Michael Cook’s Place

I’ve updated Gravitoids, adding a few little cleanups and making it generally run better. There are still some clear problems with it, such as the fear display lines seem off, and they learn to ignore the walls completely… which means my balancing is off. Still strangely distracting and fun to watch.

A short while ago, I finished playing Patapon. At only $20, the game is a great value. I wasn’t expecting much, but I was rather pleasantly surprised.

Basics

Patapon is a often described as a rhythm game combined with a real time strategy game. This is somewhat true, but I don’t entirely agree with the real time strategy part. During boss fights, it feels more like it’s a rhythm based fighter. This could be applied to normal stages as well, though the feeling is not as strong.

In Patapon you bang your drums of war in specific patterns to instruct your little Patapons to advance, fight, defend, retreat, or charge-up. I’m a big fan of rhythm fans, going back to PaRappa the Rapper nearly a decade ago. Because of the rhythm aspect, decent reviews, the interesting graphics, and the low price, I decided to pick the game up.

Gameplay

The game largely works very well. The system is responsive to the controls, and never feels arbitrary in if you hit or miss the beat (which some games, like PaRappa, did). The better you match the beat, the louder and more complex and rich the drum sounds the game produces. This little bit of feedback works quite well. The best feedback is the Patapon that you command. As you do better and better (by hitting sequences in groups without messing up) they chant louder and louder, then start to sing. Their little war song changes depending on the units that you have in your group.

The game is mostly quite fun. There is a delay between issuing orders and them being carried out. It’s this dichotomy that causes some confusion in the “feel” of the game. If the responses were more delayed, they would feel more like the Patapon were acting on their own and you were sort of guiding them (like an RTS). If the responses were more immediate, it would feel more light a real fight (and thus a fighting game). For the first few hours, this delay was somewhat annoying. While it never went away, I began to factor it in as I played more and it stopped being noticable. Only when I messed up (issued a attack instead of a retreat, when a boss was about to attack) did I notice it, and it felt like my fault. It didn’t feel arbitrary.

The mini-games, while somewhat fun and cute, were kind of simple. I didn’t feel like I needed them too much. Unlike the combat, they often DID feel like they were punishing me for not being exactly on the beat. This was especially true when playing with the baby mountain. The cooking mini-game, with Gashapon, was very fun though. I found his animations (walking along the top of the kettle) to be very cute.

I only have two complaints about the game. While the weapons and armor system seemed somewhat unnecessary to me (I never had to mess with it, just choose “optimize”), the Kaching system was annoying. Kaching is the money that you need to create new units, which can be quite expensive. The problem is that Kaching is quite hard to get, relative to what they want you to spend. This can cause you to replay some simple missions over and over just for the money, which gets tedious.

The other complaint is the ending. I expected more, but was quite disappointed. On the plus side, they left room open for a sequel which I will be looking forward to. At least the game didn’t solve every problem, only to come back a year later and pretend like there was some need for a sequel. The progression here will be much more natural than many games.

But for only $20, I can overlook those. I’ve enjoyed quite a few hours throughout the last week and a half.

Graphics

Like LocoRoco, this programming team’s previous game, the graphics are all vector based, which makes them quite clean and rather stylistic. The little Patapons are quite cute, and their changes of dress (based on the armor and weapon they have) works very well. The bosses are quite a bit more detailed, and the whole world is rather charming. I really enjoyed all the little Patapon animations as they threw spears, shot arrows, and swung axes. The little Megapon units really remind me of some of the characters in Pepper Land in Yellow Submarine.

Just a quick note, I’ve fixed the Photos section. I just noticed last week that you could only view things if you were logged in, and since I don’t give anyone accounts, that kind of defeated the purpose. It used to work, so it must have happened during an automatic version upgrade I ran. I didn’t think to check it afterwords. It should be fixed now. One of these days, I’ll put more photos up too.

Things have finally died out in my SPAM reply chain. It took two days or more. There have been a few fun updates. When we last left, Steve had sent an email, marked important, that he didn’t understand anything. A few other people responded that they were in the same boat, or more on the “I’m not responsible” bit. Then came this:

Good day Mr. [redacted],

We do apologize for the inconveniences these emails have caused you.
We would like to verify the sort of emails sent to your email box by our email address. Please also confirm if you are a customer of [redacted] Bank and if you are, is it the [redacted] -( electronic notification on each transaction done on your account) that you receive? You can select a limit of the [redacted] you want to receive in your email box.

Waiting for your reply.
Kind regards,
[redacted]

So some bank is in on this chain, and is now apologizing for this situation (which isn’t their fault). There were 5 or 6 more “who is doing this” emails, along with another 3 or so “take me off your list” messages. Next, Tim chimed in:

Dear new friends

I feel I have made quite a few this morning, as so many different people unknown to me have joined in this discussion, taking the nuisance value of this silly bit of spam to new heights.

Can I suggest no more replies to this message, tempting though it may be. Each reply is probably being distributed to many other innocent receivers of it. Remember that the original evil sender will be on the mailing list too. Having made up lots of random combinations of email addresses, it is very likely that they are now gathering in the real, working email addresses people are unwittingly give them, for even more targetted spam in the future. Don’t get duped. The age old advice is, if something arrives and it is not for you, bin it and move on.

