Friday, March 30, 2012

Vector Ayat Kursi

Ayat Kursi
Ayat Kursi Terjemaah Indonesia :
Allah, tidak ada Tuhan (yang berhak disembah) melainkan Dia Yang Hidup kekal lagi terus menerus mengurus (makhluk-Nya); tidak mengantuk dan tidak tidur. Kepunyaan-Nya apa yang di langit dan di bumi. Tiada yang dapat memberi syafaat di sisi Allah tanpa izin-Nya. Allah mengetahui apa-apa yang di hadapan mereka dan di belakang mereka, dan mereka tidak mengetahui apa-apa dari ilmu Allah melainkan apa yang dikehendaki-Nya. Kursi Allah meliputi langit dan bumi. Dan Allah tidak merasa berat memelihara keduanya, dan Allah Maha Tinggi lagi Maha Besar.


Vector Ayat Kursi CDR
Password :  nirwana-game.blogspot.com

Mirror 1
Jika link di atas gagal, coba link download Berikut :
Mirror 2


Catatan : Jika ada link Download yang rusak mohon beri tahu kami.


Rekomendasi Artikel :
"Ultrabook Notebook Tipis Harga Murah Terbaik"
"Sepeda Motor Injeksi Irit Harga Terbaik Cuma Honda"

Vector Surat An-Naas

Vector Surat An-Naas
Vector Surat An-Naas

Vector Surat An-Naas CDR
Mirror 1

Jika link di atas gagal coba link download Berikut :
Mirror 2

Download Password Untuk Membuka File Vector Surat An-Naas ini:
Password

Jika ada link Download yang rusak mohon beri tahu kami.



Vector Surat Al-Falaq

Vector Surat Al-Falaq
Vector Surat Al-Falaq

Vector Surat Al-Falaq CDR
Mirror 1


Jika link di atas gagal coba link download di bawah ini
Mirror 2


Download Password Untuk Membuka File Vector Surat Al-Falaq ini:
Password

Jika ada link Download yang rusak mohon beri tahu kami.

Vector Surat Al-Ikhlas

Vector Surat Al-Ikhlaas
Vector Surat Al-Ikhlaas

Vector Surat Al-Ikhlas CDR
Mirror 1

Jika link di atas gagal coba link download di bawah ini
Mirror 2


Password Untuk Membuka File Vector Surat Al-Ikhlaas ini:
Password

Jika ada link Download yang rusak mohon beri tahu kami.

Vector Surat Al-Fatihah

Vector Surat Al-Fatihah
Vector Surat Al-Fatihah

Vector Surat Al-Fatihah CDR
Miror 1

Jika link di atas gagal coba link download berikut ini
Mirror 2

Password Untuk Membuka File Vector Surat Al-Fatihah ini:
Password

Jika ada link Download yang rusak mohon beri tahu kami.

Vector Surat Yasin

Vector Surat Yasin ini masih dalam bentuk file cdr dan tampilannya pun masih sederhana masih perlu di edit ulang atau di modifikasi lagi sesuai kebutuhan anda. Saya rekomendasikan sebelum anda Mencetak  atau memperbanyak surat yasin ini ada baiknya kaji ulang lagi Tajwidnya, Kalo kata urang sunda ( Pariksa deui Jabar jeer na Bilih aya nukaliwat Ku simkuring )

Vector Surat Yasin

Gratis Download File Vector Surat Yasin CDR
Vector Surat Yasin
Password : nirwana-game.blogspot.com

Jika ada link Download yang rusak mohon beri tahu kami.

Identity and personality

Tobold Stoutfoot was the name of my first AD&D character, a halfling rogue, from about 30 years ago. For the blog I had shortened that to Tobold, but with the forced integration of Blogger into Google+, the family name now appears on the blog too. Tobold is an identity I took, not the name on my passport. And having used it so long, and fought battles over identity with Google and Facebook, I'd say I have some experience with living multiple identities. What I have more problems to understand is the concept of multiple personalities, which was cited as a defense in the Mittanigate scandal. "Hey, I'm not an evil guy in real life, I'm just playing one!" Is that even possible?

Obviously I am not talking about the kind of "virtual evil" we might get pushed into in games with some sort of alignment system. I do not believe that whether you choose Horde or Alliance in WoW, Sith or Jedi in SWTOR, allows any conclusion about your personality. Playing black in chess isn't evil. Even "killing" in games isn't necessarily evil, sometimes that is simply what the game is about.

But this "it's just a game" excuse only holds up as long as we are talking about avatars doing in-game action against other avatars, with no deeper emotion involved between the players behind the avatars. That is not always the case. If you read the stated goals and announcements of the Goons, they do not just want to achieve in-game goals; they *say* they want to cause emotional damage to the opposing players. A "win" is not shooting down the enemy spaceship, a "win" is making another player ragequit in frustration.

I believe that such behavior is evil. I believe that Alexander "The Mittani" Gianturco is evil. I believe that the real person blogging under the name of Syncaine is evil. I believe that wanting to win over the opposing avatar is okay, but deliberately wanting the player behind the opposing avatar to be emotionally or physically hurt is evil. And because this wanting to hurt the *real* person behind the screen is a motivation of the *real* person committing those acts of ganking, harassment, and bullying, I do not believe in the excuse that somebody is just "playing evil". You can have multiple identities, but not multiple sets of moral, unless you suffer from dissociative identity disorder.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Evolving complexity

When I started my Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition campaign, I limited my players to the classic fantasy races, and to the 8 standard classes found in the Player's Handbook. I didn't allow the more complex and exotic races and classes from the 2nd and 3rd Player's Handbook. That had two reasons: It limited how much money people had to spend on rulebooks, and it limited the complexity while the players are still learning how 4E works. If now I had a character dying in combat, and he wanted to play a race/class from the other books, I would allow it. Also if we play this campaign to the end at level 30 and start over, I would certainly allow the more complex races and classes.

I can imagine a MMORPG that works like that. The current construct with a level cap leading to an endgame is a crutch to gather lots of players at the same level, so they can play together. It isn't even a very well working crutch, because people of the same level but with very different level of gear still won't play together. Thus if developers came up with better methods to get players to play together during leveling, the crutch of the endgame wouldn't be needed any more. Players who like raiding would be better served with a game that wouldn't even require them to level but jumped into raiding right away. And for the rest I would design a game in which players would ALWAYS be leveling.

The idea would be to limit players to just a few races and let's say 4 character classes on starting the game: Fighter, rogue, mage, and priest. Leveling would be relatively slow, something like 1,000 hours to level cap. But besides gaining levels for your characters, all xp you'd gain while playing all your characters would also count towards a meta-level. And the higher your meta-level went up, the more different races and classes can you choose from when making a new character. Expansions wouldn't add new levels to the game, but new meta-levels and new races and classes.

To get people to play together, two systems would have to be tuned: One about gaining xp while in a group, where gaining xp in a group would be faster than soloing, to make up for the trouble of finding a group, but not so much faster that soloing appears totally unfeasible. And the other to enable people of different levels to play together, using a system of mentors / sidekicks with people being temporarily adjusted to the level of their group.

In this game leveling wouldn't be an obstacle to overcome to reach the "real" game; leveling would *be* the real game. And because there would be nothing left to do at the level cap, top-level characters would be bored into retirement, but rewarded with unlocking new and more complex character classes. Thus everybody would be leveling all of the time, and you would always find enough people of any given level playing. There would not be the deserted zones everybody outleveled that we find in the games of today. Instead we would get a breathing, living, virtual world which would always be active.

