File-sharing via P2P - Japanese ISPs as judges?

Have just read the article about how Japanese Internet Service Providers, i.e. the ISPs, will cut off the Internet access of subscribers found in illegal sharing of computer games, animes and music files. This is quite a recent development, i.e. in March 2008. In the proposed plan, it seems that

...copyright organizations would notify providers of Internet protocol addresses used by those who repeatedly make copies illegally, using special detection software. The providers would then send warning e-mails to the users based on the IP addresses of the computers used to connect to the Internet. If contacted users did not then stop their illegal copying, the providers would temporarily disconnect them from the Internet for a specified period of time or cancel their service-provision contracts.

What is interesting is that the court is not involved. Thus copyright organisations would play the role of judges? This cannot be, since technically speaking these copyright organisations play the role of plaintiff when they first complain about infringements. Thus, to put it more accurately, the ISPs will be the ones playing judges.

Dangerous.

In any copyright regime, there will always be circumstances for fair dealing clauses where using a copyright works without the explicit permission from the owners are allowed. Examples include news reporting, and educational uses. If we ask the ISPs to play the roles of judges, it is likely they will simply ignore the 'fair dealing' uses, since it will be too much trouble for them.

Compare the Japanese case with the Sweden case where the court is involved, it seems to be more prudent actually. In this article on Wired News about the Sweden development, a spokesman for the Swedish ISPs said that

"It's good in the way that we don't have to judge whether an Internet activity is legal or illegal," he said.

I agree with him. Leave the ISPs to do what they know best, i.e. provide Internet access, and let the courts and judges come in for the legal matters. It is only natural to get some checks and balances to prevent any systems from being abused. In these whole scenarios of ISPs, copyright owners, and uses (both legal and illegal), it is tough to determine what is right or wrong. Take a look at this discussion about the class action suit against the RIAA in the States for some different perspective.

Samorost 1 - equally interesting game

After playing Samorost 2 (review of the game here) and finding that it's a great game, it is only naturally to play Samorost 1. Overall I would think that Samorost 2 is better, with more interesting graphics and background music. The 'tricks' in Samorost 2 is also more challenging, which requires more 'thinking'. Nonetheless Samorost 1 is still worth a try.

In Samorost 1, you play a character on a 'rock' who realises that another 'rock' is heading for a collision with the same rock. So you set out for a rescue project to change the course of the alien rock. I realised that some readers may want to have a 'walkthru' of the Samorost 1. So I added the tips at the end of this post, but it's in 'dark grey' colour. If you need the tips, highlight to reveal them. Else scrolling down to look at the pictures still will not spoil the fun of the game.



When you landed on the planet surface, you will find a colony of farmers. Wonder if the face of the farmer belongs to one of the game creators?


Here starts the trip to the centre of the Earth, oops, no, it's the centre of the rock!


Don't worry if you're stuck. You got birds and squirrel as company.


The creature is more interested in ants than you. Heh, I guess humans in weird colour pajamas is less appetising.


You'll reach the main steam engine room. You will save your home!


Change your fate, change the direction!


It's not that hard isn't it?



Tips:
click the tower!
The burning tobacco. The Ski line. Press the button. Adjust the direction! Pinch his butt. Click me to fly!
Fish is biting. Get rid of pests! Shoo the bird.
Rotate the rock. Black hole is fun. Black holes are really fun. Light bulb. Open the hatch and get in!
Worms are irritating. Squirrel likes records. There are many records. Dancing owl is cute, don't you think so?
Don't block the ants! Open the hatch. He is busy during meals. The box. The lights on the door.
The blinking light. It says Q.50. Middle. Where the ladder points.

Samorost by Amanita Design

Read about this excellent Flash based games Samorost 2 by Amanita Design. This game has won an award, the Winner for Best Web Browser Game, Nominee for Excellence in Visual Art at the IGF, the Independent Games Festival. Try the game, it's quite fun. A point and click game with no need for any instruction.

In the game you played a human who lost his dog to a bunch of aliens. The aliens are picking your pears for their big boss, and you embarked on an adventure to get your dog back. That's Part 1, which is free to play. To play Part 2, you'll need to pay for the game. Here's the starting planet where you live.


Here's when the aliens arrived to steal your pears.


You have to think of a way to feed the snail properly, such that it will sleep after its meal.


Here you meet the aliens again, who is filling the bottle of pears to feed his boss.


