is going to be a min-power leveler. As the player base on MS is fairly small any PvP action is going to be difficulty to accomplish when coupled with the fact I'm going to try and gain an army of 501 as soon as possible. As such this build will be a monster hunter, primarily, with PvP purely to get the achievement awards. At least initially.

This build started out pumping points into Energy as much as possible. Quested through each Realm completing all quests to level 4 influence in order until the Land of Mist was reached. From then I simply ran through to unlock the Land of Mist and leveled using the Cefka's Champion subquest that gives 35 experience for 20 energy used. This quest allowed my character to level extremely quickly, several times a day. At this point, level 253, I am almost at the stop where I will stop placing points into Energy and Stamina and switch to Attack instead. No Defense for now, seeing as Attack helps more against a wider variety of monsters.


I plan on putting points into Attack until I have one thousand there. At that point I'll then have to decide whether to increase defense, go back to increasing Energy/Stamina or continue with Attack. That point is fairly far down the road so I'm not going to have to think about that all that much.

I do have to say that this type of build for Castle Age isn't as much fun. Power leveling requires a large army, and abundance of monsters to fight of all types and a lot of free time. The My Space version doesn't have an abundance of monsters and I don't have all that much free time. This is why this build is only partially a power leveler, but not a full blown one. I wouldn't be able to manage the account otherwise, searching for dozens of monsters to fight daily would become more of a chore than I'm willing to take on.

Java: Hotline SM Edition

Current the Hotline application is in use by the CS department. Now I've been asked to modify it so that the Sales group can use it to track their inbound calls and emails.


I used the same layout and basic structure from the original Hotline program. However as this will be a fresh program I was able to remove all of the legacy code so that it was much cleaner and simpler than before. For example the code used to generate the report depending on what month the data is from was removed and replaced with a single statement on how this should be done. As such a lot of the confusion in the code in terms of how the report should be displayed or how the individual records should be generated is gone, leaving the program much simpler and smaller in size.

I'm rather hoping that this program doesn't require as much alteration from month to month as the original Hotline program, as then the code will simply get complex quick, as happened with the previous version. I still plan on altering the programs to allow the managers to update the representative list or call options themselves. Just in case I'm not around and we're still using the program.

Diablo II: Matriarch Jaheira

Jaheira is an Assassin who specializes in the use of traps to deal with her enemies. She's considered a spellcaster and not designed for melee or close combat in any sense of the concept. As such she's quite content to stay behind her desert warrior mercenary and lay traps while he pokes monsters to death.

Jaheira's journey starts off quite slow, as she's forced to engage in melee combat with all of the monsters encountered due to traps at a low level costing too much mana to use consistantly. Still, she doesn't encounter any real danger from the monster encountered, and once she picks up a Rogue mercenary as backup things start to pick up. Jaheira does have access to Shock Web rather quickly and uses it against dangerous monsters, such as uniques, to speed up the process. Other than that all of Act I is done in melee range of monsters. It isn't until Act II that Jaheira obtains access to the more potent traps and has access to a long supply of mana potions to be able to use traps on a normal basis. Even then she finds that half her inventory is full of mana potions and trips back to town to restock are rather frequent.

Most of Normal, once traps such as Lightning Sentry, are available is fairly simple. Cloak of Shadows is used liberally to freeze monsters in place, then traps are spread around to help the mercenary wipe them out. Jaheira finds that she isn't in too much danger personally due to this tactic, however that does change a bit in Act IV and V. Since there are a fair amount of stationary, but destroyable, objects Jaheira can't use CoS without fear of crashing the game. So the mercenary gets a bit hammered in these areas and a constant supply of health potions is required to keep him viable.

Still these areas aren't too difficult and it ends up being the act bosses that are the most difficult to handle. Jaheira ended up allowing the mercenary to be knocked off early and didn't bother resurrecting him. Her tactic to deal with the bosses was to lay traps in the general area and just try to run around in a random pattern to keep the boss from hitting her but also to keep the boss within range of her traps. Then the traps are recast when they expire. CoS is not used in these instances as it truly doesn't give any sort of advantage for the traps.

To be honest Nightmare and Hell difficulties went in about the same manner, with the same tactics used with basically the same results. Cos, BoS and the lightning traps were used liberally throughout and no monster packs or uniques posed much of a problem to Jaheira. She even ran Hell at level 3 difficulty and could probably have gotten it up as far as 5 or 6 without putting her in danger, but as there wasn't much challenge in it I just wanted to finish the character up.

Stats:
Level 83
Strength - 79(122)
Dexterity - 79(121)
Vitality - 227(227)
Energy - 125(125)

Life - 895(938)
Mana - 323(339)

Lightning Resistance - 74
Fire Resistance - 74
Cold Resistance - 34
Poison Resistance - 63

Skills:
Fire Blast - 20(34)
Charged Bolt Sentry - 20(34)
Lightning Sentry - 20(34)
Death Sentry - 20(34)
Shock Web - 8(22)
Burst of Speed - 1(9)
Weapon Block - 1(9)
Cloak of Shadows - 1(9)