Play rhythm

I played Hero Academy on my iPod Touch all evening yesterday. The bad news is that I didn't manage to finish a single game. Worst case was a game in which my opponent never ever made a single move. Best case was a game in which my opponent made a move about every 15 minutes, and I had to resign after 2 hours when it was getting late and I wanted to go to bed, with the game not even half done. I then promptly deleted the Hero Academy app from my iPod. It is a game that I would love to play against a computer opponent, but as there is only PvP and it's very slow turn-based, the play rhythm of the game doesn't fit my time constraints.

Reading about Hero Academy I found out that people usually launch half a dozen games at once to not wait endlessly, but then of course they contribute to the problem because while they make a move in one game their opponent in another game has to wait. If I had time all day, I could imagine just playing a slow game, playing something else on the PC while waiting for my opponent to move. But for playing 2 hours in the evening, Hero Academy isn't really the most suitable game. If you have any limit to how long you can play, you can't be sure to finish any game.

Another game on the iOS turns out to be somewhat too fast for me. I do like the general style and structure of Battlehearts, but I wished the combat was turn-based instead of real time. On the small iPod Touch screen my fingers aren't the most precise input devices for a game that benefits from fast reaction. My dream game would be something that has the combat system of Hero Academy, but the PvE campaign structure of Battlehearts.

But all this is obviously quite subjective. Different people have different play rhythms, and a game that is too fast or too slow for one person might be just right for another. I like games in which you can adapt the game's speed to your personal rhythm, so that usually means PvE, and either turn-based, or a real-time system with a pause function where you can give commands during the pause. But that is just me.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

The future of free-for-all PvP

One of the more interesting aspects of The Mittani's drunken "let's harass that depressed guy into suicide" rant is how many people think that this is totally acceptable behavior. Syncaine even says that "Killing off the weak is not always a bad thing". Many others say that because The Mittani apologized, everything is okay now. From this reaction one can extrapolate and predict the future of games like EVE:

 Here is what I think will happen, not necessarily tomorrow, but over next few years: People will continue to play free-for-all PvP games which encourage bad behavior. Cyber-bullying will continue. At some point some bullied player will actually commit suicide, leave a letter explaining why, and his relatives will file a lawsuit. Between legislators thinking that bashing video games is always good politics, and courts thinking that there is no difference whatsoever between cyber-bullying in a game and cyber-bullying via other online platforms, we will end up with laws against game-related cyber-bullying. Game companies that can be shown to have encouraged cyber-bullying, or at least not sufficiently intervened, will get into legal trouble. At some point the extra cost of having your game support free-for-all PvP will become greater than the benefit of attracting the minority of players who actually enjoy being allowed to be cruel to other players in a game. Free-for-all PvP games will then either close down, or change their rules to only offer consensual PvP. Bullying in-game or on official game forums / game events will become a bannable offense in every online game. Free-for-all PvP will die or at least be driven far underground into games nobody plays.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The limits of being without limits

One reason that EVE Online is popular is that CCP puts up a lot less limits and restrictions on how players can interact with each other. Actions which would be bannable offences in other MMORPGs, like scamming your way into a guild and robbing the guild bank, are totally allowed in EVE Online. Many fans of EVE claim that it makes the game much better that players aren't limited to politically correct interactions.

There is just a small problem with that: Interaction between players is never just 100% confined to the virtual world. Real world rules and laws apply to the communication that spills over into the real world. Just like a telephone company doesn't have the right to declare what communication is legal or not on a telephone line, a game company can't declare real world rules invalid just because some communication took place in a game or during a game convention.

Case in point is the EVE fanfest, where during an "unfiltered" panel the elected player representative The Mittani revealed a private conversation with a depressed player, giving out that player’s in-game username and encouraged the audience and viewers watching to find the player in-game to harrass them, in the hopes he would eventually act out on his depression and commit suicide. That event forced even CCP to state that: "We are undertaking a full internal review of this panel as well as the process used for vetting the panel’s materials. Even though this panel was billed as unfiltered by CCP, we expect public presentations to be courteous and professional towards others."

There are jurisdictions in which cyber-bullying is a crime. If The Mittani succeeds in driving that player into suicide, with video proof of inciting that cyber-bullying available on the internet, he could well end up in jail. And nothing that is written in EVE Online's End User License Agreement or Terms of Service is going to change that. Because at some point you just leave the sphere of the game, and the authorities don't care whether you did that cyber-bullying via e-mail, Facebook, or EVE Online. There is a limit to what degree of limitlessness CCP can offer.

Monday, March 26, 2012

The Favorites of Selune campaign - Level 1 - Session 3

When last we left our intrepid heroes, they had agreed to help Lord Padraig of Winterhaven to free his counselor Valthrun, who had been captured by kobolds. The group had vanquished the kobolds in front of their lair, and the kobolds inside the lair behind a waterfall hadn't noticed. Thus after a short rest to recover their encounter powers, the players decided to enter the kobold's lair.

With some good stealth and perception rolls the rogue managed to determine that there were 13 kobolds in the front part of the lair, of which 10 were simple minions. The only question was how to tackle them, as the lair had three entrances: One through the waterfall, and one each left and right of it. In spite of "never split the party" now being an official D&D motto, the group decided to split up and enter through the left and right entrance at the same time.

In the end that worked out rather well. The fighter, rogue, and Lord Padraig (a level 3 paladin) entered on the left side, and the rest of the group (warlord, priest, mage, and ranger) on the right side. After 1 round fighting kobold skirmishers and minions, the rest of the kobolds came from the back of the cave: 2 dragonshields and 1 wyrmpriest joined the fight on the right side, and the kobold leader Irontooth on the left. After an intense battle, the party prevailed without anyone being dead, but having used all their available healing. The paladin NPC Lord Padraig helped a lot there with healing the fighter and rogue, because otherwise the group would have been in trouble. I played the kobolds as using their tactical abilities to the maximum, ganging up on players and searching for the weakest spots, and that made the combat quite exciting.

After the kobolds were beaten, the group found Valthrun in the back of the cave. He had freed himself and killed his single kobold minion guard with a spell. Happy reunion with his friend Lord Padraig, during which the players were able to pick up Valthrun whispering in the Lord's ear: "I got the card!". Being curious the rogue asked them directly about that, using his skills of persuasion. And somewhat reluctant Valthrun showed him a tarot card made out of ivory, saying that Lord Padraig was collecting those for the defense of Winterhaven. The group was unable to get them to say more about the card, although Lord Padraig and Valthrun offered them to pay well for any cards they might stumble upon in Nentir Vale.

On returning to Winterhaven, bad news awaited: Three villagers had disappeared in the two days where the Lord and the group were away chasing kobolds. Although one of them was rumored to just have left his wife after finding out that she had an affair with the smith, three villagers disappearing while being outside the village and close to the woods was definitively worrying. Thus the group decided to stay a while and continue their investigation into the strange events. While they suspect that the core of the problem has to do with the disappearance of two of the standing stones outside the village, they decided to leave investigation of the stones for after a night's rest, and only talked to people in the village this evening.