Here you meet the alien boss who is eating your pear, while making your dog works like a hamster to fan him!


Do something to trick the alien boss and your dog is saved!


However, when you are on your way back, the fuel runs out and you will crashed onto another planet. That's where part 2 of the game starts.


The company also produces the Samorost 1, as well as other games and flash animations. This is an interesting company to watch.

Beijing Olympics vs The Pencil Farm

Earlier I mentioned that China is quite big about virtual world and games development. Apparently they still have some way to go in the area of respecting intellectual property.

Read on the Slashdot website about how Beijing Olympics website has a game that is very similar to the 'Snow Day' from Pencil Farm. Went to both the website and took a look. The similarities are striking, very striking indeed. Pencil Farm noted the similarities and has taken some actions.

Here's the link to the original Pencil Farm's 'Snow Day'. It is a nice game and worth a try when you have 5-10 minutes to spare.


An Update:
Seems like the Pencil Farm managed to get the game removed from the Beijing Olympics website. Pencil Farm also provided a link to Sydney Morning Herald article covering the issue. A happy turn of event for Pencil Farm, don't you think so? Though I don't think he will get much compensation out of the Olympics.

Travian Guide Part 2

Not much to add since different travian players have different style of play, which is also dependent on which race you choose. There are two more points for reference, one on the Gaul traps, and the other for End Game.


1) Gauls Traps
Travian Gauls are the only race who can build traps. Plus the point that they have double cranny size, they are a good defence race to have. To attack a Gaul village, try to have more than 200 troops. This is because a fully extended trapper can have only 200 traps at maximum. Try to use attack as well instead of raids, since attack may free up the trapped troops.

No worries if your troops are trapped, they are still alive. The player cannot kill them and the trapped troops consume your crops. So it may be good to have a chat with the person to release them, or simply wait till the player's village get attacked and the troops are freed. The players can release the imprisoned troops by clicking on the rally point and select "Release".

2) End game
Towards the end of the game (some said it happens about 1 year or less from the start of the server), there will be news about End Game. Many Natars villages will sprint up, at quite predictable locations, e.g. -125, -125 or 0, -1. Once the natars villages are captured, the owner can change the name of the village. During End Game session, there will also be a 'WW' (World Wonder) tab under the "Statistics" button where you could see who are the natars village owners, and the level of WW that they have built.


Since there about about only 13 Natars villages, only 13 players can compete in building the World Wonder. There will be plenty of competition among alliances and players to capture and hold each village. Once all natars villages are conquered, the old Natars Ruin at the 400, 400 will start sending troops to attack these original natars villages. Some said attacks will come in waves when WW reaches certain fixed level, e.g. every 5th level, others said it's per level of WW built from level 90th onwards. This I'm not completely sure. What is sure is that the owners of these natars villages will need plenty of crops to feed their troops. This is how their alliances can come in, other than providing high level defensive troops.


It is also worthwhile to look at the marketplace. If there is large shift in demand where certain players stop asking for crops. It could be a sign that they lost their troops in the WW defence or from other enemies. This could be time to farm or destroy them.


Travian tools:
Other than the inactive player trackers, there are two more useful tools for travian players. Here's battle reporter
http://travilog.org.ua/en

Here's a Travian map function to view player / alliance details.
http://travianmap.nl/?ln=en

Related Posts: Travian Guide - In the Beginning - Protect Resources and Build Up Defences, Simple Review of the browser game - Travian

Travian Guide in the Beginning - Protect Resources and Build Up Defences

After playing Travian for some time, here's some tips that I've gathered from other players and various online forums.

Resource Building
In the beginning, build the resource fields and crannies (more on crannies below). Continue the process until the villages reach levels where you need more resources than your storage allows, then it's time to upgrade the warehouse and granary.

It makes more sense to upgrade the resource fields in sequence, i.e. no point building a level 6 fields when you can upgrade other level 4 to level 5 fields. Some feel that for crops, you can make an exception and build one field to level 5 as soon as possible in order to get the Grain Mill. Depends on players I guess.


Build Crannies
There will be other players who want to farm you. If they can get resources from the farming, they will be back for more. So build crannies and once they can't get any resources from you, they will just find another farm. Of course there are crazy players who come back with catapults to destroy your buildings when they can't get any resources, but these players are few. Do note though that Teutons can capture about 1/3 of the hidden resources in crannies. So it is better that you use up all the resources in your villages and don't build your warehouse to a extremely high level before your defences are up. No point having your resources stored in the warehouse, unused and only to be stolen right?


