The Candy Lei Problem

The board under varying degrees of Candy Lei. Players will never see balls roll out in the way shown on the third screen.

This week's board (previously called Summer Solstice) faces a few problems due to the board design, most notably regarding Candy Lei (and any other food that creates bigger clusters.) The fanpage hints that this is a tough board this week and mentions that the Candy Lei appears to be working, but many people disagree. So what's the real problem here?

Difficulty Adjustment: There are several ways that difficulty can be raised aside from the curve design. As boards in Blitz use the same curve file structure as in Zuma's Revenge, the difficulty can be raised by either increasing the max number of singles that pop up in a row (offset 0x15), the number of colors the curve will produce (offset 0x19, max 6), or other features like max cluster size and speed of balls (offset unknown). The balls generated are not completely random, instead the color of the ball is based on whether or not it meets various criteria in the previous sentence.

Note the difficulty applies for a single curve only, and there are two curves that are loaded in Blitz, so the difficulty for each curve can be adjusted independently.

Problem: The Candy Lei makes clusters bigger by reducing the number of single balls that can appear in a row (it also increases the chance that clusters are bigger, but only marginally). Under normal circumstances after a ball has rolled out, if the next ball isn't the same color as the previous ball then the ball after that must be the same color. The Candy Lei ensures that no single balls roll out at all. However this board allows up to two singles to roll out in a row, so a Candy Lei would set the board to the difficulty found in past boards without the use of Candy Lei. The noticeable change is minor when multiple single balls are allowed to come out in a row, but is major when they cause singles to be non-existent. The huge difference is causing people to believe that the Lei is not working.

How to resolve: The Candy Lei effect either needs to be made stronger, or change the difficulty that fewer singles roll out.

Strategy: I would normally suggest using a Spirit Turtle since you can chain hot frogs together and can clear balls / reach fruit no matter how jumbled up they are, but they banned it and 99% of the players do not have access to a turtle. Unless you are an expert with making gaps, I don't have good tips otherwise, so all I can say is good luck.

Facebook Spam via Tagging

More of these posts start showing up, usually you only know about this via email.

I've been getting a lot more of these spam messages lately, involving a friend (or friend of a friend) sending spam messages, and tagging others to improve spreadability. They're usually deleted within minutes after they show up, and due to its nature they appear to be automated. If that's the case it won't spread far, but there's a few things to get from it.

Stuff I do know about it: I know these messages exist because:

• I get an email the minute I get tagged, even though I was untagged or the post was deleted. I concluded that it was deleted, because tag review notifications include posts which were deleted, and deleted posts technicially still exist on FB's servers, with the privacy setting of that post set so that no one can see it.
• The email is legitimate.
• Who gets tagged appears to be random (though I don't know for sure because I never actually saw the live message)
• It would be quite hard to tag specific friends of friends because you need to type in at least their first name and need to start typing their last name in full.
• If the tags include friends, it can spread quicker because in most cases people don't use Tag Review and therefore any tag from a friend will auto-appear on their wall and a newsfeed post will be made about it. (With Tag Review on, it occurs only if a comment or like is made on the post in question.) Just tagging anyone will automatically hit their tag review wall.
• If it was automated you can apparently tag anyone in a status message... yet the official documentation for graph API for a status message doesn't say anything about tags.

I know there are some legitimate uses for tagging friends of friends (I usually do tags only if I am mentioning someone in a post that they can't normally see) but I feel like there are more ways for this feature to be abused. Although notifications that non-friends have tagged you can be turned off, it doesn't stop them from tagging you, so the activity log should be checked at regular intervals to ensure that people aren't associating you with... bad stuff.

Asparagus Festival Spear It Run

After going to the Asparagus festival from 2004 to 2011, it feels like almost the same each time: Head over for bus rides in order to get to the festival (or park over there), look at booths and get freebies, try various asparagus food items, that's it. Most of the booths are the same throughout the years, so it's a matter of finding what's new.