The village of course was buzzing with rumors, the peasants fearing evil spirits and a curse on the village. In two days there will be the festival of the Blessing of the Seeds, and the villagers fear that if evil spirits prevent them from holding that festival, their harvest this year will fail. Visiting the local church the priest and warlord saw the chalice on display there holding the holy water with which the Blessing of the Seeds. Meanwhile the mage found a book on petrification magic in the library of the dead mage, but it appeared to only contain very general information on the subject. Thus the group decided to go to bed (both in game and in real life) and tackle the standing stones the next "day".

The theory of perfect speed of advancement

As predicted last week, the backlash is starting about ArenaNet selling time-saving convenience items in their item shop. Basically the criticism is based on the following theory:
There is something like a perfect speed of advancement in a MMORPG. A perfect speed with which to gain levels, or gear once the levels run out. The developers are fully knowledgeable about this perfect speed of advancement. And to get maximum money out of the players, they deliberately make the "free" advancement speed much slower than the known perfect speed, forcing the players to pay money for time-saving convenience items that will speed them up to just the perfect speed of advancement.
I believe this widely cited theory to be bullshit. There is no such thing as a perfect speed of advancement. A perfect speed of advancement is technically impossible in a MMORPG because you advance as a function of the number of hours you play, and there are enormous differences between hours played of different people. Furthermore of the various motivations to play MMORPGs, only some are affected by speed of advancement: Achievers mostly, killers only if the PvP is badly balanced and allows people who have progresses faster to gank those who progressed slower, explorers and socializers barely at all.

As there is no perfect speed of advancement, developers can't deliberately deviate from the perfect speed to make item shops more profitable. For example for me personally (and some other casual players I know) the leveling speed in World of Warcraft at the moment is too fast. Thus I would never buy a "double xp scroll" in WoW, even if it was on offer. But for other players advancement can never be fast enough, and they would be very much in the market for either double xp scrolls or pay-for-premade level-capped characters in WoW if they existed.

In fact Everquest, which is shrouded in the mist of nostalgia for many people, was a game of extremely slow advancement. 2000 hours to level cap, or two years for the average player playing 20 hours per week. And this slow leveling speed had some advantages: Leveling was a meaningful activity. Guilds formed to help each other to level, and guild activities were not just limited to the endgame at the level cap. That increased social cohesion. And a game with levels in which leveling up is actually a major event makes inherently more sense than a game with levels in which leveling is considered to be a waste of time.

Thus if slow leveling isn't necessarily bad, it is stupid to think that there is a deliberate strategy of making games bad by making them slow, only to then sell you the means to speed them up. Instead the items to speed the games up are NOT designed for the people who already play the game for an average or high number of hours per week. They are designed for the time-constrained who only get a few hours of play in every week, but still want to keep up with the Joneses, or their friends. If you use them to break all sorts of server-first records with the help of you fat wallet, you're cruising well past any notion of perfect speed of advancement.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Membuat Halaman Error 404 di Blogger Dengan CSS3

Halaman Error 404
Error 404 atau pesan Halaman Tidak Ditemukan adalah kode respon HTTP standar yang menunjukkan bahwa klien mampu berkomunikasi dengan server, tetapi server tidak bisa menemukan apa yang diminta." Dengan kata sederhana halaman yang akan ditampilkan bila halaman yang sebenarnya tidak ditemukan Maka akan Muncul Error 404 atau pesan Halaman Tidak Ditemukan. Untuk Contoh klik disini
Bagaimana caranya  Membuat Halaman Error 404  di Blogger ? Caranya cukup Mudah silahkan Ikuti petunjuk di bawah ini :

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A problem of layout

The 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons provides excellent rules for what I would call a turn-based tactical RPG, in pen & paper form. In fact it is a pity that turn-based games have fallen out of favor on the PC, because 4E would make for an excellent turn-based tactical RPG on the PC. Instead we get lame real-time and action RPGs calling themselves "Dungeons & Dragons" but having very little to do with it. But also on the pen & paper side of things 4th edition doesn't have the best of reputations. And I think that might be a problem of layout.

4th edition Dungeon & Dragons adventure modules have a very distinctive style, very different from previous editions. Every encounter takes up 2 pages, on which everything a DM needs to know is described: The map, the monsters and their stats, tactics, terrain effects, descriptions, treasure, everything. The DM just opens his adventure module on the double-page for the encounter and he can run the whole thing without ever flipping a page.

Thus if you try to read a typical official 4E adventure, flipping through the usually 32-page booklets, you will see one encounter after another. Mostly combat, with a few skill challenges mixed in. And it is easy to imagine that somebody with not much experience as a Dungeon Master would run the game exactly like that: Set up the map for the encounter, run the combat, hand out treasure, and proceed to the next map with the next tactical combat encounter. And as good as the tactical combat rules are, that makes for a rather dry game.

More experienced Dungeon Masters will notice that at the start of the booklets there is all the other information to turn the game from a dry sequence of tactical combat encounters into a real role-playing game: Description of NPCs and their motivations, story outlines, lore, sequence of events with decision points, and so on. If you prepare the adventure properly and fully read and understand the part printed before the encounter descriptions, you can combine the two parts into a good adventure: Role-playing dialogues with NPCs, decision making, telling the story of a coherent and believable world in which the actions of the players matter. All the stuff in fact where pen & paper games tend to shine and computer games tend to be somewhat weak.

Unfortunately you'll need to good DM to turn the printed adventure into a great story. New Dungeon Masters receive a lot of help on how to run the tactical combat encounters, but very little help on the story-telling side. That is somewhat understandable, because it is easier to write down the instructions for the technical side of the game, while the story-telling is more of an art, and art is hard to teach in writing. Nevertheless I think that the layout with double-page after double-page of combat encounters is kind of a trap. It is what you will see if you randomly open an adventure booklet. And it contributes to the false impression that 4th edition D&D is just tactical combat and nothing else. While helping the DM to run a combat encounter without flipping pages, the DM is forced to flip pages and search for information whenever the players do anything but combat. If the role-playing information was better organized and presented, the information linking the encounters printed between the encounters, people wouldn't get the impression that D&D wasn't about role-playing any more.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Artistic text dengan object atau curve

Artistic text dengan object/curve
Artistic text dapat diatur agar aliran text- nya mengikuti segment atau beberapa segment tertentu dari sebuah object. Object yang dapat digunakan dalam hal ini adalah primitives dan curve, baik yang tertutup maupun yang terbuka. Ada beberapa macam prosedur yang dapat digunakan.
  1. Dengan menyiapkan artistic text dan objectnya terlebih dahulu, pilihlah artistic text , dan drag dengan tombol kanan mouse ke atas object. Dari menu yang muncul, pilihlah fit text to path.
  2. Dengan menyiapkan artistic text dan objectnya terlebih dahulu, pilihlah artistic text , lalu akses menu text> fit text to path, dan dengan cursor khusus, click pada object.
    Artistic text dengan object
  3. Posisilkan cursor text tool, di atas salah satu segment object hingga rupa cursor seperti pada gambar. Click, dan anda dapat langsung mengetik di atas object.