Equipment:
Weapon: Bartuc's Cut-Throat
Weapon: Bartuc's Cut-Throat
Armor: Skin of the Vipermagi (Ral)
Belt: Arachnid Mesh
Helm: Coronet - FR 18%, LR 47%, CR 18%, PR 18%, 8% LL, +2 Assassin skills
Boots: Heavy Boots - LR 22%, CR 40%, PR 33%, +2 Dex, 14% MF
Gloves: Laying of Hands
Amulet: 9 life, +3 Traps
Ring 1: All resist 15%
Ring 2: 99 AR, LR 29%, PR 30%, PLR 25%

Mercenary (Holy Freeze Desert Mercenary)
Helm: Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest
Armor: Shaftstop
Weapon: Hone Sundan (AmnShaelShael)

Hellforge:
NM: Pul
Hell: Hel

Java: En Guard Retired

The En Guard program has outrun it's usefulness in the tech support department. It has been replaced with a more robust Access database application that better tracks and retains information about customer contacts. It was fun creating the program and updating it with new features as the need arose. It it possible it will make a comeback in the future in a different form or for a different department, but for now it is simply collecting dust in my coding folder.

Diablo II: Trapsin Skill Layout

A Trapsin is an Assassin that uses the Traps abilities as her main skills. This particular variant uses Lightning Sentry (LS), Death Sentry (DS) as stationary weapons and Fireblast as her backup skill. This build can deal with most monsters encountered, and those she can't the mercenary should be able to handle with Cloak of Shadows (CoS) support to keep packs of monsters at bay. The skill setup is as follows:

Claw Mastery - 1
Fireblast - 1
Psychic Hammer - 1
Shock Web - 1
Burst of Speed - 1

At level 6 quite a few skills become available to the Trapsin. At this point the character isn't really using the skills all that much and just using her claws to melee monsters to death. For very dangerous foes she can however use either Shock Web or Fireblast to deal with them from a distance. Burst of Speed is used from here onward, active all of the time. Not only does it increase the movement speed of the character, but the trap laying speed is also increased.

Cloak of Shadows - 1
Charged Bolt Sentry - 1

At level twelve one of the characters most utilized skills becomes available, Cloak of Shadows. CoS will be used constantly for the rest of the game. When cast normal monsters will not realize the character is nearby and stand idly by while they are eliminated by the traps. The only exception to this is if the monsters have "seen" the character already and are trying to engage. They will continue to follow the character around until they either reach her or are distracted by something else. Still, a quick CoS cast followed by lots of long range attacks keeps the character very safe, as well as the mercenary. One thing to note is that CoS can crash the game if used in the vicinity of stationary objects like the towers in the beginning of Act V, the chained mummies in Act IV or the Arreat Summit.

Charged Bolt Sentry - 13
Lightning Sentry - 1

Up until level twenty-four the synergy for Lightning Sentry, CB Sentry, is increased. CB Sentry is somewhat useful for massed monsters, but against single targets is very lacking. As such once Lightning Sentry becomes available, CB Sentry will no longer be used. That and LS is far more powerful per stat points assigned to it. From here onward the character shouldn't have many problems for the rest of Normal difficulty with the combination of LS and CoS.

Lightning Sentry - 7
Death Sentry - 1

At level thirty Death Sentry becomes available. It's main use is for exploding corpses, both to keep summoning monsters from resurrecting them and for dealing physical/fire damage to other monsters. However at lower levels it really isn't necessary to use as LS clears out the packs quite nicely. One thing to note is that it is not possible to choose when DS explodes corpses and when it shoots lightning, which can be quite annoying when faced with Lightning Immune monsters.

Lightning Sentry - 20
Charged Bolt Sentry - 20
Weapon Block - 1

At level forty-six both Lightning Sentry and it's main synergy are maxed and monsters drop like flies. In fact progress should be so quick at this point that casting CoS is only necessary against really nasty boss packs. Otherwise monsters don't last long enough to threaten the mercenary with harm. Weapon Block is also added to the characters arsenal as by this point duel wielding claws is preferable to gain the most +skill mods possible for her traps. Weapon Block allows the character to still avoid damage as much as possible, with the added bonus of perhaps blocking magical attacks as well.

Death Sentry - 10
Fireblast - 20

At level seventy Lightning Sentry is further synergizes with extra points to Death Sentry, allowing it to continue wreaking havoc even against the higher Hit Point monsters in Acts IV and V of Nightmare. However the main focus is on developing a backup attack for LI monsters, Fireblast. As long as the monster remains stationary, which is the mercenary's job along with CoS, Fireblast is very effective against LIs. However due to the lobbing motion of the attack if the monster is moving then it is tough to target until the monster is almost right next to the character. This can be negated somewhat by targeting the ground where the monster should be when the Fireblast arrives, but this isn't the easiest thing to time properly.

Death Sentry - 20

At level seventy-eight Death Sentry, the second major synergy for Lightning Sentry is complete and LS packs quite the punch. Along with this DS can now be used in conjunction with LS in perhaps a 2:3 or 1:4 DS:LS ratio for added carnage and an increase in progress speed. From here on out all extra points can either go into Shadow Warrior for an added tank or Shock Web for added synergy damage for LS and Fireblast. Personally I recommend Shock Web as the combination of CoS and a melee mercenary doesn't require additional assistance in keeping the character from being mobbed.

Final Skill Distribution:

Charged Bolt Sentry - 20
Lightning Sentry - 20
Death Sentry - 20
Fireblast - 20
Burst of Speed - 1