Add to the population
One way that other players used to detect farms is the population size. If the size remains constant, there is a likelihood that the villages are inactive and thus good targets to farm. Good targets because it is likely that once the initial troops are wiped out, the inactive village wouldn't build more troops. There are software to track inactivity, where players can see scan any inactive players with distances indicated.

Protect your army
Troops are needed to bring the resources raided from your villages. So if you can kill the enemy troops, you reduce the losses in your resources. If the attacker loses sufficient troops, your villages look less attractvie to him as farms. For defence, try to build up your wall till as high as possible. Different races require more of particular types of resources for their walls. E.g. Gauls need more lumber while Romans need more iron.

A high wall level will give your troops a higher defence bonus, such that small amounts of enemy troops will be killed even when there is only a wall with no troops in your villages.

After the wall, build traps if you are a Gaul. Else start building your defensive troops. Click through the 'Instructions' on the left of the screen to scroll through your troop types and know which are the defence type troops. E.g. for Romans the praetorians are the best defending troops against infantry and the legionnaires against cavalry.


After you have sufficient troops (some say the figure should be near hundreds), you should start to build an armoury and upgrade the armour. High armour give the troops a greater defensive bonus.


Diplomacy & Others
When you are ready, get an embassy so that you can join an alliance. Also, get the rally point build up. It's in the centre of the village. Next is to get a scout. You will need the academy to research such scouts. Scouts are useful to detect scouting from others, and of course, for you to scout others.


Well, this is a war game and so you will be attacked at some point in time. Try the following when you are being attacked. Some pictures of the attack messages (and others) are shown in an earlier post on the Review of Travian.

Safeguard the resources
Resources are what help you to re-build after an attack. The paragraphs above should have sufficient tips for safeguarding the resources.

Contact the attacker
There are times when soft diplomacy works. Write a message to the attacker and ask him to look for other farms. Heh. Sometimes, point him to the inactive player tracker software and he might just leave you alone. Else you can also ask your own alliance leader for diplomatic assistance if you have an alliance.

Defence Strategy After the First Attack
Your troops are greatly weaken after the first attack, or they could simply have been wiped. While you are starting to build the troops, the attacker send more waves of attacks. Don't leave your weakened troops or those small clusters to die! Send them to a nearby village, could be yours or another friendly player. Simply 'reinforce' that village and build up your troops to a sizable amount again before sending them back. Just note the crops consumption in that temporary village and make sure there is food for the troops. If that temporary village belongs to another player, send some crops along as tokens of appreciation.

Ask for Help
There are times when we all need help, that's what friends (and alliances) are for. Contact your alliance leader and ask politely if anyone has troops for assistance. Most ideal if you could post some previous history of the battles for others to gauge the strength of attacks.

Related Posts: Travian Guide Part 2, Simple Review of the browser game - Travian

Community Games Website - Viwawa

Found a new community games website from some friends - Viwawa.

They have a series of different games, and by playing these games, a player could earn enough gold to buy items for their 'Wawa', i.e. avatars. They could also use the games to buy special skills that players could use in the games. Overall the games are quite fun enough. However, the lag can be quite irritating when players experience 'timeout', and I feel that the website could improve somewhat with the games play guide.



Currently there are six games in this website. Each time you start a game, a new pop-up windows will appear. Games include Mahjong, Dai Di (Big 2), chess, ...etc.



Above is what you'll see when you enter that particular game's webpage. Once you clicked play, you will send the screens below.



Above is what you see when you start the Sushi game, a game which I don't exactly understand how to play. Once the program loads, you'll have to join a table, possibly waiting for other players to form a complete table. Here's the waiting scene for the Big 2 game.



Pic below is from the mahjong game, which I played quite a fair bit.


Once a game is over, there will be a tally of gold coins.


Other than gold coins, a player could also use real cash to exchange for items in the website. Payment is quite easy, either credit cards or via mobile phone shortcodes. Thus anyone in Singapore with a mobile phone account can obtain in game currency easily. Given the nature of community games website, it is unsure how compelling it is for players to pay for in game currency. Game players may pay cash for RPG like games, but for such community websites? Maybe, if the advantages of such items warrant it.