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Paragraph text dan object curve tertutup

 Paragraph text dan object curve tertutup
  • Dengan mengaktifkan wrap paragraph text, khususnya dengan mode contour straddle text, pada object yang overlap dengan paragraph text, anda dapat membuat character paragraph text menghindari overlap tersebut. Sebagai contoh,
    ellipse
    pada alinea ini ditempatkan sebuah ellipse yang seharusnya menutupi text. Karena fungsi wrap paragraph text ellipse tersebut diaktifkan.
  • Untuk memberi text di dalam sebuah curve tertutup, ketiklah dulu dalam frame paragraph text seperti biasa, lalu drag text frame dengan tombol kanan mouse menuju sebuah curve tertutup, dan dari menu yang muncul, pilih place text inside.
    Paragraph text dan object curve tertutup
    Bila overflow tidak dapat ditolerir, anda dapat mengakses menu text> fit text to frame agar font diperkecil (atau diperbesar) hingga tepat memenuhi frame. 
    Anda juga dapat mengetik langsung dalam sebuah curve tertutup. Dengan pick tool,pilihlah curve yang dimaksud.
    Paragraph text dan object curve tertutup
    Kemudian dalam keadaan tersebut, aksesklah salah satusegment dengan text tool ([F8]), dan tempatkan cursor di atas segment- nya, tepatnya agakke dalam, sehingga cursor berbentuk seperti pada gambar. Bila demikian, anda dapat mengclick,dan langsung mengetik pada curve tadi. 
  • Untu memasukkan gambar ke dalam text, buatlah gambar yang diinginkan seperti biasa, lalu drag dengan tombol kanan mousemenuju paragraph text. Pilih posisi dimana anda menginginkan gambar tersebut masuk. Lepas tombol kanan mouse. Dari menu yang muncul, pilih move into text atau copy into text bila anda ingin mempertahankan aslinya.
    font symbol
    Gambar akan dianggap sebagai text dan dapat anda perlakukan seperti text biasa. Teknik ini dapat anda gunakan sebagai pengganti font symbol atau bullets.
- ( Baca Juga :  Artistic text dengan object atau curve )
Rating: 4

Friday, March 23, 2012

Paragraph text dan artistic text dengan shape tool

Mengakses obyek dengan shape tool berarti mengakses node- node- nya. Baik text paragraph maupun artistic, jika diakses dengan shape tool berarti mengakses huruf- huruf atau characters- nya. Gambar contoh di bawah ini menunjukkan sebuah text artistic dan paragraph yang diakses dengan shape tool.
Paragraph text dan artistic text dengan shape tool
Perhatikan titik- titik (kotak- kotak kecil berwarna putih) yang ada pada masing- masing huruf. Akseslah titik- titik ini dengan shape tool, dan
ubahlah letaknya secara interaktif atau melalui setting- setting yang ada pada property bar kerning text.

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Paragraph text dengan pick tool

Serupa dengan artistic text, sebuah paragraph text dapat diakses dengan pick tool untuk transformasi dasar. Perlu diketahui, bahwa transformasi yang dilakukan terhadap paragraph tool tidak ditujukan kepada character, tetapi kepada text frame. Move, strech, dan skew dianggap berlaku kepada text frame, dan character yang menjadi isi frame yang bersangkutan akan menyesuaikan diri dengan bentuk frame- nya.

Untuk rotate, character akan turut berputar bersama dengan berputarnya frame. Dan khusus untuk mirror, jika sebuah object paragraph text di- mirror horizontal, maka hasilnya adalah serupa dengan rotate 180 derajad. Di lain pihak, bila di- mirror vertical, hasilnya serupa dengan rotate 360 derajad, atau dengan kata lain, tidak terjadi perubahan apapun.

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Artistic text dengan pick tool

Bila anda memilih/ menseleksi sebuah artistic text yang sudah anda buat sebelumnya dengan menggunakan pick tool, anda dapat meng- edit sejumlah property. Dalam keadaan ini, anda dapat memperlakukan artistic text sebagai object biasa yang dipilih dengan pick tool.  ( Baca Juga : Mengenal Fungsi Text Tool Dalam coreldraw )
Anda dapat melakukan transformasi
  • Move.
  • Strech.
  • Rotate.
  • Mirror dan 
  • skew.
melalui docker transformation atau langsung pada object secara interaktif.

Karena masalah kompabilitas, ada beberapa jenis font dalam Coreldraw artistic text yang tidak memungkinkan effect bold atau italics. Untuk bold, sebenarnya anda dapat memberikan outline kepada artistic text anda. Sedangkan sebagai pengganti effect italics, anda dapat menggunakan trasformasi skew. Perhatikan contoh
Coreldraw artistic text
Dalam mengelola artistic text, anda harus sangat kreatif. Misalnya untuk membuat efek drop shadow yang sebenarnya tidak tersedia untuk text, anda dapat meng- copy object aslinya, meletakkannya di belakang
object, mengatur posisinya, dan mengisinya dengan color fill hitam.
efek drop shadow
Di artikel selanjutnya kita akan Bahas mengenai Paragraph text dengan pick tool
Rating: 4

Mengenal Fungsi Text Tool Dalam coreldraw

Coreldraw, selain sebagai software untuk menggambar, dapat juga digunakan sebagai platform
untuk publishing.
Sebagai sebuah publisher, Coreldraw antara lain harus:
  1. Dapat dengan mudah melakukan layout. Layout adalah pengaturan tata letak antar obyek dalam sebuah publikasi. Karena Coreldraw tidak saja object- oriented, tapi juga layer- oriented, maka jelas Coreldraw memenuhi syarat sebagai sebuah software publisher.
  2. Dukungan penuh terhadap teks dan editing teks. Coreldraw memiliki banyak tool dan fungsi yang berhubungan dengan teks, yang akan kita bahas dalam artikel ini.
  3. Hubungan yang harmonis antara gambar dan teks. Coreldraw dapat memasukkan gambar ke dalam teks, dan sebaliknya, menyingkirkan teks yang ter- overlap atau tertutup oleh gambar secara otomatis.
  4. Wysiwyg. Sifat “What you see is what you get” harus dimiliki oleh semua software yang mengakui dirinya sebagai software publisher. Wysiwyg mengandung arti bahwa apapun yang dihasilkan printer, akan sama persis dengan apa yang anda lihat pada tampilan di monitor, baik dalam hal bentuk, ukuran, warna (memerlukan fungsi color matching), dan sebagainya, sesuai kemampuan printer dan monitor yang digunakan. Dalam hal ini, kemampuan Coreldraw lebih dari cukup.

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iOS Triple Town

I've decided to put "iOS" in the titles of all my blog posts talking about games I play on my iPod Touch, so as to keep these posts clearly separate from my reviews of PC games. Having said that, Triple Town from Spry Fox is a game that runs not only on iOS, but in fact was released first on the Amazon Kindle, then on Facebook and Google+.

Triple Town is a puzzle game. Most puzzle games have some elements of luck, and some elements of strategy / planning. In Triple Town the luck elements are relatively small, and the strategy part is relatively strong. You score in Triple Town thus represents rather well how good you are at this game.

The basic principle is that you have a board of 6x6 squares. Each "turn" you place one new element on this board, thus one turn equals just one click. While what the next new element is you can place depends on luck, there are two major factors which make strategy possible: 1) Most of the time the new element to place is a patch of grass, everything else is less common. And 2) you get one space of intermediate storage, so if you can't use the element randomly provided, you can exchange it with the element you previously stored. Once the board is full, the game is over, and you get the score corresponding to the points for all of the elements you placed. Thus the goal of the game is to place elements in a way that the board does not fill up.