Tim

Someone has some sense. There were a few other people saying “stop replying, just delete these messages”. Someone explained how this was all going on, one address forwarding to us all. Some, like Reena, were getting pretty upset:

i am being blamed as well for sumthing i havent even done .. my email address is purely for job hunting and i wouldnt send out “smut” to anyone .. i hate the things myself and it is bloody annoying.. i am getting the freefix crap as well .. and i really personally dont want to open another email account .. so whoeva is doing this .. please get a freaking life

Responding to one of the shouting “stop emailing me” messages was Ceejay:

Hello Keith,
Sorry about all these crap coming to your email i think someone might have added all our addresses to a mailing list at [redacted] and the best way out is to report to the persons ISP and get his domain name banned, I get them too but just delete them but I don’t like the fact that you think they are coming from Nigeria. That there are a lot of school gunshots and murders in the USA does not make USA a country labelled for murderers. I don’t like the label you guys always try to apply to our country, there might as well be other countries doing this but hiding under the label of Nigeria just the same way they hide trying to make their smut look like it is coming from our email addresses. I did not want to reply to this list but the moment I saw Nigeria it set me off. Just pray for the best and exercise all best and safe internet practices but leave out the label of fraud and smut from Nigeria. It is not our Label and we would not accept it.

Thanks and Good Luck.

Some people take all the fun out of watching a thread like this. Soon someone tried to start an investigation, that was Ken.

I have been deleting this rubbish , but something caught my eye and decided to go through my deleted files. A Paul [redacted] of [redacted] tel [UK phone number redacted] responded to an email from [redacted] regarding a music purchase.
That could be a starting point for those who want start some form legal action.

Then we got another 6 messages of “unsubscribe me”, and things amazingly went quiet.

All in all, there were over 40 messages, not including bounced emails. I was really enjoying watching this.

So what happens when someone starts sending SPAM from your domain? Well it seems that this weekend someone started doing just that, maybe. There were at least using my mail server. It’s been a little annoying to get a bunch of bounce messages, but I got something interesting out of all this. (ed: continued later here)

First I got just a single message from someone. I don’t know their name, just that their email address (which I won’t post). This person was not happy to get this SPAM.

we are going to get an attourney if u keep sending smut to my email adress. i have kids here that could be exposed to this. this is my last reguest and if it keeps coming i am turning my laptop over to the law firm to investigate. i will try to make an example for the whole united states to see if u keep sending this crap. i dont know what other people do when they get this smut sent to them but it makes me sick every day i check my email. sometimes i wont even want to check it because i know there will be so much smut to delete so one more time STOP SENDING ME EMAIL STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP there that should be more than enuf requests to legally get u to stop
sending me email. please stop.

You see, people have been talking about this. For some reason, I’ve been getting these people’s replies. It all started when someone named Tiffany apologized for the emails, saying she wasn’t spamming us, but her name ended up on the emails somehow.

I have not now, nor have I EVER sent out “smut” I do not send out Spam or Porn or any thing of the sort, if you have recieved something from someone claiming to be me, check the actual headers and email it was sent from .. forced headers happen all the time… all they need is my name and email address to send it as me and IF the email was sent from MY address, I will change my profile information and security info… I am sorry, I have never … ever sent anything of a questionible nature to anyone.. .expecially strangers

Tiffany <--- NOT a "spammer"

Well, how could anyone resist that? Rowland certainly couldn’t.

Hello Al,,
I wonder why these kind of emails will be flying around my corner.
I never subscribed to any site for these and i keep receiving these trash!
Please i want to beg who so ever that is responsible for this to pls STOP or else i gonna do something funny to everyone.
Moreover, why are mails sent to [redacted] coming to me?
Infact i dont really understand.

Peter made sure to jump in, pointing out none of this was his fault:

I am suffering too and my sever etc is verry secure so its not me. Kr Peter

Matt stepped in to prevent the lawsuit threatened by Rowland.

No one’s going to sue anyone – whatever they might think. This is the whole point of these sorts of emails…to cause stress and waste time. I’d suggest you whack your spam filter up to max and just ignore them! Works for me.

Next came Keith from a consulting company who was also in on this fun little email chain.

I have had the same - think they are coming from Nigeria, just have to block them I think unless you can recommend anything else

Saurabh joined in complaining about Nigerian 419 scam messages.

join the club………i couldnt agree more
even better, i’m getting nigerian emails to give them my a/c number and sort code so that they can deposit $1m.
do they think that i was born yesterday??

Karen replied to Peter, also calling “not it.” The came Kelly who seems surprised at the whole concept of SPAM.

This is the same for me as well. I do not know who is doing this but it definitely has not originated from me. I thought our server was very secure as well. I am not sure what we can do?

me too……i received that message and was totally shocked!!!!

At this point someone named Michael was getting very annoyed at this thread. So this person sent us all this message:

Do not no how you got my email address, but please all keep the rubbish for yourselves. No more emails to this address

Last up (so far), we have Nigel. He doesn’t know why he is on this thread. None of us do.

Its not coming from me…so why copy me in on the e-mails…..

While writing this, Lee jumped in to complain.

To Whom It May Concern

This kind of spam email is indeed worrying and it would seem that a number of individuals have experienced this problem.
I too have never heard of or had any dealing with [redacted] and I must reiterate that I too have NOT sent or been party to any of this behaviour.

Last so far was Steve. He sent a quick little message, but marked it important, as though that would somehow stop this thread because he checked a little box.

I do not understand either, I have not sent anything!!

I can’t wait to see what comes next. I’ve only received 12 emails on this topic, unless my SPAM filter has caught some.