I've decided to try out something new: Run the Spear-It Run. I've heard about it for the past few years and saw the finish line, but always wondered where it started. I no longer have to look further. The run goes back and forth over a single street (this makes it quite prone for people taking shortcuts) but is decent enough.

Overall: Cleared in 28:42 (83rd place) - which is a 3:42 improvement. Getting closer to the 'under 20m 5k' goal.

Playlist: My playlist developed quite a few additions since I last did the run at Davis. It still consists of mainly electronic music, but unlike last time, there were many songs that didn't seem to fit right during the run, so I found myself having to skip quite a few songs while running.

The addition of K-Pop Songs during the run (I posted one as a comment on the photo) might get some of my friends by surprise.

• Cold Storage - Operatique
• Skrillex - Bug Hunt (Noisia Remix)
• Big Bang - Tonight
• M&H Band - Popcorn
• Daft Punk - Get Lucky (Mj edit)
• 2NE1 / Big Bang - Lollipop

New Additions: The Asparaberry Shortcake is a Strawberry Shortcake with bits of Asparagus on it, and it's 3 bucks - much cheaper than getting a shortcake at some of the other booths). I don't know if it was introduced last year, but it was featured this year.

Book Sculptures

One of the more interesting exhibits on display at the library - book paper art.

I've always seen book sculptures online as impressive, but they are even more so when you can actually see them in full 3d. It was on display the week of April 15, 2013 near the front of the UOP Library.

I was hoping to get a pic of that last year with a decent camera but the entire exhibit disappeared before I had a chance to do it.

Dialogues

Re: Foster: Not when you're in a room that's going to be removed in the release.

Draft copy of a game screen with dialogue text. Three lines, one character speaking, and an optional portrait. Non-pixel font. Not a mock-up (except for the background). This screen can also be used for various system events like any events occurring in the background.

Need to Add:

• The ability to color or bold text in dialogue - there is no real way to program this easily when relying on word wrap to do line breaks (triggered with \n).
• Optimize dialogue to stretch to border when there's no character portrait displayed.
• Text that fills in like actual dialogue instead of displaying it all at once.
• Fades. In the event that a different character is speaking in any conversation it will fade smoothly to that character, the box itself won't fade until the convo ends.
• Add some timed dialogues (no user intervention) - critical when characters are moving during dialogue.

Repairs

Looks like things have taken a turn for the worse when I got back. Although additional sprites were ready for me to use, KY's images for the menu were lost with the power outage, so I'll have to wait until the materials are ready. David's hard drive on his laptop crashed and pictures couldn't be recovered there. That makes three dead drives this semester.

My programming team is currently out at this time while they replace their laptops (via loans) and get stuff back to working condition - until then I'm on my own to carry AD to the finish... at least to a playable demo anyways.

Returning to Reno: Peppermill

I didn't get to experience all of Reno the first time around at the beginning of this year, so I decided to go another time. I've never been anywhere past Downtown Reno before, and this time around I got to explore much more of Reno, including Virginia City (my friends were at the Piper Opera House back in November but I was unable to make it that day).

I decided to stay at Peppermill since I saw a coupon at Costco once regarding this place and it was well worth the money - I didn't find Circus Circus and Eldorado too satisfying to stay in but this hotel was a notable exception to that rule as a AAA four diamond hotel.

Overview: The suite has some nice amenities. HDTV with capabilities of plugging in computer equipment *, fully dimmable lights, dual showerheads, whirlpool tub, and free wifi*. Like other high class hotels, they tend to lack a fridge and microwave (I'm accustomed to both of them, maybe it's because I've been staying in motels for too long?)

The Costco Package fixes your room cost to $100 a night for two nights, simply make a reservation and use the Costco printout instead of paying. (there are a few blackout dates though when you can't use it though, and space is limited so you'll want to plan in advance). It also gives you a substantial amount of resort credit ($50 on weekends and $100 on weekdays) effectively creating a $50 or $75 per night four diamond suite. Given this is at least 50 percent off the room in most cases, I'd take this offer again.