For that you need to build chains of 3 or more elements of the same type. If you do that, they don't disappear like in other "match 3" puzzle games. Instead on the location of the last element you placed, a new, higher value element appears. For example combining three patches of grass gives you one bush, combining three bushes gives you one tree, combining three trees gives you a small house, combining three small houses gives you a mansion, and so on. Thus as long as you can manage to always place elements in a way that they combine, you can place new elements for a long time and continue to increase your score. To make that a bit more difficult, sometimes negative elements appear, like bears. You need to trap bears to form gravestones, then combine 3 gravestones to a church, combine three churches to a cathedral, and so on. Later you also get teleporting ninja bears, which can only be turned into gravestones with a special robot element.

As I said, you can play Triple Town on various social networks. But I seriously advise against doing that. For reasons not known to me, Spry Fox decided to use different business models on different platforms. On every platform you start out with a large number of turns, something over 1,000, enough to play for a while. But once these turns are used up (and remember one turn is just one click, thus just a few seconds worth of game), you can't continue until your moves fill up again. That either happens slowly on its own, but with a cap of 150 turns; or you need to buy turns at a cost of about $1 for 400 turns. Thus to play for free you can only play a few minutes per day, while with buying turns you could quickly rack up crazy cost for a simple puzzle game. The only platform with a reasonable business model is iOS, where you can buy unlimited turns for $3. Thus a game which I would consider unplayable because of its shitty business model on Facebook / Google+ becomes a nice $3 game on the iPhone/iTouch/iPad platform.

Triple Town is also one of the prime example for the blatant cloning that is going on with games on social networks and mobile platforms. According to Spry Fox they gave another company, 6waves LOLAPPS, access to the beta of Triple Town under an NDA, with the purpose of working with them on releasing the game on iOS. Instead 6waves broke off negotiations and released a game named "Yeti Town" on iOS on the same day. Yeti Town plays on a 6x6 grid where you need to combine 3 elements to build the next bigger elements, and sometimes yetis instead of bears get into your way. Exactly the same gameplay, just changed graphics, exactly the same prices in the item shop, Yeti Town is a pure clone of Triple Town. Spry Fox sued, but the conflict hasn't been resolved yet. That sort of cloning gets more an more common, with Zynga having cloned Tiny Tower, and Valve going so far as to trademark "DotA" on the release of their "DotA 2", although "DotA 1" was a mod for Blizzard's Warcraft III (although at least in this case the developer of the clone was the same guy who had done the original).

Well, they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the fact that Triple Town got cloned tells you that it is quite a good game. Nevertheless I can only recommend it on the iOS, due to the difference in business models between platforms. But for $3 on the iOS it is well worth playing, and if you aren't sure you can first play those 1,000+ turns for free before paying.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Persuading people to pay

In the uproar over the EVE monocalypse, CCP's CEO Hilmir Petursson foolishly said something very true but hurtful: "I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say". The true measure of acceptance of microtransactions in online game is not how much people complain about it, but how many of them actually pay.

The percentage of users who pay varies a lot from game to game. Zynga with their Facebook game is said to "convert" only 1 to 3 percent of their users to paying users. Free2Play MMORPGs usually cite numbers in the 5 to 10 percent conversion range. One of the best ratios of paying users to overall users is from World of Tanks, 25 to 30 percent.

I would argue that this is because the microtransaction model of World of Tanks is the most fair. I once called it a payslope instead of a paywall: The further you progress in the game, the more are you encouraged to pay. That isn't to say that it is impossible to directly buy a big tank and gold ammo, but the investment would be a bad one, as you'd just horribly lose all the time. Even for experienced players using gold ammo in a random battle is kind of a waste. Only in the "endgame" of clan warfare where every little advantage counts does gold ammo make really sense. And then we are in a situation where those who play most and most intensively also have the best motivation to pay. That sounds rather fair to me. And seeing the conversion rates, it apparently sounds rather fair to many players.

Now that I'm trying out iOS games, I notice that many of these have a similar basic philosophy: Many games exist in a free "lite" version, and only if you play this for a while, like it, and want more, do you pay for the full version. That's a one-time purchase in most cases, but the principle remains the same: Those most interested in the game pay.

Many of the "DotA" or "MOBA" multiplayer online games also have widely hailed payment models in which everybody can play for free, and payments make most sense for players who play intensively. That this works best is logical: The more you like a game and spend time with it, the easier it is to persuade you to pay something for it. The n00b who never played the game and directly spends hundreds of dollars on it on the first day is an urban myth.

Kickstarting Banner Saga

I just bought a game that doesn't exist yet. Curiously enough that is all the rage these days. I assume that it has to do with the typical game hype cycle, where every game is great before it is released, and sucks as soon as it is released. Thus it becomes easier to sell a game before it is released, or even created.

Having said that, I was well willing to pledge $10 to Banner Saga on Kickstarter, because tactical RPGs on the PC aren't exactly plentiful. Best case scenario is me getting a game I want for $10. Worst case scenario is Banner Saga never getting made and my $10 just ending up as a faint signal to the game industry that "Hey, people would like to see some tactical RPGs on the PC!". I'm not likely to spend huge amounts on multiple Kickstarter projects yet, but I'm okay with trying it once in this case and see how it works out.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

What exactly is an unfair advantage?

Game developers sometimes say things which come back to haunt them. Like Mark Jacobs defining the exact conditions for WAR being considered a failure, and then promptly fulfilling them. I believe that Mike O’Brien of ArenaNet just wrote such a thing that will come back to haunt ArenaNet when he defined their philosophy of microtransactions:
"Here’s our philosophy on microtransactions: We think players should have the opportunity to spend money on items that provide visual distinction and offer more ways to express themselves. They should also be able to spend money on account services and on time-saving convenience items. But it’s never OK for players to buy a game and not be able to enjoy what they paid for without additional purchases, and it’s never OK for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who spend time."
Emphasis mine, because that is the part that will boomerang. The statement itself is one that a lot of people might be able to agree with. But those people will never agree what exactly constitutes an unfair advantage. And thus they will compare the reality of what exactly Guild Wars 2 sells by microtransactions with their personal definition of "unfair advantage", and pronounce ArenaNet to be in breach of promise.

That starts with things we already know about. Guild Wars 2 will have a system which resembles EVE Online's PLEX system: You will be able to exchange real money for gems, and trade those gems for in-game gold. Thus you can buy in-game gold. With which you can buy gear. Or in WoW terms: You will be able to buy "epics" for real money (as, btw., you can in WoW). Probably not the best-in-slot ones, but nevertheless. Any gear that is tradable will also be buy-able for real money. And a lot of people will consider that to be an unfair advantage of somebody spending money over somebody spending time.

The very principle of microtransactions is that anything which isn't pure fluff is going to save you time. You exchange money for time, and ArenaNet clearly says they want to sell "time-saving convenience items". But where exactly does "time-saving convenience" stop and "unfair advantage" begin? Lots of games for example sell items that give you a buff for a certain time that doubles your experience; is that a "time-saving convenience" or is that an "unfair advantage"? We will never get everybody to agree on questions like these. Some people will think being able to buy faster advancement and better gear to be perfectly acceptable, others will think it totally unfair that somebody can get to the same result as he did in less time by spending money.

Tetris Battle

Hello fans of facebook games. Today happened something to me what has not happened for really very long time. I started to play facebook game, really just to try it and two hours later I realized not only that I'm still playing, but also that I really do not want to stop. That is great sign that we have something to do with one of the best facebook games. What game caused this?
The name of the game is Tetris Battle, so as you can see it is basically Tetris, but it is also battle, so it is not just normal Tetris. It is the best facebook game I have played in 2012 and without a doubt one of the best ever. Playing Tetris against other facebook users is simply great fun.
Classic Tetris is video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the USSR. This game was released really long time ago, exactly it was June 6 of year 1984 while Pajitnov was working in Acadamy of Science. The name Tetris comes from Greek numerical prefix tetra that means four and exactly from four segments are created game pieces. The other half of the word comes from tennis, which was in fact game Pajitnov really liked.
What you probably know about Tetris is that is was the first computer game exported from USSR to United States. Since then Tetris become extremely popular and today we can say it is not just computer game, but really part of pop culture. The biggest success of Tetris is very likely the release from 1989 for Sega Game Boy.
What is really awesome about this version of Tetris is that it is multiplayer and and every game is much bigger fun when played in multiplayer. So in this game you start at level one and your opponent is also level one. If you win you get star, one or two and when you have five stars you go to next level. In level two you play against level two players and so on. That is really good so you should be always playing only against players that are equal to you. When you lose the game you lose also one star, but you can buy armor so you will not lose any star when you lose.
To win the game it is not only about just to have better score, in fact, every time when you destroy one line one line that cannot be destroyed appears in the bottom of your enemy screen. I love this aspect of game. One game lasts 2 minutes and you can even achieve KO, that is when your enemy fails and their tower grows too high so they cannot put in any other pieces.
Well, I have to write here that I have only really played it for two hours and there are even other game modes I have not tried. Even I really just tried it I love it. Tetris as multiplayer is amazing idea and it is great fun. You have to try it.

You can find the game here.

Rating 10/10

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Pokemon and Farmville

There was a lot of information this weeks about the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Mists of Pandaria, which I am not going to discuss in detail. I just want to discuss two features, already decried as "Pokemon" and "Farmville". Although the details are still sketchy and much might still change, it is foreseen that there will be a feature in which you can do battles using your pets. And you will have some sort of a farm, with daily quests to tend it.

Now I don't expect too much of these features. I would really love to play a REAL Pokemon MMORPG, based on the elemental strengths and weaknesses of the original game. But I'm pretty sure that MoP pet battles won't be as elaborate as that. And having a farm in WoW will probably still be far from what you'd expect from a "player housing" feature.

But I would like to state that features like this are a good addition to the game, because they increase the "world" aspect of World of Warcraft. They aren't on the critical path to ultimate power, but instead add alternative activities for people who aren't all that interested in ultimate power and just want to live in a fun virtual world. Although she is now playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, my ultra-casual wife is still playing World of Warcraft from time to time to do things like collecting pets or doing fishing quests. And she complains that SWTOR doesn't have many of those "world" features.

World of Warcraft has lost some of the "world" feeling by the extreme progress acceleration the leveling game has undergone. Blizzard basically wants to keep "time to level cap" constant, but that has weird effects if the level cap is 90 instead of 60. It's like watching a film in 1.5x fast forward mode, you can still follow the story but everything is somewhat weird and distorted. And by rushing through the zones at high speed you end up being less familiar with them than you were when doing them during vanilla. Note that this acceleration is *not* something the casual players requested, it was done at the request of the people who think the game starts at the level cap who wouldn't accept that every expansion pushed that level cap further away.

So everything Blizzard adds which makes the game feel more like the World of Warcraft instead of the Rush to Power of Warcraft is very welcome indeed. Jokes about Pokemon and Farmville notwithstanding.

Poor man's iPhone

Mobile gaming on iOS and Android devices is on the rise. That has been a problem for me for years: On the one hand I would like to play those nice iOS games I hear so much about, or use the cool apps; on the other hand an iPhone or iPad are bloody expensive if you only want to use them as a gaming device. I have a regular mobile phone which I don't really use all that often. And living in a small country surrounded by excessive data roaming charges makes using a 3G device as mobile internet platform wile traveling impractical. I calculated that buying an iPhone plus one year of the cheapest available phone plan plus some roaming would cost me about €1,000, and I just couldn't justify that cost.

But yesterday I was looking for an MP3-player for podcasts, and I stumbled upon the iPod Touch. Looks like an iPhone, runs pretty much every iOS game or app, but costs only €199 and no monthly cost. Basically it is an iPhone without the phone part. This being even less expensive than a comparable mobile console like the PS Vita, I decided to buy one.

So now I downloaded my first iOS games: Ascension, Hero Academy, Trade Nations, Battle Nations, and Crimson Steam Pirates (I already played Angry Birds on other platforms). The only disadvantage is that some of these are "online only" games with no offline play option, something which never made any sense to me for a mobile console game. But at home the iPod Touch works perfectly on my WiFi network. And when connecting the iPod to my computer, the synchronization with iTunes works nearly effortlessly. I can see why people praise Apple for their user friendliness. But I also experienced the disadvantages of a closed system, with some apps deciding to speak only Dutch to me because I live in Belgium, although the iPod Touch language was set to English.

While Bhagpuss thinks that it doesn't matter what business model a game has, I sure notice the huge difference between the "city" building games on Facebook and on iOS: In a typical Facebook game like Castleville or Cityville you can't really do anything without constantly spamming your friends with requests. A game like Trade Nations plays in a very similar way, but without the need for friends. Only for Hero Academy you need either friends, or be ready to battle random players with the usual dangers of your opponent not responding or quitting early. That game would really need an offline PvE mode for practice.

If you have any recommendations for games, I'd be happy to check them out. I'm mostly interested in turn-based strategy, role-playing, and city building games, but I'd have a look at anything that appears interesting. It really helps that so many games are either free or cost just one Euro or two.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Game environment

Over on Potshot's blog the interesting question is discussed of "how much (developer created) environment is needed or desirable to make a game enjoyable?". Was Everquest better than modern MMORPGs because the game environment was relatively rudimentary and we filled the gaps with our imagination?

I wonder how much the enjoyment of a game environment has to do with our expectations. Many blogs recently complained about the ending of Mass Effect 3, and one player even filed an official FTC complaint against EA Bioware over that ending constituting "false advertising". People expect certain things, sometimes impossible things, and then get unhappy if their expectations aren't met. My theory is that we liked the Everquest game environment because we didn't have too high expectations against which to measure the game. Compare that to the mountain of expectations a new game like Star Wars: The Old Republic has to measure up against, and it is easy to see how Everquest had it easier to satisfy people. I can already predict the comments about Guild Wars 2 not living up to the hype, because frankly I think the hype level for that game is already well in the impossible expectations region.

But I can only encourage the mentioned solution of creating your own game environment and playing a pen & paper roleplaying game like Dungeons & Dragons. At least one person, the Dungeon Master, gets exactly the game environment he wants and expects, because it is him who creates it. And if the Dungeon Master is any good and knows his audience, he'll create a game environment which is enjoyable to his players. Which is a lot easier if you have an audience of 6 or less instead of hundreds of thousands or even millions of players.

How to mess up your laser printer

I made a stupid and rather costly mistake with my color laser printer. I was using special cardstock paper, that is 4 postcard-sized cards on one page with a plastic back. Works wonderfully for printing my monster index cards, and I was also using it to print monster tokens and initiative riders. But once I didn't need all 4 cards, and printed on only 2 of them. So I thought I could just put the half-used page back into my printer after having removed the 2 cards I already printed on. Bad idea! Very bad idea!

The cardstock half printed all right, but once the slightly sticky plastic backing of the removed cards touched the toner drum, it got stuck there. I managed to pull it out, but apparently there was some sort of glue on the backing which had transferred to the toner drums. From then on every time I printed a page, I got magenta, cyan, and blue spots on it. Printing several pages didn't diminish the intensity of the spots, and the printer self-cleaning procedure didn't help either.

The only thing that saved me from having to buy a new printer was that the toner drums in a color laser printer are actually part of the toner cartridge, not the printer itself. So I "only" had to switch out the three color toner cartridges to fix the problem. Fortunately two of them were near empty. But the yellow one was still 75% full, so I ended up losing a hundred bucks worth of toner from this error. :( And all that for trying to save 50 cents worth of cardstock paper. :(

By the way, I wasn't able to find the same 200 g/m2 thick paper in A4 format without the division into 4 cards and without the plastic backing. I see it on Amazon, but the suppliers don't sell to Belgium, probably because sending a pack of paper would cost more postage than the paper is worth. I find a lot of glossy or matte photo paper, but not the normal kind like the HP Color Laser A4 Paper 200 gsm.

Artistic media tool dapat membuat berbagai macam garis

Artistic media tool 
Artistic media tool dapat membuat berbagai macam garis dalam coreldraw > Aktifkan tool artistic media dari toolbox atau tekan shortcut [I]. Property bar akan menampilkan macam- macam garis yang dapat kita buat:

  • Preset.
  • Brush.
  • Sprayer.
  • Calligraphic dan 
  • Pressure. 
Preset menghasilkan garis dengan ketebalan (line width) yang beragam, tergantung style yang dipilih, seperti menggambar dengan tinta dan kuas. Garis seperti ini cocok untuk menulis huruf0 huruf asia seperti jepang dan cina. Perhatikan bahwa garis yang dihasilkan tidak menggunakan outline color sebagai warna, melainkan fill color. Jadi untuk merubah warna garis, click pada color pallete, bukan right click.

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Line Calligraphy dan Behind fill

Artikel Line Calligraphy dan Behind fill ini merupakan sambungan dari artikel sebelumnya yaitu mengenai outline style dalam coreldraw.
Calligraphy.
  • Mengubah setting calligraphy adalah mengatur agar seolah- olah outline dibuat dengan kuas, pena, atau marker calligraphic. Nib shape adalah bentuk profil dari ujung marker. Bentuk yang mungkin dicapai hanya dua, kotak atau lingkaran, tergantung mode corners yang dipilih. Strech adalah rasio antara lebar profil marker terhadap tinggi- nya. Sisi terpendek dibanding sisi panjangnya. Angle adalah derajad kemiringan profil marker. Biasanya angle yang digunakan antara 0 hingga 90 derajad (ccw), tapi anda dapat menggunakan nilai lainnya hingga 360 derajad, sesuai kebutuhan.
Calligraphy
menggambarkan curve dengan nib persegi empat, strech 35%, dan angle 35 derajad.

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outline style dalam coreldraw

Line, atau yang dalam Coreldraw selalu disebut outline (dalam Artikel ini disebut line saja), sesungguhnya memiliki banyak property atau faktor penentu penampilan. Sejauh ini kita telah mengetahui bahwa sebuah line memiliki property color (outline color) dan mungkin juga telah kita singgung sedikit mengenai outline width, outline style, edge arrowhead. Dalam Artikel ini kita akan membahas property lainnya. diantaranya Mengenai :
  • Color.
  • Width.
  • Style.
  • Corners.
  • Line caps.
  • Arrowheads.
  • Calligraphy.
  • Behind fill.

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Mengenal Fungsi Shaping tools

Shaping tools mencakup knife tool dan eraser tool. Masing- masing, knife tool berfungsi untuk memotong obyek, sedangkan eraser tool menghapus bagian dari obyek. Masalahnya, hasil perpotongan berupa satu obyek atau beberapa obyek, dan dalam hal fill, obyek hasilnya tertutup atau terbuka. Untuk knife tool, tersedia dua mode operasi. Pertama leave as one object. Secara default mode ini dalamkeadaan tidak aktif, sehingga tiap operasi knife tool akan menghasilkan obyek baru. Mode auto close on cut yang secara default dalam keadaan aktif akan selalu menghasilkan obyek baru (dan aslinya) yang tertutup.

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Mengenal Fungsi Align dan Distribute

Align adalah mensejajarkan obyek- obyek yang terseleksi, sementara distribute berguna untuk menyeragamkan atau menyamakan jarak antar obyek.

Buatlah beberapa obyek yang berbeda ukuran dan bentuk, pilihlah seluruhnya.Align Distribute
Untuk mensejajarkan secara horizontal, ketik [C]. Tekan ([ctrl]+ [Z]) untuk membatalkan perintah tadi, kemudian cobalah perintah lainnya. Untuk mensejajarkan secara vertical, ketik [E]. Untuk sisi kiri [L], sisi kanan [R], sisi bawah [B], sisi atas [T]. Serupa dengan combine dan Boolean, hasil akhir tergantung dari posisi obyek paling bawah atau yang terakhir dipilih/ diseleksi.

Anda juga dapat melakukan aligning melalui tombol yang ada pada property bar. Ini akan membuka sebuah dialog box/ window dengan judul align.
Align dan Distribute
Melalui window ini anda dapat menentukan apaka align yang anda inginkan adalah terhadap bagian tengah page, sisi page. Perhatikan check- box yang ada. Bila keduanya tidak aktif, maka alignment obyek dilakukan terhadap satu sama lainnya. Perhatikan juga opsi align to grid. Aktifkan ini bila anda bekerja dengan grid, dan menginginkan semua operasi align dialihkan ke titik grid terdekat.

Sementara itu, fungsi distribute sangat berguna menyeragamkan jarak antar obyek. Misalnya anda memiliki beberapa Rectangle yang sudah sejajar secara vertical, tetapi jarak horizontal antara satu sama lainnya masih tidak seragam. Untuk menyeragamkannya, seleksi seluruhnya, tekan tombol align/ distribute yang ada pada property bar Multiple objects, pilih tab distribute, dan pilih horizontal center. Setelah menkan tombol ok, hasilnya akan memiliki jarak hotizontal yang seragam, dengan ujung paling kiri dan paling kanan sebagai penentu parameter/ batas maksimal.
Fungsi  Align dan Distribute
window/ dialog box Align dan Distribute
Fungsi  Align dan Distribute
Dalam window/ dialog box distribute, anda harus menentukan salah satu, apakah distribute dilakukan terhadap batas seleksi atau terhadap batas page.

Seperti align, mendisitribusikan right berarti menganggap sisi paling kanan dari obyek- obyek sebagai titik- titik pusat operasi, dalam hal ini operasi pendistribusian. Satu hal tambahan yang perlu anda ketahui adalah perbedaan antara perbedaan antara distribute center dan distribute spacing. Khususnya pada distribusian obyek- obyek yang berbeda bentuk dan ukuran, distribute center mengatur jarak titik pusat obyek tanpa jaminan kesamaan jarak antar obyek, sementara distribute spacing justru menjamin kesamaan jarak antar obyek tanpa pengaruh titik pusat obyek. Semoga Bermanfaat, Di artikel berikutnya Kita akan coba membahas tentang "Mengenal Fungsi Shaping tools" dalam coreldraw.
Rating: 4.5

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Building a campaign

4th edition Dungeon & Dragons is relatively well structured, so you can predict how long it takes to level up. A full campaign has 30 levels, it takes about 10 encounters per level, which means the overall length of a campaign is 300 encounters. But with my group playing only every other week for an evening, and doing about 3 encounters per evening, that results in the campaign being 100 sessions long, or about 4 years, if we ever get to the end. Very few dungeon masters would ever bother to plan a campaign 4 years ahead. For my campaign I have an idea for a theme that could last until the end, but I certainly don't have all the adventures planned out.

Now there is an old DM saying that the most important adventure is the one you are playing right now. That is where most of the preparation effort should go into. But planning several adventures ahead in lesser detail has its advantages too: You can introduce story hooks and hints about future adventures early on, build up master villains that last for more than one adventure, and create a generally more cohesive world.

Now some people write all of their campaigns and adventures from scratch. I don't. I might have sufficient writing skills for a blog, but J.R.R. Tolkien I ain't. I rather use premade adventures, which I then modify. That way I can take advantage of all the handouts, maps, and tokens provided with the adventures, and rely on somebody having play-tested the combat encounters. Even if the story in the WotC adventures is sometimes a bit weak, I don't mind. The story is the part I'm modifying the most anyway, to knit the adventures together into a campaign.

In this "knitting" part I had a major breakthrough this weekend. I had collected a bunch of official 4E adventures, some based on recommendations from my readers, plus some "best of" modules I played with a different group back in the 80's. At first I had some problems fitting them together, with the level requirements not fitting, or the setting of the adventures being so different that it appeared hard to string them together. But then I realized that my first adventure had two somewhat disparate parts, which I might better split and insert a different adventure in between. And doing that the end of the second part could be modified to give the perfect starting point for one adventure I had trouble including otherwise. Which then would fix the level gap to the next adventure after that. Suddenly the whole thing made perfect sense, and now I have adventures lined up leading from level 1 to level 8, or about 1 year of campaign. Complete with an overarching story, and lots of story hooks linking the adventures between each other.

Of course that is just the rough outline. I will still need to prepare a lot of the details, especially those of the old adventures which I need to convert to 4th edition. But I'm happy that I now have an idea to where my adventures are leading, and I have something more than a patchwork quilt of adventures. This is starting to look good!

Apa itu Boolean?

Artikel Boolean ini merupakan sambungan dari artukel sebelumnya yaitu Membuat Multiple objects di coreldraw .
Boolean, seperti juga combine, menyatukan beberapa obyek menjadi satu obyek baru. Namun ada beberapa perbedaan atau sifat khas dari boolean.
  1. Hasil akhir tidak dapat diurai lagi menjadi obyek- obyek penyusunnya.
  2. Dalam pembuatannya obyek baru, obyek penyusun dapat dipertahankan.
  3. Hubungan antar obyek penyusun dapat diatur; apakah weld, trim, atau intersect.
Boolean mencakup
  1. Weld, yaitu menyatukan beberapa obyek menjadi satu obyek baru. Property hasil akhir weld tergantung obyek yang terbawah atau yang terakhir di pilih. Untuk merubah urutan obyek tertentu, gunakan ([shift]+ [pgup]), ([ctrl]+ [pgup]), dst.
  2. Trim, yaitu memotong obyek terbawah atau terakhir terseleksi dengan obyek lainnya. Property hasil akhir trim jelas tergantung obyek yang dipotong.
  3. ntersect, yaitu membentuk obyek baru dari perpotongan obyek- obyek penyusun. Hasil akhir memiliki property sesuai obyek terbawah atau terakhir dipilih.
Boolean
Prosedur boolean ada dua macam. Pertama, anda dapat melakukannya dengan cepat melalui tombol- tombol yang ada pada property bar multiple objects. DockerCara kedua adalah melalui docker shaping. Docker tersebut dapat diakses melalui menu window > dockers > shaping > weld. Dari situ kita dengan mudah dapat berpindah fungsi antara weld- trimintersect dengan cepat. Prosedur ini agak berbeda dari cara pertama. Anda harus memilih obyek- obyek ‘lain’ terlebih dahulu. Ini bisa lebih dari satu, dan disebut source objects. Setelah itu anda tekan tombol ‘weld’, ‘trim’, atau ‘intesect’, tergantung dari operasi yang anda pilih, dan akhirnya dengan kursor memilih obyek terakhir yang disebut target. Dengan menggunakan prosedur ini anda dapat lebih mengendalikan proses boolean. Pada docker shaping, dapat anda temukan check- box untuk mempertahankan source object (obyek- obyek penyusun) atau target objects (obyek- obyek target; yang dipilih terakhir). Ubah setting semula untuk mengendalikan operasi boolean lebih jauh lagi. Hasil akhir dari proses boolean dengan prosedur ini tergantung dari property target. Pelatihan Pelatihan berikut ini sangat tergantung pada operasi- operasi yang menyangkut multiple objects. Hasil akhir yang diharapkan adalah suatu bentuk ban atau cincin dalam posisi tiga dimensi.
  1. Buatlah sebuah ellipse dengan ellipse tool sehingga hasilnya seperti pada contoh. Ellipse ini selanjutnya disebut ellipse biru.
    ellipse biru
  2. Gandakan ellipse semula, dan perkecil secara sentral. Ellipse kecil ini kita sebut ellipse hijau.
    ellipse hijau
  3. Gandakan keduanya. Yang besar kita sebut ellipse merah dan yang kecil oranye.
    ellipse merah
  4. Dibantu snap to objects, buatlah sebuah Rectangle seperti ditunjukkan contoh. Obyek ini kita sebut rectangle kuning.
    rectangle-kuning
  5. Weld rectangle kuning dengan ellipse biru. Trim ellipse biru dengan ellipse merah. Gandakan ellipse oranye, lalu hasil penggandaan tersebut di- combine dengan ellipse merah.
    Weld rectangle
  6. Terakhir, gunakan ellipse hijau untuk memotong/ men- trim ellipse oranye. Jika behasil, hasilnya akan seperti contoh.
    memotong men-trim
Untuk mempercantik hasilnya, kita akan mencoba mengisi obyek dengan gradient fill. Gradient fill adalah sejenis color fill yang memungkinkan satu obyek diisi dengan beberapa warna sekaligus. Gradient fill sendiri ada beberapa macam; kali ini kita akan mencoba linear gradient :
  1. Isilah obyek biru (tidak lagi berupa ellips) dengan warna hitam. Pastikan obyek ini masih dalam keadaan terpilih untuk langkah berikutnya.
    Ellipse-1
  2. Tekan [G] pada keyboard untuk meng- akses gradient tool, dan tarik/ drag tool tersebut dari titik terendah hingga titik tertinggi obyek, dengan masih dibantu dengan snap to objects.
    Ellipse 2
  3. Lakukan hal serupa dengan obyek oranye. Kali ini dari titik tertinggi ke titik terendah.
    Ellipse 3
  4. Untuk obyek merah, beri color fill kelabu.
    Ellipse 4
  5. Kali ini beri gradient dari titik paling kanan ke titik paling kiri.
    Ellipse 5
  6. Terakhir, hilangkan semua outline atau set warna outline menjadi warna transparent. Jika behasil, hasilnya akan seperti contoh.
    Ellipse 6
Selamat Mencoba ...!! di artikel berikutnya kita akan bahas mengenai "Mengenal  Fungsi  Align dan Distribute" dalam coreldraw
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